The Effects of Various Lumbar/Sacral Back Support Systems Upon Human Peak Muscular Force, Total Work, and Average Power

The purpose of the present investigation was to study the effects of two lumbar/sacral back supports upon peak muscular force, total work, and average power. Subjects consisted of ten well conditioned male volunteers with an age range of 21-35 years. Each subject volunteered individually to participate and was required to read and sign an inform consent form prior to participating in the investigation. The investigative design was quasi-experimental with a repeated measures (treatment-by-subjects) methodology. Each subject experienced three testing treatments to include each lumbar/sacral support and one without. The testing protocol consisted of three isokinetic back testing devices developed by Cybex, Incorporated. The performance tasks consisted of the Cybex Trunk/Extension (TEF), Trunk Rotation (TR) and Lifttask (LT) testing systems. A total of nine treatments were given for each of the ten subjects for a total of ninety treatments. The resultant data were subjected to analyses of variance (ANOVA) with repeated measures. A post-hoc Scheffe test was incorporated in the event a significant Fratio was demonstrated. Omega Squared values followed to determine the effect level of the treatments upon the selected work performance variables. Results indicated that there were no statistically significant effects existing for peak force, total work, or average power with the two lumbar/sacral back supports recorded during the following measures: Lifttask sequences of 24, 30, 36 inches per second; trunk extension at 30, 60, 90, and 120 degrees per second; right trunk rotation at 60, 90, 120 and 150 degrees per second; peak torque for left trunk rotation at 90 and 120 degrees per second; total work and average power for left trunk rotation at 60, 90, 120, and 150 degrees per second; and trunk flexion of average power at 60, 90 and 120 degrees per second. Significance did exist for trunk flexion of peak torque at 30 degrees per second (p Changes in simulated lifting tasks relative to certain trunk flexion and left trunk rotation movements were determined to be significantly different. Scheffe\u27s test for variable mean differences determined the experimental brace to be significantly different from the CompVest and/or controlled conditions in a majority of the various significant experimental observations. Omega Squared values were noted to be high for all significant and marginally significant performance tasks. It was concluded that the experimental brace employed in the present investigation was statistically different from the CompVest and controlled conditions during specific trunk flexion and left trunk rotation movements and may hold certain implications as an appropriate low back support

Enhancing the Strategic Management Process Through the Use of Professional Evaluation Methods and the Logic of Evaluation

Background: The evaluation discipline has the potential to enhance other disciplines by integrating evaluation specific methodologies and logic into processes within other disciplines and improving/strengthening the manner in which evaluation of processes, programs and policies are carried out. Purpose: This paper will highlight the evaluative nature of one of the most popular strategic management models (SMM) in corporate America, namely, Fred David’s (2013) SMM, and examine how professional evaluation logic and methodology can be used to improve David's SMM. Setting: NA Intervention: NA Research Design: The paper will make a comparative analysis between Michael Scriven's Key Evaluation Checklist (KEC) and David's SMM and highlight similarities and differences between the two models. Data Collection and Analysis: NA Findings: The paper will conclude by providing several suggestions to enhance and strengthen David's SMM to make it more robust, valuable, and useful in the business environment

Quantum Dot Ensembles as an Optical Quantum Memory

In this Ph.D. Thesis we investigate the viability of using quantum dot ensembles as a quantum memory architecture through the use numerical simulations to study population transfer within quantum dots. This is followed by an investigation into the effects of high order wavemixing on the population transfer within two level systems, which was born from effects noted while simulating quantum dots. We study the initialisation of an ensemble of inhomogeneously broadened quantum dots, introducing a novel initialisation method utilising pump field with a slow frequency sweep. We focus on the properties of such an initialisation procedure and conclude that the maximum initialisation fidelities are determined entirely by the Zeeman splittings and decay rates of the quantum dots. We study several possibilities for performing π rotations on the population of an ensemble of quantum dots, and show the RCAP protocol is the most applicable. We study this protocol in the context of quantum dots and give the optimal parameters to use to generate high fidelity π pulses. We then bring together our work on quantum dots population transfer with the work of others covering the write and read procedures on quantum dots to provide a feasibility analysis of the complete quantum memory protocol. The work on wavemixing presented in this thesis uses a novel approach to analyse wavemixing effects which is used to predict the population transferred in two level simulations of wavemixing processes. We provide simulation confirmation of our approach to analyse wavemixing effects and then go on to calculate the disruptive effects of wavemixing caused by high intensity lasers on some simple systems. Finally we show that large orders of wavemixing can, at least in principle, be used for coherent population transfer

Hybrid governance and the attribution of political responsibility: experimental evidence from the United States

How does the mode of public service delivery affect the attribution of responsibility for public goods? Through a survey experiment on a sample of more than 1,000 Americans, we provide evidence of how the allocation of public goods shapes voters' support for incumbent politicians. We find that voters prefer a mixture of public-private financing and management when it comes to the delivery of infrastructure. However, once performance information is available, the mode of infrastructure delivery no longer influences their voting intention. The successful delivery of these infrastructure projects is what ultimately matters to voters. Moreover, this preference for a mixture of public and private involvement in public service delivery is stronger among citizens with high political knowledge, who are more likely to punish the incumbent for a failed first phase of the public service delivery. These findings deepen our understanding of how hybrid forms of public service delivery are perceived by voters and how performance information affects evaluations of the performance of public services and politicians alike

Lagrangian Distributions and Connections in Symplectic Geometry

We discuss the interplay between lagrangian distributions and connections in symplectic geometry, beginning with the traditional case of symplectic manifolds and then passing to the more general context of poly- and multisymplectic structures on fiber bundles, which is relevant for the covariant hamiltonian formulation of classical field theory. In particular, we generalize Weinstein's tubular neighborhood theorem for symplectic manifolds carrying a (simple) lagrangian foliation to this situation. In all cases, the Bott connection, or an appropriately extended version thereof, plays a central role.Comment: 42 page

Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) Rollover Collisions: An Analysis of NASS - CDS Injury Data for 1998 through 2004

Copyright © 2007 SAE International Rollover collisions are very complex and the subject of significant interest. Roll-over collisions involving Sport Utility Vehicles (SUV) are of particular interest due to their high center of gravity (increased propensity for rollover) and recent surge in popularity. The following research examines SUV rollover collisions documented in the National Automotive Sampling System (NASS) Crashworthiness Data System (CDS) fo

qTeller: a tool for comparative multi-genomic gene expression analysis

Motivation: Over the last decade, RNA-Seq whole-genome sequencing has become a widely used method for measuring and understanding transcriptome-level changes in gene expression. Since RNA-Seq is relatively inexpensive, it can be used on multiple genomes to evaluate gene expression across many different conditions, tissues and cell types. Although many tools exist to map and compare RNA-Seq at the genomics level, few web-based tools are dedicated to making data generated for individual genomic analysis accessible and reusable at a gene-level scale for comparative analysis between genes, across different genomes and meta-analyses. Results: To address this challenge, we revamped the comparative gene expression tool qTeller to take advantage of the growing number of public RNA-Seq datasets. qTeller allows users to evaluate gene expression data in a defined genomic interval and also perform two-gene comparisons across multiple user-chosen tissues. Though previously unpublished, qTeller has been cited extensively in the scientific literature, demonstrating its importance to researchers. Our new version of qTeller now supports multiple genomes for intergenomic comparisons, and includes capabilities for both mRNA and protein abundance datasets. Other new features include support for additional data formats, modernized interface and back-end database and an optimized framework for adoption by other organisms’ databases. Availability and implementation: The source code for qTeller is open-source and available through GitHub (https:// github.com/Maize-Genetics-and-Genomics-Database/qTeller). A maize instance of qTeller is available at the Maize Genetics and Genomics database (MaizeGDB) (https://qteller.maizegdb.org/), where we have mapped over 200 unique datasets from GenBank across 27 maize genomes

Bergman Kernel from Path Integral

We rederive the expansion of the Bergman kernel on Kahler manifolds developed by Tian, Yau, Zelditch, Lu and Catlin, using path integral and perturbation theory, and generalize it to supersymmetric quantum mechanics. One physics interpretation of this result is as an expansion of the projector of wave functions on the lowest Landau level, in the special case that the magnetic field is proportional to the Kahler form. This is relevant for the quantum Hall effect in curved space, and for its higher dimensional generalizations. Other applications include the theory of coherent states, the study of balanced metrics, noncommutative field theory, and a conjecture on metrics in black hole backgrounds. We give a short overview of these various topics. From a conceptual point of view, this expansion is noteworthy as it is a geometric expansion, somewhat similar to the DeWitt-Seeley-Gilkey et al short time expansion for the heat kernel, but in this case describing the long time limit, without depending on supersymmetry.Comment: 27 page

Photochemical mechanism of an atypical algal phytochrome

International audiencePhytochromes are bilin-containing photoreceptors that are typically sensitive to the red/far-red region of the visible spectrum. Recently, phytochromes from certain eukaryotic algae have become attractive targets for optogenetic applications because of their unique ability to respond to multiple wavelengths of light. Herein, a combination of time-resolved spectroscopy and structural approaches across picosecond to second timescales have been used to map photochemical mechanisms and structural changes in this atypical group of phytochromes. The photochemistry of an orange/far-red light-sensitive algal phytochrome from Dolihomastix tenuilepis has been investigated by using a combination of visible, IR and X-ray scattering probes. The entire photocycle, correlated with accompanying structural changes in the cofactor/protein, are reported. This study identifies a complex photocycle for this atypical phytochrome. It also highlights a need to combine outcomes from a range of biophysical approaches to unravel complex photochemical and macromolecular processes in multi-domain photoreceptor proteins that are the basis of biological light-mediated signalling