Detection of Illegal Race Walking: A Tool to Assist Coaching and Judging

Current judging of race walking in international competitions relies on subjective human observation to detect illegal gait, which naturally has inherent problems. Incorrect judging decisions may devastate an athlete and possibly discredit the international governing body. The aim of this study was to determine whether an inertial sensor could improve accuracy, monitor every step the athlete makes in training and/or competition. Seven nationally competitive race walkers performed a series of legal, illegal and self-selected pace races. During testing, athletes wore a single inertial sensor (100 Hz) placed at S1 of the vertebra and were simultaneously filmed using a high-speed camera (125 Hz). Of the 80 steps analyzed the high-speed camera identified 57 as illegal, the inertial sensor misidentified four of these measures (all four missed illegal steps had 0.008 s of loss of ground contact) which is considerably less than the best possible human observation of 0.06 s. Inertial sensor comparison to the camera found the typical error of estimate was 0.02 s (95% confidence limits 0.01–0.02), with a bias of 0.02 (±0.01). An inertial sensor can thus objectively improve the accuracy in detecting illegal steps (loss of ground contact) and, along with the ability to monitor every step of the athlete, could be a valuable tool to assist judges during race walk events

Undergraduate Research Opportunities in Microelectronics at Boise State University

Several opportunities exist for undergraduates in the Microelectronics area at Boise State University. This paper will describe the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program funded by the National Science Foundation and other opportunities that have resulted for undergraduates due to external support. BSU became a NSF REU site for Microelectronics research in 1999. Each year 10 students are recruited nation-wide from various engineering and science disciplines to come to BSU for 8 weeks. The students work intensively with various faculty advisors and graduate student mentors. Another unique feature of our program is the tie to local industry. In 1999-2001, three students have and will benefit from an interaction with a local company, SCP Global Technologies, and this will be described

O-6 Optical Property Degradation of the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera-2 Pick Off Mirror

Degradation in the performance of optical components can be greatly affected by exposure to the space environment. Many factors can contribute to such degradation including surface contaminants; outgassing; vacuum, UV, and atomic oxygen exposure; temperature cycling; or combinations of parameters. In-situ observations give important clues to degradation processes, but there are relatively few opportunities to correlate those observations with post-flight ground analyses. The return of instruments from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) after its final servicing mission in May 2009 provided such an opportunity. Among the instruments returned from HST was the Wide-Field Planetary Camera-2 (WFPC-2), which had been exposed to the space environment for 16 years. This work focuses on the identifying the sources of degradation in the performance of the Pick-off mirror (POM) from WFPC-2. Techniques including surface reflectivity measurements, spectroscopic ellipsometry, FTIR (and ATR-FTIR) analyses, SEM/EDS, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) with and without ion milling, and wet and dry physical surface sampling were performed. Destructive and contact analyses took place only after completion of the non-destructive measurements. Spectroscopic ellipsometry was then repeated to determine the extent of contaminant removal by the destructive techniques, providing insight into the nature and extent of polymerization of the contaminant layer

USING UNDERWATER 3D KINEMATICS TO IMPROVE THE PARALYMPIC SWIMMING CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM

Swimming is a fundamental sport at the Olympic and Paralympic games, with the Paralympic classification system being the key difference between these games. To improve the accuracy of the classification system this case study investigated differences in the underwater hand kinematics of the affected and unaffected limb of an elite Para swimmer with hemiplegic cerebral palsy. In this case study, hemiplegic cerebral palsy caused impairments in strength, motor coordination and range of motion that affected hand speeds and trajectory paths during the underwater stroke phases. This work illustrates the benefit of using objective impairment and sport-specific measurements to gain insights into the impact that health conditions have on performance to guide Para swimming classification. This biomechanical analysis lays the foundations for the future improvement in international Para classification system

Effect of Inorganic and Organic Trace Mineral Supplementation on the Performance, Carcass Characteristics, and Fecal Mineral Excretion of Phase-fed, Grow-finish Swine

Concentrated livestock production has led to soil nutrient accumulation concerns. To reduce the environmental impact, it is necessary to understand current recommended livestock feeding practices. Two experiments were conducted to compare the effects of trace mineral supplementation on performance, carcass composition, and fecal mineral excretion of phase-fed, grow-finish pigs. Crossbred pigs (Experiment 1 (Exp. 1), (n = 528); Experiment 2 (Exp. 2), (n = 560)) were housed in totally-slatted, confinement barns, blocked by weight, penned by sex, and randomly assigned to pens at approximately 18 kg BW. Treatments were allocated in a randomized complete block design (12 replicate pens per treatment) with 9 to 12 pigs per pen throughout the grow-finish period. In Exp. 1, the control diet (Io100) contained Cu as CuSO4, Fe as FeSO4, and Zn (of which 25% was ZnO and 75% was ZnO4) at concentrations of 63 and 378 mg/kg, respectively. Treatment 2 (O100) contained supplemental Cu, Fe, and Zn from organic sources (Bioplex, Alltech Inc., Nicholasville, KY) at concentrations of 19, 131, and 91 mg/kg, respectively, which are the commercially recommended dietary inclusion levels for these organic trace minerals. Organic Cu, Fe, and Zn concentrations from O100 were reduced by 25% and 50% to form treatments 3 (O75) and 4 (O50-1), respectively. In Exp. 2, treatment 5 (Io25) contained 25% of the Cu, Fe, and Zn (inorganic sources) concentrations found in Io100. Treatment 6 (O50-2) was identical to the O50-1 diet from Exp. 1. Treatment 7 (O25) contained the experimental microminerals reduced by 75% from concentrations found in O100. Treatment 8 (O0) contained no trace mineral supplementation and served as a negative control for Exp. 2. In Exp. 1, tenth-rib backfat, loin muscle area and ADG did not differ (p\u3e0.05) between treatments. Pigs fed the control diet (Io100) consumed less feed (p\u3c0.01) compared to pigs fed diets containing organic trace minerals, thus, G:F was greater (p = 0.03). In Exp. 2, there were no differences among treatment means for loin muscle area, but pigs fed the reduced organic trace mineral diets consumed less (p\u3c0.05) feed and tended (p = 0.10) to have less tenth-rib backfat compared to pigs fed the reduced inorganic trace mineral diet. Considering that performance and feed intake of pigs was not affected by lower dietary trace mineral inclusion, mineral excretion could be reduced during the grow-finish phase by reducing dietary trace mineral concentration

Lifetimes in \u3csup\u3e124\u3c/sup\u3eTe: Examining Critical-Point Symmetry in the Te Nuclei

The Doppler-shift attenuation method following inelastic neutron scattering was used to determine the lifetimes of nuclear levels to 3.3-MeV excitation in 124Te. Level energies and spins, γ-ray energies and branching ratios, and multipole-mixing ratios were deduced from measured γ-ray angular distributions at incident neutron energies of 2.40 and 3.30 MeV, γ-ray excitation functions, and γγ coincidence measurements. The newly obtained reduced transition probabilities and level energies for 124Te were compared to critical-point symmetry model predictions. The E(5) and β4 potential critical-point symmetries were also investigated in 122Te and 126Te

Plan for Subdividing Genesis Mission Diamond-on-Silicon 60000 Solar Wind Collector

NASA's Genesis solar wind sample return mission experienced an off nominal landing resulting in broken, albeit useful collectors. Sample 60000 from the collector is comprised of diamond-like-carbon film on a float zone (FZ) silicon wafer substrate Diamond-on-Silicon (DOS), and is highly prized for its higher concentration of solar wind (SW) atoms. A team of scientist at the Johnson Space Center was charged with determining the best, nondestructive and noncontaminating method to subdivide the specimen that would result in a 1 sq. cm subsample for allocation and analysis. Previous work included imaging of the SW side of 60000, identifying the crystallographic orientation of adjacent fragments, and devising an initial cutting plan