¿Pueden los programas de entrenamiento de resistencia con banda elástica mitigar el aumento de peso durante las vacaciones y mejorar la fuerza de agarre de las manos en mujeres mayores?

Este estudio evaluó el efecto del entrenamien- to con ejercicios de resistencia (EER) sobre la composición corpo- ral y la fuerza muscular en 16 mujeres adultas mayores durante las vacaciones de verano (70, 5 ± 8, 4 años; Rango 60-87). Las sesio- nes de ejercicio se llevaron a cabo durante doce semanas, dos ve- ces por semana, con 60 minutos de ejercicio por sesión. Se evaluó el índice de masa corporal (IMC), el porcentaje de masa grasa (% MG, por bioimpedancia) y la fuerza de presión con un dinamómetro manual antes y después de la intervención. Las participantes mos- traron un aumento significativo en el IMC (p< 0, 05), % de MG (p<0, 001) y un incremento significativo en la fuerza prensil (p <0, 05). El programa de EER podría ser una estrategia importante para mejorar la fuerza de mujeres adultas mayores durante el periodo estival. El EER se sugiere combinarlo con otras variables, como ejercicios aeróbicos con intensidad gradualmente creciente y una intervención nutricional, para mantener un peso constante durante los períodos de vacaciones. This study evaluated the effect of resistance exercise training (RET) on body composition and muscle strength in 16 older women during summer holidays (70.5 ± 8.4 years old; Range 60-87). Exercise sessions were carried out for twelve weeks, two sessions per week, with 60 minutes of exercise per session. We measured body mass index (BMI), fat mass percentage (FM%, by bioimpedance) and grip strength with a dynamometer before and after the intervention. The participants showed a significant increase in BMI (p<0.05), FM% (p<0.001), and a significant gain in grip strength (p<0.05). The RET program could be an important strategy for improving strength for older women, but we would suggest combining it with other interventions, such as aerobic exercises with gradually increasing intensity and nutrition interventions, in order to maintain a steady weight during holiday periods

The repeatability of cognitive performance:A meta-analysis

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from The Royal Society via the DOI in this record.Behavioural and cognitive processes play important roles in mediating an individual's interactions with its environment. Yet, while there is a vast literature on repeatable individual differences in behaviour, relatively little is known about the repeatability of cognitive performance. To further our understanding of the evolution of cognition, we gathered 44 studies on individual performance of 25 species across six animal classes and used meta-analysis to assess whether cognitive performance is repeatable. We compared repeatability (R) in performance (1) on the same task presented at different times (temporal repeatability), and (2) on different tasks that measured the same putative cognitive ability (contextual repeatability). We also addressed whether R estimates were influenced by seven extrinsic factors (moderators): type of cognitive performance measurement, type of cognitive task, delay between tests, origin of the subjects, experimental context, taxonomic class and publication status. We found support for both temporal and contextual repeatability of cognitive performance, with mean R estimates ranging between 0.15 and 0.28. Repeatability estimates were mostly influenced by the type of cognitive performance measures and publication status. Our findings highlight the widespread occurrence of consistent inter-individual variation in cognition across a range of taxa which, like behaviour, may be associated with fitness outcomes.PKYC is supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (PE1801); JOvH was funded by an ERC consolidator grant (616474). MC and this research was supported by a grant from the Human Frontier Science Program to ASC and JM-F (RGP0006/2015)

Simple Ways to Measure Behavioral Responses of Drosophila to Stimuli and Use of These Methods to Characterize a Novel Mutant

The behavioral responses of adult Drosophila fruit flies to a variety of sensory stimuli – light, volatile and non-volatile chemicals, temperature, humidity, gravity, and sound - have been measured by others previously. Some of those assays are rather complex; a review of them is presented in the Discussion. Our objective here has been to find out how to measure the behavior of adult Drosophila fruit flies by methods that are inexpensive and easy to carry out. These new assays have now been used here to characterize a novel mutant that fails to be attracted or repelled by a variety of sensory stimuli even though it is motile

A collaborative VR Murder Mystery using Photorealistic User Representations

The VRTogether project has developed a Social VR platform for remote communication and collaboration. The hyper-realistic representation of users, as volumetric video, allows for natural interaction in a virtual environment with others. This video shows one of the use cases, an escape room style, where remote users need to collaboratively resolve a murder mystery. The experience takes place in the victim’s apartment where the police team (avatars) together with up to four real-time captured users (point clouds), work as a team to find clues and come up with a conclusion about what happened to the victim and who was the criminal. This experience includes a layer of interaction, enabling the users to interact with the environment, by touching objects, and to talk to the characters. It also allows for navigating between the rooms of the apartment. The experience provides immersion and social connectedness, where users are protagonists of the story, sharing the virtual environment and following the narrative. The combination of virtual reality environments (space and characters) with novel technologies for real-time volumetric video conferencing enables unique new experiences in a number of areas such as healthcare, broadcasting, and gaming. The video can be watched here: https://youtu.be/Hsj1YWo55k