TRIAL STABILISATION OF RUNNING BIOMECHANICS WITH SHOE FAMILIARISATION IN TRAINED DISTANCE RUNNERS

Appropriate trial sizes for biomechanical studies examining running shoe functionality are important to ensure valid insights into injury prevention strategies. The study aimed to examine the influence of shoe familiarisation on trial stabilisation in trained distance runners. A sequential averaging analysis was used to define trial stabilisation of biomechanical measures obtained from two testing conditions (new shoe and familiarised shoe). Between condition group analyses suggested similar trial stabilisation irrespective of shoe familiarisation (group mean ±SD: new: 7.5 ±2.0 trials; familiarised: 7.0 ±2.0 trials). Within group analyses identified variations in trial stabilisation according to the participant, condition and measure. An eight trial protocol was advocated for participantcondition analyses in longitudinal studies examining shoe functionality

Surviving the big chill: overwintering strategies of aquatic and terrestrial insects.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the cold-hardiness of aquatic insects and to use the literature to compare physiological and behavioral strategies that aquatic and terrestrial insects use to cope with minimum winter temperatures. In sharp contrast to terrestrial insects, aquatic insects from seven different orders had limited ability to supercool and did so to temperatures of only −3 to −7°C. Inability to supercool may be due to inoculative freezing—the penetration of external ice crystals through pores or orifices of the insect's cuticle. Furthermore, our results suggest that terrestrial adult stages of aquatic insects may have greater capacity to supercool than aquatic stages of the same taxon. Our results and others' suggested that few aquatic species are freeze tolerant, and those that are appear to be restricted to the order Diptera. Consequently, behavioral avoidance of ice or the capacity to remain unfrozen while encased in ice may be particularly important for overwintering aquatic insects. Ecological implications of insect coldhardiness at the individual, population, and community level are discussed for both terrestrial and aquatic insects

End-to-end Learning for Automomous Crop Row-following

For robotic technology to be adopted within the agricultural domain, there is a need for low-cost systems that can be flexibly deployed across a wide variety of crop types, environmental conditions, and planting methods, without extensive re-engineering. Here we present an approach for predicting steering angles for an autonomous, crop row-following, agri-robot using only RGB image input. Our approach employs a deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) and an end-to-end learning strategy. We pre-train our network using existing open datasets containing natural features and show that this approach can help to preserve performance across diverse agricultural settings. We also present preliminary results from open-loop field tests that demonstrate the feasibility and some of the limitations of this approach for agri-robot guidance

Effects of an Ammonia-Rich Municipal Sewage Effluent on Iowa River Fauna Near Marshalltown, Iowa

The effect of the Marshalltown municipal sewage effluent on Iowa River water quality and fauna was evaluated from July 1976 through August 1977. The effluent contains high total ammonia and un-ionized ammonia concentrations due to ammonia-rich discharges from meat packinghouses. Dissolved oxygen, pH, temperature, total ammonia nitrogen, and un-ionized ammonia data were collected at.12 sampling stations extending 18 km downstream from the sewage effluent discharge. Wild fish collections were made by using electrofishing, seines, and hoopnets. Thirty-eight fish species were collected during the study. Channel catfish. (Ictalurus punctatus) and smallmouth bass (Micropterus dolomieus) were the most common gamefish. No consistent depression in wild fish diversity was seen below the sewage discharge point. Eight hundred thirty caged channel catfish were used in conducting 13 4-day field toxicityty tests at 5 different river stations. Only 2% mortality was observed. Macroinvertebrate diversity and density were determined by using artificial substrate samplers placed at 5 river stations during 2 3-week exposure periods in the summer of 1976. Macroinvertebrate diversity recovered 770-1550 m downstream from the sewage discharge point. The applicability of the EPA un-ionized ammonia criterion and the Iowa total ammonia nitrogen standard is evaluated in light of the findings from this study

Shear viscosity as a probe of nodal topology

Electronic materials can sustain a variety of unusual, but symmetry protected touchings of valence and conduction bands, each of which is identified by a distinct topological invariant. Well-known examples include linearly dispersing pseudo-relativistic fermions in monolayer graphene, Weyl and nodal-loop semimetals, biquadratic (bicubic) band touching in bilayer (trilayer) graphene, as well as mixed dispersions in multi-Weyl systems. Here we show that depending on the underlying band curvature, the shear viscosity in the collisionless regime displays a unique power-law scaling with frequency at low temperatures, bearing the signatures of the band topology, which are distinct from the ones when the system resides at the brink of a topological phase transition into a band insulator. Therefore, besides the density of states (governing specific heat, compressibility) and dynamic conductivity, shear viscosity can be instrumental to pin nodal topology in electronic materials.Comment: Published Version: 6 Pages, 2 Figures (Supplementary as Ancillary file

Surviving the Big Chill: Overwintering Strategies of Aquatic and Terrestrial Insects

The purpose of this paper is to describe the cold-hardiness of aquatic insects and to use the literature to compare physiological and behavioral strategies that aquatic and terrestrial insects use to cope with minimum winter temperatures. In sharp contrast to terrestrial insects, aquatic insects from seven different orders had limited ability to supercool and did so to temperatures of only −3 to −7°C. Inability to supercool may be due to inoculative freezing—the penetration of external ice crystals through pores or orifices of the insect\u27s cuticle. Furthermore, our results suggest that terrestrial adult stages of aquatic insects may have greater capacity to supercool than aquatic stages of the same taxon. Our results and others\u27 suggested that few aquatic species are freeze tolerant, and those that are appear to be restricted to the order Diptera. Consequently, behavioral avoidance of ice or the capacity to remain unfrozen while encased in ice may be particularly important for overwintering aquatic insects. Ecological implications of insect coldhardiness at the individual, population, and community level are discussed for both terrestrial and aquatic insects

HOW DO BLACK NULLIPAROUS WOMEN COGNITIVELY CONSTRUCT BIRTH?

A focused ethnography was conducted to determine the cognitive constructions about birth described by nulliparous Black women in an urban area of the Southwestern US; also, during postpartum, how do these women reconcile expectations with the actual birth? Semi-structured interviews were conducted before birth and after birth. Women, 16 or older, 17 - 33 weeks carrying a singleton fetus and without anomalies or problems like pre-gestational diabetes, NYHA Cardiac Class III/IV, cancer, renal failure, or sickle cell anemia that eliminated vaginal birth were sequentially recruited and sampled in an affiliated ultrasound clinic. Women scheduled for an anatomy scan were approached. Eleven women enrolled. Participants were 17 to 30 years old, with 11 to 22 years of schooling. Gestational age at enrollment was 17+5 to 31+5 weeks. Two women were college graduates. Four women were employed, and all used Medicaid to pay for care. Seven women received SNAP and/or WIC benefits. Three of the 4 employed women received this assistance. Three women did not have their mother in their lives. The sample was purposefully analyzed for age, education and maternal presence, and a natural spread of ages and situations was found, making purposeful sampling unnecessary. Initial interviews lasted 12.5 to 41 minutes. Post-delivery interviews lasted 24 to 54 minutes, and occurred 13 to 25 days postpartum. The researcher transcribed all interviews, and used Atlas.ti to assist in analysis and organization. Women described views of birth that grew from ideas shared with them by their own mothers. Themes included “birth is painful” which was the predominant view, followed by “birth damages you and/or the baby” Two women identified, “birth changes you.” Ideas obtained from friends, other family members, the media and the popular culture, as well as their care providers were evaluated in light of these maternal ideas. Women also evaluated their own births using these maternal ideas. Beyond describing birth as their mothers did, women concluded that birth was essentially unknown to them, and they had limited expectations about what would happen during the birth