1,720,961 research outputs found
Allenamento adattato in soggetti over 70: effetti sulla forza e sulla potenza muscolare degli arti inferiori
No full textAim: Purpose of the study was to detect any gain in the strength and power of the knee extensor muscles in a group of 23 elderly people after a training period of one year. Material and meyhod: The training program, held at a frequency of three weekly sessions, wad designed to provide strength and power training suitable for elderly people, exercises aimed to improve balance, coordination, gait and dynamic posture. It consisted of heating, aerobic work, strength work, flexibility, balance, stretching, strength-training exercises with machines and exercises using elastic bands. All the participants (10 males and 13 females over the age of 70 years, mean age 76.2 ± 3.7) were evaluated before (pre) and after (post) the completion of the training program carrying out two tests: a) maximum voluntary isometric contraction at 90° of extension (KE) of the extensor muscles of the knee joint; b) maximum power of the lower limbs (LP). Result: The maximum isometric force measured on the knee extensors (KE) has increased both in males and females. The same was observed regarding the power of the knee extensors (LP). Improvement in power (LP) was more significant in the female group (p = 0.0001, 0.0009) than in the male group (p = 0.0223, 0.0454). Conclusion: The results show that elderly subjects involved in a long term training at medium intensity ncrease the strength and power of the muscle groups involved; further studies could investigate if also qther qualities such as balance and coordination improve.Training programs like this could be then applied in order to enhance the general quality of life of eldery people
Le piccole e medie imprese italiane e l’armonizzazione contabile comunitaria: scenari ed impatti
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Design and validation of an e-textile-based wearable sock for remote gait and postural assessment
Full text linkThis paper presents a new wearable e-textile based system, named SWEET Sock, for biomedical signals remote monitoring. The system includes a textile sensing sock, an electronic unit for data transmission, a custom-made Android application for real-time signal visualization, and a software desktop for advanced digital signal processing. The device allows the acquisition of angular velocities of the lower limbs and plantar pressure signals, which are postprocessed to have a complete and schematic overview of patient’s clinical status, regarding gait and postural assessment. In this work, device performances are validated by evaluating the agreement between the prototype and an optoelectronic system for gait analysis on a set of free walk acquisitions. Results show good agreement between the systems in the assessment of gait cycle time and cadence, while the presence of systematic and proportional errors are pointed out for swing and stance time parameters. Worse results were obtained in the comparison of spatial metrics. The “wearability” of the system and its comfortable use make it suitable to be used in domestic environment for the continuous remote health monitoring of de-hospitalized patients but also in the ergonomic assessment of health workers, thanks to its low invasiveness
Energetics and mechanics of human walking at oscillating speeds
No full textSYNOPSIS. Seven subjects walked on a programmable treadmill both at constant (3.5 ±0.0 and 5.0 ±0.0 km/hr) and oscillating speeds (±0.5, ±1.0, ±1.5, ±2.0 km hr~'), set to sinusoidally change between the two limits in 3 sec. In each condition oxygen consumption measurements were taken. The same experimental protocols were replicated on a walkway by asking subjects to adapt their stride frequency to an audio signal corresponding to the sinusoidal stride frequency changes measured on the treadmill. Differently from what expected, only the ±2.0 km hr~' oscillation resulted to be metabolically different from the constant speed walking, both for the treadmill and the walkway conditions. The time course of the mechanical energy of the body centre of mass could reveal that a strategy devoted to benefit from the usual energy fluctuations occurring at constant speed, is likely to be used to cope with speed varying sequences. From the energy curve observed at constant speed, it is possible to derive an energetically equivalent curve by cumulating acceleration portions, and deceleration ones, of a group of strides as to produce a single acceleration and a single deceleration phase, as it is observed in oscillating speed walking. Being aware of the bias introduced by using a non- , inertia! frame (the treadmill protocol), we are replicating the experiments with a laser beam projected on a wide radius circular path at oscillating speeds, that the subjects have to follow. The preliminary data seem to confirm the invariance of the metabolic requirements in oscillatory walking up to ±1.5 km hr~'
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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