DO FIELD HOCKEY PLAYERS REQUIRE A SPORT-SPECIFIC BIOMECHANICAL ASSESSMENT TO CLASSlFY THEIR ANTERIOR CRUClATE LIGAMENT INJURY RISK?

The lower limb biomechanics of 13 elite female hockey players were compared between 1) a generic, and 2) a hockey-specific (i.e., flexed trunk and hockey stick present) ACL injury risk movement assessment. Our aim was to determine if an athlete's ACL injury risk classification differed as a function of their movement assessment. An increase in trunk, hip and knee flexion was observed during the hockey-specific movement assessment. No significant differences in key ACL injury risk factors (i.e., peak three dimensional knee moments) were observed. These results show that imposing hockeyspecific requirements during a lab based movement assessment did not change an athlete's ACL injury risk classification when compared to a generic movement assessment

THE EFFECT OF FATIGUE INDUCED FROM A SIMULATED HOCKEY MATCH ON BIOMECHANICAL ACL INJURY RISK FACTORS IN ELITE FEMALE FIELD HOCKEY PLAYERS

This study investigated the effect of fatigue induced from team sport on the biomechanical factors of non-contact anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury risk. Peak knee moments, full body kinematics and lower limb muscle activation of 14 elite female athletes were measured during unplanned sidestepping prior to, and following, a 15 minute team sport simulation circuit. There were no changes in peak knee moments. Reductions in knee flexion angle and total muscle activation (TMA) of muscles crossing the knee (n=9) were observed (p\u3c0.05). This was explained by reductions in hamstring TMA with a reduction in gluteal (n=2) TMA also found (p\u3c0.05). Future research is needed to understand neurophysiological mechanisms associated with the unique and unintuitive muscle activation strategies adopted by team sport athletes when fatigued

The Interplay of Iron and Lipid Homeostasis in Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

The liver is essential for numerous metabolic functions and is the primary site of iron storage and regulation in addition to maintaining critical functions in lipid metabolism. Both iron deficiency and overload have been demonstrated as being involved with metabolic dysfunction; hence, tight regulation of iron absorption is essential to maintain health. Approximately one-third of individuals suffering from non-alcoholic fatty liver disease have elevated hepatic iron concentrations, with increased iron associated with increased disease severity, suggesting a convergence in dysregulation between lipid and iron metabolism. Increasingly, the literature is demonstrating, using a myriad of model organisms and iron-loading methods, that iron loading induces dysregulation in multiple aspects of hepatic lipid metabolism. However, the molecular mechanisms involved, and their subsequent effects on human diseases, are unclear. As iron is a fundamental component of many enzymes and proteins involved in lipid metabolism and is involved in the production of free radicals and oxidative stress, the mechanisms are numerous. In this review, we examine and summarise the dysregulation that iron loading elicits on hepatic lipid availability, de novo synthesis, catabolism, and export. We propose that understanding the interplay between iron and lipid metabolism holds the key to unlocking the complexities of disease development and progression, ultimately leading to improved therapeutic avenues

Asian Elephants (Elephas maximus) Discriminate Between Familiar and Unfamiliar Human Visual and Olfactory Cues

Social animals use individual identity cues to form and maintain social relationships with conspecifics. This ability to discriminate between individuals extends to heterospecifics in some social mammals. The aim of this study was to determine if Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) could differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar people using visual, auditory, and olfactory cues independently. Two female Asian elephants at the Perth Zoo were tested with stimuli generated from six humans. Video playbacks, auditory playbacks and pieces of worn shirts were used to present familiar and unfamiliar human stimuli to the elephants using a simultaneous two-choice task. Trunk reach duration and trunk reach frequency were used as measures of the elephants' interest in the stimuli. The elephants’ trunk reach durations revealed a significant difference between familiar and unfamiliar human stimuli using visual cues alone, with significantly more trunk reaching toward familiar human stimuli. No significant difference in trunk reach duration was seen between familiar and unfamiliar human stimuli for auditory or olfactory cues. Trunk reach frequency revealed a significant difference between familiar and unfamiliar human stimuli for visual and olfactory stimuli, with a greater frequency of trunk reaching towards familiar stimuli for both modes. No significant difference in trunk reach frequency was seen between familiar and unfamiliar human stimuli for auditory cues. This is the first study to use video playbacks with any species of elephant and demonstrates a potential new method for cognitive testing in this species. The results suggest that familiar humans may be important to zoo-housed Asian elephants

A protocol for precise comparisons of small vessel disease lesions between ex vivo magnetic resonance imaging and histopathology

pp. 310-32La neuroimagen y los estudios clínicos han definido la enfermedad cerebral de los vasos pequeños humanos, pero la fisiopatología sigue siendo relativamente poco comprendida. Para desarrollar terapias eficaces y estrategias preventivas, debemos comprender mejor la heterogeneidad y el desarrollo de la enfermedad de los vasos pequeños a nivel celular.S

LOFAR/H-ATLAS: The low-frequency radio luminosity - star-formation rate relation

Radio emission is a key indicator of star-formation activity in galaxies, but the radio luminosity-star formation relation has to date been studied almost exclusively at frequencies of 1.4 GHz or above. At lower radio frequencies the effects of thermal radio emission are greatly reduced, and so we would expect the radio emission observed to be completely dominated by synchrotron radiation from supernova-generated cosmic rays. As part of the LOFAR Surveys Key Science project, the Herschel-ATLAS NGP field has been surveyed with LOFAR at an effective frequency of 150 MHz. We select a sample from the MPA-JHU catalogue of SDSS galaxies in this area: the combination of Herschel, optical and mid-infrared data enable us to derive star-formation rates (SFRs) for our sources using spectral energy distribution fitting, allowing a detailed study of the low-frequency radio luminosity--star-formation relation in the nearby Universe. For those objects selected as star-forming galaxies (SFGs) using optical emission line diagnostics, we find a tight relationship between the 150 MHz radio luminosity ($L_{150}$) and SFR. Interestingly, we find that a single power-law relationship between $L_{150}$ and SFR is not a good description of all SFGs: a broken power law model provides a better fit. This may indicate an additional mechanism for the generation of radio-emitting cosmic rays. Also, at given SFR, the radio luminosity depends on the stellar mass of the galaxy. Objects which were not classified as SFGs have higher 150-MHz radio luminosity than would be expected given their SFR, implying an important role for low-level active galactic nucleus activity.Comment: 21 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Vascular function in the aging human brain during muscle exertion

: To determine how brain oxygenation is stably maintained during advancing age, cerebral oxygenation and hemoglobin were measured real-time at 10 Hz using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) at rest (30 seconds) and during a 10-repeated handgrip strength test (30 seconds) for 834 adults (M/F = 45/55%) aged 20-88 y. The amplitude of cerebral hemodynamic fluctuation was reflected by converting 300 values of % oxygen saturation and hemoglobin of each 30-second phase to standard deviation as indicatives of brain oxygenation variability (BOV) and brain hemodynamic variability (BHV) for each participant. Both BOV (+21-72%) and BHV (+94-158%) increased during the maximal voluntary muscle exertions for all age levels (α < 0.05), suggesting an increased vascular recruitment to maintain oxygen homeostasis in the brain. Intriguingly, BHV was >100 folds for both resting and challenged conditions (α < 0.001) in >80% of adults aged above 50 y despite similar BOV compared with young age counterparts, indicating a huge cost of amplifying hemodynamic oscillation to maintain a stable oxygenation in the aging brain. Since vascular endothelial cells are short-lived, our results implicate a hemodynamic compensation to emergence of daily deficits in replacing senescent endothelial cells after age 50 y

Tourism and transformation: negotiating metaphors, experiencing change

WOS:000338007000001 (Nº de Acesso Web of Science)The article introduces this special issue on tourism and transformation. After offering a brief review of the place and significance of ‘transformation’ in social sciences studies of tourism – from ‘impact studies’ to ethnographies of tourists and, more recently, ‘tourist media studies’ – we propose to take one step further and focus our attention on the performativity and reflexivity of ‘transformation’. Our main argument is that much may be gained analytically by considering how notions and experiences of transformation are addressed, negotiated and purposefully deployed in tourism contexts. We conclude with an outline of each of the contributions to this special issue, stressing that the collection re-opens the issue of transformation in tourism and provides new insights into how experiences-turned metaphors and metaphors-turnedexperiences influence both the travel experience and the development of theory

Genomics of Drug Sensitivity in Cancer (GDSC): a Resource for Therapeutic Biomarker Discovery in Cancer Cells

Alterations in cancer genomes strongly influence clinical responses to treatment and in many instances are potent biomarkers for response to drugs. The Genomics of Drug Sensitivity in Cancer (GDSC) database (www.cancerRxgene.org) is the largest public resource for information on drug sensitivity in cancer cells and molecular markers of drug response. Data are freely available without restriction. GDSC currently contains drug sensitivity data for almost 75 000 experiments, describing response to 138 anticancer drugs across almost 700 cancer cell lines. To identify molecular markers of drug response, cell line drug sensitivity data are integrated with large genomic datasets obtained from the Catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer database, including information on somatic mutations in cancer genes, gene amplification and deletion, tissue type and transcriptional data. Analysis of GDSC data is through a web portal focused on identifying molecular biomarkers of drug sensitivity based on queries of specific anticancer drugs or cancer genes. Graphical representations of the data are used throughout with links to related resources and all datasets are fully downloadable. GDSC provides a unique resource incorporating large drug sensitivity and genomic datasets to facilitate the discovery of new therapeutic biomarkers for cancer therapies

Parametric study of EEG sensitivity to phase noise during face processing

<b>Background: </b> The present paper examines the visual processing speed of complex objects, here faces, by mapping the relationship between object physical properties and single-trial brain responses. Measuring visual processing speed is challenging because uncontrolled physical differences that co-vary with object categories might affect brain measurements, thus biasing our speed estimates. Recently, we demonstrated that early event-related potential (ERP) differences between faces and objects are preserved even when images differ only in phase information, and amplitude spectra are equated across image categories. Here, we use a parametric design to study how early ERP to faces are shaped by phase information. Subjects performed a two-alternative force choice discrimination between two faces (Experiment 1) or textures (two control experiments). All stimuli had the same amplitude spectrum and were presented at 11 phase noise levels, varying from 0% to 100% in 10% increments, using a linear phase interpolation technique. Single-trial ERP data from each subject were analysed using a multiple linear regression model. <b>Results: </b> Our results show that sensitivity to phase noise in faces emerges progressively in a short time window between the P1 and the N170 ERP visual components. The sensitivity to phase noise starts at about 120–130 ms after stimulus onset and continues for another 25–40 ms. This result was robust both within and across subjects. A control experiment using pink noise textures, which had the same second-order statistics as the faces used in Experiment 1, demonstrated that the sensitivity to phase noise observed for faces cannot be explained by the presence of global image structure alone. A second control experiment used wavelet textures that were matched to the face stimuli in terms of second- and higher-order image statistics. Results from this experiment suggest that higher-order statistics of faces are necessary but not sufficient to obtain the sensitivity to phase noise function observed in response to faces. <b>Conclusion: </b> Our results constitute the first quantitative assessment of the time course of phase information processing by the human visual brain. We interpret our results in a framework that focuses on image statistics and single-trial analyses