THE EFFECTS OF ANKLE BRACING ON SPORTS-SPECIFIC CAPABILITIES

INTRODUCTION Ankle braces are widely used in athletes. In some professional sports leagues it is mandatory to wear ankle braces in order to get insurance. Even prophylactic bracing is often used in normal sports. The efficiency of ankle joint orthoses was already demonstrated in several studies, and different types of external stabilization devices were compared. Especially the. aspects of mechanical stabilization were discussed in these studies as well as retrospective observations of the prophylactic benefit regarding the prevention of sprains by using orthoses. Neurophysiological or psychological aspects are hardly taken into consideration in the literature when evaluating different types of orthoses. In the presented study the proprioception with regard to the ankle joint and especially its influence by orthoses and the effect of ankle braces on sports- specific capabilities will be discussed. First of all the question is, whether the orthoses have an impact on the proprioception of the ankle joint at all. If there is an influence, then it is of particular importance for a comprehensive judgement to document the degree of influence by each type of orthoses for the injured and not injured ankle joint. By evaluating the results of this study a possible reduction of the proprioception caused by ankle sprains will be investigated as well. This phenomenon of a posttraumatic proprioceptive deficit was already described and controversially discussed in the literature. MATERIALS AND METHODS The influence of four stabilizing devices (aircast brace, . ligafix air-brace, malleoloc-brace, taping) on sportsspecific capabilities and propioceptivity of stable and unstable ankle joints were assessed. Therefore both ankle joints of 18 uninjured volunteers and 23 injured volunteers with an old ankle sprain were tested with two different set-ups (modified Japan-test, 5 point single leg jump test). We used a modular coordination-testsystem with 5 contact plates and a computer monitor that gives in randomised sequence the signal which circles of the 5 plates to jump on. RESULTS The time for both tests as well as reaction time and contact time for each moving direction was measured and calculated by a software program. Regarding the modified Japan-test and the 5 point single leg jump test the injured group achieved showed significant better results (p< 0.01) & (

Baryogenesis in the Two-Higgs Doublet Model

We consider the generation of the baryon asymmetry in the two-Higgs doublet model. Investigating the thermal potential in the presence of CP violation, as relevant for baryogenesis, we find a strong first-order phase transition if the extra Higgs states are heavier than about 300 GeV. The mass of the lightest Higgs can be as large as about 200 GeV. We compute the bubble wall properties, including the profile of the relative complex phase between the two Higgs vevs. The baryon asymmetry is generated by top transport, which we treat in the WKB approximation. We find a baryon asymmetry consistent with observations. The neutron electric dipole moment is predicted to be larger than about 10^{-27}ecm and can reach the current experimental bound. Low values of tan\beta are favored.Comment: 25 pages, 7 figure

Electroweak Baryogenesis in Non-minimal Composite Higgs Models

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Electronic structure investigation of CoO by means of soft X-ray scattering

The electronic structure of CoO is studied by resonant inelastic soft X-ray scattering spectroscopy using photon energies across the Co 2p absorption edges. The different spectral contributions from the energy-loss structures are identified as Raman scattering due to d-d and charge-transfer excitations. For excitation energies close to the L3 resonance, the spectral features are dominated by quartet-quartet and quartet-doublet transitions of the 3d7 configuration. At excitation energies corresponding to the satellites in the Co 2p X-ray absorption spectrum of CoO, the emission features are instead dominated by charge-transfer transitions to the 3d8L-1 final state. The spectra are interpreted and discussed with the support of simulations within the single impurity Anderson model with full multiplet effects which are found to yield consistent spectral functions to the experimental data.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, 2 tables, http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevB.65.20510

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One-Center Charge Transfer Transitions in Manganites

In frames of a rather conventional cluster approach, which combines the crystal field and the ligand field models we have considered different charge transfer (CT) states and O 2p-Mn 3d CT transitions in MnO$_{6}^{9-}$ octahedra. The many-electron dipole transition matrix elements were calculated using the Racah algebra for the cubic point group. Simple "local" approximation allowed to calculate the relative intensity for all dipole-allowed $\pi -\pi$ and $\sigma -\sigma$ CT transitions. We present a self-consistent description of the CT bands in insulating stoichiometric LaMn$^{3+}$O$_3$ compound with the only Mn$^{3+}$ valent state and idealized octahedral MnO$_{6}^{9-}$ centers which allows to substantially correct the current interpretation of the optical spectra. Our analysis shows the multi-band structure of the CT optical response with the weak low-energy edge at 1.7 eV, associated with forbidden $t_{1g}(\pi)-e_{g}$ transition and a series of the weak and strong dipole-allowed high-energy transitions starting from 2.5 and 4.5 eV, respectively, and extending up to nearly 11 eV. The most intensive features are associated with two strong composite bands near $4.6\div 4.7$ eV and $8\div 9$ eV, respectively, resulting from the superposition of the dipole-allowed $\sigma -\sigma$ and $\pi -\pi$ CT transitions. These predictions are in good agreement with experimental spectra. The experimental data point to a strong overscreening of the crystal field parameter $Dq$ in the CT states of MnO$_{6}^{9-}$ centers.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Production of Gravitational Waves in the nMSSM

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