470 research outputs found
What Maximum Ankle Torque is Appropriate for Training Patients with Non-insertional Achilles Tendinopathy?
Background and Purpose: The capacity of the Achilles tendon during a 1-repetition eccentric maximum contraction is largely unknown. This study examined the maximum ankle torque during a concentric/ eccentric heel raise/lowering task and while running in healthy individuals and participants with chronic Achilles tendinopathy. These findings were applied to a 10-week training program for a patient with chronic Achilles tendinopathy.
Methods: A total of 13 subjects (9 healthy and 4 with Achilles tendinopathy) participated in this study. Subjects were asked to perform a maximum eccentric contraction wearing a weighted vest while collecting 3-dimensional biomechanical variables. Subjects also ran along an instrumented runway to assess torque at the ankle joint. All participants completed VISA-A
Outcomes: On the VISA-A, subjects with Achilles tendinopathy (AT) scored on average 28 points less than the healthy controls and were 27% weaker. The peak ankle torque during a single leg lowering task and running was 3.1 Nm/kg and appeared similar between controls and participants with chronic AT. Findings of the study when applied in a 10-week high load eccentric rehabilitation program demonstrated improved tendon characteristics and VISA-A score.
Conclusion: Unhealthy tendons likely can tolerate high loads during rehabilitation and AT programs should consist of progressive resistive exercises instead of movements that emphasize repetitions
Evolution of transonicity in an accretion disc
For inviscid, rotational accretion flows driven by a general pseudo-Newtonian
potential on to a Schwarzschild black hole, the only possible fixed points are
saddle points and centre-type points. For the specific choice of the Newtonian
potential, the flow has only two critical points, of which the outer one is a
saddle point while the inner one is a centre-type point. A restrictive upper
bound is imposed on the admissible range of values of the angular momentum of
sub-Keplerian flows through a saddle point. These flows are very unstable to
any deviation from a necessarily precise boundary condition. The difficulties
against the physical realisability of a solution passing through the saddle
point have been addressed through a temporal evolution of the flow, which gives
a non-perturbative mechanism for selecting a transonic solution passing through
the saddle point. An equation of motion for a real-time perturbation about the
stationary flows reveals a very close correspondence with the metric of an
acoustic black hole, which is also an indication of the primacy of
transonicity.Comment: 18 page
Order to disorder transition in the XY-like quantum magnet Cs2CoCl4 induced by noncommuting applied fields
We explore the effects of noncommuting applied fields on the ground-state
ordering of the quasi-one-dimensional spin-1/2 XY-like antiferromagnet Cs2CoCl4
using single-crystal neutron diffraction. In zero field interchain couplings
cause long-range order below T_N=217(5) mK with chains ordered
antiferromagnetically along their length and moments confined to the (b,c)
plane. Magnetic fields applied at an angle to the XY planes are found to
initially stabilize the order by promoting a spin-flop phase with an increased
perpendicular antiferromagnetic moment. In higher fields the antiferromagnetic
order becomes unstable and a transition occurs to a phase with no long-range
order in the (b,c) plane, proposed to be a spin liquid phase that arises when
the quantum fluctuations induced by the noncommuting field become strong enough
to overcome ordering tendencies. Magnetization measurements confirm that
saturation occurs at much higher fields and that the proposed spin-liquid state
exists in the region 2.10 < H_SL < 2.52 T || a. The observed phase diagram is
discussed in terms of known results on XY-like chains in coexisting
longitudinal and transverse fields.Comment: revtex, 14 figures, 2 tables, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Stability of Circular Orbits in General Relativity: A Phase Space Analysis
Phase space method provides a novel way for deducing qualitative features of
nonlinear differential equations without actually solving them. The method is
applied here for analyzing stability of circular orbits of test particles in
various physically interesting environments. The approach is shown to work in a
revealing way in Schwarzschild spacetime. All relevant conclusions about
circular orbits in the Schwarzschild-de Sitter spacetime are shown to be
remarkably encoded in a single parameter. The analysis in the rotating Kerr
black hole readily exposes information as to how stability depends on the ratio
of source rotation to particle angular momentum. As a wider application, it is
exemplified how the analysis reveals useful information when applied to motion
in a refractive medium, for instance, that of optical black holes.Comment: 20 pages. Accepted for publication in Int. J. theor. Phy
The underscreened Kondo effect: a two S=1 impurity model
The underscreened Kondo effect is studied within a model of two impurities
S=1 interacting with the conduction band and via an interimpurity coupling
. Using a mean-field treatment of the bosonized
Hamiltonian, we show that there is no phase transition, but a continuous
cross-over versus K from a non Kondo behaviour to an underscreened Kondo one.
For a small antiferromagnetic coupling (K>0), a completely asymmetric situation
is obtained with one s= component strongly screened by the Kondo effect
and the other one almost free to yield indirect magnetism, which shows finally
a possible coexistence between a RKKY interaction and a local Kondo effect, as
observed in Uranium compounds such as .Comment: 27 pages, RevTeX, to be published in PR
Geometric interpretation of the Pancharatnam connection and non-cyclic polarization changes
If the state of polarization of a monochromatic light beam is changed in a cyclical manner, the beam acquires-in addition to the usual dynamic phase-a geometric phase. This geometric or Pancharatnam-Berry phase equals half the solid angle of the contour traced out on the Poincaré sphere. We show that such a geometric interpretation also exists for the Pancharatnam connection, the criterion according to which two beams with different polarization states are said to be in phase. This interpretation offers what is to our knowledge a new and intuitive method to calculate the geometric phase that accompanies non-cyclic polarization changes. © 2010 Optical Society of America
Does backreaction enforce the averaged null energy condition in semiclassical gravity?
The expected stress-energy tensor of quantum fields generically
violates the local positive energy conditions of general relativity. However,
may satisfy some nonlocal conditions such as the averaged null energy
condition (ANEC), which would rule out traversable wormholes. Although ANEC
holds in Minkowski spacetime, it can be violated in curved spacetimes if one is
allowed to choose the spacetime and quantum state arbitrarily, without
imposition of the semiclassical Einstein equation G_{ab} = 8 \pi . In
this paper we investigate whether ANEC holds for solutions to this equation, by
studying a free, massless scalar field with arbitrary curvature coupling in
perturbation theory to second order about the flat spacetime/vacuum solution.
We "reduce the order" of the perturbation equations to eliminate spurious
solutions, and consider the limit in which the lengthscales determined by the
incoming state are much larger than the Planck length. We also need to assume
that incoming classical gravitational radiation does not dominate the first
order metric perturbation. We find that although the ANEC integral can be
negative, if we average the ANEC integral transverse to the geodesic with a
suitable Planck scale smearing function, then a strictly positive result is
obtained in all cases except for the flat spacetime/vacuum solution. This
result suggests --- in agreement with conclusions drawn by Ford and Roman from
entirely independent arguments --- that if traversable wormholes do exist as
solutions to the semiclassical equations, they cannot be macroscopic but must
be ``Planck scale''. A large portion of our paper is devoted to the analysis of
general issues concerning the nature of the semiclassical Einstein equation and
of prescriptions for extracting physically relevant solutions.Comment: 54 pages, 3 figures, uses revtex macros and epsf.tex, to appear in
Phys Rev D. A new appendix has been added showing consistency of our results
with recent results of Visser [gr-qc/9604008]. Some corrections were made to
Appendix A, and several other minor changes to the body of the paper also
were mad
Of Some Theoretical Significance: Implications of Casimir Effects
In his autobiography Casimir barely mentioned the Casimir effect, but
remarked that it is "of some theortical significance." We will describe some
aspects of Casimir effects that appear to be of particular significance now,
more than half a century after Casimir's famous paper
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