Acute Effects of Caffeine on Strength Performance in Trained and Untrained Individuals

Objective: The primary aim of this study was to compare the acute effects of a caffeine based supplement on the strength performance of trained and untrained individuals with a secondary investigation into the effects of a placebo. Method: Seven resistance trained (>6 months) and seven untrained (<6 months) males (mean ± SD: age: 21 ± 3 y, mass: 75.2 ± 11.3 kg, height: 176 ± 6 cm) consumed either caffeine (CAF) (5 mg.kg.bw-1), placebo (PLA) or nothing (CON) 60 minutes prior to 1 RM squat measurements in a double-blinded, repeated measures design. A two way repeated measures ANOVA was applied to test for the main effects of condition (CAF, PLA, CON) and group (Trained, Untrained), and the interaction effect (condition x group). Results: A significant interaction effect (F(2,11)=4.38, p=0.024) for 1 RM was observed. In the untrained group there was significant difference between CON and PLA (p<0.001). On average 1 RM in the untrained group was 12% lower in the CON trial (92.1 kg) compared to the PLA (102.9 kg; 95% CI=-5.3 to -16.1 kg), and 9% lower compared to CAF (p=0.005; 95% CI=-2.7 to 14.5 kg). There was no significant difference in 1 RM in the untrained group between PLA and CAF (p=0.87, 95% CI -3.2 to 7.5 kg). Additionally, there were no significant differences for the trained group between conditions. There was also a significant main effect for condition for 1 RM (F(2,11)=12.81, p<0.001) . Overall the CON trial was 6% lower (p=0.001, 95% CI=-3.0 to -10.6 kg) than the PLA trial (117.9 kg; 95% CI 97.6 to 124.6 kg), and 5% lower (p=0.12, 95% CI=-1.2 to -9.5 kg) than the CAF trial (116.4 kg; 95% CI 105.0 to 127.8 kg). There was no significant difference between PLA and CAF (p=0.951). Finally, there was a significant main effect for group (F(1,12)=8.79, p=0.12). On average 1 RM was 25% higher in the trained group (131.7 kg; 95% CI=114.5 to 148.9 kg) compared to the untrained group (98.6 kg; 95% CI=81.4 to 115.8 kg). Conclusion: These findings suggest that both a caffeine supplementation and placebo improve 1 RM in untrained individuals but do not improve performance in resistance trained athletes. No significant differences between caffeine and placebo, suggests placebo induced mechanisms also need to be considere

In-n-out: The Gas Cycle From Dwarfs To Spiral Galaxies

We examine the scalings of galactic outflows with halo mass across a suite of 20 high-resolution cosmological zoom galaxy simulations covering halo masses in the range 10^9.5-10^12\M. These simulations self-consistently generate outflows from the available supernova energy in a manner that successfully reproduces key galaxy observables, including the stellar mass–halo mass, Tully–Fisher, and mass–metallicity relations. We quantify the importance of ejective feedback to setting the stellar mass relative to the efficiency of gas accretion and star formation. Ejective feedback is increasingly important as galaxy mass decreases; we find an effective mass loading factor that scales as v-circ-2.2, with an amplitude and shape that are invariant with redshift. These scalings are consistent with analytic models for energy-driven wind, based solely on the halo potential. Recycling is common: about half of the outflow mass across all galaxy masses is later reaccreted. The recycling timescale is typically ~1 Gyr, virtually independent of halo mass. Recycled material is reaccreted farther out in the disk and with typically ~2–3 times more angular momentum. These results elucidate and quantify how the baryon cycle plausibly regulates star formation and alters the angular momentum distribution of disk material across the halo mass range where most cosmic star formation occurs

Fifty years of spellchecking

A short history of spellchecking from the late 1950s to the present day, describing its development through dictionary lookup, affix stripping, correction, confusion sets, and edit distance to the use of gigantic databases

Equine infectious keratitis in Finland : Associated microbial isolates and susceptibility profiles

Objective To retrospectively describe laboratory findings, treatment, and outcome associated with equine infectious keratitis in Finland. Animals and procedures Medical records of horses diagnosed with infectious keratitis in University of Helsinki Equine Hospital from January 2007 to June 2018 were reviewed. Results Forty-seven cases were included. Keratomycosis was diagnosed in 27 eyes and bacterial keratitis in 20 eyes. Aspergillus flavus was the most frequent fungal isolate (9/17, 53%), followed by Cylindrocarpon sp. (3/17, 18%) and Aspergillus fumigatus (2/17, 12%). Susceptibility was tested for 10/11 Aspergillus sp. isolates; all were susceptible to voriconazole while only two were susceptible to amphotericin B. Cylindrocarpon sp. isolates were resistant to both agents. Streptococcus equi subsp. zooepidemicus was the most frequent bacterial isolate (9/19, 47%), followed by other streptococci (4/19, 21%). All 13 Streptococcus sp. isolates were susceptible to penicillin, and all tested isolates (n = 11) were also susceptible to chloramphenicol. Mean duration of medical treatment was longer in fungal keratitis (38 days) than in bacterial keratitis (25 days) (P <.001). Twenty-six of the eyes underwent globe-sparing surgery in addition to medical therapy. Recovery was achieved in 66% (31/47) of all cases and in 59% (16/27) and 75% (15/20) (P = .264) of cases with keratomycosis and bacterial keratitis, respectively. Conclusions Although Aspergillus sp. and S zooepidemicus were the most frequently encountered isolates, cytology, culture, and susceptibility testing are essential to differentiate bacterial and fungal keratitis and guide the clinician to choose the most efficient treatment.Peer reviewe

On-shell Recursion in String Theory

We prove that all open string theory disc amplitudes in a flat background obey Britto-Cachazo-Feng-Witten (BCFW) on-shell recursion relations, up to a possible reality condition on a kinematic invariant. Arguments that the same holds for tree level closed string amplitudes are given as well. Non-adjacent BCFW-shifts are related to adjacent shifts through monodromy relations for which we provide a novel CFT based derivation. All possible recursion relations are related by old-fashioned string duality. The field theory limit of the analysis for amplitudes involving gluons is explicitly shown to be smooth for both the bosonic string as well as the superstring. In addition to a proof a less rigorous but more powerful argument based on the underlying CFT is presented which suggests that the technique may extend to a much more general setting in string theory. This is illustrated by a discussion of the open string in a constant B-field background and the closed string on the level of the sphere.Comment: 36 + 9 pages text, one figure, v3: added discussion on relation to old-fashioned factorization, typos corrected, published versio

The exoskeletons are here

It is a fantastic time for the field of robotic exoskeletons. Recent advances in actuators, sensors, materials, batteries, and computer processors have given new hope to creating the exoskeletons of yesteryear's science fiction. While the most common goal of an exoskeleton is to provide superhuman strength or endurance, scientists and engineers around the world are building exoskeletons with a wide range of diverse purposes. Exoskeletons can help patients with neurological disabilities improve their motor performance by providing task specific practice. Exoskeletons can help physiologists better understand how the human body works by providing a novel experimental perturbation. Exoskeletons can even help power mobile phones, music players, and other portable electronic devices by siphoning mechanical work performed during human locomotion. This special thematic series on robotic lower limb exoskeletons and orthoses includes eight papers presenting novel contributions to the field. The collective message of the papers is that robotic exoskeletons will contribute in many ways to the future benefit of humankind, and that future is not that distant

The ecology of outdoor rape: The case of Stockholm, Sweden

The objective of this article is to report the results of an ecological study into the geography of rape in Stockholm, Sweden, using small area data. In order to test the importance of factors indicating opportunity, accessibility and anonymity to the understanding of the geography of rape, a two-stage modelling approach is implemented. First, the overall risk factors associated with the occurrence of rape are identified using a standard Poisson regression, then a local analysis using profile regression is performed. Findings from the whole-map analysis show that accessibility, opportunity and anonymity are all, to different degrees, important in explaining the overall geography of rape - examples of these risk factors are the presence of subway stations or whether a basområde is close to the city centre. The local analysis reveals two groupings of high risk of rape areas associated with a variety of risk factors: city centre areas with a concentration of alcohol outlets, high residential population turnover and high counts of robbery; and poor suburban areas with schools and large female residential populations where subway stations are located and where people express a high fear of crime. The article concludes by reflecting upon the importance of these results for future research as well as indicating the implications of these results for policy

Beam Energy and Centrality Dependence of Direct-Photon Emission from Ultrarelativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions.

The PHENIX collaboration presents first measurements of low-momentum (0.41  GeV/c) direct-photon yield dN_{γ}^{dir}/dη is a smooth function of dN_{ch}/dη and can be well described as proportional to (dN_{ch}/dη)^{α} with α≈1.25. This scaling behavior holds for a wide range of beam energies at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and the Large Hadron Collider, for centrality selected samples, as well as for different A+A collision systems. At a given beam energy, the scaling also holds for high p_{T} (&gt;5  GeV/c), but when results from different collision energies are compared, an additional sqrt[s_{NN}]-dependent multiplicative factor is needed to describe the integrated-direct-photon yield