Observação, Análise e Interpretação do Jogo de Futebol, na equipa Sub-15 do Leixões Sport Club

A Observação, Análise e Interpretação no Futebol tem evoluído exponencialmente nos últimos anos. Hoje em dia, é imprescindível a presença de um departamento desta área em qualquer clube de Futebol, uma vez que a competição é cada vez debatida e equilibrada. Neste seguimento, existe uma maior necessidade de inserção equipas técnicas multidisciplinares que incluam um observador, com o objetivo de melhorar o rendimento da equipa, e que esta seja bem sucedida. As equipas técnicas pretendem conhecer e controlar o máximo de fatores, sejam estes da própria equipa ou da equipa adversária. A Observação, Análise e Interpretação pode ser uma mais-valia para a concretização desse objetivo. Este relatório surge no âmbito do estágio realizado no Leixões Sport Club na época desportiva 2016/2017 e está dividido em quatro partes fundamentais: 1) o enquadramento da prática profissional, onde se foca o macro contexto e o contexto legal institucional; 2) a realização da prática profissional onde se expõem as tarefas operacionais e complementares realizadas ao longo do estágio; um breve estudo acerca da importância da Observação, Análise e Interpretação na preparação de uma equipa de elite; 3) o desenvolvimento da prática, conclusões que se basearam na experiência diária do estágio e da revisão da literatura, e 4) e finalmente as perspetivas futuras.De modo resumido pode concluir-se que a Observação, Análise e Interpretação do comportamento é uma tarefa decisiva na preparação do treino para o jogo de Futebol, mesmo em escalões de juniores; que a mesma é utilizada por treinadores de diferentes níveis competitivos e a distribuição das informações acerca das equipas adversárias influencia o rendimento das equipas.Observation, Analysis and Interpretation in Football has evolved exponentially in recent years. Nowadays, it is essential to have a department of this area in any Football Club, since the competition is increasingly debated and balanced. In this follow-up, there is a greater need for insertion of multidisciplinary technical teams that include an observer, in order to improve the performance of the team, and that this be successful. The technical teams want to know and control the maximum of factors, be they of the own team or the opposing team. Observation, Analysis and Interpretation can be an asset to achieving this goal. This report is part of the training session held at Leixões Sport Club in the 2016/2017 sports season and is divided into four fundamental parts: 1) the framework of professional practice, which focuses on the macro context and institutional legal context; 2) the performance of the professional practice where the operational and complementary tasks performed during the internship are exposed; a brief study about the importance of Observation, Analysis and Interpretation in the preparation of an elite team; 3) the development of practice, conclusions that were based on the daily experience of the stage and literature review, and 4) and finally the future perspectives. In summary, it can be concluded that the Observation, Analysis and Interpretation of the behavior is a decisive task in the preparation of the training for the game of Football, even in junior levels; that it is used by coaches of different competitive levels and the distribution of information about the opposing teams influences the performance of the teams

A novel methodology to restrict the range of motion of human articulations

The human movement has long been a subject of extensive investigation by many authors, involving a vast interest in both clinical and sports applications. The use of biomechanical models of the human body can greatly contribute to the advancement of the body of knowledge in this scientific field as they provide rigorous information on several key biomechanical parameters. Thus, the modeling of human articulations must realistically reproduce their behavior and, therefore, to consider a restricted range of motion (RoM). The RoM is influenced by the bony structures adjacent to the articulations and by the physiological characteristics of the connective tissues, such as muscles and ligaments, surrounding them. This parameter varies amongst subjects and according to the type and anatomical location of each articulation. However, in the multibody systems methodology, the violation of the RoM for a particular joint can be clearly noted if geometrically ideal joints are used. This occurs since no additional constraints are introduced in the joint’s formulation to prevent it from acquiring unfeasible positions. To provide a solution for this problem, in this work, a novel methodology to restrict the RoM of human articulations is proposed within the framework of multibody systems methodologies. Joint resistance moments are applied to simulate the passive resistant behavior of the connective tissues existing around human articulations and to prevent physiologically unfeasible positions of the contiguous bony structures. A three-dimensional biomechanical model of the human lower leg and foot is used as a demonstrative example of application of the proposed methodology, focusing on the ankle articular complex. The results compare the dynamic behavior of the model with and without the application of the joint resistance moments and lead to the conclusion that the proposed methodology allows the correct restriction of the joints’ RoM, while preserving the mechanical energy of the system

Current evidence on biomechanical modeling for the analysis of crutch-assisted gait

Crutches are utilized as a mean of locomotion by patients with a variety of long-term disabilities, such as cerebral palsy or spinal cord injury. These assistive devices help reducing the load imposed on the injured lower extremities, while allowing an upright posture. However, crutch-assisted gait places a considerable repetitive effort on the upper extremities (UE), which are not adapted to weight-bearing tasks, thus contributing to the onset of secondary health conditions. Due to the raising significance of this problem, the research on biomechanical modeling strategies for the analysis of the loads imposed on the UE during crutch-assisted gait has been growing. The resulting scientific knowledge may provide promising options for the improvement of crutch design based on patients’ biomechanical outcomes and, thus, a detailed evaluation of this topic is strongly warranted. This has been the main motivation for preparing this review, which provides a comprehensive discussion and summary of the biomechanical modeling strategies currently available in the literature used to study crutch-assisted gait. PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science electronic databases were searched on July 2021, and 18 studies, dated from 1985 to 2021, were included. Six studies used commercial software (OpenSim or Anybody), while the remaining developed in-house codes. Fifteen studies considered three-dimensional biomechanical models, among which six focused on the UE, eight modeled the entire human body and one did not provide this information. Musculoskeletal models were considered only in 17% of all studies. Three strategies were used to incorporate crutches on the biomechanical models, namely defining this assistive devices as a rigid body independent of the forearm/hand, imposing a position constraint on the glenohumeral joint, and using an arm/crutch or forearm/crutch system as a single rigid body. Forces exerted on the glenohumeral, elbow and wrist articulations during swing-through crutch gait were double the ones during reciprocal gait

A foot-ground contact model for human motion analysis

Over the last decades, there has been a growing interest in the area of contact-impact modeling and analysis in the context of multibody system dynamics. However, it remains a difficult task to accurately model the contact mechanics when the geometric and material properties are of complex natures, such as in the case of the human foot-ground interaction. Bearing that in mind, the foot is the main source of interaction with the surrounding environment for most people, since it is the only part of the human body that is in contact with the ground and, therefore, contact models that describe the human foot-ground interaction are of extreme importance for biomechanical analysis. Thus, to accurately replicate the human motion during the analysis of biomechanical multibody systems, the computational models must consider realistic representations of the foot and appropriate numerical descriptions of its interaction with the ground surface. In this sense, the main purpose of this work is to present a two-dimensional biomechanical multibody model to describe the foot-ground contact. The interaction between the foot and the ground is geometrically defined by circles positioned at specific locations on the foot plantar surface, and a plane, describing the ground. The contact is detected based on the relative interpenetration of the surfaces, and appropriate constitutive laws associated with the normal and tangential forces developed during the contact are applied. With the purpose of correctly determining the contact forces, an optimization process is implemented to obtain the most suitable values for the geometric and contact parameters of the proposed model. Finally, the results obtained from computational and experimental analysis are compared using a multibody model of the right side of human body, with the aim of validating the proposed approach.This work has been supported by Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, under the national support to R&D units grant, with the reference project UIDB/04436/2020 and UIDP/04436/2020, as well as through IDMEC, under LAETA, project UIDB/50022/2020. The second author expresses her gratitude to the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology through the PhD grant (2021.04840.BD)

Current perspectives on the modeling of the foot-ground interaction for human motion analysis

Contact-impact events are multifaceted phenomena because their modeling process strongly depends on multiple factors, such as the geometry of the contacting surfaces, the local physical properties of the materials, and the numerical representation of the interaction between the contacting bodies. In particular, when the geometric and material properties are of complex nature, it is still a quite challenging problem to accurately represent the contact mechanics. This is the case of the human foot-ground interface. The dynamic simulation of the human motion is conditioned by the foot-ground contact forces since the response of muscles, ligaments and articular reaction forces and moments is highly affected by them. Therefore, the accuracy of contact models that describe the human foot-ground interaction play a key role in biomechanical dynamic simulations. Several formulations to mimic the human foot-ground interaction have been proposed in the literature, which provide numerical approaches to calculate the ground reaction forces without the need of any experimental measurement. This work reviews and discusses the methodologies utilized to study the foot-ground interaction in human locomotion available in the literature. For this purpose, PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus electronic databases were searched on September 2021 to identify publications focusing on foot-ground contact modeling strategies. A total of 30 papers, dated from 1995 to 2020, were selected and thoroughly analyzed. Different contact geometries were established with the goal of defining the foot and ground surfaces, in which the most common were based on points, circles, ellipses, spheres, ellipsoids and surfaces obtained from 3D scanning procedures. Regarding the contact resolution, the formulations based on contact force approaches were preferred to the methods based on geometrical constraints. Several studies considered both computational and experimental approaches. One of the main limitations reported in the analyzed papers dealt with the restriction of the motion to the sagittal plane

Epidemiology of Superficial Fungal Infections in Portugal: 3-year review (2014-2016)

Introdução: As infeções fúngicas superficiais são as dermatoses infeciosas mais frequentes e a sua incidência continua a aumentar. Os dermatófitos são os principais agentes causais apresentando, contudo, uma distribuição geográfica variável. Material e Métodos: O presente estudo teve como objetivo a caracterização epidemiológica das infeções fúngicas superficiais diagnosticadas nos Serviços/Unidades de Dermatologia pertencentes ao Serviço Nacional de Saúde Português entre janeiro de 2014 e dezembro 2016 através da análise retrospetiva dos resultados das culturas realizadas durante esse período. Resultados: Foram estudados 2375 isolamentos, pertencentes a 2319 doentes. O dermatófito mais frequentemente isolado foi o Trichophyton rubrum (53,6%), tendo sido o principal agente causal da tinha da pele glabra (52,4%) e das onicomicoses (51,1%). Relativamente às tinhas do couro cabeludo, globalmente o Microsporum audouinii foi o agente mais prevalente (42,6%), seguido do Trichophyton soudanense (22,1%). Enquanto na área metropolitana de Lisboa estes dermatófitos foram os principais agentes de tinha do couro cabeludo, nas regiões Norte e Centro o agente mais frequente foi o Microsporum canis (58,5%). Os fungos leveduriformes foram os principais responsáveis pelas onicomicoses das mãos (76,7%). Conclusão: Os resultados deste estudo estão globalmente concordantes com a literatura científica. O Trichophyton rubrum apresenta-se como o dermatófito mais frequentemente isolado em cultura. Na tinha do couro cabeludo, na área metropolitana de Lisboa, as espécies antropofílicas de importação assumem particular destaque.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A comparative study of the viscoelastic constitutive models for frictionless contact interfaces in solids

The nature of the constitutive contact force law utilized to describe contact-impact events in solid contact interfaces plays a key role in predicting the response of multibody mechanical systems and in the simulation of engineering applications. The goal of this work is to present a comparative study on the most relevant existing viscoelastic contact force models. In the sequel of this process, their fundamental characteristics are examined and their performances evaluated. Models developed based on the Hertz contact theory and augmented with a damping term to accommodate the dissipation of energy during the impact process, which typically is a function of the coefficient of restitution between the contacting solids, are considered in this study. In particular, the identified contact force models are compared in the present study for simple solid impact problems with the sole purpose of comparing the performance of the various models and examining the corresponding system behavior. The outcomes indicate that the prediction of the dynamic behavior of contacting solids strongly depends on the selection of the contact force model.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT