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Isokinetic strength differences between elite senior and youth female soccer players identifies training requirements
No full textObjectives: To compare traditional and angle-specific isokinetic strength of eccentric knee flexors and concentric knee extensors in female senior professional and youth soccer players. Design: Cross- sectional study design. Setting: University’s Laboratory. Participants: A total of 34 players (17 seniors [age 25.31 ± 4.51 years; height 167.89 ± 7.04cm; mass 63.12 ± 7.79kg] and 17 youths [16.91 ± 1.16 years; height 165.92 ± 4.42cm; mass 60.07 ± 4.48kg]) from the Women’s Super League 1 completed strength assessments at 180, 270 and 60°∙s-1. Main Outcome Measures: Peak torque (PT), dynamic control ratio (DCR), angle of peak torque (APT), functional range (FR), angle-specific torque (AST) and angle-specific DCR (DCRAST) were compared between age groups. Results: The PT (P = 0.016) AST (P = 0.041) were significantly higher in seniors compared to youths; however APT (P = 0.141), DCR (P = 0.524) FR (P = 0.821) and DCRAST (P = 0.053) were not significant between playing age. Conclusion: The use of absolute and angle-specific strength measures were able to distinguish between female playing ages, whereas DCR and DCRAST was unable to identify differences. The PT and AST metrics may be the most useful metrics to help identify and inform training needs, particularly in youths
Transnational flow in cloud-based music production: organisational communication and collaboration between Australia and America
Get PDFIn this paper, we take three researchers from different parts of the globe and experiment with long-distance songwriting through a sociological and organizational lens. During this process, we combine production expertise and facilities into a networked recording studio environment with expanded toolsets centred on songwriting production. We investigate a new flow concept that we name transnational flow (TNF). This flow state exists as aform of non-synchronic group flow somewhere between Csikszentmihalyi’s(1995) individualist flow theory and Sawyer’s (2007) group flow theory. Thepaper investigates the difficulties of managing multiple flow states in a complex organizational network between Australia and North America. We use Karl Weick’s Sense making (1995) and Jazz metaphor (1998) theories to form an organizational framework that enables the creative flow process to occur over a complex network with a time difference of seven hours
Environmental heterogeneity of Staphylococcus species from alkaline fermented foods and associated toxins and antimicrobial resistance genetic elements
Get PDFDifferent samples of three products including Bikalga and Soumbala from Burkina Faso (West Africa) and Ntoba Mbodi from Congo-Brazzaville (Central Africa) were evaluated. The bacteria (400) were phenotyped and genotypically characterized by Rep-PCR, PFGE, 16S rRNA and rpoB gene sequencing and spa typing. Their PFGE profiles were compared with those of 12,000 isolates in the Center for Disease Control (CDC, USA) database. They were screened for the production of enterotoxins, susceptibility to 19 antimicrobials, presence of 12 staphylococcal toxin and 38 AMR genes and the ability to transfer erythromycin and tetracycline resistance genes to Enterococcus faecalis JH2-2.
Fifteen coagulase negative (CoNS) and positive (CoPS) species characterized by 25 Rep-PCR/PFGE clusters were identified: Staphylococcus arlettae, S. aureus, S. cohnii, S. epidermidis, S. gallinarum, S. haemolyticus, S. hominis, S. pasteuri, S. condimenti, S. piscifermentans, S. saprophyticus, S. sciuri, S. simulans, S. warneri and Macrococcus caseolyticus. Five species were specific to Soumbala, four to Bikalga and four to Ntoba Mbodi. Two clusters of S. gallinarum and three of S. sciuri were particular to Burkina Faso. The S. aureus isolates exhibited a spa type t355 and their PFGE profiles did not match any in the CDC database. Bacteria from the same cluster displayed similar AMR and toxin phenotypes and genotypes, whereas clusters peculiar to a product or a location generated distinct profiles. The toxin genes screened were not detected and the bacteria did not produce the staphylococcal enterotoxins A, B, C and D. AMR genes including blazA, cat501, dfr(A), dfr(G), mecA, mecA1, msr(A) and tet(K) were identified in CoNS and CoPS. Conjugation experiments produced JH2-2 isolates that acquired resistance to erythromycin and tetracycline, but no gene transfer was revealed by PCR.
The investigation of the heterogeneity of Staphylococcus species from alkaline fermented foods, their relationship with clinical and environmental isolates and their safety in relation to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and toxin production is anticipated to contribute to determining the importance of staphylococci in alkaline fermented foods, especially in relation to the safety of the consumers
What do you mean, just speak it?
Get PDFMusical theatre performers should always consider the speaking of the text as a means by which to eventually sing the song. David Henson, former Director of London College of Music and currently Associate Professor in Performance, outlines some ways in which students can begin to interrogate the text of the songs they are performing, creating the synergy between acting and singing which defines musical theatre
Socioscope: I know who you are, a robo, human caller or service number
Get PDFTelephony technologies (mobile, VoIP, and fixed) have potentially improved the way we communicate in our daily life and have been widely adopted for business and personal communications. At the same time, scammers, criminals, and fraudsters have also find the telephony network an attractive and affordable medium to target end-users with the advertisement, marketing of legal and illegal products, and bombard them with the huge volume of unwanted calls. These calls would not only trick call recipients into disclosing their private information such as credit card numbers, PIN code which can be used for financial fraud but also causes a lot of displeasure because of continuous ringing.
The fraudsters, political campaigners can also use telephony systems to spread malicious information (hate political or religious messages) in real-time through audio or text messages, which have serious political and social consequences if malicious callers are not mitigated in a quick time. In this context, the identification of malicious callers would not only minimize telephony fraud but would also bring peace to the lives of individuals. One way to classifies users as a spammer or legitimate is to get feedback from the call recipients about their recent interactions with the caller, but these systems not only bring inconvenience to callees but also require changes in the system design. The call detail records extensively log the activities of users and can be used to categorize them as the spammer and non-spammer. In this paper, we utilize the information from the call detailed records and proposed a spam detection framework for the telephone network that identifies malicious callers by utilizing the social behavioral features of users within the network. To this extent, we first model the behavior of the users as the directed social graph and then analyze different features of the social graph i.e. the Relationship Network and Call patterns of users towards their peers. We then used these features along with the decision tree to classify callers into three classes i.e. human, spammer and call center. We analyzed the call record
data-set consisting of more than 2 million users. We have conducted a detailed evaluation of our framework which demonstrates its effectiveness by achieving acceptable detection accuracy and extremely low false-positive rate. The performance results show that the spammers and call center numbers not only have a large number of non-repetitive calls but also have a large number of short duration calls. Similarly, on the other hand, the legitimate callers have a good number of repetitive calls and most of them interacted for a relatively long duration
"Everyone knows me as the weird kid": being bisexual, genderfluid, and fifteen
Get PDFEveryone Knows Me as the Weird Kid is a performance text created from collaborative narrative interviews between the first author and a 15-year-old participant named Max who identifies as bisexual and genderfluid. The performance explores how Max negotiates a range of challenges—including homophobia, transphobia, bullying, and harassment—on a day-to-day basis. It offers evocative insights into life as a young person with an intersecting identity across school, community, online, and family contexts. By choosing to represent Max’s experiences as a performance text, we offer a living, breathing resource that can be performed in educational settings not only to young people but also by young people. We share Everybody Knows Me as the Weird Kid as a resource to help others respond to sexual and gender-related bullying and discrimination in their own lives
Using electroencephalography to explore cognitive-cultural networks and ecosystemic performance environments for improvisation
Get PDFThis chapter provides an overview and rationale for research being undertaken in the area of human computer interface design, in the context of non-idiomatic or free improvisation. The aim of this chapter is to bring together three areas of enquiry: cognitive cultural networks, ecosystemic design, and brain computer interfaces, with the purpose of exploring their potential application within the realm of musical improvisation and to provide a rationale for future creative developments this area. The theoretical themes of the chapter will be developed as a model for the creation of performance architectures and environments. As an exemplar, the recently created piece Mondrisonic will be described as an implementation of this model
Early Esophageal Adenocarcinoma detection using deep learning methods
Get PDFPurpose: This study aims to adapt and evaluate the performance of different state-of-the-art deep learning object detection methods to automatically identify Esophageal Adenocarcinoma (EAC) regions from High-Definition White Light Endoscopy (HD-WLE) images.
Method: Several state-of-the-art object detection methods using Convolution Neural Networks (CNN’s) were adapted to automatically detect abnormal regions in the esophagus HD-WLE images, utilizing VGG’16 as the backbone architecture for feature extraction. Those methods are Regional-based Convolutional Neural Network (R-CNN), Fast R-CNN, Faster R-CNN and Single Shot Multi-box Detector (SSD). For the evaluation of the different methods, 100 images from 39 patients that have been manually annotated by five experienced clinicians as ground truth have been tested.
Results: Experimental results illustrate that the SSD and Faster R-CNN networks show promising results, the SSD outperforms other methods achieving a sensitivity of 0.96, specificity of 0.92 and f-measure of 0.94. Additionally, the average recall rate of the Faster R-CNN in locating the EAC region accurately is 0.83.
Conclusion: In this paper, recent deep learning object detection methods are adapted to detect esophageal abnormalities automatically. The evaluation of the methods proved its ability to locate abnormal regions in the esophagus from endoscopic images. The automatic detection is a crucial step that may help early detection and treatment of EAC and also can improve automatic tumor segmentation to monitor its growth and treatment outcome
The applied, knowledge, and work-based oriented project management coaching frame-work (AKW-PMCF)
Get PDFCoaching is an effective leadership tool for assisting project managers in coping with the pressure and the demand of managing complex projects successfully by balancing time, scope, resources and quality constraints. However, there is a lack of project management specific coaching frameworks. Hence, this paper aims to develop an "applied, knowledge, and work-based" oriented project management coaching framework (AKW-PMCF) which helps professionals at different levels to cope with project management challenges. We ap-plied design science methodology in this research. We collected the data via explorative survey from project management professionals and employed descriptive analysis when ana-lysing the data. As a result, we developed AKW-PMCF. AKW-PMCF consists of eight coaching steps and seven knowledge areas. We then evaluated AKW-PMCF with Kirkpat-rick and Kirkpatrick (2016)'s learning model and technology acceptance model (TAM) via experts’ feedback. The results showed that AKW-PMCF improved the project management skills of the project professionals (the experts) and they will apply the framework for coach-ing their team members. This research has extended the existing coaching literature by pro-ducing AKW-PMCF, broadened the TAM’s application in assessing a non-technological management product, and provided an applied and work-based method for aspiring coaches in project management. In addition, AKW-PMCF is instrumental for the project managers who would like to serve as coaches in their project team
Knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions toward Tuberculosis in Bangladesh: a cross-sectional mixed methods study
Get PDFIn Bangladesh, Tuberculosis (TB) is a key public health concern. In this study we assessed knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions (KAP) towards TB among the general population. A cross-sectional mixed-methods study was conducted between March and August 2014, where a total of 400 adults were interviewed at Dhaka city in Bangladesh. The overall knowledge of TB was very limited despite 99.5% of the study respondents having heard of TB. About 99.0% stated correctly that cough was one of the major signs and symptoms of TB. About 39.0% mentioned that through airborne disease someone could get TB. With regard to curability of TB, 362 people replied that TB can be cured. About 77.0% informed that TB could be cured by taking medicines such as antibiotics or others. Sixty five percent of respondents knew someone who had have TB. The mean summary score for TB knowledge was 40 out of 100 (SD 0.5). Regression analysis shows that people with tertiary level of education were connected with higher TB knowledge and people having no income were related with lower TB knowledge. A lack of awareness was associated to delay in seeking treatment because people did not recognize the symptoms of tuberculosis. To improve knowledge of TB among people having no income or even lower income group more emphasis should be given and also more awareness is required to develop the individual’s perception amongst their neighbors in the study area. The alertness campaigns for TB knowledge should be a major concern countrywide in Bangladesh