An examination of training on the VertiMax Resisted Jumping Device for improvements in lower body power in highly trained college athletes

Training to develop superior muscular power has become a key component to most progressive sport conditioning programs. Conventional resistance training, plyometrics, and speed/agility modalities have all been employed in an effort to realize superlative combinations of training stimuli. New training devices such as the VertiMax resisted jump trainer are marketed as a means of improving lower body reactive power. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the VertiMax, in combination with traditional training modalities, for improvements in lower body power among highly trained athletes. Forty men and women Division I collegiate athletes representing the sports of baseball, basketball, soccer, gymnastics, and track completed a 12-week mixed-methods training program. Two groups were constructed with both groups performing the same conventional resistance training and strength training exercises. The training control group performed traditional plyometric exercises while the experimental group performed similar loaded jump training on the VertiMax. Lower body power was measured before and after the training program by the TENDO FiTROdyne Powerlizer and statistically compared for differences between groups. Data analyses identified a significant (p < 0.05) and meaningful difference between power development among the 2 groups, with the VertiMax eliciting a greater treatment effect (effect size = 0.54) over conventional resistance and plyometric training alone (effect size = 0.09). These data convincingly demonstrate that the VertiMax represents an effective strategy for developing lower body power among trained college athletes, when combined with traditional strength and conditioning approaches

El impacto de la tenacidad en el rendimiento académico en la educación superior

El rendimiento académico ocupa un lugar sumamente importante a nivel internacional debido a las elevadas tasas de abandono y fracaso escolar. En este sentido, la tenacidad se encuentra estrechamente relacionada con el rendimiento académico, es por lo que el objetivo de este estudio fue explorar la relación entre la tenacidad y el rendimiento académico en 576 estudiantes de la Universidad de Granada. Para ello, se realizó la prueba H de Kruskal-Wallis para muestras independientes y la prueba U de Mann Whitney para dos muestras independientes para identificar la presencia de diferencias en tenacidad en función de edad, sexo, titulación y curso, y rendimiento académico en función de la tenacidad y el análisis de correlación de Spearman entre las variables del estudio. Los resultados revelaron diferencias estadísticamente significativas en perseverancia en el esfuerzo en función de la titulación, así como en perseverancia en el esfuerzo y tenacidad en función del sexo. Asimismo, se encontraron diferencias estadísticamente significativas en el rendimiento académico de los participantes en función de su nivel de tenacidad, con una tendencia a presentar un mayor rendimiento académico el alumnado universitario con mayor nivel de tenacidad. Estos resultados suponen un avance en lo que respecta a los estudios relacionados con la tenacidad en el contexto español, pues parece que esta habilidad no cognitiva tiene incidencia en el rendimiento académico del alumnado de universitario, con las implicaciones que ello conlleva

Improving speech intelligibility in hearing aids. Part II: Quality assessment

[EN] Subjective tests are the most reliable methods for quantifying the perceived speech intelligibility, but the process to perform these tests usually is time consuming and cost expensive. For this reason, different objective measures have been proposed in the literature to evaluate the intelligibility and/or quality of speech in such a way that cooperation of human listeners is not necessary. In this paper, we describe a wide range of subjective tests reported in the literature, focusing on those proposed to evaluate speech intelligibility of Spanish language, not only for normal hearing listeners, but for hearing impaired as well. Afterwards we summarize the most common objective measures of speech quality, and finally we perform a comparison between them and some subjective speech intelligibility tests. In the subjective tests, clean Spanish speech material has been contaminated with different real background noises: cafeteria and outside traffic noise. Results show that Short-Time Objective Intelligibility (STOI) and Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality (PESQ) indices present a better correlation and a lower mean square error when predicting intelligibility compared to other objective measures tested.This work has been supported by European Union ERDF and Spanish Government through TEC2012-38142-C04 project, and Generalitat Valenciana through PROMETEOII/2014/003 project. Participation of author A. Padilla has been supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from Conacyt (Mexico). The authors wish to acknowledge Prof. Felipe Orduña for his insightful comments that contributed to improve the manuscript, and to everyone who participated in the listening tests.Padilla, A.; Piñero Sipán, MG.; Diego Antón, MD.; Ferrer Contreras, M.; González Téllez, A.; Ayllón, D.; Gil Pita, R.... (2014). Improving speech intelligibility in hearing aids. Part II: Quality assessment. Waves. 6:73-85. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/57900S7385

Improving speech intelligibility in hearing aids. Part I: Signal processing algorithms

[EN] The improvement of speech intelligibility in hearing aids is a traditional problem that still remains open and unsolved. Modern devices may include signal processing algorithms to improve intelligibility: automatic gain control, automatic environmental classification or speech enhancement. However, the design of such algorithms is strongly restricted by some engineering constraints caused by the reduced dimensions of hearing aid devices. In this paper, we discuss the application of state-of-theart signal processing algorithms to improve speech intelligibility in digital hearing aids, with particular emphasis on speech enhancement algorithms. Different alternatives for both monaural and binaural speech enhancement have been considered, arguing whether they are suitable to be implemented in a commercial hearing aid or not.This work has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, under project TEC2012-38142-C04-02.Ayllón, D.; Gil Pita, R.; Rosa Zurera, M.; Padilla, L.; Piñero Sipán, MG.; Diego Antón, MD.; Ferrer Contreras, M.... (2014). Improving speech intelligibility in hearing aids. Part I: Signal processing algorithms. Waves. 6:61-71. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/57901S6171

Factores de riesgo para la presentación de bacteriuria en gatos con enfermedad del tracto urinario inferior: un análisis retrospectivo de 102 casos (2008 – 2015)

The aim of this retrospective study was to describe the results of bacterial isolates and to determine the risk factors involved in the presentation of bacteriuria in cats with lower urinary tract disease (FLUTD). Clinical records of feline patients (n=102) who underwent urinalysis and urine culture were collected. The following variables were considered: age, sex, reproductive status, breed, bodyweight, season, colour of urine, urine odour, urine density, pH, glucose, proteins, blood, leukocytes, erythrocytes, crystals and type of crystals. In 60.8% (62/102) of the samples, bacteria were isolated in urine, including E. coli 40.3% (25/62), Klebsiella sp 12.9% (8/62), Staphylococcus sp 12.9% (8 / 62), Proteus sp 8.1% (5/62), Enterobacter sp 8.1% (5/62) and Staphylococcus epidermidis 6.4% (4/62). Age, urinary density and presence of blood were statistically significant. In addition, it was determined that the urine density, the red colour of the urine, the presence of leukocytes and crystals represent risk factors (p &lt;0.05) for the occurrence of bacteriuria.El objetivo de este estudio retrospectivo fue describir los resultados de aislados bacterianos y determinar los factores de riesgo involucrados en la presentación de bacteriuria en gatos con enfermedad del tracto urinario inferior (FLUTD). Se recolectaron 102 historias clínicas de pacientes felinos a los cuales se les realizó análisis de orina y urocultivo. Se consideraron las variables edad, sexo, estado reproductivo, raza, peso, estación del año, color de orina, olor de orina, densidad urinaria, pH, glucosa, proteínas, sangre, leucocitos, eritrocitos, cristales y tipo de cristales. En el 60.8% (62/102) de las muestras se llegó a aislar bacterias en orina, entre ellas E. coli 40.3% (25/62), Klebsiella sp 12.9% (8/62), Staphylococcus sp 12.9% (8/62), Proteus sp 8.1% (5/62), Enterobacter sp 8.1% (5/62) y Staphylococcus epidermidis 6.4% (4/62). La edad, densidad urinaria y presencia de sangre fue estadísticamente significativa. Además, se determinó que, la densidad urinaria, el color rojo de la orina, la presencia de leucocitos y de cristales representan factores de riesgo (p&lt;0.05) para la ocurrencia de bacteriuria

Design and simulation of an imaging neutral particle analyzer for the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak

An Imaging Neutral Particle Analyzer (INPA) diagnostic has been designed for the ASDEX Upgrade (AUG) tokamak. The AUG INPA diagnostic will measure fast neutrals escaping the plasma after charge exchange reactions. The neutrals will be ionized by a 20 nm carbon foil and deflected toward a scintillator by the local magnetic field. The use of a neutral beam injector (NBI) as an active source of neutrals will provide radially resolved measurements, while the use of a scintillator as an active component will allow us to cover the whole plasma along the NBI line with unprecedented phase-space resolution (<12 keV and 8 cm) and a fast temporal response (up to 1 kHz with the high resolution acquisition system and above 100 kHz with the low resolution one), making it suitable to study localized fast-ion redistributions in phase space.European Union’s Horizon 2020 (Grant Agreement No. 805162)Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (Grant No. FPU19/02486

The ODD protocol for describing agent-based and other simulation models: A second update to improve clarity, replication, and structural realism

© 2020, University of Surrey. All rights reserved. The Overview, Design concepts and Details (ODD) protocol for describing Individual-and Agent-Based Models (ABMs) is now widely accepted and used to document such models in journal articles. As a standardized document for providing a consistent, logical and readable account of the structure and dynamics of ABMs, some research groups also find it useful as a workflow for model design. Even so, there are still limitations to ODD that obstruct its more widespread adoption. Such limitations are discussed and addressed in this paper: the limited availability of guidance on how to use ODD; the length of ODD documents; limitations of ODD for highly complex models; lack of sufficient details of many ODDs to enable reimplementation without access to the model code; and the lack of provision for sections in the document structure covering model design ratio-nale, the model’s underlying narrative, and the means by which the model’s fitness for purpose is evaluated. We document the steps we have taken to provide better guidance on: structuring complex ODDs and an ODD summary for inclusion in a journal article (with full details in supplementary material; Table 1); using ODD to point readers to relevant sections of the model code; update the document structure to include sections on model rationale and evaluation. We also further advocate the need for standard descriptions of simulation experiments and argue that ODD can in principle be used for any type of simulation model. Thereby ODD would provide a lingua franca for simulation modelling

Magnetic equilibrium design for the SMART tokamak

The SMall Aspect Ratio Tokamak (SMART) device is a new compact (plasma major radius R≥0.40 m, minor radius a≥0.20 m, aspect ratio A≥1.7) spherical tokamak, currently in development at the University of Seville. The SMART device has been designed to achieve a magnetic field at the plasma center of up to B=1.0 T with plasma currents up to I=500 kA and a pulse length up to τ=500 ms. A wide range of plasma shaping configurations are envisaged, including triangularities between −0.50≤δ≤0.50 and elongations of κ≤2.25. Control of plasma shaping is achieved through four axially variable poloidal field coils (PF), and four fixed divertor (Div) coils, nominally allowing operation in lower-single null, upper-single null and double-null configurations. This work examines phase 2 of the SMART device, presenting a baseline reference equilibrium and two highly-shaped triangular equilibria. The relevant PF and Div coil current waveforms are also presented. Equilibria are obtained via an axisymmetric Grad-Shafranov force balance solver (Fiesta), in combination with a circuit equation rigid current displacement model (RZIp) to obtain time-resolved vessel and plasma currents.The authors would like to thank the VEST team for their technical and engineering support. This work received funding from the Fondo Europeo de Desarollo Regional (FEDER) by the European Commission under grant agreement numbers IE17-5670 and US-15570. In addition support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 805162) is gratefully acknowledged

Mechanical and electromagnetic design of the vacuum vessel of the SMART tokamak

The SMall Aspect Ratio Tokamak (SMART) is a new spherical device that is currently being designed at the University of Seville. SMART is a compact machine with a plasma major radius (R) greater than 0.4 m, plasma minor radius (a) greater than 0.2 m, an aspect ratio (A) over than 1.7 and an elongation (k) of more than 2. It will be equipped with 4 poloidal field coils, 4 divertor field coils, 12 toroidal field coils and a central solenoid. The heating system comprises of a Neutral Beam Injector (NBI) of 600 kW and an Electron Cyclotron Resonance Heating (ECRH) of 6 kW for pre-ionization. SMART has been designed for a plasma current (I) of 500 kA, a toroidal magnetic field (B) of 1 T and a pulse length of 500 ms preserving the compactness of the machine. The free boundary equilibrium solver code FIESTA [1] coupled to the linear time independent, rigid plasma model RZIP [2] has been used to calculate the target equilibria taking into account the physics goals, the required plasma parameters, vacuum vessel structures and power supply requirements. We present here the final design of the SMART vacuum vessel together with the Finite Element Model (FEM) analysis carried out to ensure that the tokamak vessel provides high quality vacuum and plasma performance withstanding the electromagnetic j×B loads caused by the interaction between the eddy currents induced in the vessel itself and the surrounding magnetic fields. A parametric model has been set up for the topological optimization of the vessel where the thickness of the wall has been locally adapted to the expected forces. An overview of the new machine is presented here.This work received funding from the Fondo Europeo de Desarollo Regional (FEDER) by the European Commission under grant agreement numbers IE17-5670 and US-15570. This work has been carried out within the framework of the EUROfusion Consortium and has received funding from the Euratom research and training programme 2014-2018 and 2019-2020 under grant agreement No 633053. The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the European Commission