The Connections Between Musculoskeletal Injury and Global Reaction

The peripheral effects of severe musculoskeletal injury are a well-studied phenomenon, but less well studied are the neural deficits. Past research has demonstrated that such severe injuries, specifically torn and reconstructed anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), may increase cognitive burden due to lack of afferent feedback from damaged nerves. This has previously shown to lead to delayed voluntary reactions in the lower extremities, but global neural changes are currently unknown. The goal of the conducted research was to determine whether neuromuscular deficits due to ACL injury and reconstruction in one limb influences motor behavior on a global level. Simple reaction time, choice reaction time, and go-no-go (e.g., response inhibition) tests were performed in the upper limbs using a basic computer with keyboard task. These tests were designed to detect these deficits in individuals with and without ACL injury and reconstruction. Since our preliminary data is not currently powered to detect differences in outcomes (i.e., p-value; 0.05), below we present preliminary data was analyzed using Repeated Measures ANOVAs.Individuals that had a prior ACL injury and reconstruction (n=5) were compared to healthy controls (CON; n=14). Preliminary evidence illustrates that individuals with prior ACL injury and reconstruction had. No differences were observed simple reaction time, choice reaction time, or go-no-go.While additional research is needed to determine potential global impairment created by ACL injury, preliminary results demonstrate there may be no difference in group. Lack of significance leads to the potential that ACL injury is not caused by an inherent delay in global reactions, but ACL injury may induce limb specific delay and thereby increase incidence of re-injury upon return to sport. Yet, further analysis is necessary. Funding: Research was supported by Utah State University Office of Research Undergraduate Research and Creative Opportunity (K. Reel, 2021)

Utilization of Leadership Behaviors in Athletic Training According to Job Title

Context: The frequent practice of leadership within Athletic Training is critical to the profession\u27s growth. While there is some research into the importance of leadership behaviors in Athletic Training (AT), there is little in regards to the practice frequency (utilization) of leadership behaviors. Objective: To examine the frequency of use for leadership behaviors within AT and to make recommendations to AT educational programs. Methods & Procedures: Non-experimental, exploratory and descriptive research design. Intervention: The forty-nine item Leadership Utilization in Athletic Training Scale (LUATS) was developed based on important leadership behaviors described by Kutz (2010). Each behavior was rated on a five-point scale (1=never to 5=always). Participants: Ninety-nine Certified Athletic Trainers (n=63 women; 64%) responded to the survey. A majority of respondents (n=55, 55.6%) reported working in College/University setting. The most frequent job title reported was educators/clinician (n=37; 37%), followed by Head AT (n=33; 33%). Data Analysis: Internal consistency of the LUATS was measured using Chronbach’s alpha and item analysis. Descriptive statistics and central tendency were calculated using Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) 22.0. Statistical significance was determined a priori at p≤0.05. Independent samples t-test and one-way ANOVAs with Sidak post-hoc analysis were used to measure the differences between respondents and groups. Results: Internal consistency of the LUATS was α=.96, item analysis for individual behaviors ranged from .961 to .963. The three most utilized leadership behaviors were credibility (M=4.8±.43), thrives on responsibility (M=4.67±.55), and critical thinking (M=4.59±.61). The three least utilized leadership behaviors were scholarship (M=3.32±1.24), socially responsible (M=3.72±1.02), and risk taker (M=3.84±0.89). Women utilized discipline more than men (M=4.25±.65, M=3.97±.72, p=.05). Courageous leadership (confidence) was utilized more frequently by those with 20 or more years of experience compared to those with 9 or less (F(3,92)=3.421, p=.021). Clinic-based athletic trainers reported uses excellent verbal communication more than college/university-based athletic trainers (F-(3,93)=3.399, p=.037). Educator/clinical AT’s reported using ethical behavior more than head athletic trainers (F(3,94)=3.159, p=.025); and intentional leadership, social responsibility, excellent written skills, scholarship, identification of leaders, risk taking, responsibility for actions, knowledgeable, and nurtures professional relationship more than staff athletic trainers(F(3,94)=2.791 to 4.906, p=.003 to .048); and courageous leadership more than head athletic trainers (F(3,94)=7.332, p=.002) and staff athletic trainers (F(3,94)=7.332, p=.001). Conclusions: Overall, leadership behaviors were reported to be practiced with similar frequency between work settings, years of experience, and sex. The most notable differences were between job title, with Educator/Clinical utilizing leadership behaviors more than Head and staff AT’s. These findings can be used to recommend non-clinical continuing education and professional preparation for specific AT roles and settings. Key Words: Leadership behaviors, certified athletic trainers, clinical practic

A Novel Inpainting Framework for Virtual View Synthesis

Multi-view imaging has stimulated significant research to enhance the user experience of free viewpoint video, allowing interactive navigation between views and the freedom to select a desired view to watch. This usually involves transmitting both textural and depth information captured from different viewpoints to the receiver, to enable the synthesis of an arbitrary view. In rendering these virtual views, perceptual holes can appear due to certain regions, hidden in the original view by a closer object, becoming visible in the virtual view. To provide a high quality experience these holes must be filled in a visually plausible way, in a process known as inpainting. This is challenging because the missing information is generally unknown and the hole-regions can be large. Recently depth-based inpainting techniques have been proposed to address this challenge and while these generally perform better than non-depth assisted methods, they are not very robust and can produce perceptual artefacts. This thesis presents a new inpainting framework that innovatively exploits depth and textural self-similarity characteristics to construct subjectively enhanced virtual viewpoints. The framework makes three significant contributions to the field: i) the exploitation of view information to jointly inpaint textural and depth hole regions; ii) the introduction of the novel concept of self-similarity characterisation which is combined with relevant depth information; and iii) an advanced self-similarity characterising scheme that automatically determines key spatial transform parameters for effective and flexible inpainting. The presented inpainting framework has been critically analysed and shown to provide superior performance both perceptually and numerically compared to existing techniques, especially in terms of lower visual artefacts. It provides a flexible robust framework to develop new inpainting strategies for the next generation of interactive multi-view technologies

Utilization of Leadership Behaviors in Athletic Training According to Job Title

Context: The frequent practice of leadership within Athletic Training is critical to the profession\u27s growth. While there is some research into the importance of leadership behaviors in Athletic Training (AT), there is little in regards to the practice frequency (utilization) of leadership behaviors. Objective: To examine the frequency of use for leadership behaviors within AT and to make recommendations to AT educational programs. Methods & Procedures: Non-experimental, exploratory and descriptive research design. Intervention: The forty-nine item Leadership Utilization in Athletic Training Scale (LUATS) was developed based on important leadership behaviors described by Kutz (2010). Each behavior was rated on a five-point scale (1=never to 5=always). Participants: Ninety-nine Certified Athletic Trainers (n=63 women; 64%) responded to the survey. A majority of respondents (n=55, 55.6%) reported working in College/University setting. The most frequent job title reported was educators/clinician (n=37; 37%), followed by Head AT (n=33; 33%). Data Analysis: Internal consistency of the LUATS was measured using Chronbach’s alpha and item analysis. Descriptive statistics and central tendency were calculated using Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) 22.0. Statistical significance was determined a priori at p≤0.05. Independent samples t-test and one-way ANOVAs with Sidak post-hoc analysis were used to measure the differences between respondents and groups. Results: Internal consistency of the LUATS was α=.96, item analysis for individual behaviors ranged from .961 to .963. The three most utilized leadership behaviors were credibility (M=4.8±.43), thrives on responsibility (M=4.67±.55), and critical thinking (M=4.59±.61). The three least utilized leadership behaviors were scholarship (M=3.32±1.24), socially responsible (M=3.72±1.02), and risk taker (M=3.84±0.89). Women utilized discipline more than men (M=4.25±.65, M=3.97±.72, p=.05). Courageous leadership (confidence) was utilized more frequently by those with 20 or more years of experience compared to those with 9 or less (F(3,92)=3.421, p=.021). Clinic-based athletic trainers reported uses excellent verbal communication more than college/university-based athletic trainers (F-(3,93)=3.399, p=.037). Educator/clinical AT’s reported using ethical behavior more than head athletic trainers (F(3,94)=3.159, p=.025); and intentional leadership, social responsibility, excellent written skills, scholarship, identification of leaders, risk taking, responsibility for actions, knowledgeable, and nurtures professional relationship more than staff athletic trainers(F(3,94)=2.791 to 4.906, p=.003 to .048); and courageous leadership more than head athletic trainers (F(3,94)=7.332, p=.002) and staff athletic trainers (F(3,94)=7.332, p=.001). Conclusions: Overall, leadership behaviors were reported to be practiced with similar frequency between work settings, years of experience, and sex. The most notable differences were between job title, with Educator/Clinical utilizing leadership behaviors more than Head and staff AT’s. These findings can be used to recommend non-clinical continuing education and professional preparation for specific AT roles and settings. Key Words: Leadership behaviors, certified athletic trainers, clinical practic

Qigang Chen’s Synthesis of Multicultural Compositional Features in Er Huang

The purpose of this thesis is to identify prominent multicultural features of Qigang Chen\u27s piano concerto, Er Huang. It looks at theoretical aspects borrowed from Chinese practice as well as the practices of Chen\u27s mentor Olivier Messiaen. This thesis then shows how Chen synthesizes those traditions. Chinese concepts discussed are banqiang, gong shift, bian sheng (changed notes) and the specific luogu dianzi (percussion topoi from beijing opera) ji-ji-feng. Messiaenic concepts discussed are motivic recycling and transformation, added values, irregular augmentation and diminution, modalism and rhythmic contrast

The Mesoamerica Center turns a 17th century building in Guatemala into a UT gem

The University of Texas writes about Planet Texas 2050 and the UT director of The Mesoamerica Center's idea for a teaching center in an article published in Oct. 23, 2019.Office of the VP for Researc

A New Mutual Information based Similarity Measure for Medical Image Registration

Medical image registration (IR) is the systematic process of aligning spate images, often involving different modalities with common reference framework, so complementary information can be combined and compared. This paper presents a new similarity measure which uses Expectation Maximization for Principal Component Analysis allied with mutual information (EMPCA-MI) for medical IR. The new measure has been analysed on multimodal, three band magnetic resonance images (MRI) T1, T2 and PD weighted, in the presence of both intensity non-uniformities (INU) and noise. Both quantitative and qualitative experimental results clearly demonstrate both improved robustness and lower computational complexity of the new EMPCA-MI paradigm compared with existing MI-based similarity measures, for various MRI test datasets

Weight pressure in sport-females (WPS-F) scoring information

ManuscriptPurpose: To assess sport-specific weight pressures for female athletes participating in a variety of sports Refer to the following article for more information regarding the development of the WPS-F: Reel, J.J., SooHoo, S., Petrie, T.A., Greenleaf, C., Carter, J.E. (June 2010). Slimming down for sport: Development of weight pressures in sport measure for female athletes. Journal of Clinical Sport Psychology

Approximating The Spectral Width Of Irradiance Fluctuations With Quasi-frequency

Under weak turbulence theory, we will use the random thin phase screen model and the Kolmogorov power-law spectrum to derive approximate models for the scintillation index, covariance function of irradiance fluctuations, and temporal spectrum of irradiance fluctuations for collimated beams. In addition, we will provide an expression for the quasi-frequency of a collimated beam and investigate the relationship between the quasi-frequency and the maximum width of the normalized temporal spectrum of irradiance for a collimated beam