KINEMATICS ANALYSIS OF TAEKWONDO\u27S RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ROUNDHOUSE KICK VELOCITY AND ELECTRONIC BODY PROTECTOR

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of kicking velocity on inductive values of electronic body protector during a roundhouse kick. Six elite collegiate taekwondo player participated in the study. Each participant performed five 90°roundhouse kick as hard as possible and record the inductive values of electronic body protector. Kicking velocity of kicking leg was measured by motion analysis system. The results showed that kicking velocity before impact of the highest scoring kick was significantly higher than that of lowest scoring kick. In addition, impact kicking velocity of the highest scoring kick was significantly higher than that of the lowest scoring kick. In conclusion, inductive values of the electronic body protector were increased by improving kick velocity at the moment of foot contact

Christians and Buddhists Are Comparably Happy on Twitter: A Large-Scale Linguistic Analysis of Religious Differences in Social, Cognitive, and Emotional Tendencies

Are different religions associated with different social, cognitive, and emotional tendencies? Although major world religions are known to encourage social interactions and help regulate emotions, it is less clear to what extent adherents of various religions differ in these dimensions in daily life. We thus carried out a large-scale sociolinguistic analysis of social media messages of Christians and Buddhists living in the United States. After controlling for age and gender effects on linguistic patterns, we found that Christians used more social words and fewer cognitive words than Buddhists. Moreover, adherents of both religions, similarly used more positive than negative emotion words on Twitter, although overall, Christians were slightly more positive in verbal emotional expression than Buddhists. These sociolinguistic patterns of actual rather than ideal behaviors were also paralleled by language used in the popular sacred texts of Christianity and Buddhism, with the exception that Christian texts contained more negative and fewer positive emotion words than Buddhist texts. Taken together, our results suggest that the direct or indirect influence of religious texts on the receivers of their messages may partially, but not fully, account for the verbal behavior of religious adherents

Ground Reaction Forces of Dart-Throwing at Different Target Heights

The purpose of the study was to explore whether dart players produce different lower limb control strategies when throwing darts at spatially separated targets in the vertical direction. Eight experienced darts players (height 1.75±0.04 m, mass 83.4±19.3 kg) participated in this research. Two Multi-Axis Force Plates were used to collect GRF data on both legs and synchronized with a Motion Capture System. The participants threw darts at three targets at different heights, which were the upper section of the 20 point area, bullseye and lower section of the 3 point area. The results showed that the amplitude of anterior-posterior GRF of their front legs were significantly different when darts was thrown at the 20 zone, bullseye and 3 zone respectively. Our study found that the braking forces of the front legs were greater when a dart was being thrown at the highest target (20 points) than when it was being thrown at the lowest target (3 points)

Effect of the Kinesio tape to muscle activity and vertical jump performance in healthy inactive people

BACKGROUND: Elastic taping applied on the triceps surae has been commonly used to improve the performance of lower extremities. However, little objective evidence has been documented. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of elastic taping on the triceps surae during a maximal vertical jump. It was hypothesized that elastic taping to the triceps surae would increase muscle activity and cause positive effect to jump height. METHODS: Thirty-one healthy adults (19 males and 12 females with mean age, body weight and height for 25.3 ± 3.8 years old, 64.1 ± 6.2 kg, and 169.4 ± 7.3 cm, respectively) were recruited. All participants performed vertical jump tests prior to (without taping) and during elastic taping. Two elastic tapes, Kinesio tape and Mplacebo tape from two different manufacturers, were applied to the participants, respectively. RESULTS: The results showed that the vertical ground reaction force increased when Kinesio tape was applied even when the height of jump remained about constant. However, the height of the jump decreased, and there was no difference on the vertical ground reaction force in Mplacebo taping group. Although the EMG activity of medial gastrocnemius tended to increase in Kinesio taping group, we did not see differences in EMG activity for the medial gastrocnemius, tibialis anterior and soleus muscles in either group. CONCLUSIONS: Based on the varied effects of Kinesio tape and Mplacebo tape, different intervention technique was suggested for specific purpose during vertical jump movement. Mplacebo tape was demanded for the benefits of stabilization, protection, and the restriction of motion at the ankle joint. On the other hand, the findings may implicate benefits for medial gastrocnemius muscle strength and push-off force when using Kinesio tape

LOWER LIMB STABILIZATION STRATEGIES OF DART ATHLETES AT DIFFERENT LEVELS

The purpose of the study was to understand lower limb stabilization strategies during the acceleration phase of dart throwing in athletes at different levels. Multi-Axis Force Plates and 3D Motion Capture were adopted to collect data. Six male darts athletes, including three elite athletes and three sub elite athletes, throw darts to hit Bull\u27s Eye abiding the rules of the World Darts Federation. The study shows that during acceleration phase, the ground reaction force of elite athletes changes substantially, while the change of ground reaction force of sub elite athletes was relatively small. Significant difference of the change in the front foot ground reaction force (GRF) on a vertical axis is reached (p\u3c0.05). The cause may be because the elite players use greater GRF transition from rear foot and front foot than sub elite players. On the contrast, sub elite athletes are still in the stage of integration, thus lower limb movement is minimized in order to stabilize the throw

Indoor Depth Completion with Boundary Consistency and Self-Attention

Depth estimation features are helpful for 3D recognition. Commodity-grade depth cameras are able to capture depth and color image in real-time. However, glossy, transparent or distant surface cannot be scanned properly by the sensor. As a result, enhancement and restoration from sensing depth is an important task. Depth completion aims at filling the holes that sensors fail to detect, which is still a complex task for machine to learn. Traditional hand-tuned methods have reached their limits, while neural network based methods tend to copy and interpolate the output from surrounding depth values. This leads to blurred boundaries, and structures of the depth map are lost. Consequently, our main work is to design an end-to-end network improving completion depth maps while maintaining edge clarity. We utilize self-attention mechanism, previously used in image inpainting fields, to extract more useful information in each layer of convolution so that the complete depth map is enhanced. In addition, we propose boundary consistency concept to enhance the depth map quality and structure. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of our self-attention and boundary consistency schema, which outperforms previous state-of-the-art depth completion work on Matterport3D dataset. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/patrickwu2/Depth-CompletionComment: Accepted by ICCVW (RLQ) 201

Circumferential scouting punch biopsies to delineate surgical margin for dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans

AbstractDermatofibrosarcoma protuberans (DFSP) is an uncommon soft-tissue tumor involving the dermis and subcutaneous tissue with a high local recurrence rate after standard excision. Mohs micrographic surgery offers a lower recurrence rate. However, the procedure requires multiple stages of excision with intraoperative histopathological mapping, which is time consuming and expensive. We report our experience of using circumferential scouting punch biopsy technique in five patients to determine in advance the resection margins for DFSP prior to wide excision. Multiple 4 mm punches, usually eight in number, were performed 1–2.5 cm around the palpable borders of DFSP to delineate the resection margins in five consecutive patients. Tumors were excised at a later date along the margin defined by these biopsies and the wounds were repaired with skin graft. The operation was completed in 2 hours in all cases excluding one that required frozen sections for deep margin. No recurrence was noted 2–10 years after the operations. The results suggest that circumferential scouting punch biopsies before wide excision may be an alternative method to define the resection margins for DFSP when Mohs surgery is not available

FUBP3 interacts with FGF9 3′ microsatellite and positively regulates FGF9 translation

A TG microsatellite in the 3′-untranslated region (UTR) of FGF9 mRNA has previously been shown to modulate FGF9 expression. In the present study, we investigate the possible interacting protein that binds to FGF9 3′-UTR UG-repeat and study the mechanism underlying this protein–RNA interaction. We first applied RNA pull-down assays and LC-MS analysis to identify proteins associated with this repetitive sequence. Among the identified proteins, FUBP3 specifically bound to the synthetic (UG)15 oligoribonucleotide as shown by supershift in RNA-EMSA experiments. The endogenous FGF9 protein was upregulated in response to transient overexpression and downregulated after knockdown of FUBP3 in HEK293 cells. As the relative levels of FGF9 mRNA were similar in these two conditions, and the depletion of FUBP3 had no effect on the turn-over rate of FGF9 mRNA, these data suggested that FUBP3 regulates FGF9 expression at the post-transcriptional level. Further examination using ribosome complex pull-down assay showed overexpression of FUBP3 promotes FGF9 expression. In contrast, polyribosome-associated FGF9 mRNA decreased significantly in FUBP3-knockdown HEK293 cells. Finally, reporter assay suggested a synergistic effect of the (UG)-motif with FUBP3 to fine-tune the expression of FGF9. Altogether, results from this study showed the novel RNA-binding property of FUBP3 and the interaction between FUBP3 and FGF9 3′-UTR UG-repeat promoting FGF9 mRNA translation