1,126 research outputs found
The Effects of a Rugby Season on Neck Strength in Professional Men’s Rugby Union
Rugby union is a physically demanding sport that places tremendous strain on players' bodies.While physical and mental well-being receive close attention, the importance of neck strength often goes unnoticed. Contact events such as tackles and scrums exert significant pressure on the neck region, potentially compromising strength and function. This may increase brain and cervical injury risk, as players may struggle to mitigate forceful impacts. Front five players may be particularly susceptible, but limited data exists on how rugby activities affect neck strength throughout the season.In this longitudinal study, the maximal isometric neck strength of 33 professional male rugby union players was measured over the 2021-2022 professional rugby season, using a custom-designed apparatus. Testing comprised two components: (i) pre-, mid-, and post-season testing of the entire squad to explore positional differences and seasonal patterns, and (ii) a front-five case study involving weekly neck strength testing to monitor changes and their associations with-game events.The findings revealed a significant decrease in neck strength among the forwards in all directions from pre- to post-season, while no significant changes were observed among the backs. At the season’s outset, the forwards exhibited significantly greater neck strength compared to the backs, with only neck extension remaining significantly stronger by the end.he front-five case study identified associations between decreased neck strength and in-game events in some players.This study provides valuable insights regarding observed decrements in neck strength among professional male rugby players, despite limited statistical power. Further research is needed to enhance the generalisability of these findings. Moreover, the study demonstrates the feasibility and reliability of a weekly neck strength monitoring protocol, which can help identify weaknesses and imbalances to prevent neck and head injuries. These findings highlight the potential for establishing a standardised methodology for monitoring neck strength within the rugby community
Post-coloniality and the movements and readings of scientific and legal practices: The history of HIV/AIDS in Africa, patents, and the multilateral governance of generic drugs
This thesis examines the history, political economy, and global response to HIV/AIDS in Africa. It is particularly interested in how Africa’s colonial past and postcolonial struggles with European science and law influenced these issues. It therefore explores the many ways that the colonial encounter coloured how scientific knowledge about HIV/AIDS travelled to and was read and contested in Africa. In addition, it sets out how this encounter informed the political economy of debates about access to and the global governance of generic HIV/AIDS drugs in the continent.
It draws on an interdisciplinary and theoretically-informed scholarship to unpack these issues. However, it aims not to produce new theoretical insights or make original theoretical contributions to this scholarship. Rather, it seeks to contribute to and fill-in gaps in the historiography of HIV/AIDS in Africa and scholarship on the global governance of generic HIV/AIDS drugs. Accordingly, it examines two areas that have not received adequate, academic attention in these areas. Firstly, Project SIDA—the first major research project on HIV/AIDS in Africa; and, secondly, the World Health Organization Prequalification Programme for Generic HIV/AIDS drugs—the primary, regulatory regime that governs the production, certification, and importation of generic HIV/AIDS drugs in the continent. It situates these subjects within a wider discussion about the colonial encounter and postcolonial struggles in Africa around European science and law. It argues that the encounter influenced how Project SIDA, and the scientific knowledge that it produced, was read and contested in Africa. It also contends that postcolonial struggles, especially around the global patent regime, informed the political economy within which the Prequalification Programme emerged and, importantly, the technical capacity of African generic manufactured to certify their generic drugs for HIV/AID treatment programmes in the continent
Spectral effects of a calcium amendment on red spruce foliage at laboratory and stand scale
Three sets of measurements were made to determine the effects of an October 1999 whole-watershed Ca-application on the chemical and spectral properties of red spruce (Picea rubens Sarg.) foliage at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest. Results of our measurements showed significant differences between the Ca-treated watershed (WS1) and a nearby reference watershed (WS6). Foliar chemistry data collected in 2007 showed that concentrations of Ca, Sr, and oxalate remain higher in WS1, and the increase in oxalate is strongly linked to the level of total Ca, possibly by a Ca-oxalate crystal precipitation response. High-resolution laboratory spectral data measured from 400-2500 nm show a pan-spectral increase in reflectance in WS1 spruce. Satellite data from the Landsat TM and ETM+ instruments did not parallel laboratory spectral results, but showed a distinct increase in near-infrared reflectance between 1999-2007. See individual chapter abstracts for more complete summaries
Scaling Recurrent Neural Network Language Models
This paper investigates the scaling properties of Recurrent Neural Network
Language Models (RNNLMs). We discuss how to train very large RNNs on GPUs and
address the questions of how RNNLMs scale with respect to model size,
training-set size, computational costs and memory. Our analysis shows that
despite being more costly to train, RNNLMs obtain much lower perplexities on
standard benchmarks than n-gram models. We train the largest known RNNs and
present relative word error rates gains of 18% on an ASR task. We also present
the new lowest perplexities on the recently released billion word language
modelling benchmark, 1 BLEU point gain on machine translation and a 17%
relative hit rate gain in word prediction
SampleQC: robust multivariate, multi-cell type, multi-sample quality control for single-cell data
Quality control (QC) is a critical component of single-cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) processing pipelines. Current approaches to QC implicitly assume that datasets are comprised of one cell type, potentially resulting in biased exclusion of rare cell types. We introduce SampleQC, which robustly fits a Gaussian mixture model across multiple samples, improves sensitivity, and reduces bias compared to current approaches. We show via simulations that SampleQC is less susceptible to exclusion of rarer cell types. We also demonstrate SampleQC on a complex real dataset (867k cells over 172 samples). SampleQC is general, is implemented in R, and could be applied to other data types
Montana: Mount Anna
https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/4458/thumbnail.jp
Games Of Childhood Days Or Ring Around A Rosie
https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/5155/thumbnail.jp
The TFTP Agreement, Schrems Rights, and the Saugmandsgaard Requirements
The article focuses on the implications that provide importance to the EU-U.S. Agreement for the U.S. Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP Agreement) such as the Schrems case and the EU advocate general Henrik Saugmandsgaard. Topics discussed include the clarification of the mandatory requirements which measures the generalized retention which is the Saugmandsgaard requirements, the EU-US Privacy Shield and the regulatory obligation of the TFTP agreement
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