Tradeoff between Stability and Maneuverability during Whole-Body Movements

Understanding how stability and/or maneuverability affects motor control strategies can provide insight on moving about safely in an unpredictable world. Stability in human movement has been well-studied while maneuverability has not. Further, a tradeoff between stability and maneuverability during movement seems apparent, yet has not been quantified. We proposed that greater maneuverability, the ability to rapidly and purposefully change movement direction and speed, is beneficial in uncertain environments. We also hypothesized that gaining maneuverability comes at the expense of stability and perhaps also corresponds with decreased muscle coactivation.We used a goal-directed forward lean movement task that integrated both stability and maneuverability. Subjects (n = 11) used their center of pressure to control a cursor on a computer monitor to reach a target. We added task uncertainty by shifting the target anterior-posterior position mid-movement. We used a balance board with a narrow beam that reduced the base of support in the medio-lateral direction and defined stability as the probability that subjects could keep the balance board level during the task.During the uncertainty condition, subjects were able to change direction of their anterior-posterior center of pressure more rapidly, indicating that subjects were more maneuverable. Furthermore, medio-lateral center of pressure excursions also approached the edges of the beam and reduced stability margins, implying that subjects were less stable (i.e. less able to keep the board level). On the narrow beam board, subjects increased muscle coactivation of lateral muscle pairs and had greater muscle activity in the left leg. However, there were no statistically significant differences in muscle activity amplitudes or coactivation with uncertainty.These results demonstrate that there is a tradeoff between stability and maneuverability during a goal-directed whole-body movement. Tasks with added uncertainty could help individuals learn to be more maneuverable yet sufficiently stable

Living in a LOFT

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Investigating the Mechanism of Post-Treatment on PEDOT:PSS via Single-Particle Absorption Spectroscopy

The conductive polymer PEDOT:PSS, widely used in optoelectronic devices, exhibits improved conductivity upon post-treatment, but the mechanism of this improvement is difficult to fully ascertain. The effects of thermal annealing and DMSO post-treatment on PEDOT:PSS, from the nano- to mesoscale, are studied using single-particle absorption spectroscopy. An average decrease in size and apparent increase in rotational order of individual particles are observed with both treatments, including unexpected correlations between change in rotational order and initial properties. Simulation of these transformations and correlations occurring during the annealing process reveal that the effects of DMSO-post treatment can be explained by oligomer depletion and do not explicitly require conformational changes including oligomer rotation

Chemical evidence for the origin of the cold water belt along the northeastern coast of Hokkaido

In the southwestern Okhotsk Sea, the cold water belt (CWB) is frequently observed on satellite images offshore of the Soya Warm Current flowing along the northeastern coast of Hokkaido, Japan, during summertime. It has been speculated that the CWB is upwelling cold water that originates from either subsurface water of the Japan Sea off Sakhalin or bottom water of the Okhotsk Sea. Hydrographic and chemical observations (nutrients, humic-type fluorescence intensity, and iron) were conducted in the northern Japan Sea and southwestern Okhotsk Sea in early summer 2011 to clarify the origin of the CWB. Temperature-salinity relationships, vertical distributions of chemical components, profiles of chemical components against density, and the (NO3 + NO2)/PO4 relationship confirm that water in the CWB predominantly originates from Japan Sea subsurface water

Regeneration dynamics of iron and nutrients from bay sediment into bottom water of Funka Bay, Japan

We studied iron remobilization and nutrient regeneration in bottom water of Funka Bay, Japan, bimonthly from August 2010 to December 2011. The bay basin (bottom depth, 92-96 m) is separated from the northwest Pacific Ocean at its mouth by a sill with a depth of 60 m. After a spring phytoplankton bloom during early March-early April, nutrients in bay bottom water tended to accumulate with time until August-September, and to increase gradually with depth during April-October, by the oxidative decomposition of settling particulate organic matter on the bay bottom. In contrast, the process of iron remobilization into bottom water of the bay is remarkably different from nutrient regeneration. The much higher concentrations of dissolved and total dissolvable iron near the bottom and the seasonally variable relationship between dissolved iron concentration and apparent oxygen utilization in bay bottom water likely reflect a balance between dissolved iron input and removal processes within the bay bottom water. The release of soluble Fe(II) from reducing bay sediments might induce the high concentrations of dissolved and total dissolvable iron in deep-bottom waters of Funka Bay and might be one of the most important sources of iron in Funka Bay. The upward transport of iron from the bay bottom to the surface water during the winter vertical mixing may play an important role in the supply of bioavailable iron for phytoplankton growth in the coastal waters