Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A preliminary investigation into the relationship between functional movement screen scores and athletic physical performance in female team sport athletes

There is little research investigating relationships between the Functional Movement Screen (FMS) and athletic performance in female athletes. This study analyzed the relationships between FMS (deep squat; hurdle step [HS]; in-line lunge [ILL]; shoulder mobility; active straight-leg raise [ASLR]; trunk stability push-up; rotary stability) scores, and performance tests (bilateral and unilateral sit-and-reach [flexibility]; 20-m sprint [linear speed]; 505 with turns from each leg; modified T-test with movement to left and right [change-of-direction speed]; bilateral and unilateral vertical and standing broad jumps; lateral jumps [leg power]). Nine healthy female recreational team sport athletes (age = 22.67 ± 5.12 years; height = 1.66 ± 0.05 m; body mass = 64.22 ± 4.44 kilograms) were screened in the FMS and completed the afore-mentioned tests. Percentage between-leg differences in unilateral sit-and-reach, 505 turns and the jumps, and difference between the T-test conditions, were also calculated. Spearman's correlations (p ≤ 0.05) examined relationships between the FMS and performance tests. Stepwise multiple regressions (p ≤ 0.05) were conducted for the performance tests to determine FMS predictors. Unilateral sit-and-reach positive correlated with the left-leg ASLR (r = 0.704-0.725). However, higher-scoring HS, ILL, and ASLR related to poorer 505 and T-test performance (r = 0.722-0.829). A higher-scored left-leg ASLR related to a poorer unilateral vertical and standing broad jump, which were the only significant relationships for jump performance. Predictive data tended to confirm the correlations. The results suggest limitations in using the FMS to identify movement deficiencies that could negatively impact athletic performance in female team sport athletes.
In fl uence of silica fume on the microstructure of cement pastes : New insights from 1 H NMR relaxometry

a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: 1 H NMR (B) Silica fume (D) C–S–H composition (B) Density (B) 1 H NMR has been used to characterise white Portland cement paste incorporating 10 wt. % of silica fume. Samples were measured sealed throughout the hydration without sample drying. Paste compositions and C–S–H characteristics are calculated based on 1 H NMR signal intensities and relaxation analysis. The results are compared with a similar study of plain white cement paste. While the presence of silica fume has little influence on C–S–H densities, the chemical composition is impacted. After 28 days of sealed hydration, the Ca/(Si + Al) ratio of the C–S–H is 1.33 and the H 2 O/(Si + Al) ratio is 1.10 when 10% of silica fume is added to the white cement. A densification of the C–S–H with time is observed. There are no major changes in capillary, C–S–H gel and interlayer pore sizes for the paste containing silica fume compared to the plain white cement paste. However, the gel/interlayer water ratio increases in the silica fume blend. Basic cement hydration involves the dissolution of alite (C 3 S) and belite (C 2 S) with the formation, by precipitation, of calcium silicate hydrates (C–S–H) and calcium hydroxide (CH, also called " portlandite "). While calcium hydroxide is a very well known crystalline phase [1,2], the C–S–H structure, chemical composition, density and morphology remain uncertain [3]. The primary reasons are twofold: first, C–S–H is a highly disordered nanoscale material incorporating a significant amount of water that is difficult to probe experimentally. Only a few techniques are able to adequately characterise as-prepared C–S–H without removing the water, a procedure that damages the nanoscale structures that are of interest. Secondly, the way C–S–H precipitates is highly dependent on the chemical and physical conditions in which the hydration takes place [4–6]. The different phenomena leading to C–S–H precipitation become even more complex when supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) are used. Some SCMs act only as nucleation sites for the C–S–H to grow: the so-called filler effect [7]; others cause pozzolanic reactions, i.e., the consumption of CH to form more C–S–H. Silica fume is a by-product from the production of elemental silicon and its alloys. Silica fume is typically used at replacement levels of 5–10% in high performance concrete to improve strength and durability. It not only can react with calcium hydroxide …
Confidence and choral configuration: The affective impact of situational and acoustic factors in amateur choirs

This article reports a qualitative study investigating the factors affecting confidence levels amongst adult amateur choral singers. Three focus groups (involving a total of 18 participants) and 16 individual interviews were carried out with experienced choral singers, and over 40 hours of recorded verbal data were collected. The research aims were to explore the lived experience of choral singers; to examine the main influences on choral singers’ perceptions of their voices and performance ability; to identify factors affecting their confidence as choral singers; to extrapolate confidence-building strategies for amateur choral singers. One of the major emergent themes was choir configuration, which encompassed the spacing between singers, the layout of the choir, the position of the individual singer within the choir, and the position of the choir within the venue. All of these elements reportedly had effects upon the confidence of choral singers during rehearsal and performance. These findings have practical implications for leaders of amateur choral ensembles, as choir configuration may be used as one of the tools for building collective and individual choral confidence.
Clinical Interventions in Aging Dovepress the Clinical Features of Foreign Body Aspiration into the Lower Airway in Geriatric Patients

Purpose: To analyze the clinical features of foreign-body aspiration into the lower airway in geriatric patients. Patients and methods: The clinical data of 17 geriatric patients with foreign-body aspiration were retrospectively analyzed and compared with 26 nongeriatric adult patients. The data were collected from Peking University First Hospital and Anhui Chest Hospital between January 2000 and June 2014. Results: (1) In the geriatric group, the most common symptoms were cough and sputum (15 cases, 88%), dyspnea (six cases, 35%), and hemoptysis (four cases, 24%). Five patients (29%) in the geriatric group could supply the history of aspiration on their first visit to doctor, a smaller percentage than in the nongeriatric group (13 cases, 50%). Only three cases in the geriatric group were diagnosed definitely without delay. Another 14 cases were misdiagnosed as pneumonia or lung cancer, and the time of delayed diagnosis ranged from 1 month to 3 years. Complications due to delay in diagnosis included obstructive pneumonitis, atelectasis, lung abscess, and pleural effusion. (2) Chest computed tomography demonstrated the foreign body in three cases (21%) in the geriatric group, which was lower than the positive proportion of detection in the nongeriatric group (nine cases, 35%). The most common type of foreign body in the geriatric group was food, such as bone fragments (seven cases, 41%) and plants (seven cases, 41%), and the foreign body was most often lodged in the right bronchus tree (eleven cases, 65%), especially the right lower bronchus (seven cases, 41%). Flexible bronchoscopy removed the foreign body successfully in all patients. Conclusion: The clinical features of foreign-body aspiration in geriatric patients are usually more obscure than in nongeriatric adults, which may lead to long delay in diagnosis. Flexible bronchoscopy is safe and useful for early diagnosis and effective management in geriatric patients. We suggest flexible bronchoscopy as the first-line approach to similar patients, especially those with aspiration history and unexplained pneumonia.
Quantifying variation in forest disturbance, and its effects on aboveground biomass dynamics, across the eastern United States

The role of tree mortality in the global carbon balance is complicated by strong spatial and temporal heterogeneity that arises from the stochastic nature of carbon loss through disturbance. Characterizing spatio‐temporal variation in mortality (including disturbance) and its effects on forest and carbon dynamics is thus essential to understanding the current global forest carbon sink, and to predicting how it will change in future. We analyzed forest inventory data from the eastern United States to estimate plot‐level variation in mortality (relative to a long‐term background rate for individual trees) for nine distinct forest regions. Disturbances that produced at least a fourfold increase in tree mortality over an approximately 5 year interval were observed in 1–5% of plots in each forest region. The frequency of disturbance was lowest in the northeast, and increased southwards along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts as fire and hurricane disturbances became progressively more common. Across the central and northern parts of the region, natural disturbances appeared to reflect a diffuse combination of wind, insects, disease, and ice storms. By linking estimated covariation in tree growth and mortality over time with a data‐constrained forest dynamics model, we simulated the implications of stochastic variation in mortality for long‐term aboveground biomass changes across the eastern United States. A geographic gradient in disturbance frequency induced notable differences in biomass dynamics between the least‐ and most‐disturbed regions, with variation in mortality causing the latter to undergo considerably stronger fluctuations in aboveground stand biomass over time. Moreover, regional simulations showed that a given long‐term increase in mean mortality rates would support greater aboveground biomass when expressed through disturbance effects compared with background mortality, particularly for early‐successional species. The effects of increased tree mortality on carbon stocks and forest composition may thus depend partly on whether future mortality increases are chronic or episodic in nature.
On error estimation of automatic quadrature scheme for the evaluation of Hadamard integral of second order singularity.

1wi(t)f (t) (t x)2 dt; x 2 [ 1; 1]; i = 0; 1; 2; (1) where w0(t) = 1; w1(t) = p 1 t2; w2(t) = 1 p 1 t2 are the weights, and the given function f imperative to have certain smoothness or continuity properties. Particular attention is paid to error estimate of the developed AQS, where it shows the acquired AQS scheme is obtained in the class of functions C N+2; [ 1; 1] which converges to the exact very fast by increasing the knot points. The first and second kind of Chebyshev polynomials are used in the conjecture. Several numerical examples clearly demonstrate the developed AQS rendering efficient, accurate and reliable results. This research gives comparative performances of the present method with others.
Factors That Affect Proliferation of Salmonella in Tomatoes Post-Harvest: The Roles of Seasonal Effects, Irrigation Regime, Crop and Pathogen Genotype

Main Objectives Fresh fruits and vegetables become increasingly recognized as vehicles of human salmonellosis. Physiological, ecological, and environmental factors are all thought to contribute to the ability of Salmonella to colonize fruits and vegetables pre- and post-harvest. The goal of this study was to test how irrigation levels, fruit water congestion, crop and pathogen genotypes affect the ability of Salmonella to multiply in tomatoes post-harvest. Experimental Design Fruits from three tomato varieties, grown over three production seasons in two Florida locations, were infected with seven strains of Salmonella and their ability to multiply post-harvest in field-grown tomatoes was tested. The field experiments were set up as a two-factor factorial split plot experiment, with the whole-plot treatments arranged in a randomized complete-block design. The irrigation treatment (at three levels) was the whole-plot factor, and the split-plot factor was tomato variety, with three levels. The significance of the main, two-way, and three-way interaction effects was tested using the (type III) F-tests for fixed effects. Mean separation for each significant fixed effect in the model was performed using Tukey’s multiple comparison testing procedure. Most Important Discoveries and Significance The irrigation regime per se did not affect susceptibility of the crop to post-harvest proliferation of Salmonella. However, Salmonella grew significantly better in water-congested tissues of green tomatoes. Tomato maturity and genotype, Salmonella genotype, and inter-seasonal differences were the strongest factors affecting proliferation. Red ripe tomatoes were significantly and consistently more conducive to proliferation of Salmonella. Tomatoes harvested in the driest, sunniest season were the most conducive to post-harvest proliferation of the pathogen. Statistically significant interactions between production conditions affected post-harvest susceptibility of the crop to the pathogen. UV irradiation of tomatoes post-harvest promoted Salmonella growth.
Genes, Memes and Human History

Perhaps the most critical problem facing the human sciences is that of integrating two conceptions of human activity. On the one hand, humans are evolved primates. And humans are encultured beings: intentional agents who are profoundly influenced by the particular cultures in which they are immersed. It has proved remarkably difficult to develop an account of human nature and of the broad patterns of human history that does justice to both these facts. The lingering nature/nurture problem is just one expression of this unresolved tension. Archaeology, of all the human sciences, can dodge this problem the least, and the great virtue of Shennan’s Genes, Memes and Human History is that he confronts it directly. For though humans are now both cultural and ecological beings, it was not always so. Once our hominid ancestors had a social organisation and a material culture roughly equivalent to that of today’s chimpanzees. Chimps are not encultured in the sense that we are encultured: their social life and their ecology does not depend on the accurate and extensive transmission of information from parents to offspring. It falls to archaeology to document and explain the transition from merely social hominids to encultured hominids. Archaeologists cannot escape our dual nature, for they must explain its coming into being. Thus for an evolutionary archaeologist like Shennan, the evolutionary facet of human nature and human history must be geneologically primary. For our enculturation is the product of a continuing evolutionary process grafted onto the top of a pre-existing set of ecological and social relations. Accordingly, Shennan begins by describing the toolkit that has been developed by those in the business of giving evolutionary explanations of human behaviour, identifying three basic approaches to human behavioural evolution. He briefly mentions evolutionary psychology: the project of developing evolutionary explanations of human cognition while also using evolutionary theory as a tool for generating hypotheses about our cognitive organisation. But his real interest is
The Impact of Labor Markets on the Transmission of Monetary Policy in an Estimated DSGE Model

Real wages are a key determinant of marginal costs. The latter themselves are a driving force of inflation. We ask how wages and labor market shocks feed into the inflation process. We model search and matching frictions in the labour market in an otherwise standard New-Keynesian closed economy DSGE model. We estimate the model using Bayesian techniques for German data from the mid 70s to present. In our framework, we find that labor market structure is important for the evolution of the business cycle, and for monetary policy in particular. Yet labor market shocks are not important information for the conduct of stabilization policy.
Removing hidden nodes in IEEE 802.11 wireless networks

This paper investigates the hidden-node phenomenon (HN) that arises in IEEE 802.11 wireless networks. HN can cause many performance problems, including throughput degradation, unfair throughput distribution among flows, and throughput instability. Previous investigations mostly focus on methods to alleviate these performance problems rather than direct elimination of HN. Such an approach may solve one but not all of these problems. This paper is a first attempt to identify the fundamental conditions leading to HN. In particular, we show that HN arises fundamentally as a result of the 802.11 protocol constraints. Based on the insight obtained from the analysis, we devise a Hidden-node-Free Design (HFD) that completely removes HN. Readers who are only interested in the results, but not the derivations, may skip Section 3.
Land Reform and Sex Selection in China

China’s land reform in 1978–84 unleashed rapid growth in farm output and household income. In new data on reform timing in 914 counties, we find an immediate trend break in the fraction of male children following the reform. Among second births that followed a firstborn girl, sex ratios increased from 1.1 to 1.3 boys per girl in the 4 years following reform. Larger increases are found among families with more education. The land reform estimate is robust to controlling for the county-level rollout of the One Child Policy. Overall, we estimate land reform accounted for about 1 million missing girls.
Validación de la escala de rendimiento laboral individual en trabajadores argentinos

El objetivo del presente estudio fue validar y analizar las propiedades psicometricas de la Escala de Rendimiento Laboral Individual de Koopmans et al. (2013). Se ejecuto un estudio piloto con 31 estudiantes de posgrado para analizar la equivalencia operacional de la escala. Se elaboro un estudio principal a efectos de analizar las propiedades psicometricas de la escala puesta a punto en el estudio piloto. En esta ocasion se trabajo sobre una nueva muestra seleccionada en forma no probabilistica, la que quedo integrada por 434 trabajadores. Sobre los datos recabados se ejecutaron analisis factoriales (exploratorio y confirmatorio). Sendos analisis indicaron una estructura trifactorial con adecuada consistencia (rendimiento en la tarea: ? = .76, comportamientos contraproducentes: ? = .76, y rendimiento en el contexto: ? = .72), confiabilidad compuesta (CR mayores a .70), y validez convergente (AVE mayor a .50). La version argentina del instrumento quedo conformada por 13 items, demostrando ser una medida confiable y parsimoniosa del rendimiento laboral percibido.
Well-posedness of the Westervelt and the Kuznetsov equation with nonhomogeneous Neumann boundary conditions

In this paper we show wellposedness of two equations of nonlinear acoustics, as relevant e.g. in applications of high intensity ultrasound. After having studied the Dirichlet problem in previous papers, we here consider Neumann boundary conditions which are of particular practical interest in applications. The Westervelt and the Kuznetsov equation are quasilinear evolutionary wave equations with potential degeneration and strong damping. We prove local in time well-posedness as well as global existence and exponential decay for a slightly modi ed model. A key step of the proof is an appropriate extension of the Neumann boundary data to the interior along with exploitation of singular estimates associated with the analytic semigroup generated by the strongly damped wave equation.
Learning from examples in large neural networks.

A statistical mechanical theory of learning from examples in layered networks at finite temperature is studied. When the training error is a smooth function of continuously varying weights the generalization error falls off asymptotically as the inverse number of examples. By analytical and numerical studies of single-layer perceptrons we show that when the weights are discrete the generalization error can exhibit a discontinuous transition to perfect generalization. For intermediate sizes of the example set, the state of perfect generalization coexists with a metastable spin-glass state. Understanding how systems can be efficiently trained to perform tasks is of fundamental importance. A central issue in learning theory is the rate of improvement in the processing of novel data as a function of the number of examples presented during training, i.e. , the generalization curve. ' Numerical results on training in layered neural networks indicate that the generalization error improves gradually in some cases, and sharply in others. s In this work we use statistical mechanics to study generalization curves in large layered networks. We will first discuss the general theory and then present results for learning in a single-layer perceptron. The computational function of layered neural networks is described in terms of the input-output relations that they generate. We consider here a multilayer network with M input nodes, whose states are denoted by synaptic weights of the network. The network is trained by adjusting its weights to approximate or reproduce, if possible, a target function cto(S) on the input space.
Evaluation of the experimental basis for assessment factors to protect individuals with asthma from health effects during short-term exposure to airborne chemicals

Abstract Background: Asthmatic individuals constitute a large sub-population that is often considered particularly susceptible to the deleterious effects of inhalation of airborne chemicals. However, for most such chemicals information on asthmatics is lacking and inter-individual assessment factors (AFs) of 3–25 have been proposed for use in the derivation of health-based guideline values. Objective: To evaluate available information in attempt to determine whether a general difference in airway response during short-term exposure between healthy and asthmatic individuals can be identified, and whether current AFs for inter-individual variability provide sufficient protection for asthmatics. Methods: After performing systematic review of relevant documents and the scientific literature estimated differential response factors (EDRF) were derived as the ratio between the lowest observed adverse effect levels for healthy and asthmatic subjects based on studies in which both groups were tested under the same conditions. Thereafter, the concentration–response relationships for healthy and asthmatic subjects exposed separately to four extensively tested chemicals (nitrogen dioxide, ozone, sulfuric acid, sulfur dioxide) were compared on the basis of combined data. Finally, a Benchmark Concentration (BMC) analysis was performed for sulfur dioxide. Results: We found evidence of higher sensitivity among asthmatics (EDRF > 1) to 8 of 19 tested chemicals, and to 3 of 11 mixtures. Thereafter, we confirmed the higher sensitivity of asthmatics to sulfuric acid and sulfur dioxide. No difference was observed in the case of ozone and nitrogen dioxide. Finally, our BMC analysis of sulfur dioxide indicated a ninefold higher sensitivity among asthmatics. Conclusion: Although experimental data are often inconclusive, our analyses suggest that an AF of 10 is adequate to protect asthmatics from the deleterious respiratory effects of airborne chemicals.