Is tDCS an Adjunct Ergogenic Resource for Improving Muscular Strength and Endurance Performance? A Systematic Review

Exercise performance is influenced by many physical factors, such as muscle strength and endurance. Particularly in the physical fitness and sports performance contexts, there are many types of ergogenic aids to improve muscular strength and endurance performance, with non-athletes and even athletes using illegal drugs to reach the top. Thus, the development of innovative methods to aid in exercise performance is of great interest. One such method is transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). A systematic search was performed on the following databases, until January 2019; PubMed/MEDLINE, SCOPUS, and Pedro database. Studies on tDCS for muscular strength and endurance performance improvement in non-athletes and athletes adults were included. We compared the effect of anodal-tDCS (a-tDCS) to a sham/control condition on the outcomes muscular strength and endurance performance. We found 26 controlled trials. No trial mentions negative side effects of the intervention. The data show differences between the studies investigating muscle strength and the studies evaluating endurance, with regard to successful use of tDCS. Studies investigating the efficiency of tDCS on improving muscular strength demonstrate positive effects of a-tDCS in 66.7% of parameters tested. In contrast, in studies evaluating the effects of a-tDCS on improving endurance performance the a-tDCS revealed a significant improvement in only 50% of parameters assessed. The majority of the data shows consistently influence of a-tDCS on muscular strength, but not to endurance performance. The results of this systematic review suggest that a-tDCS can improve muscular strength, but not to endurance performance

Compiler and Runtime Optimizations for Fine-Grained Distributed Shared Memory Systems

Bal, H.E. [Promotor

Reparallelization and Migration of OpenMP Programs

Typical computational grid users target only a single cluster and have to estimate the runtime of their jobs. Job schedulers prefer short-running jobs to maintain a high system utilization. If the user underestimates the runtime, premature termination causes computation loss; overesti-mation is penalized by long queue times. As a solution, we present an automatic reparallelization and migration of OpenMP applications. A reparallelization is dynamically computed for an OpenMP work distribution when the num-ber of CPUs changes. The application can be migrated between clusters when an allocated time slice is exceeded. Migration is based on a coordinated, heterogeneous check-pointing algorithm. Both reparallelization and migration enable the user to freely use computing time at more than a single point of the grid. Our demo applications successfully adapt to the changed CPU setting and smoothly migrate between, for example, clusters in Erlangen, Germany, and Amsterdam, the Netherlands, that use different processors. Benchmarks show that reparallelization and migration im-pose average overheads of about 4 % and 2%. 1

Aquatic therapy in stroke rehabilitation: systematic review and meta-analysis

The main object of this systematic review and meta‐analysis is to collect the available evidence of aquatic therapy in stroke rehabilitation and to investigate the effect of this intervention in supporting stroke recovery. The PubMed, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials and the PEDro databases were searched from their inception through to 31/05/2020 on randomized controlled trials evaluating the effect of aquatic therapy on stroke recovery. Subjects´ characteristics, methodological aspects, intervention description, and outcomes were extracted. Effect sizes were calculated for each study and outcome. Overall, 28 appropriate studies (N = 961) have been identified. A comparison with no intervention indicates that aquatic therapy is effective in supporting walking, balance, emotional status and health‐related quality of life, spasticity, and physiological indicators. In comparison with land‐based interventions, aquatic therapy shows superior effectiveness on balance, walking, muscular strength, proprioception, health‐related quality of life, physiological indicators, and cardiorespiratory fitness. Only on independence in activities of daily living the land‐ and water‐based exercise induce similar effects. Established concepts of water‐based therapy (such as the Halliwick, Ai Chi, Watsu, or Bad Ragaz Ring methods) are the most effective, aquatic treadmill walking is the least effective. The current evidence is insufficient to support this therapy form within evidence‐based rehabilitation. However, the available data indicate that this therapy can significantly improve a wide range of stroke‐induced disabilities. Future research should devote more attention to this highly potent intervention

Low‐latency Java communication devices on RDMA‐enabled networks

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Expósito, R. R., Taboada, G. L., Ramos, S., Touriño, J., & Doallo, R. (2015). Low‐latency Java communication devices on RDMA‐enabled networks. Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience, 27(17), 4852-4879., which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/cpe.3473. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.[Abstract] Providing high‐performance inter‐node communication is a key capability for running high performance computing applications efficiently on parallel architectures. In fact, current systems deployments are aggregating a significant number of cores interconnected via advanced networking hardware with Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) mechanisms, that enable zero‐copy and kernel‐bypass features. The use of Java for parallel programming is becoming more promising thanks to some useful characteristics of this language, particularly its built‐in multithreading support, portability, easy‐to‐learn properties, and high productivity, along with the continuous increase in the performance of the Java virtual machine. However, current parallel Java applications generally suffer from inefficient communication middleware, mainly based on protocols with high communication overhead that do not take full advantage of RDMA‐enabled networks. This paper presents efficient low‐level Java communication devices that overcome these constraints by fully exploiting the underlying RDMA hardware, providing low‐latency and high‐bandwidth communications for parallel Java applications. The performance evaluation conducted on representative RDMA networks and parallel systems has shown significant point‐to‐point performance increases compared with previous Java communication middleware, allowing to obtain up to 40% improvement in application‐level performance on 4096 cores of a Cray XE6 supercomputer.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; TIN2013-42148-PXunta de Galicia; GRC2013/055Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia; AP2010-434

The distributed ASCI supercomputer project

The Distributed ASCI Supercomputer (DAS) is a homogeneous wide-area distributed system consisting of four cluster computers at different locations. DAS has been used for research on communication software, parallel languages and programming systems, schedulers, parallel applications, and distributed applications. The paper gives a preview of the most interesting research results obtained so far in the DAS project

The level of special force in swimming and triathlon

Veldema J. The level of special force in swimming and triathlon . Thesis; 1999

Verbesserte Effizienz, Flexibilität, und Korrektheit von DSM Systeme

A collection of research topics that together help improve distributed shared memory systems. Contents: Java/OpenMP as a language for cluster and grid computing. The Tapir language as a functional/parallel language to allow both model-checking and parallel-execution for DSM middlewares and general applications.Eine Sammlung von Forschungsberichte die zusammen die Effizienz und Nutzbarkeit von verteilte-gemeinsamen Speicher Systeme (DSM) verbessern. Inhalt: Java/OpenMP wird vorgeschlagen als eine Sprache für Grid/Clustercomputing. Die Tapir Sprache wird daneben vorgestellt (eine Funktionale und Parallele Sprache) womit man Laufzeitsysteme und Anwendungen programmieren kann

Resistance training in stroke rehabilitation: systematic review and meta-analysis

Veldema J, Jansen P. Resistance training in stroke rehabilitation: systematic review and meta-analysis. Clinical Rehabilitation. 2020;34(9):1173-1197.**Objective:** This systematic review and meta-analysis investigates the effects of resistance training in supporting the recovery in stroke patients. **Data sources:** PubMed, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials and the PEDro databases were reviewed up to 30 April 2020. **Review methods:** Randomized controlled trials were included, who compared: (i) resistance training with no intervention, (ii) resistance training with other interventions and (iii) different resistance training protocols in stroke rehabilitation. **Results:** Overall 30 trials ( n = 1051) were enrolled. The parameters evaluated were: (1) gait, (2) muscular force and motor function, (3) mobility, balance and postural control, (4) health related quality of life, independence and reintegration, (5) spasticity and hypertonia, (6) cardiorespiratory fitness, (7) cognitive abilities and emotional state and (8) other health-relevant physiological indicators. The data indicates that: (i) resistance training is beneficial for the majority of parameters observed, (ii) resistance training is superior to other therapies on muscular force and motor function of lower and upper limbs, health related quality of life, independence and reintegration and other health-relevant physiological indicators, not significantly different from other therapies on walking ability, mobility balance and postural control and spasticity and hypertonia, and inferior to ergometer training on cardiorespiratory fitness and (iii) the type of resistance training protocol significantly impacts its effect; leg press is more efficient than knee extension and high intensity training is superior than low intensity training. **Conclusion:** Current data indicates that resistance training may be beneficial in supporting the recovery of stroke patients. However, the current evidence is insufficient for evidence-based rehabilitation