Sports or physical activity for the inactive world:should we be encouraging safer physical activity patterns more than sports?

The scientific evidence on the positive effects of physical activity as part of a healthy lifestyle is well established. Physical activity has both direct and indirect effects for preventing several chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease (CVD), obesity, diabetes and cancer.1 Healthcare policies across the globe have developed numerous strategies to encourage physical activity with several calls for action to prevent and decrease overweight and obesity, such as calls for action in the US Department for health and Human Services in 2001, the UK House of Commons Health Committee report on obesity and the Department of Health physical activity guidelines in 2004.2-4 Moreover, numerous implementation initiatives have encouraged physical activity and sports participation with an aim of achieving health outcomes and cost saving strategies for healthcar

High cycling cadence reduces carbohydrate oxidation at given low intensity metabolic rate

Cycling cadence (RPM)-related differences in blood lactate concentration (BLC) increase with increasing exercise intensity, whilst corresponding divergences in oxygen uptake (VO2) and carbon dioxde production (VCO2) decrease. We tested the hypothesis, that a higher RPM reduces the fraction (%) of the VO2 used for carbohydrate oxidation (relCHO) at a given BLC. Eight males (23.9 +/- 1.6 yrs; 177 +/- 3 cm; 70.3 +/- 3.4 kg) performed incremental load tests at 50 and 100 RPM. BLC, VO2 and VCO2 were measured. At respiratory exchange ratios (RER) <1, relCHO were calculated and the constant determining 50% relCHO (kCHO) was approximated as a function of the BLC. At submaximal workload, VO2 and RER were lower (p<0.001) at 50 than at 100 RPM. No differences were observed in VO2peak (3.96 +/- 0.22 vs. 4.00 +/ 0.25 l min-1) and RERpeak (1.18 +/- 0.02 vs. 1.15 +/- 0.02). BLC was lower (p<0.001) at 50 than at 100 RPM irrespective of cycling intensity. At 50 RPM, kCHO (4.2 +/- 1.4 (mmol l-1)3) was lower (p<0.05) than at 100 RPM (5.9 +/- 1.9 (mmol l-1)3). This difference in kCHO reflects a reduced CHO oxidation at a given BLC at 100 than at 50 RPM. At a low exercise intensity, a higher cycling cadence can substantially reduce the reliance on CHO at a given metabolic rate and/or BLC

Robust Adaptive Median Binary Pattern for noisy texture classification and retrieval

Texture is an important cue for different computer vision tasks and applications. Local Binary Pattern (LBP) is considered one of the best yet efficient texture descriptors. However, LBP has some notable limitations, mostly the sensitivity to noise. In this paper, we address these criteria by introducing a novel texture descriptor, Robust Adaptive Median Binary Pattern (RAMBP). RAMBP based on classification process of noisy pixels, adaptive analysis window, scale analysis and image regions median comparison. The proposed method handles images with high noisy textures, and increases the discriminative properties by capturing microstructure and macrostructure texture information. The proposed method has been evaluated on popular texture datasets for classification and retrieval tasks, and under different high noise conditions. Without any train or prior knowledge of noise type, RAMBP achieved the best classification compared to state-of-the-art techniques. It scored more than $90\%$ under $50\%$ impulse noise densities, more than $95\%$ under Gaussian noised textures with standard deviation $\sigma = 5$, and more than $99\%$ under Gaussian blurred textures with standard deviation $\sigma = 1.25$. The proposed method yielded competitive results and high performance as one of the best descriptors in noise-free texture classification. Furthermore, RAMBP showed also high performance for the problem of noisy texture retrieval providing high scores of recall and precision measures for textures with high levels of noise

Parallel processing for scientific computations

The main contribution of the effort in the last two years is the introduction of the MOPPS system. After doing extensive literature search, we introduced the system which is described next. MOPPS employs a new solution to the problem of managing programs which solve scientific and engineering applications on a distributed processing environment. Autonomous computers cooperate efficiently in solving large scientific problems with this solution. MOPPS has the advantage of not assuming the presence of any particular network topology or configuration, computer architecture, or operating system. It imposes little overhead on network and processor resources while efficiently managing programs concurrently. The core of MOPPS is an intelligent program manager that builds a knowledge base of the execution performance of the parallel programs it is managing under various conditions. The manager applies this knowledge to improve the performance of future runs. The program manager learns from experience

Smoking and tooth discolouration: findings from a national cross-sectional study

Background: Smoking is a risk factor of a number of oral diseases; the extent to which tobacco products influence dental aesthetics has not been widely investigated. The aim of this study was to determine satisfaction with own tooth colour of smokers and non-smokers and to investigate whether smokers have higher levels of self-assessed tooth discolouration compared to nonsmokersMethods: A cross sectional national study was conducted on sample of 6,000 UK adults. A total of 3,384 adults was interviewed. Smoking behaviour was recorded together with satisfaction with own tooth colour. Prevalence of perceived discolouration was measured by asking respondents to match their own tooth colour to one of a set of seven photographs of differing severities of discolouration.Results: Twenty eight percent of smokers reported having moderate and severe levels of tooth discolouration compared to 15% in non-smokers. As well as more often perceiving discolouration smokers were also more likely to be dissatisfied with their own tooth colour compared to nonsmokers.Conclusion: The study provides further evidence of the negative impact of tobacco smoking on dental aesthetics in the general public. The evidence provided by the study may be of value in short interventions for smoking cessation in the dental setting

The Evolution and Diffusion of the Standard Business Reporting (SBR) Initiatives: Evidence from UK Small Businesses

Few studies have comprehensively described Standard Business Reporting (SBR) as a policy-driven initiative based on inline eXtensible Business Reporting Language (iXBRL) aimed at reducing the administrative burden of statutory business reporting. The SBR term is still difficult to understand even by the countries where it has been implemented. The objective of this study is twofold. First, it describes in detail the evolution of the SBR initiatives in the UK. Second, it investigates the drivers and inhibitors of the take-up of the SBR initiative by small businesses based on the technology, organization, and environment (TOE) framework. It draws on contextual data and 23 interviews with participants involved in the development of these initiatives. The findings show that the following are perceived as drivers of the take-up of the SBR initiatives by small private companies: the relative advantages of using WebFiling, commercial filing software, and the digital services, the organizational accountant's readiness, and the influence of commercial filing software. However, we find no evidence that the relative advantage of using the joint-filing facility via iXBRL was perceived as a driver of the take-up of this innovation. The findings indicate that the absence of critical mass among government agencies inhibits its diffusion. This study provides specific implications to small businesses, the accountants working in small businesses and practice, government agencies in the UK, and other jurisdictions embarking on the SBR initiatives for further developments to reduce the reporting burden on smaller entitie

Performance analysis of local area networks

A simulation of the TCP/IP protocol running on a CSMA/CD data link layer was described. The simulation was implemented using the simula language, and object oriented discrete event language. It allows the user to set the number of stations at run time, as well as some station parameters. Those parameters are the interrupt time and the dma transfer rate for each station. In addition, the user may configure the network at run time with stations of differing characteristics. Two types are available, and the parameters of both types are read from input files at run time. The parameters include the dma transfer rate, interrupt time, data rate, average message size, maximum frame size and the average interarrival time of messages per station. The information collected for the network is the throughput and the mean delay per packet. For each station, the number of messages attempted as well as the number of messages successfully transmitted is collected in addition to the throughput and mean packet delay per station

Classification of Al-Hadith Al-Shareef using data mining algorithm

In this paper we compared the effectiveness of four different automatic learning algorithms for classifying Al-Hadith Al-Shareef into 8 selective books depending on Sahih BuKhari.The automatic learning algorithms are Rocchio algorithm, K-NN algorithm (K- Nearest Neighbor), Naïve Bayes algorithm and SVM algorithm (Support Vector Machines). We used TF-IDF technique to compute the relative frequency for each word in a particular document. We split the documents of AL-Hadith in such 75% of AL-Hadiths (1350 Hadiths) are used as training data (build the classifier) and the remaining 25% of AL-Hadith (150 Hadiths) are used for testing the accuracy of the resulting models in reproducing the manual category assignments.The average of words in each document is about 5to10 words

Techniques for Engine Mount Modeling and Optimization

This dissertation presents techniques for the design of engine mounting system to address the issue of vibration isolation. While the techniques presented herein are general, the application of proposed techniques is demonstrated primarily through applications in motorcycles. The dynamic loads that are generated due to the shaking forces within the engine and the road loads that are transmitted to the engine through the tire patch are discussed. The geometrical shape of the engine mount is also considered in this work. All models discussed herein deal with solving the optimization problem for the engine mount system such that the transmitted forces to and from the engine are minimized in which the mount parameters are used as design variables. While work has been done in the past in the area of engine mount design, this dissertation tries to fill in the gap when it comes to designing a comprehensive mounting system that takes into account modeling of the mount characteristics, the excitation load present in the system, and a determination of the final geometrical shape of the engine mount. The work presented in this dissertation discusses three major problems. The first problem addresses comprehensive mount modeling wherein mathematical mount models range from a simple Voigt model to a complex Voigt model that captures hysteresis and nonlinear behavior are presented. The issue of mechanical snubbing is also considered in these models. An optimization problem is formulated to determine the mount parameters by minimizing the difference between the transmitted loads predicted by the theoretical model and experimentally measured values. The second problem addressed in this dissertation deals with mounting system optimization. The optimization is carried out such that the loads transmitted through the mount system from/to the frame are minimized. The road loads that are generated due to the irregularities in the road profile and the shaking loads that are generated due to the engine imbalance are discussed in detail. The mount parameters are considered as design variables. Displacement constraints, both static and dynamic are considered to account for packaging requirements and to prevent mechanical snubbing of the engine mount. Numerical examples dealing with mount system optimization are presented first for a six degree of freedom model that deals only with the powertrain assembly. This is followed by twelve degree of freedom model that builds on the previous model by considering the swing-arm assembly dynamics in addition to the powertrain assembly. The third problem presented in this dissertation deals with finding the optimum geometrical shape of the mount itself. The shape optimization of the mount is done using a nonlinear finite element model of the mount developed in ANSYS®. An optimization problem is formulated to minimize the difference between the target stiffness obtained from the dynamic analysis and stiffness values obtained from the mount geometry. The mount geometrical parameters such as the mount diameter and the thickness are used as design variables. Numerical examples are provided quantifying how mount geometrical parameters vary for different operating engine speeds. All the models and techniques developed in this work will help designers comprehensively design a mounting system that achieves an effective vibration isolation of the powertrain assembly