A new footwear technology to promote non-heelstrike landing and enhance running performance: Fact or fad?

This study sought to compare the kinetics and kinematics data in a group of habitual shod runners when running in traditional running shoes and newly designed minimalist shoes with lug platform. This novel footwear design claims to simulate barefoot running and reduce energy loss during impact. We compared footstrike angle (FSA), vertical average (VALR) and instantaneous (VILR) loading rates, energy loss and initial vertical stiffness between two shoe conditions. Runners demonstrated a decreased FSA while running in minimalist shoes with lug platform than traditional shoes (P = 0.003; Cohen’s d = 0.918). However, we did not observe a landing pattern transition. VALR and VILR between two footwear conditions showed no significant difference (P = 0.191–0.258; Cohen’s d = 0.304–0.460). Initial vertical stiffness (P = 0.032; Cohen’s d = 0.671) and energy loss (P = 0.044; Cohen’s d = 0.578) were greater when running in minimalist shoes with lug platform. The results show that minimalist shoes with lug platform reduce the FSA but may not lead to a landing pattern switch or lower vertical loading rates. Interestingly, the new shoe design leads to a greater energy loss than traditional running shoes, which could be explained by a higher initial vertical stiffness.     

Trait Affection Given and Received: A Test of Hofstede’s Theoretical Framework

This study sought to address Hofstede and McCrae’s (2004) call for systematic cross-cultural comparisons of trait-like attributes. Specifically, we examined the extent to which Danish, Icelandic, Polish, and American adults’ trait affection given and trait affection received are (a) dependent on national origin, and (b) associated with Hofstede’s dimensions of cultures (i.e. individualism-collectivism, masculinity-femininity, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance). The participants (N = 606) completed a questionnaire in English that consisted of the trait affection given and trait affection received scales. Results of a multivariate analysis of variance and linear regression analyses revealed that people’s trait affection given and received are (a) dependent on national origin, and (b) associated with Hofstede’s dimensions of cultures.     

Hot-Heads,Gentlemen and the Liberties of Tradesmen

Abstract

Over the summer and autumn of 1739 Philadelphia’s two newspapers published competing versions of a hearing in the Pennsylvania assembly that was described as the ‘Affair of the Tanners’. What began as a minor property dispute in the colonial assembly became, with the aid of the local press, a citywide paper war for the support of the urban populace. This article argues the affair provides unique evidence for competing conceptions of the common good in the eighteenth-century colonial city, and was an expression of conflict with deep roots in Philadelphia’s history. The affair also shows how the medium of print could reflect both transatlantic cultural processes as well as distinctly local grievances, as a group of prosperous city artisans and their opponents utilized the city’s newspapers to articulate competing commonwealth ideologies.     

Comfort,Class and Climate Change: The Rise of Glass in Late Medieval and Early Modern Domestic Architecture

ABSTRACT

In the modern world, glass windows are considered an indispensable element of the built environment. Throughout premodern times, however, glass was not universally used in European architecture. This article argues that the rise of glass in Western architecture was neither an inevitable nor a linear process, but rather a response to certain social, cultural and environmental factors that gained increasing relevance from the late medieval period onwards. In other words, glass windows are a cultural convention, reflecting some of the wide-ranging and transformative challenges that Europeans faced in the late medieval and early modern period.