Physiological and Biomechanical Responses of Highly Trained Distance Runners to Lower-Body Positive Pressure Treadmill Running

Background: As a way to train at faster running speeds, add training volume, prevent injury, or rehabilitate after an injury, lower-body positive pressure treadmills (LBPPT) have become increasingly commonplace among athletes. However, there are conflicting evidence and a paucity of data describing the physiological and biomechanical responses to LBPPT running in highly trained or elite caliber runners at the running speeds they habitually train at, which are considerably faster than those of recreational runners. Furthermore, data is lacking regarding female runners’ responses to LBPPT running. Therefore, this study was designed to evaluate the physiological and biomechanical responses to LBPPT running in highly trained male and female distance runners. Methods: Fifteen highly trained distance runners (seven male; eight female) completed a single running test composed of 4 × 9-min interval series at fixed percentages of body weight ranging from 0 to 30% body weight support (BWS) in 10% increments on LBPPT. The first interval was always conducted at 0% BWS; thereafter, intervals at 10, 20, and 30% BWS were conducted in random order. Each interval consisted of three stages of 3 min each, at velocities of 14.5, 16.1, and 17.7 km·h−1 for men and 12.9, 14.5, and 16.1 km·h−1 for women. Expired gases, ventilation, breathing frequency, heart rate (HR), rating of perceived exertion (RPE), and stride characteristics were measured during each running speed and BWS. Results: Male and female runners had similar physiological and biomechanical responses to running on LBPPT. Increasing BWS increased stride length (p \u3c 0.02) and flight duration (p \u3c 0.01) and decreased stride rate (p \u3c 0.01) and contact time (p \u3c 0.01) in small-large magnitudes. There was a large attenuation of oxygen consumption (VO2) relative to BWS (p \u3c 0.001), while there were trivial-moderate reductions in respiratory exchange ratio, minute ventilation, and respiratory frequency (p \u3e 0.05), and small-large effects on HR and RPE (p \u3c 0.01). There were trivial-small differences in VE, respiratory frequency, HR, and RPE for a given VO2 across various BWS (p \u3e 0.05). Conclusions: The results indicate the male and female distance runners have similar physiological and biomechanical responses to LBPPT running. Overall, the biomechanical changes during LBPPT running all contributed to less metabolic cost and corresponding physiological changes. Keywords: AlterG, Lower-body positive pressure, Body weight support, Anti-gravity, Running, Stride characteristics, Physiological characteristics, Metabolic demand, Oxygen demand, Oxygen cos

Effects of two neuromuscular training programs on running biomechanics with load carriage: a study protocol for a randomised controlled trial

Background In recent years, athletes have ventured into ultra-endurance and adventure racing events, which tests their ability to race, navigate, and survive. These events often require race participants to carry some form of load, to bear equipment for navigation and survival purposes. Previous studies have reported specific alterations in biomechanics when running with load which potentially influence running performance and injury risk. We hypothesize that a biomechanically informed neuromuscular training program would optimize running mechanics during load carriage to a greater extent than a generic strength training program. Methods This will be a two group, parallel randomized controlled trial design, with single assessor blinding. Thirty healthy runners will be recruited to participate in a six weeks neuromuscular training program. Participants will be randomized into either a generic training group, or a biomechanically informed training group. Primary outcomes include self-determined running velocity with a 20 % body weight load, jump power, hopping leg stiffness, knee extensor and triceps-surae strength. Secondary outcomes include running kinetics and kinematics. Assessments will occur at baseline and post-training. Discussion To our knowledge, no training programs are available that specifically targets a runner’s ability to carry load while running. This will provide sport scientists and coaches with a foundation to base their exercise prescription on

GNSS ambiguity resolution with controllable failure rate for long baseline network RTK

Many large-scale GNSS CORS networks have been deployed around the world to support various commercial and scientific applications. To make use of these networks for real-time kinematic positioning services, one of the major challenges is the ambiguity resolution (AR) over long inter-station baselines in the presence of considerable atmosphere biases. Usually, the widelane ambiguities are fixed first, followed by the procedure of determination of the narrowlane ambiguity integers based on the ionosphere-free model in which the widelane integers are introduced as known quantities. This paper seeks to improve the AR performance over long baseline through efficient procedures for improved float solutions and ambiguity fixing. The contribution is threefold: (1) instead of using the ionosphere-free measurements, the absolute and/or relative ionospheric constraints are introduced in the ionosphere-constrained model to enhance the model strength, thus resulting in the better float solutions; (2) the realistic widelane ambiguity precision is estimated by capturing the multipath effects due to the observation complexity, leading to improvement of reliability of widelane AR; (3) for the narrowlane AR, the partial AR for a subset of ambiguities selected according to the successively increased elevation is applied. For fixing the scalar ambiguity, an error probability controllable rounding method is proposed. The established ionosphere-constrained model can be efficiently solved based on the sequential Kalman filter. It can be either reduced to some special models simply by adjusting the variances of ionospheric constraints, or extended with more parameters and constraints. The presented methodology is tested over seven baselines of around 100 km from USA CORS network. The results show that the new widelane AR scheme can obtain the 99.4 % successful fixing rate with 0.6 % failure rate; while the new rounding method of narrowlane AR can obtain the fix rate of 89 % with failure rate of 0.8 %. In summary, the AR reliability can be efficiently improved with rigorous controllable probability of incorrectly fixed ambiguities

Development of a set of process and structure indicators for palliative care: the Europall project

Contains fulltext : 110866.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: By measuring the quality of the organisation of palliative care with process and structure quality indicators (QIs), patients, caregivers and policy makers are able to monitor to what extent recommendations are met, like those of the council of the WHO on palliative care and guidelines. This will support the implementation of public programmes, and will enable comparisons between organisations or countries. METHODS: As no European set of indicators for the organisation of palliative care existed, such a set of QIs was developed. An update of a previous systematic review was made and extended with more databases and grey literature.In two project meetings with practitioners and experts in palliative care the development process of a QI set was finalised and the QIs were categorized in a framework, covering the recommendations of the Council of Europe. RESULTS: The searches resulted in 151 structure and process indicators, which were discussed in steering group meetings. Of those QIs, 110 were eligible for the final framework. CONCLUSIONS: We developed the first set of QIs for the organisation of palliative care. This article is the first step in a multi step project to identify, validate and pilot QIs