Nonlocal problems with singular nonlinearity

We investigate existence and uniqueness of solutions for a class of nonlinear nonlocal problems involving the fractional $p$-Laplacian operator and singular nonlinearities.Comment: 20 page

Analysis of Heart Rate Training Responses in Division I Collegiate Athletes

New technology continuously develops to assist with enhancing athletic performance. Assessing the physiological responses athletes experience from training is crucial when developing programs to simultaneously optimize performance and improve fitness levels. By combining coaching expertise with scientific technology, coaches can monitor and obtain their athletes\u27 individual objective physiological responses (i.e. heart rates) on the effectiveness of the applied external stimuli or training program(s). PURPOSE: To examine the physical training doses through heart rate monitoring of strength and condition (S&C) sessions compared to a typical game setting in female soccer and basketball collegiate athletes. METHODS: Participants were nine female soccer players [age: 20.5 ± 0.34 yr., height: 172.2 ± 1.25 cm, mass: 66.8 ± 1.72 kg, BMI: 22.6 + 0.34] and nine female basketball players (mean + SD) [age: 20.3 ± 0.33 yr., height: 178.4 ± 2.27 cm, mass: 73.3 ± 3.43 kg, BMI: 22.9 + 0.78] from a NCAA Division I university. Participants wore a heart rate chest strap monitor during the summer S&C training sessions and preseason games. Each subject\u27s height, weight, age-predicted max heart rate, and player position were recorded into Polar Team2 Pro system. After each training session and game, each subjects\u27 data from the transmitter was uploaded for analysis. Data was subsequently analyzed to determine the training load (TL), average calories expended per minute (kcal/min), average heart rate, maximum heart rate, and percent of time spent in each training zone (Z1-Z5) for the selected S&C sessions (T1 and T2) and one pre-season game (T3). RESULTS: One-way ANOVA with repeated measures detected significant differences in the women\u27s soccer TL with post hoc comparisons revealing the TL in T3 (239.1 ± 112.4) was higher than T1 (147.1 ± 63.4) and T2 (149.6 ± 36.4) and percent time in Z3 was lower in T3 (13.7 ± 2.7) compared to T1 (22.5 ± 6.5) and T2 (21.7 ± 8.1). One-way ANOVA with repeated measures detected significant differences in the women\u27s basketball kcal/min, average heart rate and percent of time spent in Z1-Z5. Post hoc comparisons revealed T3 had the lowest values in both kcal/min (9.7 ± 3.0) and average heart rate (133.8 ± 16.8). T1 had the greatest amount of time spent in Z4 (25.9 ± 10.0) and Z5 (32.8 ± 21.1) and the least amount of time spent in Z1 (13.0 ± 22.1) and Z2 (12.9 ± 9.0). T2 had the highest percent time spent in Z2 (12.9 ± 9.0) and Z3 (20.1 ± 6.3). T3 had the greatest percent time spent in Z1 (13.0 ± 22.1) and the least amount of time spent in Z3 (11.3 ± 6.3) and Z4 (15.2 ± 7.1). CONCLUSION: Summer strength and conditioning sessions for soccer produced physiological responses that were relatively similar to the responses experienced in preseason games. However, summer strength and conditioning sessions for basketball had similar training loads to preseason games but it did not replicate the physiological responses in preseason games. Heart rate monitoring systems may be useful in helping strength and conditioning coaches and the sport coaches to quantify physiological responses to game and practice sessions in their athletes

Mura urbiche nell’Italia centro-settentrionale. Significato e funzione tra la fine della repubblica e la prima età imperiale

Il testo analizza il significato e la funzione delle mura urbiche costruite o rinnovate tra la fine della Repubblica e la prima età imperiale, attraverso una serie di esempi di insediamenti urbani situati nell'Italia centro-settentrionale . In questo periodo, in diverse aree geografiche, sono stati prodotti diversi risultati monumentali. In alcuni casi, la necessità di difesa è ancora rilevante e l'esistenza di mura, porte e torri, rivela questa necessità. Nonostante la Pax Augusta, il fenomeno del brigantaggio, in primis, impone, in alcune aree, una certa attenzione alla funzione difensiva. In altri casi, le mura possono svolgere funzioni diverse, non solo limitate ad una matrice rituale-simbolica. In questo processo, anche le porte della città si trasformano, entrando in simbiosi con la tipologia monumentale della arco onorario e diventando, a volte, un vero e proprio monumento commemorativo di particolari eventi. Le mura urbiche interagiscono con le porte e con le torri sia funzionalmente sia formalmente. Adesso, il loro compito non è più quello di chiudere la città in una rigida alternativa interno/esterno, ma è piuttosto quello di creare un dialogo tra la realtà dell'insediamento e ciò che lo circonda. Questo dialogo avviene, grazie alle porte e ad altre strutture, sia artificiali, quali ponti o naturali, sia naturali come, ad esempio, i corsi d'acqua. L'attenzione si rivolge all'elemento della prospettiva spaziale, che emerge in molti casi di rinnovamento urbano e grazie alla quale si crea un'interazione tra la città e il mondo esterno.The text synthesizes an analysis of the meaning and function of city walls through a series of examples of urban settlements founded, or renewed, in cental-northern Italy, between the end of the Republic and the First Imperial Age. A period in which, in different geographical areas, different monumental results were produced. In some cases the need for defense is still relevant and the structure of city walls, gates and towers, reveal this need. Despite the Pax Augusta, the phenomenon of brigandage, in primis, imposes in some areas a certain attention to their defensive function. In other cases, the city walls may have existed to perform functions different than that of defensive; functions that are not limited only to a symbolic ritual matrix. In this process, even the city gates are transformed, entering in symbiosis with the monumental typology of the honorary arch and becoming, sometimes, a real commemorative monument of particular events. The prestige of the location of this monumental typology in the city wall is completely independent from the validity of the defensive walls. The city walls interact with the doors and with the towers both functionally and formally. Now, their task is not to close the village in a rigid internal/external alternative but rather to create a dialogue between the reality of the settlement and what surrounds it. This dialogue takes place, thanks to the doors and to other structures, both man-made, such as bridges, or natural, such as courses of water, paying attention to the element of the spatial perspective, that emerges, now, in many cases of urban renewal and thanks to which is created an interaction between the city and the outside world

The Importance of the Entrepreneur’s Perception of “Success”

Purpose - In spite of the fact that the success of new ventures has been a widely studied topic in the field of entrepreneurship, no consensus on what is understood by the success of a firm can be found in the literature. Thus, the objective of this work is to discover what the entrepreneur really understands by the success of his/her business in its early years. To that end, this study clarifies the principal indicators used by entrepreneurs and analyses the relationship between how entrepreneurs understand the success of their business and the performance of that business. Design/methodology/approach – In a logit regression model, the research data are analyzed, using a sample of 98 entrepreneurs who are the heads of new firms in various sectors of activity. Findings - The study shows that there is a relationship between the way in which the entrepreneur measures how the business is doing and the performance of that business. More specifically, this research reveals that it is not the use of a greater number of indicators to measure the success that identifies the successful newly-created business from the unsuccessful, but the fact that those indicators are from different perspectives. Moreover, the results show that customer-related indicators are more effective than financial indicators to distinguish between successful and unsuccessful organizations. Research limitations/implications – Future research including qualitative interviews will help to further investigate the relationship between the entrepreneur’s perception of success and company performance. Practical implications – As a result of this research, the entrepreneurs can be conscience about how important it is the way they understand “the success” before they constitute their business. The results of this study mean a valuable knowledge to the academics that research in the entrepreneurship field, specifically to those that are focused on the success factors study. Originality/value – This research is pioneering in relating the way that the entrepreneur measures his company’s success and demonstrating its importance.Entrepreneur’s perception of success; new ventures; entrepreneurship.

Potential effects of pneumatic fracturing on existing structures and utilities

This thesis develops a mathematical design model for predicting ground deformations resulting from pneumatic fracturing. Pneumatic fracturing is a patented process developed for the purpose of enhancing the in situ treatment and removal of hazardous contaminants from geologic formations. During pneumatic injections, measurable ground deformations are experienced both during and after the process. Safe application of pneumatic fracturing to contaminated plumes occurring beneath existing structures and utilities requires that the elastic deformation behavior of the geologic formation and overlying structures be quantified. Data from five pneumatic fracturing sites were regressed to establish the characteristic polynomial describing the curvature of ground deformation. A model was then developed using theories of elastic plate bending and ground deformations by igneous laccolith intrusions. The deformed geologic formation is modeled as a circular plate subjected to a linear tapering pressure distribution. Comparison of the model results with actual field data displayed reasonable agreement. An instrumented field test was performed beneath an actual contaminated industrial facility to obtain data on the dynamic response of the structure. Based on the field test results, as well as experience from over 40 additional pneumatic fracturing sites, a systematic design guideline was developed. The guideline classifies structures as either flexible or rigid, and then categorizes them into one of three characteristic design cases

These are not the k-mers you are looking for: efficient online k-mer counting using a probabilistic data structure

K-mer abundance analysis is widely used for many purposes in nucleotide sequence analysis, including data preprocessing for de novo assembly, repeat detection, and sequencing coverage estimation. We present the khmer software package for fast and memory efficient online counting of k-mers in sequencing data sets. Unlike previous methods based on data structures such as hash tables, suffix arrays, and trie structures, khmer relies entirely on a simple probabilistic data structure, a Count-Min Sketch. The Count-Min Sketch permits online updating and retrieval of k-mer counts in memory which is necessary to support online k-mer analysis algorithms. On sparse data sets this data structure is considerably more memory efficient than any exact data structure. In exchange, the use of a Count-Min Sketch introduces a systematic overcount for k-mers; moreover, only the counts, and not the k-mers, are stored. Here we analyze the speed, the memory usage, and the miscount rate of khmer for generating k-mer frequency distributions and retrieving k-mer counts for individual k-mers. We also compare the performance of khmer to several other k-mer counting packages, including Tallymer, Jellyfish, BFCounter, DSK, KMC, Turtle and KAnalyze. Finally, we examine the effectiveness of profiling sequencing error, k-mer abundance trimming, and digital normalization of reads in the context of high khmer false positive rates. khmer is implemented in C++ wrapped in a Python interface, offers a tested and robust API, and is freely available under the BSD license at github.com/ged-lab/khmer