Situational Efficacy of Anthropomotor Types of Young Female Handball Players

A battery of 26 anthropomotor and 15 situational handball tests were used in a sample of 155 girls aged 13 years, attending Split handball school for 4 years, for taxonomization and determination of relations among the areas analyzed. Figures were analyzed by taxonomic analysis using the model of polar types and canonic correlation analysis. Five types that basically corresponded to the positions in the team were identified in the anthropomotor area: universal player, wing player, outside player, middle outside player and circular player. Situation-related types showed three ways of presenting specific handball activity defined by the level of complexity of realization of specific tasks: specific handball efficacy, specific hand coordination, and movement with changes of direction. Two types of integrating attitudes, i.e. two ways of solving complex tasks, were established by canonic relations between the anthropomotor and situational types. According to the first, the energy articulated as dynamic mass is used for the purpose of achieving general handball goals, and it is typical for all-round players and outside shooters. According to the other one, different kinds of movements are used to achieve the goals in handball, typical for wing players and middle outside attack players, characterized by regulation of direction changes and handling the ball

Influence of the Attack End Conduction on Match Result in Handball

The influence of 18 predictive variables on final match result in the character of the criterion variable has been analyzed for the purpose to establish the significance of positional direction of the attack end conduction on the situation-related resulting successfulness in top quality handball. It has been done on the sample of 80 matches from 1999 Men , s World Handball Championship in Egypt. The frequency and the effectiveness of shooting from different playing positions are defined by these predictive variables. It is evident from investigation results that predictive variables significantly explain resulting successfulness. Significant influence on final match result is given by all variables defining the effectiveness of the realization (achieved goals), except from the pivot attacker position. Also particularly significant influence on final match result is given by variables of the realization from back attacker positions and from individual action by the break-through and from the fastbreak. Variables relating to the frequency of shooting from particular position have no significant influence on the result meaning that resulting successfulness does not depend on quantity but on quality of shots

Influence of the Attack End Conduction on Match Result in Handball

The influence of 18 predictive variables on final match result in the character of the criterion variable has been analyzed for the purpose to establish the significance of positional direction of the attack end conduction on the situation-related resulting successfulness in top quality handball. It has been done on the sample of 80 matches from 1999 Men , s World Handball Championship in Egypt. The frequency and the effectiveness of shooting from different playing positions are defined by these predictive variables. It is evident from investigation results that predictive variables significantly explain resulting successfulness. Significant influence on final match result is given by all variables defining the effectiveness of the realization (achieved goals), except from the pivot attacker position. Also particularly significant influence on final match result is given by variables of the realization from back attacker positions and from individual action by the break-through and from the fastbreak. Variables relating to the frequency of shooting from particular position have no significant influence on the result meaning that resulting successfulness does not depend on quantity but on quality of shots

Position Specific Morphological Characteristics of Top-Level Male Handball Players

With the aim of determining the common morphological features of senior male handball players and of analyzing their specificities i.e. the probable variation between the four playing positions (back court players, wings, pivots, goalkeepers), 25 anthropometric measures were applied to the sample of 49 players, members of three top-quality handball teams. The basic descriptive parameters were calculated and then an analysis of variance and a cluster analysis were performed. A mesomorphic, athletic body- type was obtained with a marked longitudinal skeleton dimensionality, but also with a balanced ratio between the skeletal system and muscle mass and with low values of subcutaneous fat tissue. Back court players and goalkeepers are superior in terms of outstanding skeletal dimensions and circumferences. Line players, i.e. wings and pivots, have somewhat lower longitudinal measures, whereas pronounced voluminosity and a slightly higher fat tissue value differentiate pivots from players in other positions. Cluster analysis revealed a greater homogeneity in the morphological profiles of the samples of line players (wings and pivots) than in the profiles of backs or goalkeepers. The obtained position-related differences in morphological characteristics of players suggest that the experienced players from the sample were earlier successfully subjected to the selection process and oriented to a particular playing position because of the observed correspondence between their body-type and specific kinesiological demands of the position in question. Therefore, in top-quality team-handball it would be recommendable to select players whose morphological profiles are as compatible as possible with positional specificities in the demand for the game

LINKS: Learning-based multi-source IntegratioN frameworK for Segmentation of infant brain images

Segmentation of infant brain MR images is challenging due to insufficient image quality, severe partial volume effect, and ongoing maturation and myelination processes. In the first year of life, the image contrast between white and gray matters of the infant brain undergoes dramatic changes. In particular, the image contrast is inverted around 6-8 months of age, and the white and gray matter tissues are isointense in both T1- and T2-weighted MR images and thus exhibit the extremely low tissue contrast, which poses significant challenges for automated segmentation. Most previous studies used multi-atlas label fusion strategy, which has the limitation of equally treating the different available image modalities and is often computationally expensive. To cope with these limitations, in this paper, we propose a novel learning-based multi-source integration framework for segmentation of infant brain images. Specifically, we employ the random forest technique to effectively integrate features from multi-source images together for tissue segmentation. Here, the multi-source images include initially only the multi-modality (T1, T2 and FA) images and later also the iteratively estimated and refined tissue probability maps of gray matter, white matter, and cerebrospinal fluid. Experimental results on 119 infants show that the proposed method achieves better performance than other state-of-the-art automated segmentation methods. Further validation was performed on the MICCAI grand challenge and the proposed method was ranked top among all competing methods. Moreover, to alleviate the possible anatomical errors, our method can also be combined with an anatomically-constrained multi-atlas labeling approach for further improving the segmentation accuracy

Differentiating patients with radiculopathy from chronic low back pain patients by single surface EMG parameter

The classification potential of surface electromyographic (EMG) parameters needs to be explored beyond classification of subjects onto low back pain subjects and control subjects. In this paper, a classification model based on surface EMG parameter is introduced to differentiate low back pain patients with radiculopathy from chronic low back pain (CLBP) patients and control subjects. A variant of the Roman chair was used to perform static contractions, where subject's own upper body weight was used to induce muscle fatigue in low back muscles. Surface EMG signals were recorded over the paraspinal muscles at L1–L2 and L4–L5 interspace level. As a descriptor of spectral changes, the median frequency of the power spectrum (MDF) was estimated by use of Hilbert–Huang transform. Student's t-test detected that regression line slope of the median frequency is significantly different (p < 0.05) only between low back pain patients with radiculopathy and other two groups. There was no significant difference between CLBP patients and control subjects. The achieved overall accuracy of the implemented decision tree classification model was at best 86.8%. The results suggest possibility of differentiating low back pain patients to subgroups depending on clinical symptoms