The Effectiveness of Teaching the Novice the Soccer Instep Kicking Technique as Compared to Teaching the Traditional Techniques of Kicking the Extra Point in Football

The purpose of this investigation was to compare the soccer “instep kick” technique and the “traditional” kick technique used in place-kicking to determine whether one method is more efficient and the more effective to teach to subjects with no previous kicking experience than the other. The following procedure was employed in this investigation. Twenty subjects were chosen at random form the required freshmen physical education classes at South Dakota State University. Two experimental groups were determined and equated from the results of the Sargent Jump Test. The groups were determined randomly to be Group A (Instep Kick) and Group B (Traditional) kicking groups. The subjects in both groups practiced their techniques for a period of twenty-four days. Each subject completed 700 practice kicks. At the end of each kicking session the subjects kicked five kicks for score. The kicks for score were used to chart a learning curve. At the end of the twenty-four day kicking period the subjects were tested over a two-day period. The subjects kicked fifteen kicks for score on each of these two days. Statistical procedures were applied to the data. As a result of the findings obtained during this investigation, the following conclusions appear warranted: Either technique of place-kicking could be taught successfully to football players. In the investigator’s opinion the “instep kick” was mastered more quickly than the “traditional” kick. There was no statistical significant difference between the improvements of the two groups

2.0 å structure of indole-3-glycerol phosphate synthase from the hyperthermophile Sulfolobus solfataricus: possible determinants of protein stability

AbstractBackground: Recent efforts to understand the basis of protein stability have focussed attention on comparative studies of proteins from hyperthermophilic and mesophilic organisms. Most work to date has been on either oligomeric enzymes or monomers comprising more than one domain. Such studies are hampered by the need to distinguish between stabilizing interactions acting between subunits or domains from those acting within domains. In order to simplify the search for determinants of protein stability we have chosen to study the monomeric enzyme indole-3-glycerol phosphate synthase from the hyperthermophilic archaeon Sulfolobus solfataricus (sIGPS), which grows optimally at 90°C.Results The 2.0 å crystal structure of sIGPS was determined and compared with the known 2.0 å structure of the IGPS domain of the bifunctional enzyme from the mesophilic bacterium Escherichia coli (eIGPS). sIGPS and eIGPS have only 30% sequence identity, but share high structural similarity. Both are single-domain (β/α)8 barrel proteins, with one (eIGPS) or two (sIGPS) additional helices inserted before the first β strand. The thermostable sIGPS has many more salt bridges than eIGPS. Several salt bridges crosslink adjacent α helices or participate in triple or quadruple salt-bridge clusters. The number of helix capping, dipole stabilizing and hydrophobic interactions is also increased in sIGPS.Conclusion The higher stability of sIGPS compared with eIGPS seems to be the result of several improved interactions. These include a larger number of salt bridges, stabilization of α helices and strengthening of both polypeptide chain termini and solvent-exposed loops

Synthetic fluid inclusions in natural quartz. IV. Chemical analyses of fluid inclusions by SEM/EDA: Evaluation of method

The compositions of individual synthetic fluid inclusions in the systems NaCl-KCl, NaCl-CaCl2 and NaCl-KCl-CaCl2 have been semi-quantitatively determined by energy dispersive analysis of precipitates produced during thermal decrepitation. Inclusions containing known mixtures of 20 wt.% total salinity were synthesized by healing fractures in natural quartz at 600-700[deg]C and 5-7 kbars for 7-10 days. The two-phase, daughter-free inclusions homogenized at 170-250[deg]C, began to decrepitate after about 100[deg] of overheating and by 360-420[deg]C a significant number of decrepitates had formed on the polished surface. Peak heights generated by EDA (raster mode) of these decrepitates were standardized using both single and mixed salt standards evaporated to dryness in a vacuum. Although the mixed salt standards better approximated the decrepitate compositions, difficulties were encountered in producing micronscale homogeneity and the single salts yielded more reliable results.Eight different solutions of 20-23 wt.% total salinity were run and in all the samples the average compositions of 10-20 discrete, single inclusion decrepitates fell with 6 wt.% (0.2 to 5.2) of the actual composition, suggesting that the decrepitates were chemically representative of their precursor inclusions. However, not all decrepitates analyzed provided similarly accurate results. Electron mapping revealed that fracture-aligned decrepitates were often chemically inhomogeneous and thus had to be avoided. A sample decrepitated at 500[deg]C yielded spurious results suggesting that chloride volatility may become a significant problem when temperatures in excess of 450[deg]C are required for decrepitation. Decrepitates with diameters between 10 and 30 [mu]m yielded more consistent and accurate results than smaller or larger decrepitates on the same samples.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/27326/1/0000349.pd

Leitstudie 2010

Strategien zu erarbeiten, die aufzeigen, wie das langfristige Klimaschutzziel 2050 in Deutschland erreicht werden kann, ist das oberste Ziel von Studien, die seit gut einem Jahrzehnt vom DLR-ITT, Abteilung Systemanalyse und Technikbewertung mit wechselnden Projektpartnern für das BMU und das UBA durchgeführt werden. In der Leitstudie 2010 entstanden auf der Basis differenzierter und aktualisierter Potenzialabschätzungen, die technische, strukturelle und ökologische Kriterien berücksichtigen, und detaillierten Technik- und Kostenanalysen zu den Einzeltechnologien der Erneuerbaren verschiedene Szenarien ihres möglichen langfristigen Ausbaus in Wechselwirkung mit den übrigen Teilen der Energieversorgung in Deutschland. Für die Leitstudie 2010 haben die Projektpartner DLR, Stuttgart und Fraunhofer-IWES, Kassel erstmals mittels geeigneter Modelle eine vollständige dynamische und teilweise räumlich aufgegliederte Simulation der Stromversorgung durchgeführt. Außerdem wird der Untersuchungsraum für diese Simulation auf ganz Europa (einschließlich einiger nordafrikanischer Länder) ausgedehnt, um die Wechselwirkungen eines nationalen Umbaus der Energieversorgung mit der Entwicklung in Nachbarregionen erfassen zu können

Cryptographic Smooth Neighbors

We revisit the problem of finding two consecutive $B$-smooth integers by giving an optimised implementation of the Conrey-Holmstrom-McLaughlin ``smooth neighbors\u27\u27 algorithm. While this algorithm is not guaranteed to return the complete set of $B$-smooth neighbors, in practice it returns a very close approximation to the complete set, but does so in a tiny fraction of the time of its exhaustive counterparts. We exploit this algorithm to find record-sized solutions to the pure twin smooth problem. Though these solutions are still not large enough to be cryptographic parameters themselves, we feed them as input into known methods of searching for twins to yield cryptographic parameters that are much smoother than those given in prior works. Our methods seem especially well-suited to finding parameters for the SQISign signature scheme, particularly those that are geared towards high-security levels

Action selection in early stages of psychosis: an active inference approach

BACKGROUND: To interact successfully with their environment, humans need to build a model to make sense of noisy and ambiguous inputs. An inaccurate model, as suggested to be the case for people with psychosis, disturbs optimal action selection. Recent computational models, such as active inference, have emphasized the importance of action selection, treating it as a key part of the inferential process. Based on an active inference framework, we sought to evaluate previous knowledge and belief precision in an action-based task, given that alterations in these parameters have been linked to the development of psychotic symptoms. We further sought to determine whether task performance and modelling parameters would be suitable for classification of patients and controls. METHODS: Twenty-three individuals with an at-risk mental state, 26 patients with first-episode psychosis and 31 controls completed a probabilistic task in which action choice (go/no-go) was dissociated from outcome valence (gain or loss). We evaluated group differences in performance and active inference model parameters and performed receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses to assess group classification. RESULTS: We found reduced overall performance in patients with psychosis. Active inference modelling revealed that patients showed increased forgetting, reduced confidence in policy selection and less optimal general choice behaviour, with poorer action-state associations. Importantly, ROC analysis showed fair-to-good classification performance for all groups, when combining modelling parameters and performance measures. LIMITATIONS: The sample size is moderate. CONCLUSION: Active inference modelling of this task provides further explanation for dysfunctional mechanisms underlying decision-making in psychosis and may be relevant for future research on the development of biomarkers for early identification of psychosis

Transitions in microbial communities along a 1600 km freshwater trophic gradient

This study examined vertically-resolved patterns in microbial community structure across a freshwater trophic gradient extending 1600 km from the oligotrophic waters of Lake Superior to the eutrophic waters of Lake Erie, the most anthropogenically influenced of the Laurentian Great Lakes system. Planktonic bacterial communities clustered by Principal Coordinates Analysis (PCoA) on UniFrac distance matrices into four groups representing the epilimnion and hypolimnion of the upper Great Lakes (Lakes Superior and Huron), Lake Superior\u27s northern bays (Nipigon and Black bays), and Lake Erie. The microbes within the upper Great Lakes hypolimnion were the most divergent of these groups with elevated abundance of Planctomycetes and Chloroflexi compared to the surface mixed layer. Statistical tests of the correlation between distance matrices identified temperature and sample depth as the most influential community structuring parameters, reflecting the strong UniFrac clustering separating mixed-layer and hypolimnetic samples. Analyzing mixed-layer samples alone showed clustering patterns were correlated with nutrient concentrations. Operational taxonomic units (OTU) which were differentially distributed among these conditions often accounted for a large portion of the reads returned. While limited in coverage of temporal variability, this study contributes a detailed description of community variability that can be related to other large freshwater systems characterized by changing trophic state

Understanding how the crowded interior of cells stabilizes DNA/DNA and DNA/RNA hybrids–in silico predictions and in vitro evidence

Amplification of DNA in vivo occurs in intracellular environments characterized by macromolecular crowding (MMC). In vitro Polymerase-chain-reaction (PCR), however, is non-crowded, requires thermal cycling for melting of DNA strands, primer-template hybridization and enzymatic primer-extension. The temperature-optima for primer-annealing and extension are strikingly disparate which predicts primers to dissociate from template during extension thereby compromising PCR efficiency. We hypothesized that MMC is not only important for the extension phase in vivo but also during PCR by stabilizing nucleotide hybrids. Novel atomistic Molecular Dynamics simulations elucidated that MMC stabilizes hydrogen-bonding between complementary nucleotides. Real-time PCR under MMC confirmed that melting-temperatures of complementary DNA–DNA and DNA–RNA hybrids increased by up to 8°C with high specificity and high duplex-preservation after extension (71% versus 37% non-crowded). MMC enhanced DNA hybrid-helicity, and drove specificity of duplex formation preferring matching versus mismatched sequences, including hair-pin-forming DNA- single-strands

Eine Option für den Emissionshandel nach 2020: Einbeziehung des Konsums emissionsintensiver Materialien

Ergebnisse eines Forschungsprojektes des Netzwerkes Climate Strategie