The Effects of Motivational and Instructional Self-Talk on Cross-Training Exercise Performance

Self-talk is a multi-dimensional construct comprised of self-statements that provide instruction, or motivation, for successful task completion. Instructional self-talk has been shown to be more effective during precision tasks, and motivational self-talk has been shown to be more effective during gross motor and exercise tasks. The effects of self-talk on task performance have not been explored through a combination of endurance and precision exercise, or cross-training. The purpose of the present study was to analyze the effectiveness of instructional and motivational self-talk during a cross-training exercise task of running and overhead squatting. 30 participants were evenly divided into three groups (i.e., control, motivational, and instructional), and were examined across three exercise trials. Two 3 x 3 factorial ANOVAs comparing exercise time and mechanical score revealed no significant differences between groups across exercise trials. The results of the present study provide a potential starting point for future self-talk studies analyzing the combination of exercise tasks

Quality Time: A simple online technique for quantifying multicore execution efficiency

Abstract—In order to increase utilization, multicore pro-cessors share memory resources among an increasing number of cores. This sharing leads to memory interference, which in turn leads to a non-uniform degradation in the execution of concurrent applications, even in the presence of fairness mechanisms. Many utilities rely on application CPU Time both for measuring resource usage and inferring application progress. These utilities are therefore directly affected by the distorting effects of multicore interference on the representativeness of CPU Time as a proxy for progress. This makes reasoning about myriad properties from fairness, to QoS, to throughput optimality very difficult in consolidated environments, such as IaaS. We introduce the notion of Quality Time, which provides a measure of application progress analogous to CPU Time’s measure of resource usage, and we propose a simple online sampling-based technique to approximate Quality Time with high accuracy. We have implemented three user-space tools called Qtime, Qtop, and Qplacer. Qtime can attach to an application to calculate its Quality Time online, Qtop is a dashboard that monitors the Quality Times of all applications on the system, and Qplacer leverages Quality Time information to find better application placements and improve overall system quality. With Quality Time, we are able to reduce the error in inferring execution efficiency from 150.3 % to 25.1 % in the worst case and from 30.0 % to 7.5 % on average. Qplacer can increase average system throughput by 3.2 % when compared to static application placement. I

Impact of Gravel Dredging Operations on Surface Water Quality in Streams in the Upper Cumberland Basin

This is a report to the USEPA, Kentucky Division of Water and the Kentucky Water Resources Research Institute, focused on the biologic and morphological impacts of gravel mining in the upper Cumberland basin

Ring-Closing Metathesis of Olefinic Peptides: Design, Synthesis, and Structural Characterization of Macrocyclic Helical Peptides

Heptapeptides containing residues with terminal olefin-derivatized side chains (3 and 4) have been treated with ruthenium alkylidene 1 and undergone facile ring-closing olefin metathesis (RCM) to give 21- and 23-membered macrocyclic peptides (5 and 6). The primary structures of peptides 3 and 4 were based upon a previously studied heptapeptide (2), which was shown to adopt a predominantly 3_(10)-helical conformation in CDCl_3 solution and an α-helical conformation in the solid state. Circular dichroism, IR, and solution-phase ^1H NMR studies strongly suggested that acyclic precursors 3 and 4 and the fully saturated macrocyclic products 7 and 8 also adopted helical conformations in apolar organic solvents. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction of cyclic peptide 8 showed it to exist as a right-handed 3_(10)-helix up to the fifth residue. Solution-phase NMR structures of both acyclic peptide 4 and cyclic peptide 8 in CD_2Cl_2 indicated that the acyclic diene assumes a loosely 3_(10)-helical conformation, which is considerably rigidified upon macrocyclization. The relative ease of introducing carbon−carbon bonds into peptide secondary structures by RCM and the predicted metabolic stability of these bonds renders olefin metathesis an exceptional methodology for the synthesis of rigidified peptide architectures

The effectiveness of the Liverpool care pathway in improving end of life care for dying cancer patients in hospital. A cluster randomised trial

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Most cancer patients still die in hospital, mainly in medical wards. Many studies in different countries have shown the poor quality of end-of-life care delivery in hospitals. The Program "Liverpool Care Pathway for the dying patient" (LCP), developed in the UK to transfer the hospice model of care into hospitals and other care settings, is a complex intervention to improve the quality of end-of-life care. The results from qualitative and quantitative studies suggest that the LCP Program can improve significantly the quality of end-of-life care delivery in hospitals, but no randomised trial has been conducted till now.</p> <p>Methods and design</p> <p>This is a randomized cluster trial, stratified by regions and matched for assessment period. Pairs of eligible medical wards from different hospitals will be randomized to receive the LCP-I Program or no intervention until the end of the trial. The LCP-I Program will be implemented by a Palliative Care Unit.</p> <p>The assessment of the end-points will be performed for all cancer deaths occurred in the six months after the end of the LCP-I implementation in the experimental wards and, in the same period of time, in the matched control wards. The primary end-point is the overall quality of end-of-life care provided on the ward to dying cancer patients and their families, assessed using the Global Scale of the Italian version of the Toolkit <it>"After-death Bereaved Family Member Interview</it>".</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>This study can be interpreted as a Phase III trial according to the Medical Research Council Framework. In this study, the effectiveness of a fully defined intervention is assessed by comparing the distribution of the endpoints in the experimental and in the control arm.</p> <p>Research ID</p> <p>RFPS-2006-6-341619</p> <p>Trial registration</p> <p>ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: <a href="http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01081899">NCT01081899</a></p

End of life care: The experiences of advance care planning amongst family caregivers of people with advanced dementia - A qualitative study

Background: End of life decisions for people with advanced dementia are reported as often being difficult for families as they attempt to make appropriate and justified decisions. Aim: To explore the experiences of advance care planning amongst family caregivers of people with advanced dementia. Design: Qualitative research including a series of single cases (close family relatives). Methods: A purposive sample of 12 family caregivers within a specialist dementia unit was interviewed about their experiences of advance care planning between August 2009 and February 2010. Results/Findings: Family caregivers need encouragement to ask the right questions during advance care planning to discuss the appropriateness of nursing and medical interventions at the end of life. Conclusions: Advance care planning can be facilitated with the family caregiver in the context of everyday practice within the nursing home environment for older people with dementia

Cross-sectional interactions between quality of the physical and social environment and self-reported physical activity in adults living in income-deprived communities

Background: Understanding the environmental determinants of physical activity in populations at high risk of inactivity could contribute to the development of effective interventions. Socioecological models of activity propose that environmental factors have independent and interactive effects of physical activity but there is a lack of research into interactive effects. Objectives: This study aimed to explore independent and interactive effects of social and physical environmental factors on self-reported physical activity in income-deprived communities. Methods: Participants were 5,923 adults in Glasgow, United Kingdom. Features of the social environment were self-reported. Quality of the physical environment was objectively-measured. Neighbourhood walking and participation in moderate physical activity [MPA] on ≥5 days/week was self-reported. Multilevel multivariate logistic regression models tested independent and interactive effects of environmental factors on activity. Results: ‘Social support’ (walking: OR:1.22,95%CI=1.06-1.41,p<0.01; MPA: OR:0.79,95%CI=0.67-0.94,p<0.01), ‘social interaction’ (walking: OR:1.25,95%CI=1.10-1.42,p<0.01; MPA: OR:6.16,95%CI=5.14-7.37,p<0.001) and ‘cohesion and safety’ (walking: OR:1.78,95%CI=1.56-2.03,p<0.001; MPA: OR:1.93,95%CI=1.65-2.27,p<0.001), but not ‘trust and empowerment’, had independent effects on physical activity. ‘Aesthetics of built form’ (OR:1.47,95%CI=1.22-1.77,p<0.001) and ‘aesthetics and maintenance of open space’ (OR:1.32, 95%CI=1.13-1.54,p<0.01) were related to walking. ‘Physical disorder’ (OR:1.63,95%CI=1.31-2.03,p<0.001) had an independent effect on MPA. Interactive effects of social and physical factors on walking and MPA were revealed. Conclusions: Findings suggest that intervening to create activity-supportive environments in deprived communities may be most effective when simultaneously targeting the social and physical neighbourhood environment