Effects of 6-Week Resistance Elastic Band Exercise on Functional Performances of 8-9 Year-Old Children

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of 6-week exercises performed by elastic resistance band on functional performance (balance, agility, hand grip strength and flexibility) in children aged 8-9 years. So, 102 students participated in this study according to pre-test and post-test design. Participants were divided into two groups: experimental group (n=50, height: 134.0 ± 6.3 cm, mass: 30.9 ± 7.9 kg, age: 8.6 ± 0.5 years) and control group (n=52, height: 135.0 ± 6.2 cm, mass: 32.4 ± 5.9 kg, age: 8.6 ± 0.6 years). The experimental group performed exercises using elastic resistance bands of lightness grade at the same time of day (45 minutes/day, 3 days/week), and the control group did not participate in any physical activity. Balance was measured by Flamingo Test, agility by Ilinois, flexibility by sit and reach box and strength was measured by hand-grip dynamometer. It was determined that 6-week exercises performed by elastic resistance band increased significantly the hand grip strength; however there was no statistically significant effect on balance, agility and flexibility abilities.The inclusion of elastic resistance band exercises in the context of school activity programs can improve children's strengths. For this reason, exercises performed by elastic resistance bands for more than 6 weeks can be added to activity programs in school as an economical, fun and reliable way to improve the hand-grip performance of children

The Ubiquity of Large Graphs and Surprising Challenges of Graph Processing: Extended Survey

Graph processing is becoming increasingly prevalent across many application domains. In spite of this prevalence, there is little research about how graphs are actually used in practice. We performed an extensive study that consisted of an online survey of 89 users, a review of the mailing lists, source repositories, and whitepapers of a large suite of graph software products, and in-person interviews with 6 users and 2 developers of these products. Our online survey aimed at understanding: (i) the types of graphs users have; (ii) the graph computations users run; (iii) the types of graph software users use; and (iv) the major challenges users face when processing their graphs. We describe the participants' responses to our questions highlighting common patterns and challenges. Based on our interviews and survey of the rest of our sources, we were able to answer some new questions that were raised by participants' responses to our online survey and understand the specific applications that use graph data and software. Our study revealed surprising facts about graph processing in practice. In particular, real-world graphs represent a very diverse range of entities and are often very large, scalability and visualization are undeniably the most pressing challenges faced by participants, and data integration, recommendations, and fraud detection are very popular applications supported by existing graph software. We hope these findings can guide future research

The Effects of 12 Weeks Pilates Exercises on Functional and Cognitive Performance in Elderly People

The aim of the study was to investigate the effects of 12 weeks Pilates exercises on functional and cognitive performance in elderly people which are living in an elderly care center. Forty three elderly were randomly allocated either to Pilates group (PG, n= 21; mean age, 72.8 ± 7.84 years), which performed three session of Pilates per week for 12 weeks, or to control group (CG, n= 22; mean age, 77.7 ± 7.25 years), which no performed any exercise is except from daily works. Participants tested to handgrip strength, Berg balance scale, Functional reach test and Mini Mental State Examination Test before and after the 12 weeks of exercise. Finally, PG demonstrated improvement in all variables. However, CG has no improvement any variables. Pilates exercises led to significant improvement in functional and cognitive performance. Therefore, elderly people can apply a well-structured Pilates exercise program under Pilates instructor and physiotherapist

Extending DBMSs with satellite databases

In this paper, we propose an extensible architecture for database engines where satellite databases are used to scale out and implement additional functionality for a centralized database engine. The architecture uses a middleware layer that offers consistent views and a single system image over a cluster of machines with database engines. One of these engines acts as a master copy while the others are read-only snapshots which we call satellites. The satellites are lightweight DBMSs used for scalability and to provide functionality difficult or expensive to implement in the main engine. Our approach also supports the dynamic creation of satellites to be able to autonomously adapt to varying loads. The paper presents the architecture, discusses the research problems it raises, and validates its feasibility with extensive experimental result