Development of a Race Simulation to Be Used with Treadmills and Exercise Bikes

ICON Health & Fitness, Inc. has become one of the largest manufacturers of fitness equipment. This company now includes many popular fitness equipment manufacturers like Weider, Weslo, HealthRider, and NordicTrack through various acquisitions and launches of new lines. In 2005, it is projected four million units of fitness equipment will be manufactured by the company (ICON). With the popularity of treadmills and exercise bikes, ICON Health & Fitness added the capability to download exercise programs using its iFit© technology. This allows an audio cable to be plugged into the equipment from a PC and utilizes sound waves to control a treadmill\u27s speed and inclination or an exercise bike\u27s resistance. By mapping a race course with a GPS device, the GPS device could download its readings in a text format to a PC to have the course\u27s elevation and length emulated. With this simulation, a Java program could process it and allow a program to be ran on a Java capable device to control a treadmill or exercise bike utilizing the iFit© technology. This capability would cater to the runners who cannot run a race due to family or work schedules. They could emulate an upcoming race on a treadmill and workout when their schedule permits. In 2005, the Springfield Road Runners of Springfield Illinois sanctioned 18 races for women and 17 races for men to be used for their points\u27 series (Springfield). A member of the Springfield Road Runners can now train for the upcoming race without the worry of running at night or during inconvenient times. With this one example from a running club in a community in Illinois having 18 possible races to download, we see the market possibility when the number of running clubs in the United States is factored into the equation. This capability would also cater to the runner who wishes to run the Boston Marathon, ride in the Tour De France, or other popular races. Instead of qualifying and then joining the 20,000 runners in April for the Boston Marathon, the runner could load up the Java program and see how he would compare against other runners within the race ( Boston ). Once a GPS race is captured, it can be processed to emulate the race and store the simulation in an encrypted format. It will then be available to be purchased and downloaded from a website. A Java program will be available to purchase which will process the downloaded encrypted file and emulate the race on a treadmill or exercise bike

Soft two-meson-exchange nucleon-nucleon potentials. II. One-pair and two-pair diagrams

Two-meson-exchange nucleon-nucleon potentials are derived where either one or both nucleons contains a pair vertex. Physically, the meson-pair vertices are meant to describe in an effective way (part of) the effects of heavy-meson exchange and meson-nucleon resonances. {}From the point of view of ``duality,'' these two kinds of contribution are roughly equivalent. The various possibilities for meson pairs coupling to the nucleon are inspired by the chiral-invariant phenomenological Lagrangians that have appeared in the literature. The coupling constants are fixed using the linear $\sigma$ model. We show that the inclusion of these two-meson exchanges gives a significant improvement over a potential model including only the standard one-boson exchanges.Comment: 21 pages RevTeX, 7 postscript figures; revised version as to appear in Phys. Rev.

Vector Meson Photoproduction with an Effective Lagrangian in the Quark Model

A quark model approach to the photoproduction of vector mesons off nucleons is proposed. Its starting point is an effective Lagrangian of the interaction between the vector meson and the quarks inside the baryon, which generates the non-diffractive s- and u- channel resonance contributions. Additional t-channel $\pi^0$ and $\sigma$ exchanges are included for the $\omega$ and $\rho^0$ production respectively to account for the large diffractive behavior in the small $t$ region as suggested by Friman and Soyeur. The numerical results are presented for the $\omega$ and $\rho$ productions in four isospin channels with the same set of parameters, and they are in good agreement with the available data not only in $\omega$ and $\rho^0$ productions but also in the charged $\rho$ productions where the additional t-channel $\sigma$ exchange does not contribute so that it provides an important test to this approach. The investigation is also extended to the $\phi$ photoproduction, and the initial results show that the non-diffractive behavior of the $\phi$ productions in the large $t$ region can be described by the s- and u- channel contributions with significantly smaller coupling constants, which is consistent with the findings in the similar studies in the QHD framework. The numerical investigation has also shown that polarization observables are essential for identifying so-called "missing resonances".Comment: 36 pages, 10 PS figures, extended version of nucl-th/9711061 and nucl-th/9803021, submitted to PR

Electroproduction of kaons from the proton in a Regge-plus-resonance approach

We present a Regge-plus-resonance (RPR) description of the p(e,e'K^+)Y processes (Y=\Lambda,\Sigma^0) in the resonance region. The background contributions to the RPR amplitude are constrained by the high-energy p(\gamma, K^+)Y data. As a result, the number of free model parameters in the resonance region is considerably reduced compared to typical effective-Lagrangian approaches. We compare a selection of RPR model variants, originally constructed to describe $KY$ photoproduction, with the world electroproduction database. The electromagnetic form factors of the intermediate N^*s and $\Delta^*s are computed in the Bonn constituent-quark model. With this input, we find a reasonable description of the p(e,e'K^+)Y data without adding or readjusting any parameters. It is demonstrated that the electroproduction response functions are extremely useful for fine-tuning both the background and resonant contributions to the reaction dynamics.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures; added discussion on double counting in the RPR model; accepted for publication in Phys. Lett.

Light-Front Hadron Dynamics and AdS/CFT Correspondence

A remarkable consequence of the AdS/CFT correspondence is the nonperturbative derivation of dimensional counting rules for hard scattering processes. Using string/gauge duality we derive the QCD power behavior of light-front Fock-state hadronic wavefunctions for hard scattering in the large-$r$ region of the AdS space from the conformal isometries which determine the scaling of string states as we approach the boundary from the interior of AdS space. The nonperturbative scaling results are obtained for spin-zero and spin-\half hadrons and are extended to include the orbital angular momentum dependence of the constituents in the light-front Fock-expansion. The correspondence with string states is considered for hadronic states of arbitrary orbital angular momentum for a given hadron of spin $\leq 2$. We examine the implications of the color configuration of hadronic Fock-states for the QCD structure of scattering amplitudes at large $N_C$. Quark interchange amplitudes emerge as the dominant large $N_C$ scattering mechanisms for conformal QCD.Comment: LaTex, 21 pages. Additional references, corrected color factors, and corrected Dirac conformal dimension

An Unified Approach To Pseudo Scalar Meson Photoproductions Off Nucleons In The Quark Model

An unified approach to the pseudo scalar meson ($\pi, \eta$, and $K$) photoproduction off nucleons are presented. It begins with the low energy QCD Lagrangian, and the resonances in the s- and u- channels are treated in the framework of the quark model The duality hypothesis is imposed to limit the number of the t-channel exchanges. The CGLN amplitudes for each reaction are evaluated, which include both proton and neutron targets. The important role by the S-wave resonances in the second resonance region is discussed, it is particularly important for the $K, \eta$ and $\eta^\prime$ photoproductions.Comment: 31 pages in Latex fil

Heavy Squarks at the LHC

The LHC, with its seven-fold increase in energy over the Tevatron, is capable of probing regions of SUSY parameter space exhibiting qualitatively new collider phenomenology. Here we investigate one such region in which first generation squarks are very heavy compared to the other superpartners. We find that the production of these squarks, which is dominantly associative, only becomes rate-limited at mSquark > 4(5) TeV for L~10(100) fb-1. However, discovery of this scenario is complicated because heavy squarks decay primarily into a jet and boosted gluino, yielding a dijet-like topology with missing energy (MET) pointing along the direction of the second hardest jet. The result is that many signal events are removed by standard jet/MET anti-alignment cuts designed to guard against jet mismeasurement errors. We suggest replacing these anti-alignment cuts with a measurement of jet substructure that can significantly extend the reach of this channel while still removing much of the background. We study a selection of benchmark points in detail, demonstrating that mSquark= 4(5) TeV first generation squarks can be discovered at the LHC with L~10(100)fb-1

Emotions in business-to-business service relationships

Emotion in business-to-business service relationships regarding cargo services is explored. The service relationship is characterised by mutual trust and cooperation. Contact is mainly via telephone or e-mail with some face-to-face interactions and participants providing a complex, multi-skilled seamless service. Experience rather than training plays a vital role with long-term service relationships built up and maintained. Emotional sensitivity is acquired partly by experience and a repeat customer base but mainly through a genuine desire to help and get to know others. In contrast to the view of emotional labour bringing managerial control or adverse affects to service staff, the emotion engendered by this work is authentic expression bringing personal satisfaction