3,613 research outputs found
The effects of cervical muscle fatigue on balance - A study with elite amateur rugby league players
Neck muscle fatigue has been shown to alter an individual’s balance in a similar way to that reported in subjects suffering from neck pain or subjects that have suffered a neck injury. The main purpose of the present study was to quantify the effects of neck fatigue on neck muscle electromyography (EMG) activity, balance, perceived fatigue and perceived stability. Forty four elite amateur rugby league players resisted with their neck muscles approximately 35% maximum voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC) force for 15 minutes in eight different directions. Sway velocity and surface electromyography were measured. Questionnaires were used to record perceived effort and stability. Repeated measures ANOVA showed that after 15 minutes isometric contraction, significant changes were seen in sway velocity, perceived sway and EMG median frequency. There were no differences in perceived efforts. The changes in sway velocity and median frequency were more pronounced after extension and right and left posterior oblique contractions but there was no significant difference in sway velocity after contraction in the right lateral flexion, right anterior oblique and left anterior oblique direction of contraction. All the subjects showed oriented whole-body leaning in the plane of the contraction. The experiment produced significantly altered and perceived altered balance in this group of physically fit individuals. The results may contribute to our understanding of normal functional capacities of athletes and will provide a basis for further investigation in healthy non-athletes and participants that have suffered neck injuries. This may ultimately help develop accurate and valid rehabilitation outcome measures
Special treatment reduces helium permeation of glass in vacuum systems
Internal surfaces of the glass component of a vacuum system are exposed to cesium in gaseous form to reduce helium permeation. The cesium gas is derived from decomposition of cesium nitrate through heating. Several minutes of exposure of the internal surfaces of the glass vessel are sufficient to complete the treatment
Effects of cervical muscle fatigue on the perception of the subjective vertical and horizontal
Introduction: Cervical functional capacity outcome measures that are simple and reliable are urgently needed in order permit accurate assessment/reassessment during treatments and rehabilitation. Induced neck muscle fatigue has been shown to alter functional capacities such as balance and kinaesthetic sense in the standing posture. The Rod and Frame Test has also shown promise as a method of assessing the effects of chronic neck pain and injury, but currently only in the sitting position. The objectives of this project were therefore 1) to validate the computerised rod and frame test in the standing posture, and 2) to measure the effects that different cervical muscle fatigue protocol would have on the assessment of the subjective visual vertical and horizontal. Method: The validation of the standing computerised rod and frame test in the standing posture was obtained by comparing results (n = 74) between the sitting and standing positions with the Spearman's correlation coefficient. In addition, agreement between the two methods was analysed with the Bland-Altman method. Participants (n = 56) resisted with their neck muscles approximately 35% maximum isometric voluntary contraction force for 15 minutes on a purpose built apparatus in eight different directions. Wilcoxon signed rank tests analysed changes in horizontal and vertical rod and frame test between the neutral and all different directions of contraction. The changes of recorded unsigned vertical and horizontal errors for the combined frame condition in all situations of isometric contraction were analysed with two respective one-way repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA). Discussion: The Spearman's rho and Bland-Altman plots show that the Rod and Frame Test works equally well in sitting and standing positions. After muscle contraction, there were significant increases in error in all participants for both horizontal and vertical rod and frame tests, except after flexion. These errors were predominantly present after fatigue of muscles in the coronal plane of contraction. Proprioception alone cannot explain the difference in the rod and frame results between different muscle groups. It is suggested that an evolutionary advantage of developing improved subjective verticality awareness in the same direction as the main visual field could explain these findings. © 2014 Gosselin and Fagan
Extreme vacuum technology including cryosorption, diffusion pump and pressure calibration studies Summary technical report, 1 Feb. 1965 - 1 Mar. 1966
Cryosorption, diffusion pump, and pressure calibration studies in extreme vacuum science and technology application progra
Extreme vacuum technology including cryosorption, diffusion pump and pressure calibration studies Quarterly status report no. 8, 1 May - 1 Aug. 1965
Cryosorption, diffusion pump, and low pressure calibration studies on Penning gauge and cold cathode magnetro
Study of low pressure application of the orbitron
Evaluation of low pressure performance of orbitron ionization gaug
From Feynman Proof of Maxwell Equations to Noncommutative Quantum Mechanics
In 1990, Dyson published a proof due to Feynman of the Maxwell equations
assuming only the commutation relations between position and velocity. With
this minimal assumption, Feynman never supposed the existence of Hamiltonian or
Lagrangian formalism. In the present communication, we review the study of a
relativistic particle using ``Feynman brackets.'' We show that Poincar\'e's
magnetic angular momentum and Dirac magnetic monopole are the consequences of
the structure of the Lorentz Lie algebra defined by the Feynman's brackets.
Then, we extend these ideas to the dual momentum space by considering
noncommutative quantum mechanics. In this context, we show that the
noncommutativity of the coordinates is responsible for a new effect called the
spin Hall effect. We also show its relation with the Berry phase notion. As a
practical application, we found an unusual spin-orbit contribution of a
nonrelativistic particle that could be experimentally tested. Another practical
application is the Berry phase effect on the propagation of light in
inhomogeneous media.Comment: Presented at the 3rd Feynman Festival (Collage Park, Maryland,
U.S.A., August 2006
Noncommutative Quantum Mechanics Viewed from Feynman Formalism
Dyson published in 1990 a proof due to Feynman of the Maxwell equations. This
proof is based on the assumption of simple commutation relations between
position and velocity. We first study a nonrelativistic particle using Feynman
formalism. We show that Poincar\'{e}'s magnetic angular momentum and Dirac
magnetic monopole are the direct consequences of the structure of the sO(3) Lie
algebra in Feynman formalism. Then we show how to extend this formalism to the
dual momentum space with the aim of introducing Noncommutative Quantum
Mechanics which was recently the subject of a wide range of works from particle
physics to condensed matter physics.Comment: 11 pages, To appear in the Proceedings of the Lorentz Workshop
"Beyond the Quantum", eds. Th.M. Nieuwenhuizen et al., World Scientific,
Singapore, 2007. Added reference
DeepKSPD: Learning Kernel-matrix-based SPD Representation for Fine-grained Image Recognition
Being symmetric positive-definite (SPD), covariance matrix has traditionally
been used to represent a set of local descriptors in visual recognition. Recent
study shows that kernel matrix can give considerably better representation by
modelling the nonlinearity in the local descriptor set. Nevertheless, neither
the descriptors nor the kernel matrix is deeply learned. Worse, they are
considered separately, hindering the pursuit of an optimal SPD representation.
This work proposes a deep network that jointly learns local descriptors,
kernel-matrix-based SPD representation, and the classifier via an end-to-end
training process. We derive the derivatives for the mapping from a local
descriptor set to the SPD representation to carry out backpropagation. Also, we
exploit the Daleckii-Krein formula in operator theory to give a concise and
unified result on differentiating SPD matrix functions, including the matrix
logarithm to handle the Riemannian geometry of kernel matrix. Experiments not
only show the superiority of kernel-matrix-based SPD representation with deep
local descriptors, but also verify the advantage of the proposed deep network
in pursuing better SPD representations for fine-grained image recognition
tasks
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