2,982 research outputs found
Optimization of post-exercise recovery beverages’ composition
No full textFluid intake and adequate hydration are essential and critical during and after training sessions and competition events. Reductions in body water content will prejudice performance with exercise performance significantly impaired when 2% or more of body weight is lost through sweat [1-3]. Guidelines states that in the post exercise (within 30 minutes to 1 hour after the end of the physical exercise), effective rehydration requires the intake of a volume of fluid equal to, at least, the 150% of the difference between body weight before and after the training [4] but a lack is still present regarding specific guidelines related to beverage formulations, strategies and volumes.
Indeed, in addition to water, sweat contains variable amounts of sodium, with lesser amounts of potassium, calcium, and magnesium so it is important that athletes can benefit from intake of an appropriate amount of a well-formulated drink [5-9].
Our prevoius studies underlined the potential role of skimmed milk as post recovery drink possibly linked to its specific characteristics [10-12]. In particular, milk has naturally high concentrations of electrolytes, that should aid in fluid recovery following exercise [4, 13].
Moreover, it contains casein and whey proteins in a ratio of 3:1 which provides for slower digestion and absorption of these proteins resulting in sustained elevations of blood amino acid concentrations.
In this regard, the aim of this study was to further evaluate the role of milk as post-recovery beverage. In particular, skimmed milk was tested in different volumes (no diluted skimmed milk, skimmed milk diluted 1:2 and 1:3) in order to better evaluate its role and to optimize volume. Moreover, specific nutrients (i.e. Casein, Sodium) and their possible combinations (Casein + Sodium, Whey proteins + Sodium) were taken into account in different concentrations to investigate possible role of specific nutrients.
30 athletes, both male and female, aged between 19 and 47, took part to the study. Each strategy was tested for one week with an intake equal to 500ml of the specific drink with the addiction of an amount of water equal to the volume needed to reach the 150% of loss body weight during the exercise.
A specific questionnaire was performed to ask about type of activity performed, the intensity of the activity, the urine colour, the thirst sensation after waking up in the morning; eventual cramps. Anthropometric measurement and Bioimpedence Analysis (both mono-frequency and multi-frequency) were performed to assess body composition and hydration in term of total body water, intra-cellular water and extra-cellular water.
Following guidelines indications, through the use of 150% of water intake in the post exercise, a variability among subjects were observed with cases also of worsening of hydration status underlining the importance of beverage characteristics as several elements might affect fluid balance: the macronutrient content, the electrolyte (i.e. sodium and potassium) [5-9].
Among the different strategies tested, skimmed milk resulted again the best one, able both to improve total body water in terms of intra-cellular water and body composition more than single milk nutrients. This underlines the importance of further investigate milk as post-exercise recovery beverage in terms not only of nutrients content but also nutrients synergism.
Even if data obtained by this study are limited by the restricted number of athletes, obtained results can be considered a step ahead to better evaluate the role of milk as recovery beverages, to define its applicability and to study new hydration protocols in order to improve the present knowledge on athlete’s hydration and recovery.
References
[1] Maughan RJ. Investigating the associations between hydration and exercise performance: methodology and limitations. Nutr Rev. 2012;70(suppl_2):S128-S131.
[2] Maughan RJ, Shirreffs SM, Leiper JB. Errors in the estimation of hydration status from changes in body mass. J Sports Sci. 2007;25(7):797-804.
[3] Goulet ED, et al. Pre-exercise hyperhydration delays dehydration and improves endurance capacity during 2 h of cycling in a temperate climate. J Physiol Anthropol. 2008;27(5):263-71.
[4] Shirreffs SM, Watson P, Maughan RJ. Milk as an effective post-exercise rehydration drink. Br J Nutr. 2007; 98(1):173-180.
[5] Thomas DT, Erdman KA, Burke LM. Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Dietitians of Canada, and the American College of Sports Medicine: Nutrition and Athletic Performance. J Acad Nutr Diet. 2016;116(3):501-528.
[6] Brancaccio P, et al. Supplementation of Acqua Lete(R) (Bicarbonate Calcic Mineral Water) improves hydration status in athletes after short term anaerobic exercise. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2012; 9(1):35.
[7] Maughan RJ, et al. A randomized trial to assess the potential of different beverages to affect hydration status: development of a beverage hydration index. Am J Clin Nutr. 2016;103(3):717-23.
[8] Kalman DS, et al. Comparison of coconut water and a carbohydrate-electrolyte sport drink on measures of hydration and physical performance in exercise-trained men. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2012;9(1):1.
[9] Oliver S, et al. Development of a hydration index: a randomized trial to assess the potential of different beverages to affect hydration status. Nutr Hosp. 2015;32 Suppl 2:10264.
[10] Vici G, Albertini F, Quintavalle A, Belli L, Polzonetti V. Milk as recovery drink after exercise: a case study. Alimenti Funzionali e Nutraceutici per la Salute. Camerino, 28th June 2016
[11] Vici G, Camilletti D, Cesanelli L, Belli L, Polzonetti V. Effects of different nutritional strategies in post exercise recovery. Cibo e Nutraceutici: direzione salute. Camerino, 10th July 2018
[12] Vici G, Camilletti D, Mozzoni A, Cesanelli L, Belli L, Polzonetti V. Effects of specific re-hydration protocols after exercise in non-elite and elite athletes. 3rd Sport Nutrition International Conference. Bologna, 30th November 2018
[13] Roy BD. Milk: the new sports drink? A Review. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2008;5:15
An assessment of the impact of possible CAP reform scenarios on Romanian agriculture
No full textUsing a simplified model, with key-variable the prices of two different possible scenarios of CAP reform after 2013 (moderate and radical), this paper present a comparison between the price effects of implementation of each reform scenario at 2015 horizon on Romanian agriculture. This short analysis shows that, under the presented hypotheses, the net welfare effect, due to the price changes, for the selected products, is positive in both reform scenarios, yet greater in the case of the radical reform. Integrated in the large context of Romanian development, it seems that the influence of CAP reform upon agriculture and rural areas will be most likely a gradual one: an interpenetration between the two scenarios is foreseeable, starting with the moderate reform that will dominate the period around 2013, the reform measures acquiring a more radical character afterwards.CAP reform, Romania, welfare effects, Agricultural and Food Policy,
A Framework for Rapidly Prototyping Data Mining Pipelines
No full textWith the advent of Big Data, data mining techniques have become crucial for improving decision-making across diverse sectors, yet their employment demands significant resources and time. Time is critical in industrial contexts, as delays can lead to increased costs, missed opportunities, and reduced competitive advantage. To address this, systems for analyzing data can help prototype data mining pipelines, mitigating the risks of failure and resource wastage, especially when experimenting with novel techniques. Moreover, business experts often lack deep technical expertise and need robust support to validate their pipeline designs quickly. This paper presents Rainfall, a novel framework for rapidly prototyping data mining pipelines, developed through collaborative projects with industry. The framework’s requirements stem from a combination of literature review findings, iterative industry engagement, and analysis of existing tools. Rainfall enables the visual programming, execution, monitoring, and management of data mining pipelines, lowering the barrier for non-technical users. Pipelines are composed of configurable nodes that encapsulate functionalities from popular libraries or custom user-defined code, fostering experimentation. The framework is evaluated through a case study and SWOT analysis with INGKA, a large-scale industry partner, alongside usability testing with real users and validation against scenarios from the literature. The paper then underscores the value of industry–academia collaboration in bridging theoretical innovation with practical application
Rich, Sturmian, and trapezoidal words
No full textIn this paper we explore various interconnections between rich words, Sturmian words, and trapezoidal words. Rich words, first introduced by the second and third authors together with J. Justin and S. Widmer, constitute a new class of finite and infinite words characterized by having the maximal number of palindromic factors. Every finite Sturmian word is rich, but not conversely. Trapezoidal words were first introduced by the first author in studying the behavior of the subword complexity of finite Sturmian words. Unfortunately this property does not characterize finite Sturmian words. In this note we show that the only trapezoidal palindromes are Sturmian. More generally we show that Sturmian palindromes can be characterized either in terms of their subword complexity (the trapezoidal property) or in terms of their palindromic complexity. We also obtain a similar characterization of rich palindromes in terms of a relation between palindromic complexity and subword complexity
Characterization Results for the Poset Based Representation of Topological Relations - I: Introduction and Models
No full text@article{DBLP:journals/informaticaSI/ForlizziN99,
author = {Luca Forlizzi and
Enrico Nardelli},
title = {Characterization Results for the Poset Based Representation
of Topological Relations - I: Introduction and Models.},
journal = {Informatica (Slovenia)},
volume = {23},
number = {2},
year = {1999},
bibsource = {DBLP, http://dblp.uni-trier.de}
Characterization Results for the Poset Based Representation of Topological Relations - II: Intersection and Union
No full text@article{DBLP:journals/informaticaSI/ForlizziN00,
author = {Luca Forlizzi and
Enrico Nardelli},
title = {Characterization Results for the Poset Based Representation
of Topological Relations - II: Intersection and Union.},
journal = {Informatica (Slovenia)},
volume = {24},
number = {1},
year = {2000},
bibsource = {DBLP, http://dblp.uni-trier.de}
System-on-chip Computing and Interconnection Architectures for Telecommunications and Signal Processing
No full textThis dissertation proposes novel architectures and design techniques targeting SoC building blocks for telecommunications and signal processing applications.
Hardware implementation of Low-Density Parity-Check decoders is approached at both the algorithmic and the architecture level. Low-Density Parity-Check codes are a promising coding scheme for future communication standards due to their outstanding error correction performance.
This work proposes a methodology for analyzing effects of finite precision arithmetic on error correction performance and hardware complexity. The methodology is throughout employed for co-designing the decoder. First, a low-complexity check node based on the P-output decoding principle is designed and characterized on a CMOS standard-cells library. Results demonstrate implementation loss below 0.2 dB down to BER of 10^{-8} and a saving in complexity up to 59% with respect to other works in recent literature. High-throughput and low-latency issues are addressed with modified single-phase decoding schedules. A new "memory-aware" schedule is proposed requiring down to 20% of memory with respect to the traditional two-phase flooding decoding. Additionally, throughput is doubled and logic complexity reduced of 12%. These advantages are traded-off with error correction performance, thus making the solution attractive only for long codes, as those adopted in the DVB-S2 standard. The "layered decoding" principle is extended to those codes not specifically conceived for this technique. Proposed architectures exhibit complexity savings in the order of 40% for both area and power consumption figures, while implementation loss is smaller than 0.05 dB.
Most modern communication standards employ Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing as part of their physical layer. The core of OFDM is the Fast Fourier Transform and its inverse in charge of symbols (de)modulation. Requirements on throughput and energy efficiency call for FFT hardware implementation, while ubiquity of FFT suggests the design of parametric, re-configurable and re-usable IP hardware macrocells. In this context, this thesis describes an FFT/IFFT core compiler particularly suited for implementation of OFDM communication systems. The tool employs an accuracy-driven configuration engine which automatically profiles the internal arithmetic and generates a core with minimum operands bit-width and thus minimum circuit complexity. The engine performs a closed-loop optimization over three different internal arithmetic models (fixed-point, block floating-point and convergent block floating-point) using the numerical accuracy budget given by the user as a reference point. The flexibility and re-usability of the proposed macrocell are illustrated through several case studies which encompass all current state-of-the-art OFDM communications standards (WLAN, WMAN, xDSL, DVB-T/H, DAB and UWB). Implementations results are presented for two deep sub-micron standard-cells libraries (65 and 90 nm) and commercially available FPGA devices. Compared with other FFT core compilers, the proposed environment produces macrocells with lower circuit complexity and same system level performance (throughput, transform size and numerical accuracy).
The final part of this dissertation focuses on the Network-on-Chip design paradigm whose goal is building scalable communication infrastructures connecting hundreds of core. A low-complexity link architecture for mesochronous on-chip communication is discussed. The link enables skew constraint looseness in the clock tree synthesis, frequency speed-up, power consumption reduction and faster back-end turnarounds. The proposed architecture reaches a maximum clock frequency of 1 GHz on 65 nm low-leakage CMOS standard-cells library. In a complex test case with a full-blown NoC infrastructure, the link overhead is only 3% of chip area and 0.5% of leakage power consumption.
Finally, a new methodology, named metacoding, is proposed. Metacoding generates correct-by-construction technology independent RTL codebases for NoC building blocks. The RTL coding phase is abstracted and modeled with an Object Oriented framework, integrated within a commercial tool for IP packaging (Synopsys CoreTools suite). Compared with traditional coding styles based on pre-processor directives, metacoding produces 65% smaller codebases and reduces the configurations to verify up to three orders of magnitude
BEAR: BPMN and Environment AnimatoR
No full textNowadays, BPMN is a de-facto standard for modeling multiple participants processes as collaboration diagrams. BPMN collaboration can be heavily influenced by the physical environment in which the involved participants act. Indeed, they can occupy a position, move in the space, make decisions according to the environment’s status, and change it. However, BPMN lacks support for integrating the environment. To overcome this limitation, we present BEAR, a tool for modeling and animating together a BPMN collaboration and its environment in the form of a place graph. BEAR supports designers in precisely understanding the interplay between BPMN collaborations and the environment
A General Formulation to Describe Empirical Rainfall Thresholds for Landslides
No full textAbstractIn this paper, a brief description of the Generalized FLaIR Model (GFM, De Luca and Versace, 2016) is provided, that is able to reproduce all the empirical thresholds proposed in literature, aimed to forecast landslides triggered by rainfall. In particular, this paper focuses on Antecedent Precipitation (AP) schemes. The paper demonstrates that these are particular solutions of the GFM and will exemplify this using AP schemes for NE Italy1, Seattle2 and Nicaragua - El Salvador3
The technological specialization of countries : an analysis of patent data
No full textNew methods of analysis of patent statistics allow assessing country profiles of technological specialization for the period 1990-2006. We witness a modest decrease in levels of specialization, which we show to be negatively influenced by country size and degree of internationalization of inventive activities
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