bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Cross-cultural experience, strategic motivation and employer hiring preference: An exploratory study in an emerging economy
Authors: Zoogah David B. , Abbey Augustus
Published: December 2010

The relationship between self-complexity, strategic motivation, and organizational processes such as staffing seems lacking in the human resources management and organizational behavior (OB) literatures. In two studies we examined the self-complexity of potential employees with and without cross-cultural experience as determinant of preferences of employers mediated by strategic motivations of organizations. We found in a sample of 40 organizations from an emerging economy, Ghana, that employers seemed to prefer employees with cross-cultural experience who are perceived to facilitate achievement of their strategic motivations. Implications for international human resources management are discussed.
The impact of cultural context on the perception of work/ family balance by professional women in Singapore and Hong Kong
Authors: Htwe Htwe Thein  , Austen Siobhan , Currie Janice , Lewin Erica
Published: December 2010

‘Work/family balance’ has recently come to the fore in public policy debate and academic inquiry across the industrialized world. However, this issue has been relatively under-explored in the context of Asian business and society. This paper reports the results of a qualitative, exploratory investigation of the perceptions and experiences of predominantly professional women, aged 25—45 years living in Singapore and Hong Kong. Data from focus groups were used to explore how women in these countries perceive work/family balance and the role of family, government and other support structures in managing this aspect of their lives. This study confirms that cultural context is a significant factor in how women perceive and respond to the issue of work/family balance.
Experimental and theoretical analysis in impedance-based structural health monitoring with varying temperature
Authors: Sepehry Naserodin , Shamshirsaz Mahnaz , Bastani Ali
Published: December 2010

In the recent years, the piezoelectric wafer active sensors (PWASs) are increasing as a measurement tool in structural health monitoring techniques. In impedance-based structural health monitoring (ISHM) method, the electrical impedance of a PWAS bonded to the structure is measured and served as a defect detection index of the structure. The principle of this method is based on the electromechanical coupling effect of PWAS materials. As any change in the structure will lead to a change in mechanical impedance of structure, the electrical impedance of PWAS could sense this change by the electromechanical coupling effect of PWAS. Since the physical and mechanical properties of PWAS materials are temperature-dependent, so the electrical impedance of PWAS will change with varying temperature. Consequently, the changes in environmental or service temperatures could be detected in ISHM method as a defect. In this article, in order to consider the temperature dependency of PWAS material properties, a temperature-dependent model is developed for a PWAS bonded to an Euler Bernoulli cantilever beam. An aluminum (alloy 2024) beam was examined experimentally by ISHM method in order to validate the proposed model. The comparison of theoretical and experimental results demonstrates a good improvement in ISHM modeling where temperature variation is present.
IL-7-dependent STAT-5 activation and CD8+ T cell proliferation are impaired in HIV infection
Authors: Vranjkovic Agatha , Crawley Angela M , Patey Andrea , Angel Jonathan B
Published: December 2010

This study tests the hypothesis that IL-7 signaling and activity of CD8+ T cells are impaired in HIV infection. IL-7 is necessary for optimal CTL activity and T cell survival and proliferation. Defects in IL-7R signaling may contribute to impaired activity of IL-7 observed in progressive HIV disease. A decreased proportion of CD8+ T cells expressing the IL-7Rα chain (CD127) in progressive HIV disease would be expected to affect IL-7 activity. Alternatively, disease-associated defects of remaining CD8+CD127+ T cells may influence IL-7 responsiveness. Therefore, the IL-7 responsiveness of CD8+CD127+ T cells from HIV– and untreated or treated HIV+ individuals was investigated. Blood was collected from HIV– and untreated or effectively treated HIV+ (<50 viral copies/ml for >1 year) individuals, and CD8+CD127+ T cells were isolated and cultured with IL-7. Indicators of IL-7 signaling (P-STAT5) and activity (Bcl-2 and proliferation) were evaluated by flow cytometry. Isolated CD8+CD127+ T cells from untreated HIV+ individuals expressed significantly less P-STAT5 in response to IL-7 compared with CD8+CD127+ T cells from HIV– individuals. In effectively treated HIV+ individuals, CD8+CD127+ T cells also expressed significantly lower levels of P-STAT5 compared with HIV– individuals. IL-7-dependent proliferation of CD8+CD127+ T cells from untreated HIV+ individuals was similarly impaired. In contrast, IL-7-induced Bcl-2 expression was not impaired in CD8+CD127+ T cells from HIV+ individuals. These data demonstrate that IL-7/IL-7R dysfunction in HIV infection may contribute to IL-7-specific signaling defects. Decreased, IL-7-dependent activation of STAT5 and impaired proliferation may negatively impact the maintenance of CD8+ T cell responsiveness in HIV infection.
The Frailty of the Ontic
Authors: Terada Rei
Published: December 2010

“Working through” would seem to be the crux of psychoanalysis. It is the collective name for the processes by which, despite itself, resistance gives way. Cumulatively, moments of unknotted resistance account for larger psychic change where it has been stalled —for, by definition, where one needs to work through, an obstacle to change has already arisen. Clinical analysts call psychic change “action”—“action” is what one has to show for one's therapy. Freud's theory of working through thus promises to shed light on the question that U.S. literary critics and social theorists have been accustomed to think about using the concept of “agency.” Theory now has moved slightly beyond this concept; yet a penumbra of anxiety about agency colors the reception of contemporary theory. A more direct questioning, not of the state of theories of agency exactly, but of the role of their ghosts in current theoretical discourse, may therefore be helpful. I reflect on these diagonally, while suggesting their difference from the theory of action implied by working through.

The logic of working through melts into the theory of reality as such. Registrations of pieces of reality, so the logic goes, depend on a relaxation of resistance, which may be the result of working through: the loosening of resistance enables a new perspective, the recognition of new objects. On the other hand, such registrations may enable resistance to loosen—registering any piece of reality can change the dynamic of resistances across the psychic system and have effects outside the immediate occasion. Working through resistance merges on both ends with the ongoing registration of perceptions in the lifelong project of trying to perceive reality together with other people. Departing somewhat from Freud's use of the term registration, I use it to emphasize the place where working through meets the ordinary registration of perceptions in the construction of reality. The absence of a boundary between the theory of working through and the theory of reality holds a possibility: that by reflecting on the banal registration of perceptions we can better understand action in several senses of the word.
The Spoiler's Art: Embarrassed Space as Memorialization
Authors: Ellison David A.
Published: December 2010

This essay looks at three architectural responses to the task of memorializing the mass murder of European Jewry. Both Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum and Peter Eisenman's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe are tautly theorized and well-defended instances of contemporary architecture that are nevertheless subject to—and to a degree invite—embarrassment in the context of Berlin as a historically burdened location. In contrast, Ernö Goldfinger's house at 2 Willow Road, Hampstead Heath, London, formulates a different response to the problem of properly acknowledging the historical past, in the form of a permanent threat to the interior's governing aesthetic.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The Postracial Horizon
Authors: Hesse Barnor
Published: December 2010

The postracial idea of Western societies being socially beyond the hegemonic imperatives of previous racial formations or exhibiting the increasing disintegration of racism has rightly drawn intellectual and political fire from critical theory. However, what this fire routinely obscures are the various ways in which discourses of antiracism and the postracial converge around a singular failure to interrogate the political and theoretical conditions of possibility for the early twentieth-century concept of racism. Conceptually racism as an object of critique was founded on the condemnation of “race thinking” (anchored in the biological) as well as the foreclosure from that critique of “race performativity” (inscribed in the colonial). Gestated during the 1930s and 1940s in political opposition to Nazism's ideology of race, racism as a concept was also conceived Eurocentrically, as aberrant to Western liberal democracy. Subsequently appropriated by civil rights and anticolonial movements, such pragmatic appropriations often unwittingly colluded in reinscribing the concept of racism as representational rather than performative, antiliberal rather than liberal, and ideological rather than governmental. Insofar as the postracial now signifies these political terms of appropriation, it can be argued that the Eurocentric concept of racism also provides it with the alibi of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Consequently, it is not simply the emergence of the postracial horizon that is the problem for critical theory but the genealogy of the concept of racism itself.
Nationalist Heterosexuality, Migrant (Il)legality, and Irish Citizenship Law: Queering the Connections
Authors: Luibhéid Eithne
Published: December 2010

“Illegal” status is commonly conceived as stemming from migrants' undesirable characters, yet recent scholarship has shown that “legal” and “illegal” statuses are created through political processes and relations of power that require critical scrutiny. This essay expands the scholarship by showing that sexual norms critically shape where and how states draw distinctions between legal and illegal status. In Ireland at the turn of the millennium, pregnant migrants were constructed as paradigmatic figures of illegal immigration, whose arrival and childbearing were to be prevented through changes to citizenship law. These changes, however, did less to prevent illegal migration than to expand migrants' routes into becoming designated as illegal and suffering harsh consequences. Furthermore, the legal changes reworked sexual, gender, racial, class, and cultural hierarchies at local, national, transnational, and diasporic scales, within the context of the state's embrace of economic neoliberalization. Overall, the essay suggests that Irish events illuminate the importance of bringing queer and immigration scholarship into critical dialogue, contributing to a better understanding of how nationalist sexual norms not only shape formations of migrant legality and illegality but also become redefined through concerns about illegal immigration in a context of neoliberalization.
Afterword: Theory Now and Again
Authors: Culler Jonathan
Published: December 2010

The invitation to think about “theory now” requires a double response. Insofar as theory has a “now,” it is a “now” in the time of disciplines and institutions, a point in an institutional trajectory. To ask where theory is now invites us to describe where theory has been and where it is heading. And certainly there is much that could be said about theory now: narratology, for some time in the doldrums, seems to be making a comeback, taking cognitive science rather than linguistics as a model, though it may be too early to say whether this will prove productive. Psychoanalysis plays a less central role in theory than it used to, except in the form of trauma theory, whose pertinence to a host of contemporary issues continues to be d emonstrated. Questions about the nature of identity seem to have receded, as Rei Terada points out, doubtless because theoretical debates have led to a more subtle understanding, that identities are neither simply imposed nor freely performed. Theories of haunting or spectrality provide new ways of thinking about a variety of perennial issues, including memory, the modes of being of the past, and intertextuality. The study of affect, once relegated by both philosophy and literary and cultural studies to the margins of psychology, has become central, with shame, compassion, envy, and sentimentality all requiring theorization and historical exploration. Queer theory continues to expand its purview, as a wider range of investigations and arguments is developed and new paradigms, such as that of reparative reading, emerge from theory's deep engagement with the pressures and the tragedies of gay lives. Race has come to be understood as much more complicated than early theorizations realized, and the problems of theorizing power and possibilities of resistance continue to engage thinkers, as the essays in this issue amply show.
U.S. Political Romanticism and the Psychological Impacts of Obama's Presidency
Authors: Newfield Christopher
Published: December 2010

While most commentaries trace Barack Obama's decline to his failure to fight for the progressive policies whose supporters got him elected, this article argues that Obama's rise and fall are both functions of his embodiment and then betrayal of a collective psychology here called U.S. political romanticism. This romanticism envisions a highly functional form of inclusive political deliberation that is now absent from U.S. political life and which Obama seemed to enable by telling the truth in public about complicated private states of feeling. Obama's mishandling of the Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest serves as an example of a retreat into standard concealment and falsification of “controversial” parts of the private self that has ended Obama's bid to be a transformative political figure.
Metabolic fuels: regulating fluxes to select mix
Authors: Weber Jean-Michel
Published: December 2010

Animals must regulate the fluxes of multiple fuels to support changing metabolic rates that result from variation in physiological circumstances. The aim of fuel selection strategies is to exploit the advantages of individual substrates while minimizing the impact of disadvantages. All exercising mammals share a general pattern of fuel selection: at the same they oxidize the same ratio of lipids to carbohydrates. However, highly aerobic species rely more on intramuscular fuels because energy supply from the circulation is constrained by trans-sarcolemmal transfer. Fuel selection is performed by recruiting different muscles, different fibers within the same muscles or different pathways within the same fibers. Electromyographic analyses show that shivering humans can modulate carbohydrate oxidation either through the selective recruitment of type II fibers within the same muscles or by regulating pathway recruitment within type I fibers. The selection patterns of shivering and exercise are different: at the same , a muscle producing only heat (shivering) or significant movement (exercise) strikes a different balance between lipid and carbohydrate oxidation. Long-distance migrants provide an excellent model to characterize how to increase maximal substrate fluxes. High lipid fluxes are achieved through the coordinated upregulation of mobilization, transport and oxidation by activating enzymes, lipid-solubilizing proteins and membrane transporters. These endurance athletes support record lipolytic rates in adipocytes, use lipoprotein shuttles to accelerate transport and show increased capacity for lipid oxidation in muscle mitochondria. Some migrant birds use dietary omega-3 fatty acids as performance-enhancing agents to boost their ability to process lipids. These dietary fatty acids become incorporated in membrane phospholipids and bind to peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors to activate membrane proteins and modify gene expression.
Energetic cost of communication
Authors: Stoddard Philip K. , Salazar Vielka L.
Published: December 2010

Communication signals may be energetically expensive or inexpensive to produce, depending on the function of the signal and the competitive nature of the communication system. Males of sexually selected species may produce high-energy advertisement signals, both to enhance detectability and to signal their size and body condition. Accordingly, the proportion of the energy budget allocated to signal production ranges from almost nothing for many signals to somewhere in excess of 50% for acoustic signals in short-lived sexually selected species. Recent data from gymnotiform electric fish reveal mechanisms that regulate energy allocated to sexual advertisement signals through dynamical remodeling of the excitable membranes in the electric organ. Further, males of the short-lived sexually selected species, Brachyhypopomus gauderio, trade off among different metabolic compartments, allocating energy to signal production while reducing energy used in other metabolic functions. Female B. gauderio, by contrast, do not trade off energy between signaling and other functions. To fuel energetically expensive signal production, we expect a continuum of strategies to be adopted by animals of different life history strategies. Future studies should explore the relation between life history and energy allocation trade-offs.
The physiological regulation of glucose flux into musclein vivo
Authors: Wasserman David H. , Kang Li , Ayala Julio E. , Fueger Patrick T. , Lee-Young Robert S.
Published: December 2010

Skeletal muscle glucose uptake increases dramatically in response to physical exercise. Moreover, skeletal muscle comprises the vast majority of insulin-sensitive tissue and is a site of dysregulation in the insulin-resistant state. The biochemical and histological composition of the muscle is well defined in a variety of species. However, the functional consequences of muscle biochemical and histological adaptations to physiological and pathophysiological conditions are not well understood. The physiological regulation of muscle glucose uptake is complex. Sites involved in the regulation of muscle glucose uptake are defined by a three-step process consisting of: (1) delivery of glucose to muscle, (2) transport of glucose into the muscle by GLUT4 and (3) phosphorylation of glucose within the muscle by a hexokinase (HK). Muscle blood flow, capillary recruitment and extracellular matrix characteristics determine glucose movement from the blood to the interstitium. Plasma membrane GLUT4 content determines glucose transport into the cell. Muscle HK activity, cellular HK compartmentalization and the concentration of the HK inhibitor glucose 6-phosphate determine the capacity to phosphorylate glucose. Phosphorylation of glucose is irreversible in muscle; therefore, with this reaction, glucose is trapped and the uptake process is complete. Emphasis has been placed on the role of the glucose transport step for glucose influx into muscle with the past assertion that membrane transport is rate limiting. More recent research definitively shows that the distributed control paradigm more accurately defines the regulation of muscle glucose uptake as each of the three steps that define this process are important sites of flux control.
Muscles and their myokines
Authors: Pedersen Bente Klarlund
Published: December 2010

In the past, the role of physical activity as a life-style modulating factor has been considered as that of a tool to balance energy intake. Although it is important to avoid obesity, physical inactivity should be discussed in a much broader context. There is accumulating epidemiological evidence that a physically active life plays an independent role in the protection against type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, dementia and even depression. For most of the last century, researchers sought a link between muscle contraction and humoral changes in the form of an ‘exercise factor’, which could be released from skeletal muscle during contraction and mediate some of the exercise-induced metabolic changes in other organs such as the liver and the adipose tissue. We have suggested that cytokines or other peptides that are produced, expressed and released by muscle fibres and exert autocrine, paracrine or endocrine effects should be classified as ‘myokines’. Given that skeletal muscle is the largest organ in the human body, our discovery that contracting skeletal muscle secretes proteins sets a novel paradigm: skeletal muscle is an endocrine organ producing and releasing myokines, which work in a hormone-like fashion, exerting specific endocrine effects on other organs. Other myokines work via paracrine mechanisms, exerting local effects on signalling pathways involved in muscle metabolism. It has been suggested that myokines may contribute to exercise-induced protection against several chronic diseases.
Limits to sustained energy intake. XIII. Recent progress and future perspectives
Authors: Speakman John R. , Król Elżbieta
Published: December 2010

Several theories have been proposed to explain limits on the maximum rate at which animals can ingest and expend energy. These limits are likely to be intrinsic to the animal, and potentially include the capacity of the alimentary tract to assimilate energy – the ‘central limitation’ hypothesis. Experimental evidence from lactating mice exposed to different ambient temperatures allows us to reject this and similar ideas. Two alternative ideas have been proposed. The ‘peripheral limitation’ hypothesis suggests that the maximal sustained energy intake reflects the summed demands of individual tissues, which have their own intrinsic limitations on capacity. In contrast, the ‘heat dissipation limit’ (HDL) theory suggests that animals are constrained by the maximal capacity to dissipate body heat. Abundant evidence in domesticated livestock supports the HDL theory, but data from smaller mammals are less conclusive. Here, we develop a novel framework showing how the HDL and peripheral limitations are likely to be important in all animals, but to different extents. The HDL theory makes a number of predictions – in particular that there is no fixed limit on sustained energy expenditure as a multiple of basal metabolic rate, but rather that the maximum sustained scope is positively correlated with the capacity to dissipate heat.
Critical oxygen levels and metabolic suppression in oceanic oxygen minimum zones
Authors: Seibel Brad A.
Published: December 2010

The survival of oceanic organisms in oxygen minimum zones (OMZs) depends on their total oxygen demand and the capacities for oxygen extraction and transport, anaerobic ATP production and metabolic suppression. Anaerobic metabolism and metabolic suppression are required for daytime forays into the most extreme OMZs. Critical oxygen partial pressures are, within a range, evolved to match the minimum oxygen level to which a species is exposed. This fact demands that low oxygen habitats be defined by the biological response to low oxygen rather than by some arbitrary oxygen concentration. A broad comparative analysis of oxygen tolerance facilitates the identification of two oxygen thresholds that may prove useful for policy makers as OMZs expand due to climate change. Between these thresholds, specific physiological adaptations to low oxygen are required of virtually all species. The lower threshold represents a limit to evolved oxygen extraction capacity. Climate change that pushes oxygen concentrations below the lower threshold (∼0.8 kPa) will certainly result in a transition from an ecosystem dominated by a diverse midwater fauna to one dominated by diel migrant biota that must return to surface waters at night. Animal physiology and, in particular, the response of animals to expanding hypoxia, is a critical, but understudied, component of biogeochemical cycles and oceanic ecology. Here, I discuss the definition of hypoxia and critical oxygen levels, review adaptations of animals to OMZs and discuss the capacity for, and prevalence of, metabolic suppression as a response to temporary residence in OMZs and the possible consequences of climate change on OMZ ecology.
A Novel Template Route for Synthesizing Mesoporous Carbon Materials
Authors: Tang Weiping , Xie Jingying
Published: December 2010

A novel template route by mixing ZnO nanoparticle templates and a polyacrylamide carbon source with mechanical stirring and followed by carbonization and template removal is first reported for synthesizing mesoporous carbon materials.
A New Type of Cesium-ion-conducting Solid
Authors: Tamura Shinji , Nishikawa Taku , Imanaka Nobuhito
Published: December 2010

High Cs+ ion conductivity was successfully realized in solids at temperatures below 250 °C by doping Cs–bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl) amide (CsTFSA) into cubic rare earth oxides of R2O3. Among the (1 − x)R2O3–xCsTFSA solids prepared, a 0.75Gd2O3–0.25CsTFSA solid showed the highest Cs+ ion conductivity of 3.4 × 10−2 S cm−1 at 250 °C, which is the highest value yet reported for a solid Cs+ ion conductor.
An Audio Integrated Motorcycle Helmet
Authors: Liu Lichuan , Kuo Sen M. , Raghuathan Kishan P.
Published: December 2010

This paper presents an audio-integrated motorcycle helmet that provides music, voice communication, and noise reduction functions. The effects of degrading the music and speech signals by the motorcycle noise were studied Experimental setup with real ambience of a person riding a motorcycle, wearing a helmet with active noise control (ANC), and listening to audio under noisy conditions was built. The performance of the audio-integrated system in reducing noise and preserving the quality of audio signals was evaluated using computer simulations and real-time experiments with recorded motorcycle noise.
New Swiss Legislation to Protect Persons from Vibrations and Structure-Borne Noise
Authors: Meloni Tommaso
Published: December 2010

An ordinance has been drafted which protects persons in buildings against the harmful effects or nuisance of vibration and structure-borne noise such as from railways. The ordinance will enter into force soon. The legislation is based on the classical principle of an evaluative determination with subsequent rating on the basis of exposure limits. The vibration exposure limits are orientated on the basis of the perception threshold. For structure-borne noise, the exposure limits are described by energy-equivalent units and are stipulated for an audible range distinctly above threshold. Furthermore, maximum levels are also applied at night so as to take sleep disturbance into account. Aspects such as proportionality and stipulated remediation deadlines facilitate implementation of the legislation. However, remediation is problematic in relation to rail transport facilities in particular. This is due to the high complexity of implementation measures and the related costs. The technical developments demanded in the ordinance should make a beneficial contribution to realising the long-term goals.
A Survey on the Assessment of Wind Energy Potential in Gaza Strip
Authors: Alaydi Juma Yousuf
Published: December 2010

The analysis of collected wind data at two sites in Gaza Strip namely, Gaza city and Gaza International Air Port in Rafah city is presented. The two sites are candidates for remote area wind energy applications The purpose of this paper is to present the results of the assessment of wind energy potential in Gaza Strip in order to evaluate the wind regimes for installing wind energy conversion systems for power generation. The data on wind speed, direction and frequency distribution are used to analyze wind energy characteristics and availability at some stations in Gaza Strip. The vertical extrapolation was based on the power-law expression, and the wind energy and potential have been estimated at the wind generator hub height of approximately 50 m. Also, values of Weibull parameters c and k are determined from wind summary statistics. Consequently, the wind power is estimated adopting the Weibull distribution expression. From the results of this paper, sites are recommended for the wind energy exploitation in Gaza Strip.
Dynamic Response Analysis of the Rotating Blade of Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine
Authors: Xiong Liu , Xianmin Zhang , Gangqiang Li , Yan Chen , Zhiquan Ye
Published: December 2010

This paper presents a dynamic response analysis of the blade of horizontal axis wind turbines using finite element method. The blade is treated as a cantilever and modeled with two-node beam element. The blade element–momentum theory is applied to calculate the aerodynamic loads. Dynamic inflow and dynamic stall are taken into account to reflect the transient aerodynamics. The centrifugal stiffening is introduced to consider the restoring effects of centrifugal force. An aerodynamic damping model is presented for calculating the overall damping ratio instantaneously during time-domain simulation. The structural dynamic equation is solved using Newmark method and the overall dynamic response of the blade is obtained based on the modal superposition principle. Applying the proposed method, the power production load case of a 1.0 MW wind turbine operating in turbulent wind field is simulated. The simulation results indicate that the blades of large-scale horizontal axis wind turbines undergo significant vibration and deflection during operation, and the centrifugal stiffening and aerodynamic damping both considerably affect the structural response of the blade.
The Development of a Typology of Abusive Coaching Behaviours within Youth Sport
Authors: Raakman Elaine , Dorsch Kim , Rhind Daniel
Published: December 2010

The purpose of this article was to create the Typology of Coaching Transgressions model (TOCT), which is concerned with abuse, neglect and violence in youth sport. Comments provided by the Justplay Behaviour Management Program from two competitive hockey associations and one large soccer association were analyzed and sorted to assess the utility of the model to capture inappropriate coaching behaviours. A total of 540 comments were examined deductively using the TOCT. Approximately 80% of coaching transgressions were of an indirect nature (i.e., not directed at the athlete specifically), indicating that young athletes are exposed to forms of abuse, neglect, and violence that may create harm in ways not yet fully understood. These findings illuminate the importance of understanding the nature and impact of coaching conduct on youth sport participants.
An External Focus of Attention Results in Greater Swimming Speed
Authors: Freudenheim Andrea Michele , Wulf Gabriele , Madureira Fabrício , Pasetto Silmara Cristina , Corrěa Umberto César
Published: December 2010

We examined effects of attentional focus on swimming speed. Participants' task was to swim one length of a pool (16 m) using the front crawl stroke. In Experiment 1, intermediate swimmers were given attentional focus instructions related to the crawl arm stroke or the leg kick, respectively. Participants were instructed to focus on “pulling your hands back” or “pushing the instep down” (internal focus), or on “pushing the water back/down” (external focus), respectively. Swim times were significantly shorter with an external focus. In Experiment 2, a control condition was included. Times were significantly faster in the external focus compared with both the internal focus and control conditions. These findings have implications for enhancing performance in swimming.
Practical Considerations for the Assessment of the Metabolic and Physiological Responses to Closed-Wheel Motor Racing Using the Actiheart System: A Single Participant Study
Authors: Gordon Dan A , Thompson Nathan F , Salisbury Richard J
Published: December 2010

The purpose of this single participant case-study was to assess the effectiveness of using a non-invasive ECG system for the determination of the cardiovascular responses to closed-wheel motor racing and to offer some insights into the practicalities of working in the field with extreme sports participants. A professional racing driver participated in two driving trials and a laboratory based assessment of V̇O2max. During the driving trials HR telemetry was recorded every 15 s using the Actiheart system. Linear regression interpolation techniques were applied to the laboratory data for the estimation of the metabolic cost of driving from the collected HR data. During the practice session, HR was closely related to driving pace (p < 0.05). The metabolic demand for the 45 min session was 44.5 ± 16.6 kJ·min−1. In the competition trial the mean HR response was 182.1 ± 6.9 b·min−1, with an energy expenditure of 59.6 ± 9.5 kJ·min−1. The results from this study indicate that there is a profound metabolic strain associated with motor racing and that the Actiheart system provides a non-invasive means of determining the physical demands of automobile motor racing. However, metabolic demand may be overestimated in the presence of other influences on heart rate during competition.
Towards an Evolving Critical Consciousness in Coaching Research: The Physical Pedagogic Bricolage
Authors: Bush Anthony , Silk Michael
Published: December 2010

Within this paper we argue that the ontological core of sports coaching is fragile, somewhat narrow and blinkered, and acts to constrict that which counts as knowledge within the field. Through contextualising the field within a corporatised university system that favours instrumentalised forms of knowledge, we challenge the mythopoeic status afforded to the terminology ‘sport’ and ‘coaching’, instead proposing the moniker Physical Pedagogic Bricolage (PPB) to better encapsulate a reconceptualised field. Through opening the field to the deep interdisciplinarity of bricolage, we sketch a more democratic field that promotes understanding, communication, and, creates structures that allow for a better informed, more rigorous, mode of knowledge production which has the power to move the field of sports coaching in a more progressive direction. This is a project that connects coaching to a broader notion of cultural politics designed to further a multiracial, economic and political democracy, a project that connects theory to social change, textual analysis to practical politics, and academic inquiry to public spheres [1]. Of course, we fully recognise that such a challenge to the ontological core of the field will be contested. As such, we intend this paper less as a prescription for coaching research and more of a directional purview that invites—expects—critical dialogue, response and debate as we work towards a set of perhaps competing knowledges, epistemologies, and, axiological approaches that together can ‘do coaching justice.’
A Hydrocode Material Model for Concrete
Authors: Hartmann Thomas , Pietzsch Achim , Gebbeken Norbert
Published: December 2010

In order to predict the behavior of concrete structures under impulsive loading it is not only essential to be able to model the dynamic strength and other strain rate dependent properties of the material, but also to describe realistically the damage and the softening process of the material. Various material models representing different phenomena of the response of concrete to high dynamic loads have already been developed. However, concrete modeling, especially damage modeling, is still far from completion. This paper presents an enhanced material model (HPG) for the simulation of concrete subjected to high dynamic loads. It combines existing approaches from different material models and new formulations for the dynamic strength increase, damage and degradation. The model is based on static material behavior and extends it to the high dynamic range. The formulations for yield surface, plastic hardening and strain rate dependency are presented and the damage and degradation models are explained in detail. The model was implemented in the commercial hydrocode Autodyn and validated both by contact detonation and large caliber impact tests.
Finite Element Simulation of FRP Strengthened Reinforced Concrete Slabs under Two Independent Air Blasts
Authors: Tanapornraweekit Ganchai , Haritos Nicholas , Mendis Priyan , Ngo Tuan
Published: December 2010

Multiple detonations might occur in both accidental explosions and terrorism attacks. Generally, normal reinforced concrete (RC) structures which are not designed to withstand high intensity blast loads are not capable of withstanding explosions from a single blast let alone a sequence of more than one blast. Since concrete is often highly cracked and damaged from the first blast, the remaining deteriorated concrete and steel reinforcement in a RC member becomes very vulnerable to collapse. This paper reports on the feasibility of using fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) to strengthen a normal RC slab capable of sustaining two independent air blasts. Apart from the experimental investigation, numerical studies have been conducted to verify the concrete and FRP material models when they are utilized to predict the behaviour of FRP-RC structures under multiple blasts. This article provides guidance on how to choose appropriately between the two existing concrete models available in the LS-DYNA code.
High Velocity Penetration/Perforation Using Coupled Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics-Finite Element Method
Authors: Swaddiwudhipong S. , Islam M.J. , Liu Z.S.
Published: December 2010

Finite element method (FEM) suffers from a serious mesh distortion problem when used for high velocity impact analyses. The smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method is appropriate for this class of problems involving severe damages but at considerable computational cost. It is beneficial if the latter is adopted only in severely distorted regions and FEM further away. The coupled smooth particle hydrodynamics – finite element method (SFM) has been adopted in a commercial hydrocode LS-DYNA to study the perforation of Weldox 460E steel and AA5083-H116 aluminum plates with varying thicknesses and various projectile nose geometries including blunt, conical and ogival noses. Effects of the SPH domain size and particle density are studied considering the friction effect between the projectile and the target materials. The simulated residual velocities and the ballistic limit velocities from the SFM agree well with the published experimental data. The study shows that SFM is able to emulate the same failure mechanisms of the steel and aluminum plates as observed in various experimental investigations for initial impact velocity of 170 m/s and higher.
Plastic Deformation, Failure and Energy Absorption of Sandwich Structures with Metallic Cellular Cores
Authors: Zhu Feng , Lu Guoxing , Ruan Dong , Wang Zhihua
Published: December 2010

Cellular metals with stochastic, 2D or 3D periodic microstructures can sustain large plastic deformation at almost constant stress. Due to such excellent energy absorption capability, cellular metals are very suited to be used as the core of sandwich structures, which have been applied widely to the areas of aerospace and aeronautical design, the automotive manufacturing, and shipbuilding, as well as the defense and nuclear industries. Although there is a great deal of research currently available related to the behaviour of sandwich structures with metallic cellular core under various loading conditions, they are widely scattered in the literature. This review paper brings together the latest developments in this important research area. Three types of cellular metals, namely metal foams, honeycombs and prismatic materials and truss and textile based lattice materials are considered. The responses of sandwich structure with such cores subjected to different loads, i.e. quasi-static/low velocity compression and indentation, ballistic impact, high speed compression and blast loading, are reviewed. The emphasis has been placed on their plastic deformation, failure and energy absorption behaviours.
Blast Load Variability and Accuracy of Blast Load Prediction Models
Authors: Netherton Michael D. , Stewart Mark G.
Published: December 2010

A statistical analysis of explosive blast loading field (test) data has revealed a high level of variability of peak reflected pressure, impulse and time of positive phase duration for repeatable tests where variability would be expected to be a minimum. The model error (accuracy) of a widely used predictive blast load model is also assessed. A probabilistic model of blast loading is then developed that considers variability and/or uncertainty of explosive mass, net equivalent quantity of an explosive in terms of TNT mass, stand-off distance, air temperature, air pressure, inherent variability and model error. Two widely used explosives are considered: Tritonal (military) and ANFO (terrorism). This type of statistical and probabilistic analysis is essential for structural reliability analysis of structures subject to explosive blast loading where load variability is an important contributor to damage and safety risks. It was found that the TM5–1300 design values for peak reflected pressure and time of positive phase duration adequately represent median values of the probability distribution of blast loads. The TM5–1300 design values for peak reflected impulse were 40% higher than median values with probabilities of exceedance of only 4% to 23%. This over-estimation of actual blast loads on a structure may lead to conservative design outcomes.
RC Column Failure Probabilities to Blast Loads
Authors: Hao Hong , Stewart Mark G. , Li Zhong-Xian , Shi Yanchao
Published: December 2010

Structural reliability analyses are commonly applied to estimation of probabilities of structural damage to static and dynamic loads such as earthquake, wind and wave loads. Although blast loadings acting on structures from accidental explosions or hostile bombings are very difficult to be accurately predicted owing to many uncertain parameters that influence explosion shock wave propagation and shock wave interaction with structures, reliability analyses of structural failure to blast loadings with consideration of uncertainties in blast loading and structural parameters are very limited. Instead, a large safety factor is usually used to account for uncertain variations in blast loading and structural parameters in blast-resistant design and analysis. This may lead to an inaccurate design of structures to resist blast loads, and an inaccurate assessment of structure performance in a given explosion scenario. In this study, reliability analyses of three example RC columns to randomly varying blast loads are carried out. The column dimensions, reinforcement ratios and material strengths are assumed to be normally distributed with the respective design parameters as the mean values. The mean value and standard deviation of the peak reflected pressure and duration of the blast load at various scaled distances are derived from available empirical formulae, and are used in this study to model the blast pressure variations. Failure probabilities of the example RC columns subjected to blast loads of different scaled distances are estimated. Numerical results are compared with those obtained with the deterministic blast loading or deterministic column property assumptions. The importance of considering the random variations of structural properties and blast loadings in assessing the blast load effects on RC columns is discussed.
Central Nervous System Toxicity Associated with Ertapenem Use
Authors: Duquaine Susan , Kitchell Ellen , Tate Temeka , Tannen Richard C , Wickremasinghe Itala Manosha
Published: December 2010

Objective

To report stroke-like symptoms and unusual central nervous system adverse effects in 2 elderly patients receiving ertapenem.

Case Summary:

TWO patients ≥70 years of age experienced unusual mental status changes while receiving ertapenem. Patient 1 developed garbled speech and miosis 1 week after starting appropriately dosed ertapenem (1 g/day) for sacral osteomyelitis. Symptoms resolved upon ertapenem discontinuation but recurred upon rechallenge. Patient 2. a cachectic male with acute renal insufficiency, became delirious and progressively obtunded 5 days after starting ertapenem 1 g/day. Nine days after initiation of therapy, he required intubation and mechanical ventilation; ertapenem was discontinued at that time. Within 2 days of ertapenem discontinuation, his mental state cleared and the ventilator was removed.

Discussion:

Carbapenems, including ertapenem, have been implicated in causing central nervous system toxicity, including hallucinations and seizures. However, published reports of other, nonseizure-related central nervous system events are limited. Considerable resources were expended on extensive medical interventions before ertapenem was identified as a potential cause of the delirium in our patients. When applied to our patients, the Naranjo probability scale indicated a highly probable relationship for patient 1 and a probable relationship for patient 2 between the adverse effects and ertapenem use.

Conclusions:

Clinicians should be cognizant of ertapenem's potential to induce profound changes in mental status that may mimic other conditions in elderly patients.
What Should We Be Fine Tuning in Acute Coronary Syndromes—Dosing of Antiplatelet Therapy or Data Presentation?
Authors: Nemerovski Carrie W , Dorsch Michael P , Jennings Douglas L
Published: December 2010

The CURRENT OASIS 7 (The Clopidogrel and Aspirin Optimal Dose Usage to Reduce Recurrent Events–Seventh Organization to Assess Strategies in Ischemic Syndromes) trial recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine and a subgroup of this trial published in The Lancet evaluated alternative dosing strategies for Clopidogrel and aspirin in the treatment of acute coronary syndromes. Critiques of these clinical trial data have been previously published and debated, but this study brings to light another area of scientific discussion. Using this trial as an example, this commentary emphasizes several key aspects of the clinical trial data presentation and publication process that need to improve and reminds clinicians of the many limitations to subgroup analyses.
Risk Management of Nanomaterials: Environmental and Consumer Protection under Existing EC Legislation on Chemicals, Pesticides and Biocides
Authors: Heselhaus Sebastian
Published: December 2010

There are many promises, but also potential risks, concerning the evolving nano-industry. For maintaining a high level of protection for the environment and consumer in this area of industry a thorough evaluation of the traditional approaches to risk assessment and management is needed. To this end, this article analyses the substance-oriented approach of the REACH Regulation as the main instrument for environmental and consumer protection and compares it to the Pesticide Directive and the Biocidal Products Directive, both of which are based on a product-oriented approach. The results challenge current assumptions that the traditional regulatory approaches are sufficiently equipped to provide for adequate risk assessment towards the new properties of nanomaterials.