Use of deterministic models in sports and exercise biomechanics research

A deterministic model is a modeling paradigm that determines the relationships between a movement outcome measure and the biomechanical factors that produce such a measure. This review provides an overview of the use of deterministic models in biomechanics research, a historical summary of this research, and an analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of using deterministic models. The deterministic model approach has been utilized in technique analysis over the last three decades, especially in swimming, athletics field events, and gymnastics. In addition to their applications in sports and exercise biomechanics, deterministic models have been applied successfully in research on selected motor skills. The advantage of the deterministic model approach is that it helps to avoid selecting performance or injury variables arbitrarily and to provide the necessary theoretical basis for examining the relative importance of various factors that influence the outcome of a movement task. Several disadvantages of deterministic models, such as the use of subjective measures for the performance outcome, were discussed. It is recommended that exercise and sports biomechanics scholars should consider using deterministic models to help identify meaningful dependent variables in their studies.     

Customized USB flash drives used to promote library resources and services to first-year medical and dental students

In line with its institution's commitment to keep new student orientation/welcome events "green," Columbia University's Health Sciences Library (HSL) applied for a National Network of Libraries of Medicine Middle Atlantic Region (NN/LM MAR) Small Projects Award(1) in Spring/Summer 2009 to explore paperless modes of outreach. This article describes the project that resulted from this funding, whose purpose was to determine whether customized 1 GB USB flash drives are a good vehicle for distributing library promotional materials to incoming medical and dental students. This project gave HSL librarians the opportunity to connect with students in a way that had not been done before and to consider how these new students use/view the information the library produces.     

e-Government Adoption Model (GAM): Differing service maturity levels

This research has as its objective the discovery of the critical factors that enable citizens to adopt e-Government (e-Gov) at different stages of service maturity. To accomplish the objective, this research has explained the related concepts and theories and developed a research framework grounded on a strong theoretical and literature review background. The empirical study was conducted in Canada, which is a leader in providing mature e-Gov services. From our results, we have observed two ontological differences from the present literature in the adoption behavior of e-Gov where organizational and financial perspectives have distinct implications over parsimonious technology adoption behavior. First, technology adoption model (TAM), diffusion of innovation theory (DOI), and theory of planned behavior (TPB) cannot capture and specify the complete essence of e-Gov adoption behavior of citizens. Second, e-Gov adoption behavior also differs based on service maturity levels, i.e., when functional characteristics of organizational, technological, economical, and social perspectives of e-Gov differ. Our findings indicate the critical factors that enable citizens to adopt e-Gov at different stages of service maturity. Public administrators and policy-makers have potential implications from the findings of the adoption behavior of e-Gov at different maturity levels.     

Understanding the dynamics in e-Participation initiatives: Looking through the genre and stakeholder lenses

Conventionally, e-Participation initiatives are considered to be successful only if users use these services. While the growing body of e-Participation literature has listed and studied challenges and barriers to achieving this end, conceptual clarity on why such projects are considered as failures is yet to be achieved. We argue that this is due to the inadequate understanding of the complex stakeholder dynamics of an e-Participation project. In this paper, we seek to address this knowledge gap by proposing that using stakeholder theory complemented by genre theory provides an interpretive lens to understand the complexities in the development and use of such projects. To illustrate our proposed lens, we apply it to analyze an e-Participation project in Norway at its development and use phases. Our findings indicate that a key factor that influences the success of e-Participation initiatives is high saliency of at least one stakeholder group at various phases of the initiatives. The saliency of stakeholders changes over the life of a project and hence the salient stakeholder also varies. Consequently, it is not essential for the same stakeholder group to be salient throughout, only that some stakeholders remain salient. Our interpretive lens also extends the discourse on stakeholder theory. In traditional management literature stakeholder theory is meant as a tool to identify stakeholders' groups to which management or owner of an organization should pay attention. We show that it is also useful to identify which stakeholder groups will act to protect their interests. Based on our findings, we propose insights into studying and developing e-Participation projects.     

Circulating Biomarkers and their Possible Role in Pathogenesis of Chronic Hepatitis B and C Viral Infections

The present study evaluated the plausible role of circulating biomarkers in immune pathogenesis of chronic hepatitis considered a priority in clinical hepatology. Total viral load of chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) patients was quantified and correlation studies were performed with circulating levels of Th1/Th2 cytokines; C reactive protein and circulating nucleosomes; glutathione reductase (GR) and superoxide dismutase. To our knowledge, the study is first among its kind that validates strong positive correlation of viral load with IL-4, IL-6, GR in HBV and IL-6, IL-10, GR in HCV infections. Although, multi-centric studies including large cohorts are required for translating our findings to clinical practice, however, role of these biomarkers with potential diagnostic or prognostic significance might be helpful in clinical assessment of high-risk individuals, thereby, designing interventional strategies, towards development of personalized medicare. The results of our study also offer valuable insights of immune signaling mediators engaged in development of hepatocellular carcinoma.     

Neutrino oscillations: The 2007 Benjamin Franklin medal in physics presented to Arthur McDonald and Yoji Totsuka

This award recognizes two specific discoveries that constitute the experimental discovery of neutrino oscillations. In 1998 the Super-Kamiokande group under the leadership of Yoji Totsuka published their paper, “Evidence for Oscillation of Atmospheric Neutrinos” in Physical Review Letters [1]. The paper describes a deficit of muon-type neutrinos from below the detector relative to those from above. It explains this “atmospheric neutrino anomaly” as a result of transformation of some of the muon neutrinos into another type of neutrino. Four years later, the group led by Arthur McDonald described “Direct Evidence for Neutrino Flavor Transformation from Neutral-Current Interactions in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory” [2] in the same journal. This experiment detected lower energy neutrinos from deep inside the Sun. By measuring all flavors of neutrinos with large rates, the SNO collaboration showed definitively that the long-standing “solar neutrino puzzle” was another manifestation of neutrino oscillations. As a result of these two experiments, we now understand that neutrinos can change identities during propagation and that both the solar and atmospheric neutrino “problems” result from the same underlying phenomenon of oscillations. A consequence of neutrino oscillations is that neutrinos, previously thought to be massless, must have a non-zero rest mass.     

Exact analysis for the identification of non-minimum phase processes

Analytical expressions are derived from a single symmetrical relay feedback test for the identification of open loop stable and unstable non-minimum phase processes. The second derivative of the limit cycle output helps in finding the time delay of the process. The derived expressions can be used to identify the process models with up to five unknowns. The effectiveness of the proposed identification method is verified through different simulation results.     

Do RFIDs (radio frequency identifier devices) provide new ethical dilemmas for librarians and information professionals?

This paper provides an analysis of the current and potential ethical implications of RFID technology for the library and information professions. These issues are analysed as a series of ethical dilemmas, or hard-to-resolve competing ethical obligations, which the librarian has in relationship to information objects, library users and the wider social and political environment or state. A process model of the library is used as a framework for the discussion to illustrate the relationship between the different participants in the library system and it is argued that ethical analysis should involve the identification of future developments as well as current issues. The analysis shows that RFIDs do currently pose some dilemmas for librarians in terms of the conflicts between efficient service, privacy of users and an obligation to protect the safety of society as a whole, and that these are likely to become more problematic as the technology develops. This paper is part 2 of a series of papers on RFIDs and the library and information professions.