Ediacaran Macro Body Fossils

This paper, Ediacaran Macro Body Fossils, reports a new discovery of well preserved three dimensional macro body fossils of the Ediacaran Period in central YunNan province in the People's Republic of China. These body fossils will enable more detailed and in-depth exploration of the evolution of multi-cellular macro organisms on this planet, whereas in the past, researches could only rely on cast or imprint fossils

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MALE AND FEMALE PLAYERS IN THE FRONTAL PLANE BIOMECHANICS DURING VOLLEYBALL SPIKE LANDING

The purpose of this study was to investigate differences of kinematic variables between male and female volleyball players after a spiking, to understand the mechanism of volleyball spike landing. Eight males and eight females were recruited to participate in this study from the university volleyball team. The kinematic data were collected by ten Vicon cameras (300Hz) and two force plates (1500Hz). The results presented the right hip joint, and both knee joints are significant differences between male and female volleyball players at initial contact. Similarly, at the moment of peak force during the landing phase, the right hip joint and both knee joints are significant differences between male and female volleyball players. These differences demonstrated that male and female players performed different strategies during volleyball spike landing

Vehicle Coordinated Strategy for Vehicle Routing Problem with Fuzzy Demands

The vehicle routing problem with fuzzy demands (VRPFD) is considered. A fuzzy reasoning constrained program model is formulated for VRPFD, and a hybrid ant colony algorithm is proposed to minimize total travel distance. Specifically, the two-vehicle-paired loop coordinated strategy is presented to reduce the additional distance, unloading times, and waste capacity caused by the service failure due to the uncertain demands. Finally, numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches

Task-Adaptive Negative Class Envision for Few-Shot Open-Set Recognition

Recent works seek to endow recognition systems with the ability to handle the open world. Few shot learning aims for fast learning of new classes from limited examples, while open-set recognition considers unknown negative class from the open world. In this paper, we study the problem of few-shot open-set recognition (FSOR), which learns a recognition system robust to queries from new sources with few examples and from unknown open sources. To achieve that, we mimic human capability of envisioning new concepts from prior knowledge, and propose a novel task-adaptive negative class envision method (TANE) to model the open world. Essentially we use an external memory to estimate a negative class representation. Moreover, we introduce a novel conjugate episode training strategy that strengthens the learning process. Extensive experiments on four public benchmarks show that our approach significantly improves the state-of-the-art performance on few-shot open-set recognition. Besides, we extend our method to generalized few-shot open-set recognition (GFSOR), where we also achieve performance gains on MiniImageNet

ANGULAR ANALYSIS OF THE INDEX AND MIDDLE FINGERS DURING FASTBALL AND CURVEBALL PITCHING – A CASE STUDY

The purpose of this study was to expand the knowledge by quantifying and comparing finger angle between curveball (CB) and fastball (FB) pitching. One division II college pitcher was participated in present study. A VICON Motion capture system were used to collect 3-D kinematic data (500Hz). Three successful trials for each FB and CB were collected. The metacarpal phalangeal joint (MCP), proximal interphalangeal joint (PIP) and distal interphalangeal joint (DIP) angle was analysed. There were several differences in MCP, PIP and DIP angle for CB and FB. But similar patterns were found between index finger and middle finger. This information may beneficial to conduct thefurther study to explore the mechanics of pitching

A THREE-DIMENSIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE VOLLEYBALL ONE-FOOT JUMP SPIKE

INTRODUCTION: Since the Chinese National female volleyball team developed the one-foot jump spike technique during the 1980s, the high percentage of successful spiking has made the skill a powerful offensive weapon on volleyball courts all over the world. But no research has been done on the biomechanical analysis of the female one-foot jump spike. The purpose of this study was to describe the biomechanical characteristics of the techniques of the one-foot jump spike demonstrated by elite Taiwanese female players. METHODS: Four elite female players from the Taiwanese National Volleyball Team served as subjects. Their mean height, weight, and age (and variance) were 1.78 (0.03) m, 63.53 (.11) kg, and 21.50 (.58) years, respectively. Two Peak Performance high speed video cameras operating at 120Hz were synchronized to record the actions employed by the subjects in performing the one-foot jump spike. Three-dimensional object space co-ordinates of digitized image co-ordinates were obtained using a DLT algorithm and 19 calibration points in the video volume. RESULTS: [Table 1] The values of selected variables for the one-foot jump spike by the four female players were calculated (Table 1). The elite female one-foot jump spikers had a shorter takeoff time(0.198s) than the elite male two-foot spikers(0.308s).The female one-foot jump spikers also had a sharper approach angle(27 deg)then the elite male and female two-foot spikers(45- 60 deg) which made it harder for the opponent to block the ball. The results of this study provide valuable information for teachers and coaches teaching players to perform the one-foot jump spike. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicated that elite female one-foot jump spikers have a shorter takeoff time and a sharper approach angle then the elite male and female two-foot spikers, which contribute to the success of spiking

Tetra­kis[μ-1,4-bis­(4,5-dihydro-1,3-oxazol-2-yl)benzene-κ2 N:N′]tetra­kis­(μ-methano­lato-κ2 O:O)bis­(μ-perchlorato-κ2 O:O′)tetra­copper(II) bis­(perchlorate)

The title tetra­nuclear CuII complex, [Cu4(C12H12N2O2)4(CH3O)4(ClO4)2](ClO4)2, is located around an inversion center. Each CuII atom is coordinated by two cis-O atoms from two bridging methano­late anions and two cis-N atoms from two bridging 1,4-bis­(4,5-dihydro-1,3-oxazol-2-yl)benzene (L) ligands in the basal plane, and is further coordinated by one O atom of the bridging perchlorate anion, forming a distorted square-pyramidal geometry. The Cu⋯Cu separations in the recta­ngular core are 2.9878 (11) and 6.974 (1) Å. In the asymmetric unit, there are two L ligands with a syn conformation. In one L ligand, the dihedral angles between the central benzene ring and the terminal 4,5-dihydro-1,3-oxazol-2-yl mean planes are 22.1 (4) and 33.1 (4)°, and in the other L ligand the corresponding dihedral angles are 29.3 (4) and 29.9 (4)°. The uncoordinated perchlorate anion is linked with the complex mol­ecules via weak C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds