328 research outputs found
Editorial: Muscle and Tendon Plasticity and Interaction in Physiological and Pathological Conditions
A feature-based comparison of local search and the Christofides algorithm for the travelling salesperson problem
Understanding the behaviour of well-known algorithms for classical NP-hard optimisation problems is still a difficult task. With this paper, we contribute to this research direction and carry out a feature based comparison of local search and the well-known Christofides approximation algorithm for the Traveling Salesperson Problem. We use an evolutionary algorithm approach to construct easy and hard instances for the Christofides algorithm, where we measure hardness in terms of approximation ratio. Our results point out important features and lead to hard and easy instances for this famous algorithm. Furthermore, our cross-comparison gives new insights on the complementary benefits of the different approaches.Samadhi Nallaperuma, Markus Wagner, Frank Neumann, Bernd Bischl, Olaf Mersmann, Heike Trautmannhttp://www.sigevo.org/foga-2013
Simplified Triceps Surae Muscle Volume Assessment in Older Adults
Triceps surae (TS) muscle volume can be estimated in young adults by only considering the maximal anatomical cross-sectional area (ACSAmax) and the length of the muscle due to the presence of a constant muscle-specific shape factor. This study aimed to investigate if this simplified muscle volume assessment is also applicable in older adults or if muscle-specific shape changes with aging. MRI sequences were taken from the dominant leg of 21 older female adults. The boundaries of all three TS muscles (SOL, soleus; GM, gastrocnemius medialis; GL, gastrocnemius lateralis) were manually outlined in transverse image sequences, and muscle volume for each muscle was calculated as the integral of the obtained cross-sectional areas of the contours along the whole length of the muscle (measured volume) and, in addition, by using the average muscle-specific shape factors of each muscle obtained from the ratio of the measured volume and the product of ACSAmax and the muscle length (estimated volume). There were no differences in the measured and estimated muscle volumes (SOL: 357.7 ± 61.8 vs. 358.8 ± 65.3 cm3; GM: 179.5 ± 32.8 vs. 179.8 ± 33.3 cm3; GL: 90.2 ± 15.9 vs. 90.4 ± 14.8 cm3). However, when using the reported shape factors of younger adults instead, we found a significant (p < 0.05) overestimation of muscle volume for SOL and GM with average RMS differences of 6.1 and 7.6%, respectively. These results indicate that corrections of muscle-specific shape factors are needed when using the previously proposed simplified muscle volume assessment as aging may not only be accompanied with muscle atrophy but also changes in the shape of skeletal muscle
Feature-based diversity optimization for problem instance classification
Parallel Problem Solving from Nature – PPSN XIVUnderstanding the behaviour of heuristic search methods is a challenge. This even holds for simple local search methods such as 2-OPT for the Traveling Salesperson problem. In this paper, we present a general framework that is able to construct a diverse set of instances that are hard or easy for a given search heuristic. Such a diverse set is obtained by using an evolutionary algorithm for constructing hard or easy instances that are diverse with respect to different features of the underlying problem. Examining the constructed instance sets, we show that many combinations of two or three features give a good classification of the TSP instances in terms of whether they are hard to be solved by 2-OPT.Wanru Gao, Samadhi Nallaperuma, and Frank Neuman
New determination of the mass of the eta meson at COSY-ANKE
A value for the mass of the eta meson has been determined at the COSY-ANKE
facility through the measurement of a set of deuteron laboratory beam momenta
and associated 3He center-of-mass momenta in the d+p -> 3He+X reaction. The eta
was then identified by the missing-mass peak and the production threshold
determined. The individual beam momenta were fixed with a relative precision of
3 x 10^-5 for values around 3 GeV/c by using a polarized deuteron beam and
inducing an artificial depolarizing spin resonance, which occurs at a
well-defined frequency. The final-state momenta in the two-body d+p -> 3He+eta
reaction were investigated in detail by studying the size of the 3He momentum
ellipse with the forward detection system of the ANKE spectrometer. Final
alignment of the spectrometer for this high precision experiment was achieved
through a comprehensive study of the 3He final-state momenta as a function of
the center-of-mass angles, taking advantage of the full geometrical acceptance.
The value obtained for the mass, m(eta)=(547.873 +- 0.005(stat) +- 0.027(syst))
MeV/c^2, is consistent and competitive with other recent measurements, in which
the meson was detected through its decay products.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures, 3 tables, published versio
Absence of spin dependence in the final state interaction of the d(pol) p --> 3He eta reaction
The deuteron tensor analysing power t_{20} of the d(pol) p --> 3He eta
reaction has been measured at the COSY-ANKE facility in small steps in excess
energy Q up to Q = 11 MeV. Despite the square of the production amplitude
varying by over a factor of five through this range, t_{20} shows little or no
energy dependence. This is evidence that the final state interaction causing
the energy variation is not influenced by the spin configuration in the
entrance channel. The weak angular dependence observed for t_{20} provides
useful insight into the amplitude structure near threshold.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Modular control of human movement during running: An open access data set
The human body is an outstandingly complex machine including around 1000 muscles and joints acting synergistically. Yet, the coordination of the enormous amount of degrees of freedom needed for movement is mastered by our one brain and spinal cord. The idea that some synergistic neural components of movement exist was already suggested at the beginning of the 20th century. Since then, it has been widely accepted that the central nervous system might simplify the production of movement by avoiding the control of each muscle individually. Instead, it might be controlling muscles in common patterns that have been called muscle synergies. Only with the advent of modern computational methods and hardware it has been possible to numerically extract synergies from electromyography (EMG) signals. However, typical experimental setups do not include a big number of individuals, with common sample sizes of 5 to 20 participants. With this study, we make publicly available a set of EMG activities recorded during treadmill running from the right lower limb of 135 healthy and young adults (78 males and 57 females). Moreover, we include in this open access data set the code used to extract synergies from EMG data using non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) and the relative outcomes. Muscle synergies, containing the time-invariant muscle weightings (motor modules) and the time-dependent activation coefficients (motor primitives), were extracted from 13 ipsilateral EMG activities using NMF. Four synergies were enough to describe as many gait cycle phases during running: weight acceptance, propulsion, early swing, and late swing. We foresee many possible applications of our data that we can summarize in three key points. First, it can be a prime source for broadening the representation of human motor control due to the big sample size. Second, it could serve as a benchmark for scientists from multiple disciplines such as musculoskeletal modeling, robotics, clinical neuroscience, sport science, etc. Third, the data set could be used both to train students or to support established scientists in the perfection of current muscle synergies extraction methods. All the data is available at Zenodo (doi: 10.5281/zenodo.1254380). © 2018 Frontiers Media S.A.All right reserved
Production of the 1S0 diproton in the pp -> pp pi0 reaction at 0.8 GeV
The pp -> pp pi0 differential cross section has been measured with the ANKE
spectrometer at COSY-Juelich for pion cms angles between 0 and 15.4 degrees at
a proton beam energy of 0.8 GeV. The selection of diproton pairs with an
excitation energy E_{pp} < 3 MeV ensures that the final pp system is dominantly
in the spin-singlet 1S0 state. The kinematics are therefore very similar to
those of pp -> d pi+ but with different spin and isospin transitions. The
results will thus provide a crucial extra test of pion production models in
nucleon-nucleon collisions.
The cross sections, which are over two orders of magnitude smaller than those
of pp -> d pi+, show a forward dip, even stronger than that seen at lower
energies. This behaviour is well reproduced in a theoretical model that
includes P-wave Delta-N states.Comment: 10 pages, 5 eps figures, prepared using elsart.cl
Measurement of the Analyzing Power in \\with a Fast Forward --Diproton
A measurement of the analyzing power of the
reaction was carried out at beam energies of 0.5 and 0.8 GeV by detection of a
fast forward proton pair of small excitation energy MeV. The
kinematically complete experiment made use of the ANKE spectrometer at the
internal beam of COSY and a deuterium cluster--jet target. For the first time
the --wave dominance in the fast diproton is experimentally demonstrated in
this reaction. While at GeV the measured analyzing power
vanishes, it reaches almost unity at GeV for neutrons scattered at
. The results are compared with a model taking into
account one--nucleon exchange, single scattering and (1232) excitation
in the intermediate state. The model describes fairly well the unpolarized
cross section obtained earlier by us and the analyzing power at 0.8 GeV, it
fails to reproduce the angular dependence of at 0.5 GeV.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl
Determination of Deuteron Beam Polarizations at COSY
The vector and tensor polarizations of a deuteron beam have been measured
using elastic deuteron-carbon scattering at 75.6 MeV and deuteron-proton
scattering at 270 MeV. After acceleration to 1170 MeV inside the COSY ring, the
polarizations of the deuterons were checked by studying a variety of nuclear
reactions using a cluster target at the ANKE magnet spectrometer placed at an
internal target position of the storage ring. All these measurements were
consistent with the absence of depolarization during acceleration and provide a
number of secondary standards that can be used in subsequent experiments at the
facility.Comment: 12 pages, 13 figure
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