Training Load and Injury in Professional Ballet

In professional ballet, training load has frequently been suggested to be associated with the risk of musculoskeletal injury. Despite a recent surge in the number of training load research studies in high performance sport, relatively little research has been conducted investigating training load in ballet. The aim of this thesis was, therefore, to describe the training loads undertaken by professional ballet dancers, explore the load-injury relationship in ballet, and provide valid methods and recommendations for load management in professional ballet. Two five-season cohort studies were conducted, investigating scheduling and medical data at an elite professional ballet company. Shared frailty models were used to investigate relationships between individual risk factors, accumulated dance volume, and hazard ratios for injury risk. Greater week-to-week changes in dance volume and smaller seven-day dance volume were associated with increase rates of overuse injury, whilst age (traumatic injury), previous injury, and company rank (overuse injury) were also associated with increases in hazard ratios for injury. Analyses of scheduling data were consistent with previous research regarding the large rehearsal and performance volumes completed by ballet dancers. For the first time, however, the present research revealed the large variation in dance hours occurring from week-to-week, across the season, and between company ranks. In professional ballet, there is great scope to optimise training loads from increased emphasis on periodisation of the repertoire and rehearsal schedule alone. Three methodological studies explored the development and validation of training load measures in professional ballet. Firstly, the validity of session rating of perceived exertion in professional ballet dancers was investigated, revealing very large positive linear relationships with Edwards and Banister training impulse scores. Correlation coefficients were comparable across men and women, though were larger in rehearsals compared with ballet class. Secondly, a rule-based classifier for measuring jump frequency and height from accelerometer data was developed and validated, demonstrating a high degree of accuracy, and providing a simple means of managing jump load. Finally, a series of recurrent neural networks were developed to facilitate the measurement of tissue-specific forces outside of a laboratory using inertial measurement units, outperforming single variable linear regression approaches for the measurement of Achilles tendon, patellar tendon, and tibial force. Open-source software was developed and presented to house these algorithms, and database and visualize longitudinal training load data. This thesis demonstrates the importance of managing a rehearsal and performance schedule throughout a professional ballet season. Where more in-depth understanding of training load is required for managing high-risk dancers, this thesis provides practical, valid, and open-source methods for quantifying load

Banana Xanthomonas Wilt infection: the role of debudding and roguing as control options within a mixed cultivar plantation

An optimal control framework is designed in which the use of clean planting materials, debudding, disinfection of tools, and roguing are considered as control measures of Banana Xanthomonas Wilt (BXW) within a plantation of multiple cultivars. A model for a special case of two cultivars (AAA- and ABB-genome cultivars) was analyzed. By Pontryagin’s Maximum Principle, we characterized and discussed possible control strategies that substantially reduce the infection levels of BXW within a plantation of ABB- and AAA-genome cultivars. A combination of both prevention and containment controls yielded the greatest decline in the infection levels in both cultivars. Additionally, for effective BXW management, it is important to assess the endemic level of the plantation before application of controls, and once implemented, this should be maintained even when the disease is undetectable to eliminate possible resurgence

Book Reviews: Municipal Government in North Carolina; from Currituck to Calabash: Living with North Carolina's Barrier Islands; Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives

Book reviews of: MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT IN NORTH CAROLINA: What is the most prevalent form of municipal government in North Carolina? Which North Carolina statute allows cities to budget and expend revenues? Must municipal budgets be balanced? Can cities levy property taxes for mass transit or public housing? The answers to these and other questions can be easily found in Municipal Government in North Carolina. The book is edited by David M. Lawrence and Warren J. Wicker, professors of Public Law and Government at the Institute of Government, and it is intended to be a reference guide to North Carolina city government. In addition, it offers a framework for administrative organization of cities and towns. FROM CURRITUCK TO CALABASH: LIVING WITH NORTH CAROLINA'S BARRIER ISLANDS: In recent years, the North Carolina coastline has undergone massive development. Higher incomes, more leisure, and the absence of major hurricanes have led to widespead, often dangerous construction. The authors of From Currituck to Calabash seek to provide a guide for "proper, limited development" of the North Carolina barrier islands. This volume is the first of a series entitled Living with the Shore, which will eventually provide guidance to development of the shorelines of all states bordering the oceans and Great Lakes. MEGATRENDS: TEN NEW DIRECTIONS TRANSFORMING OUR LIVES: City planners constantly search for new information which will help them anticipate and influence the future. Megatrends , written by John Naisbitt, features ten national social trends that are changing American life

Adding confidence to our injury burden estimates: is bootstrapping the solution?

Injury burden is a composite measure of injury incidence and mean severity that can be used to understand the overall impact of injuries and help identify priority areas for injury prevention. Injury burden has been used within rugby union epidemiological studies since the early 2000s, but it is now recognised and recommended within other sports, including the most recent International Olympic Committee consensus statement for the recording and reporting of epidemiological data on injury and illness. Injury burden is normally reported as athlete days absence per 1000 athletehours and is derived from the product of injury incidence (expressed as injuries sustained/1000 athlete-hours) and severity (expressed as the mean severity of injury in days). While the value of injury burden as an output measure from injury surveillance studies is evident, there appears to be some confusion in the literature regarding its calculation. For instance, some authors have used median severity to calculate injury burden rather than mean severity, as discussed in a recent critical review. In addition, there appears to be no clear guidance within the sports medicine literature regarding the most appropriate way to calculate confidence intervals (CIs) for this metric

Precompression and desensitization of a high explosive by trapped gas in plate impacts--new measurements

It has long been known that trapped gas between an impactor and high explosive will precompress a layer of the explosive. Most quantitative studies measure the resulting decrease in shock sensitivity. There have been no studies really aimed at measuring the properties of the precompressed layer. Experiments at Los Alamos originally to study release behavior allow the layer to be probed in PBX 9502 (95% TATB, 5% KeI-F 800)

Comparison of Plankton Catch by Three Light-Trap Designs in the Northern Gulf of Mexico

The ichthyoplankton catch and zooplankton biomass estimates of three light-trap designs-cylindrical, quatrefoil, and rectangular-were compared over three consecutive nights at an offshore petroleum platform in the northern Gulf of Mexico. The quatrefoil light trap had higher fish and zooplankton abundance estimates than the other two designs. Categorical analysis of the two abundant fish taxa, Opisthonema oglinum and Anchoa spp., indicated that catch by the quatrefoil and rectangular traps was similar, capturing more larvae than juveniles and more O. oglinum than Anchoa spp. relative to cylindrical trap catch. Across all fish species, the quatrefoil captured a greater percentage of larvae. Other ontogenetic and species-specific differences were noted among the light-trap designs. Samples from vertical plankton tows underestimated larger size classes compared to light-trap catch. Light-trap catch per unit effort (CPUE) declined through the night, especially for the quatrefoil, and increased with depth. In contrast, the percentage of larvae captured across all traps increased through the night and decreased with depth, indicating that CPUE was related mostly to juvenile catch. The percentage of larvae also decreased with increasing water current speed

Wandering as a sociomaterial practice : extending the theorization of GPS tracking in cognitive impairment

Electronic tracking through global positioning systems (GPSs) is used to monitor people with cognitive impairment who “wander” outside the home. This ethnographic study explored how GPS-monitored wandering was experienced by individuals, lay carers, and professional staff. Seven in-depth case studies revealed that wandering was often an enjoyable and worthwhile activity and helped deal with uncertainty and threats to identity. In what were typically very complex care contexts, GPS devices were useful to the extent that they aligned with a wider sociomaterial care network that included lay carers, call centers, and health and social care professionals. In this context, “safe” wandering was a collaborative accomplishment that depended on the technology’s materiality, affordances, and aesthetic properties; a distributed knowledge of the individual and the places they wandered through, and a collective and dynamic interpretation of risk. Implications for design and delivery of GPS devices and services for cognitive impairment are discussed

Gene response profiles for Daphnia pulex exposed to the environmental stressor cadmium reveals novel crustacean metallothioneins

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Genomic research tools such as microarrays are proving to be important resources to study the complex regulation of genes that respond to environmental perturbations. A first generation cDNA microarray was developed for the environmental indicator species <it>Daphnia pulex</it>, to identify genes whose regulation is modulated following exposure to the metal stressor cadmium. Our experiments revealed interesting changes in gene transcription that suggest their biological roles and their potentially toxicological features in responding to this important environmental contaminant.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Our microarray identified genes reported in the literature to be regulated in response to cadmium exposure, suggested functional attributes for genes that share no sequence similarity to proteins in the public databases, and pointed to genes that are likely members of expanded gene families in the <it>Daphnia </it>genome. Genes identified on the microarray also were associated with cadmium induced phenotypes and population-level outcomes that we experimentally determined. A subset of genes regulated in response to cadmium exposure was independently validated using quantitative-realtime (Q-RT)-PCR. These microarray studies led to the discovery of three genes coding for the metal detoxication protein metallothionein (MT). The gene structures and predicted translated sequences of <it>D. pulex </it>MTs clearly place them in this gene family. Yet, they share little homology with previously characterized MTs.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The genomic information obtained from this study represents an important first step in characterizing microarray patterns that may be diagnostic to specific environmental contaminants and give insights into their toxicological mechanisms, while also providing a practical tool for evolutionary, ecological, and toxicological functional gene discovery studies. Advances in <it>Daphnia </it>genomics will enable the further development of this species as a model organism for the environmental sciences.</p

Spectroscopy of Broad Line Blazars from 1LAC

We report on optical spectroscopy of 165 Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars (FSRQs) in the Fermi 1LAC sample, which have helped allow a nearly complete study of this population. Fermi FSRQ show significant evidence for non-thermal emission even in the optical; the degree depends on the gamma-ray hardness. They also have smaller virial estimates of hole mass than the optical quasar sample. This appears to be largely due to a preferred (axial) view of the gamma-ray FSRQ and non-isotropic (H/R ~ 0.4) distribution of broad-line velocities. Even after correction for this bias, the Fermi FSRQ show higher mean Eddington ratios than the optical population. A comparison of optical spectral properties with Owens Valley Radio Observatory radio flare activity shows no strong correlation.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap

Measurement of telescope transmission using a Collimated Beam Projector

With the increasingly large number of type Ia supernova being detected by current-generation survey telescopes, and even more expected with the upcoming Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time, the precision of cosmological measurements will become limited by systematic uncertainties in flux calibration rather than statistical noise. One major source of systematic error in determining SNe Ia color evolution (needed for distance estimation) is uncertainty in telescope transmission, both within and between surveys. We introduce here the Collimated Beam Projector (CBP), which is meant to measure a telescope transmission with collimated light. The collimated beam more closely mimics a stellar wavefront as compared to flat-field based instruments, allowing for more precise handling of systematic errors such as those from ghosting and filter angle-of-incidence dependence. As a proof of concept, we present CBP measurements of the StarDICE prototype telescope, achieving a standard (1 sigma) uncertainty of 3 % on average over the full wavelength range measured with a single beam illumination