Compliance with Intensity-Focused Prescription of Physical Activity Using Real-Time Cadence

The utility of wearable activity monitors can provide a better guide to increase adherence to the recommended physical activity levels for health improvement. However, the extent of participants’ ability to comply with the physical activity prescription using a newly developed, intensity-focused value, real-time cadence, remains unclear. PURPOSE: To examine the participants’ ability to comply with a given physical activity prescription focusing on intensity (i.e., real-time cadence). METHODS: Thirty-six healthy adult individuals (age 18-65 yrs; 18 female) participated in the study. During a 2-min over-ground walking trial, participants were prescribed to walk at any cadences (steps/min; an indicative of intensity of ambulatory activities) faster than 120 (i.e., equivalent to a brisk walking) using either one of the following devices in a counter-balanced order: (1) Garmin Forerunner 235 (GM) and (2) Polar M430 (PL), (3) Garmin Foot Pot (FP) and (4) Polar Stride Sensor (SS). Descriptive statistics were used to calculate the % of participants who complied accordingly with the given physical activity prescription as well as the means of cadence performed in each trial. Pearson correlation was conducted to determine the relationship between a criterion (i.e., hand count) and the measures from each device. RESULTS: In general, greater than 90% of the participants (91.7%, 97.2%, 100%, and 97.2% for the device (1) through (4), respectively) were able to maintain walking intensity at the prescribed level using real-time cadence. Mean cadences performed in the protocol were barely above the prescribed intensity, 120 steps/min (i.e., approximately 123 steps/min). The correlations showed strong relationships between the criterion and the measures of the monitors (p \u3c.001). GM and PL sometimes showed a value of zero (0), indicating no detection of steps, during the protocol (from 4 and 11 participants, respectively). CONCLUSION: The results suggest the potential to use the activity monitors providing real-time cadence for physical activity prescription and clarify the participants’ capability to manipulate the values of real-time cadence to maintain the targeted intensity of physical activity. A highly aimed intensity prescription rather than minimum requirement might help individuals ensure the compliance with targeted intensity

Diffeomorphic Deformation via Sliced Wasserstein Distance Optimization for Cortical Surface Reconstruction

Mesh deformation is a core task for 3D mesh reconstruction, but defining an efficient discrepancy between predicted and target meshes remains an open problem. A prevalent approach in current deep learning is the set-based approach which measures the discrepancy between two surfaces by comparing two randomly sampled point-clouds from the two meshes with Chamfer pseudo-distance. Nevertheless, the set-based approach still has limitations such as lacking a theoretical guarantee for choosing the number of points in sampled point-clouds, and the pseudo-metricity and the quadratic complexity of the Chamfer divergence. To address these issues, we propose a novel metric for learning mesh deformation. The metric is defined by sliced Wasserstein distance on meshes represented as probability measures that generalize the set-based approach. By leveraging probability measure space, we gain flexibility in encoding meshes using diverse forms of probability measures, such as continuous, empirical, and discrete measures via \textit{varifold} representation. After having encoded probability measures, we can compare meshes by using the sliced Wasserstein distance which is an effective optimal transport distance with linear computational complexity and can provide a fast statistical rate for approximating the surface of meshes. Furthermore, we employ a neural ordinary differential equation (ODE) to deform the input surface into the target shape by modeling the trajectories of the points on the surface. Our experiments on cortical surface reconstruction demonstrate that our approach surpasses other competing methods in multiple datasets and metrics

Far-Ultraviolet Cooling Features of the Antlia Supernova Remnant

We present far-ultraviolet observations of the Antlia supernova remnant obtained with Far-ultraviolet IMaging Spectrograph (FIMS, also called SPEAR). The strongest lines observed are C IV 1548,1551 and C III 977. The C IV emission of this mixed-morphology supernova remnant shows a clumpy distribution, and the line intensity is nearly constant with radius. The C III 977 line, though too weak to be mapped over the whole remnant, is shown to vary radially. The line intensity peaks at about half the radius, and drops at the edge of the remnant. Both the clumpy distribution of C IV and the rise in the C IV to C III ratio towards the edge suggest that central emission is from evaporating cloudlets rather than thermal conduction in a more uniform, dense medium.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, will be published in ApJ December 1, 2007, v670n2 issue. see http://astro.snu.ac.kr/~jhshinn/ms.pd

Echo Path Transfer Function Estimation for Spectral Subtraction-based Acoustic Echo Suppression

In this study, we propose a novel technique for spectral subtraction (SS)-based acoustic echo suppression (AES). Conventional AES methods based on SS apply fixed weights to the estimated echo path transfer function (EPTF) at the current signal segment and to the EPTF estimated until the previous time interval. We propose a new EPTF estimation approach that adaptively updates the weight parameters in response to abrupt changes in the acoustic environment. From the experiments, we conclude that the developed techniques can be successfully used for the SS-based AES systems

A Study of the Effect of Anger on Immoral Judgment of Internet Privacy Invasion

With the emergence of Web 2.0, people are able to share their thoughts and photos with their friends and strangers. Yet, they also risk invasion of their privacy. Information privacy has therefore become an important issue in the information age. In this research, we focus on the influence of anger on immoral judgment of privacy invasion in cyberspace. Specifically, two scenarios, nonviolent and violent-depiction, are designed to investigate the influence of anger on immoral decision making. Our results revealed that the level of anger will increase immoral judgment in nonviolent and violent depiction scenarios, respectively. And the level of anger in violent-depiction scenario is higher than in nonviolent-depiction scenario. The research findings show that college students easily make an immoral judgment in violent situations. In violent depiction scenario, however, high moral obligation group can enhance the effect of ethical self-efficacy for moral judgment

Impact factor of Korean Journal of Pediatrics on Korean Medical Citation Index and Science Citation Index of Web of Science

PurposeThe total number of times a paper is cited, also known as the impact factor (IF) of a medical journal, is widely implied in evaluating the quality of a research paper. We evaluated the citation index data as an IF of Korean J Pediatr in Korean Medical Citation Index (KoMCI) and JCI of Web of Science.MethodsWe calculated the IF of Korean J Pediatr at KoMCI supervised by Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors. And we estimated the IF of Korean J Pediatr by the JCI of Web of Science although it was never officially reported.ResultsThe IF of Korean J Pediatr on KoMCI has increased from 0.100 in the year 2000, to 0.205 in 2008, and 0.326 in 2009. Although the IF of Korean J Pediatr was 0.006 in 2005, 0.018 in 2006, 0.028 in 2008, 0.066 in 2009, and 0.018 in 2010 according to the JCI of Web of Science, the number of citations are steadily increasing.ConclusionUnderstanding and realizing the current status will be a stepping stone for further improvement. The next objective of the Korean J Pediatr is to become registered in the SCI or SCIE. Increasing the IF according to the JCI of Web of Science is crucial in order to achieve this goal

Panton-Valentine Leukocidin–Positive MRSA, Shanghai

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