A KINEMATIC COMPARISON OF RUNNING ON TREADMILL AND OVERGROUND SURFACES

Treadmills are often used for research in sport running shoes and physical training. The purpose of this study was to compare the kinematics in treadmill and overground running, and to investigate if the shoe testing on treadmill can reflect the performance of the running shoes on overground surfaces. Thirteen male subjects were recruited to run on treadmill, tartan, grass and concrete surfaces. Effective vertical stiffness, temporal and kinematic parameters were measured. The results showed that the running patterns within overground surfaces were not significantly different, while the significant differences were found between treadmill and overground running

Superheavy dark matter and ultrahigh energy cosmic rays

The phase of inflationary expansion in the early universe produces superheavy relics in a mass window between 10^{12} GeV and 10^{14} GeV. Decay or annihilation of these superheavy relics can explain the observed ultrahigh energy cosmic rays beyond the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin cutoff. We emphasize that the pattern of cosmic ray arrival directions with energies beyond 20 EeV will decide between the different proposals for the origin of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays.Comment: Based on an invited talk given by RD at Theory Canada 1, Vancouver, June 2-5, 200

QCD Chiral restoration at finite TT under the Magnetic field: Studies based on the instanton vacuum model

We investigate the chiral restoration at finite temperature $(T)$ under the strong external magnetic field $\vec{B}=B_{0}\hat{z}$ of the SU(2) light-flavor QCD matter. We employ the instanton-liquid QCD vacuum configuration accompanied with the linear Schwinger method for inducing the magnetic field. The Harrington-Shepard caloron solution is used to modify the instanton parameters, i.e. the average instanton size $(\bar{\rho})$ and inter-instanton distance $(\bar{R})$, as functions of $T$. In addition, we include the meson-loop corrections (MLC) as the large-$N_{c}$ corrections because they are critical for reproducing the universal chiral restoration pattern. We present the numerical results for the constituent-quark mass as well as chiral condensate which signal the spontaneous breakdown of chiral-symmetry (SB$\chi$S), as functions of $T$ and $B$. Besides we find that the changes for the $F_\pi$ and $m_\pi$ due to the magnetic field is relatively small, in comparison to those caused by the finite $T$ effect.Comment: 4 pages, 1 table, 6figs. arXiv admin note: significant text overlap with arXiv:1103.605

Cultural orientation of self-bias in perceptual matching

This work was supported by grants from the Economic and Social Research Council (ES/K013424/1), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31371017), and the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (HKU758412H)Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Theoretical study of the absorption spectra of the sodium dimer

Absorption of radiation from the sodium dimer molecular states correlating to Na(3s)-Na(3s) is investigated theoretically. Vibrational bound and continuum transitions from the singlet X Sigma-g+ state to the first excited singlet A Sigma-u+ and singlet B Pi-u states and from the triplet a Sigma-u+ state to the first excited triplet b Sigma-g+ and triplet c Pi-g states are studied quantum-mechanically. Theoretical and experimental data are used to characterize the molecular properties taking advantage of knowledge recently obtained from ab initio calculations, spectroscopy, and ultra-cold atom collision studies. The quantum-mechanical calculations are carried out for temperatures in the range from 500 to 3000 K and are compared with previous calculations and measurements where available.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures, revtex, eps

Defense gene expression and phenotypic changes of rice (Oryza sativa L.) at the reproductive stage in response to whitebacked planthopper (Sogatella furcifera Horvath) infestation

This study was to determine the gene expression pattern and phenotypic change of Cheongcheong, Nagdong, TN1, and 8 different pedigrees of the CNDH population when WBPH infestation initiated at the reproductive stage of the crop. WBPH infested plants generally showed higher expression level of defense genes compared with the uninfected plants. LOX transcriptional levels in Nagdong and CNDH42-1 did not increase after WBPH feeding at all-time course. Chlorophyll content declined in infested plants compared to their controls, but still CNDH3, CNDH14-2, and CNDH65 were healthier. Heavy and extensive WBPH feeding affected rice yield and grain quality although the infestation started at the reproductive stage

Approach to equilibrium for a class of random quantum models of infinite range

We consider random generalizations of a quantum model of infinite range introduced by Emch and Radin. The generalization allows a neat extension from the class $l_1$ of absolutely summable lattice potentials to the optimal class $l_2$ of square summable potentials first considered by Khanin and Sinai and generalised by van Enter and van Hemmen. The approach to equilibrium in the case of a Gaussian distribution is proved to be faster than for a Bernoulli distribution for both short-range and long-range lattice potentials. While exponential decay to equilibrium is excluded in the nonrandom $l_1$ case, it is proved to occur for both short and long range potentials for Gaussian distributions, and for potentials of class $l_2$ in the Bernoulli case. Open problems are discussed.Comment: 10 pages, no figures. This last version, to appear in J. Stat. Phys., corrects some minor errors and includes additional references and comments on the relation to experiment