The frequency of falls in children judo training

Purpose: Falling techniques are inseparable part of youth judo training. Falling techniques are related to avoiding injuries exercises (Nauta et al., 2013). There is not good evidence about the ratio of falling during the training in children. Methods: 26 children (age 8.88±1.88) were video recorded on ten training sessions for further indirect observation and performance analysis. Results: Research protocol consisted from recording falls and falling techniques (Reguli et al., 2015) in warming up, combat games, falling techniques, throwing techniques and free fighting (randori) part of the training session. While children were taught almost exclusively forward slapping roll, backward slapping roll and sideward direct slapping fall, in other parts of training also other types of falling, as forward fall on knees, naturally occurred. Conclusions: Judo coaches should stress also on teaching unorthodox falls adding to standard judo curriculum (Koshida et al., 2014). Various falling games to teach children safe falling in different conditions should be incorporated into judo training. Further research to gain more data from groups of different age in various combat and non-combat sports is needed

Fear of crime and victimization among the elderly participating in the self-defence course

Purpose. Self-defence training could enhance seniors´ defensive skills and fitness. There is lack of evidence about fear and concerns of seniors participating in the self-defence course. Methods. 18 elderly persons (16 female, 1 male; age 66.2, SD=5.86) participated in the self-defence course lasting 8 training units (each unit 60 minutes). Standardized tool for fear of crime and victimization analysis previously used in Euro-Justis project in the Czech Republic (2011) was used in pretest and posttest. Results. We explored the highest fear of crime by participants in their residence area after dark (mean=2,77; median=3; SD=0,80), lower fear at the night in their homes (mean=2,29; median=2; SD=0,75) and in their residence area at the daytime (mean=2,00; median=2; SD=0,77) at the beginning of the course. We noticed certain decrease of fear of crime after the intervention. Participant were less afraid of crime in their residence area after dark (mean=2,38; median=2; SD=0,77), they felt lower fear of crime at the night in their homes (mean=2,00; median=2; SD=0,48) and in their residence area at the daytime (mean=1,82; median=2; SD=0,63). Conclusions. The approach to self-defence teaching for elderly should be focused not just on the motor development, but also on their emotional state, fear of crime, perception of dangerousness of diverse situations and total wellbeing. Fear of crime analysis can contribute to create tailor made structure of the self-defence course for specific groups of citizens

Obiter Dicta

"Stitched together over five years of journaling, Obiter Dicta is a commonplace book of freewheeling explorations representing the transcription of a dozen notebooks, since painstakingly reimagined for publication. Organized after Theodor Adorno’s Minima Moralia, this unschooled exercise in aesthetic thought—gleefully dilettantish, oftentimes dangerously close to the epigrammatic—interrogates an array of subject matter (although inescapably circling back to the curiously resemblant histories of Western visual art and instrumental music) through the lens of drive-by speculation. Erick Verran’s approach to philosophical inquiry follows the brute-force literary technique of Jacques Derrida to exhaustively favor the material grammar of a signifier over hand-me-down meaning, juxtaposing outer semblances with their buried systems and our etched-in-stone intuitions about color and illusion, shape and value, with lessons stolen from seemingly unrelatable disciplines. Interlarded with extracts of Ludwig Wittgenstein but also Wallace Stevens, Cormac McCarthy as well as Roland Barthes, this cache of incidental remarks eschews what’s granular for the biggest picture available, leaving below the hyper-specialized fields of academia for a bird’s-eye view of their crop circles. Obiter Dicta is an unapologetic experiment in intellectual dot-connecting that challenges much long-standing wisdom about everything from illuminated manuscripts to Minecraft and the evolution of European music with lyrical brevity; that is, before jumping to the next topic.

Bio-Inspired Robotics

Modern robotic technologies have enabled robots to operate in a variety of unstructured and dynamically-changing environments, in addition to traditional structured environments. Robots have, thus, become an important element in our everyday lives. One key approach to develop such intelligent and autonomous robots is to draw inspiration from biological systems. Biological structure, mechanisms, and underlying principles have the potential to provide new ideas to support the improvement of conventional robotic designs and control. Such biological principles usually originate from animal or even plant models, for robots, which can sense, think, walk, swim, crawl, jump or even fly. Thus, it is believed that these bio-inspired methods are becoming increasingly important in the face of complex applications. Bio-inspired robotics is leading to the study of innovative structures and computing with sensory–motor coordination and learning to achieve intelligence, flexibility, stability, and adaptation for emergent robotic applications, such as manipulation, learning, and control. This Special Issue invites original papers of innovative ideas and concepts, new discoveries and improvements, and novel applications and business models relevant to the selected topics of ``Bio-Inspired Robotics''. Bio-Inspired Robotics is a broad topic and an ongoing expanding field. This Special Issue collates 30 papers that address some of the important challenges and opportunities in this broad and expanding field

Evolution of System, Modelling and Control Concepts in Ancient Greece

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the historical origins of system, modelling, and automatic control concepts as well as to follow their development. An attempt is made to place the early formation and evolution of these concepts within the framework of their current understanding. Our research focuses on ancient Greece and involves searching through the primary sources and the literature on archaeological findings related to system, modelling and control ideas. Nowadays, the application fields of system, modelling, and control concepts are mostly associated with complex, industrial or business processes and problems. However, the emergence of the system and modelling concepts is to be found in the early scientific and technological human thought, when the under consideration issues are the creation and the structure of the world, the natural processes and phenomena, or the functions of human body. On the other hand, the mythical intention of constructing automatic machines that imitate the living beings at the beginning, and the realisation of them in the Hellenistic times, give birth to the concept of feedback and control. The study of the primitive appearance of system, modelling, and control concepts and their evolution from the Mythical period to the Hellenistic era serves the purposes of: a) the in depth understanding of these concepts, b) placing them in a proper historical setup, c) highlighting aspects of the current advanced system theories, modelling methodologies and control methods from a historical perspective, and d) expanding their application in more and more complicated problems

Southern Accent September 1981 - April 1982

Southern Adventist University\u27s newspaper, Southern Accent, for the academic year of 1981-1982.https://knowledge.e.southern.edu/southern_accent/1057/thumbnail.jp

Expanded Choreographies - Choreographic Histories

From objects to sounds, choreography is expanding beyond dance and human bodies in motion. This book offers one of the rare systematic investigations of expanded choreography as it develops in contemporaneity, and is the first to consider expanded choreography from a trans-historical perspective. Through case studies on different periods of European dance history - ranging from Renaissance dance to William Forsythe's choreographic objects and from Baroque court ballets to digital choreographies - it traces a journey of choreography as a practice transcending its sole association with dancing, moving, human bodies

Hollywood superheroes : the aesthetics of comic book to film adaptation

This thesis develops a theoretically-informed approach with which to analyse the aesthetics of the adaptation of superhero comic books into blockbuster films. Pervasive modes of thinking present superhero blockbusters as artistically degraded products that are not worthy of aesthetic analysis. I demonstrate that exploring the ways in which superhero blockbusters adapt comic book style and form reveals aesthetic sophistication and multiplicities of meaning. Engaging with comic book and film history also enables me to identify ways in which superhero blockbusters have contributed to the development of Hollywood’s blockbuster filmmaking paradigm. My approach combines models and concepts from studies of adaptation that employ poststructuralist theory. This theoretical framework explains transformations that content may undergo as it is adapted between the different forms available to comics and film, and enables examination of dialogues occurring in the vast networks of intertexts in which superhero blockbusters are situated. After my review of literature establishes the thesis’ theoretical underpinnings, my chapters undertake close textual analysis of three distinct case studies. The selection of case studies allows me to continue to develop my approach by examining different superhero archetypes, alongside significant contexts, trends and technologies that impact Hollywood blockbusters. Chapter one looks at the first superhero blockbuster, Superman: The Movie (1978). I begin by outlining, and exploring relations between, the range of Superman texts released prior to the film. Doing so reveals the qualities of the intertextual networks that comprise a superhero franchise. I then analyse the strategies that Superman: The Movie deploys to adapt and enter the network of Superman texts, before situating the film in the context of the emerging blockbuster paradigm in 1970s Hollywood. Chapters two and three analyse films produced in the twenty-first century, as superhero blockbusters gained a central position in Hollywood production. Chapter two evaluates the aesthetics of the Spider-Man trilogy (2002, 2004 and 2007) in relation to two contexts that are often considered to have facilitated the superhero blockbuster’s twenty-first century success: the increasing use and sophistication of digital filmmaking technologies in Hollywood, and the contemporary sociopolitical climate. Looking at the representation of bodies and space elucidates the ways in which the films incorporate digital filmmaking technologies into their adaptive practices and offer a sociopolitical commentary. Chapter three examines the strategies that films produced by Marvel Studios, with particular focus on team film The Avengers (2012), deploy to adapt the model of seriality that superhero comic books use to interconnect multiple series in a shared diegesis. The analysis focuses on ways in which The Avengers uses bodies and space to compress the expansive diegetic universe into a single film, and interrogates how these strategies shape the film’s sociopolitical meanings. My case studies demonstrate that the approach developed in this thesis illuminates the complex and equivocal meanings that the adaptive practices of superhero blockbusters generate