Combined effects of exercise and different levels of acute hypoxic severity: A randomized crossover study on glucose regulation in adults with overweight

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of manipulating hypoxic severity with low-intensity exercise on glucose regulation in healthy overweight adults.Methods: In a randomized crossover design, 14 males with overweight (age: 27 ± 5 years; body mass index (BMI) 27.1 ± 1.8 kg⋅m2) completed three exercise trials involving 60 min aerobic exercise cycling at 90% lactate threshold in normoxia (NM, FiO2 = 20.9%), moderate hypoxia (MH, FiO2 = 16.5%) and high hypoxia (HH, FiO2 = 14.8%). A post-exercise oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) was performed. Venous blood samples were analyzed for incremental area under the curve (iAUC), plasma glucose and insulin, as well as exerkine concentrations (plasma apelin and fibroblast growth factor 21 [FGF-21]) pre- and post-exercise. A 24-h continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) was used to determine interstitial glucose concentrations. Heart rate, oxygen saturation (SpO2) and perceptual measures were recorded during exercise.Results: Post-exercise OGTT iAUC for plasma glucose and insulin concentrations were lower in MH vs. control (p = 0.02). Post-exercise interstitial glucose iAUC, plasma apelin and FGF-21 were not different between conditions. Heart rate was higher in HH vs. NM and MH, and MH vs. NM (p < 0.001), while SpO2 was lower in HH vs. NM and MH, and MH vs. NM (p < 0.001). Overall perceived discomfort and leg discomfort were higher in HH vs. NM and MH (p < 0.05), while perceived breathing difficulty was higher in HH vs. NM only (p = 0.003).Conclusion: Compared to higher hypoxic conditions, performing acute aerobic-based exercise under moderate hypoxia provided a more effective stimulus for improving post-exercise glucose regulation while concomitantly preventing excessive physiological and perceptual stress in healthy overweight adults

Preliminary Investigation of an Innovative Digital Motion Analysis Device for Badminton Athlete Performance Evaluation

Badminton is a sport that combines several different physical aspects. At a professional level, the sport demands excellent fitness criteria namely the player's aerobic stamina, agility, strength, speed as well as precision. This study fundamentally entails the development of an innovative training system that incorporates technology that could improve the athlete's performance. Although existing motion tracking technology can provide reliable and accurate tracking results, nonetheless, the product cost and complexity keeps them away from being employed in most sports. This investigation involves the comparison between Kinect Technology and inertial measurement unit (IMU). The kinematic movement of the arm from wrist until shoulder was observed in this study for the purpose of investigating the difference between the acceleration of skeleton detected by the Kinect motion tracking and a low-cost IMU. The results obtained were found to be promising, and it is important in enabling pattern recognition of different badminton strokes in the next stage of the study. The movement of the right-hand wrist is tracked by Microsoft Kinect that can track the skeleton of the player whilst the IMU that measures the acceleration is attached at the right-hand wrist. Although the acceleration of the wrist may readily be obtained from the IMU, the acceleration from Kinect may only be obtained through mathematical manipulation. It was found that the accelerations of the upper limb movement from both IMU and Kinect demonstrated good agreement

Digital Analysis of Badminton Athlete Motion

Badminton is a sport that combines several different physical aspect. At a professional level, the sport demands excellent fitness criteria namely the player’s aerobic stamina, agility, strength, speed as well as precision. This study essentially entails the development of an innovative training system that incorporates technology that could improve the athlete’s performance. This system uses a combination of two Kinect, and relevant sensors that are required to capture necessary parameters for badminton analysis such as the motion detection, as well as the acceleration of the player. The training system can be used by the coach and/or biomechanics to analyse the performance of the athletes. The motion detection of the athlete is captured by means of Kinect skeleton tracking algorithm that tracks up to 20 joints of the body including their x-axis, y-axis and z-axis coordinates. An external device (a miniaturised Bluetooth, 6 DoF accelerometer and microprocessor) attached at the rear of the racquet’s handle is used to measure the motion of the racquet. The data is transferred via Bluetooth to an Android-based tablet device. The skeleton coordinates obtained from the tracking algorithm are in good agreement with the measurement taken from Kinect. In addition, the acceleration results achieved from the device attached to the racquet shows promising results, which enables pattern recognition of different strokes in badminton. The miniaturised device, as well as Kinect, have demonstrated its efficacy in measuring the necessary parameters in analysing the performance of badminton players

Influence of bonus and creative rewards on creative outputs and creative risks

Creativity has been identified by many as the key to successful strategy formulation and implementation. To some firms, this can mean gaining a competitive advantage, to others,this might be the crucial tool for survival. This study examines the impact that goal-attainment bonus schemes and rewards for creative actions have on the willingness of an average managerial employee to take risks, explore possibilities and respond to hunches thus generating creative outcomes

The impact of online consumer review to online hotel booking intention in Malaysia

Travellers today tend to believe more on peer reviews in selecting tourism products and services instead of information provided by the businesses. With the rise of communication technologies such as Web 2.0, there is pool of opinions on hotels, tourism destinations, and even travel services that are expressed from the perspective of consumer consumption in the internet. As online review becomes an important source for travellers to evaluate the quality of hospitality services, only hoteliers that take advantage of online review are able to attract the attention of travellers that utilize the digital channel for information searching. The increment of hotels and rooms in Malaysia has somehow exceed the increment of tourist arrivals in the recent years. Hoteliers are worried that the supply would go beyond the demand in the future with the continuous growth of hotels but average occupancy rate remains at 62 to 63 percent. Thus, this study aims to examine the causal relationship between the attributes of the online consumer reviews and the online hotel booking intention specifically in Malaysia context. 200 survey responses were collected from local travellers that have at least once booked hotel through online method. The results show that usefulness (t = 3.478, p < 0.01), valence (t = 2.462, p < 0.05), and timeliness (t = 2.145, p < 0.05) of the online consumer review significantly affect the online hotel booking intention in Malaysia. This findings provide an insight to hoteliers on how to manage and improve the online consumer reviews that are accessible

The Impact of Online Consumer Review to Online Hotel Booking Intention in Malaysia

Travellers today tend to believe more on peer reviews in selecting tourism products and services instead of information provided by the businesses. With the rise of communication technologies such as Web 2.0, there is pool of opinions on hotels, tourism destinations, and even travel services that are expressed from the perspective of consumer consumption in the internet. As online review becomes an important source for travellers to evaluate the quality of hospitality services, only hoteliers that take advantage of online review are able to attract the attention of travellers that utilize the digital channel for information searching. The increment of hotels and rooms in Malaysia has somehow exceed the increment of tourist arrivals in the recent years. Hoteliers are worried that the supply would go beyond the demand in the future with the continuous growth of hotels but average occupancy rate remains at 62 to 63 percent. Thus, this study aims to examine the causal relationship between the attributes of the online consumer reviews and the online hotel booking intention specifically in Malaysia context. 200 survey responses were collected from local travellers that have at least once booked hotel through online method. The results show that usefulness (t = 3.478, p 0.01), valence (t = 2.462, p 0.05), and timeliness (t = 2.145, p 0.05) of the online consumer review significantly affect the online hotel booking intention in Malaysia. This findings provide an insight to hoteliers on how to manage and improve the online consumer reviews that are accessible