Revisiting the stretch-induced force deficit:A systematic review with multilevel meta-analysis of acute effects

Background:When recommending avoidance of static stretching prior to athletic performance,authors and practitioners commonly refer to available systematic reviews.However,effect sizes(ES)in previous reviews were extracted in major part from studies lacking control conditions and/or prepost testing designs.Also,currently available reviews conducted calculations without accounting for multiple study outcomes,with ES:0.03 to 0.10,which would commonly be classified as trivial.Methods:Since new meta-analytical software and controlled research articles have appeared since 2013,we revisited the available literatures and performed a multilevel meta-analysis using robust variance estimation of controlled prepost trials to provide updated evidence.Furthermore,previous research described reduced electromyography activity—also attributable to fatiguing training routines—as being responsible for decreased subsequent performance.The second part of this study opposed stretching and alternative interventions sufficient to induce general fatigue to examine whether static stretching induces higher performance losses compared to other exercise routines.Results:Including 83 studies with more than 400 ES from 2012 participants,our results indicate a significant,small ES for a static stretch-induced maximal strength loss(ES=0.21,p=0.003),with high magnitude ES(ES=0.84,p=0.004)for stretching durations≥60 s per bout when compared to passive controls.When opposed to active controls,the maximal strength loss ranges between ES:0.17 to0.28,p<0.001 and 0.040 with mostly no to small heterogeneity.However,stretching did not negatively influence athletic performance in general(when compared to both passive and active controls);in fact,a positive effect on subsequent jumping performance(ES=0.15,p=0.006)was found in adults.Conclusion:Regarding strength testing of isolated muscles(e.g.,leg extensions or calf raises),our results confirm previous findings.Nevertheless,since no(or even positive)effects could be found for athletic performance,our results do not support previous recommendations to exclude static stretching from warm-up routines prior to,for example,jumping or sprinting.

GLOBAL BOUND ON THE GRADIENT OF SOLUTIONS TO p-LAPLACE TYPE EQUATIONS WITH MIXED DATA

In this paper,the study of gradient regularity for solutions of a class of elliptic problems of p-Laplace type is offered.In particular,we prove a global result concerning Lorentz-Morrey regularity of the non-homogeneous boundary data problem:-div((s^(2)+|▽u|^(2)p-2/2)▽u)=-div(|f|^(p-2)f)+g inΩ,u=h in■Ω,with the(sub-elliptic)degeneracy condition s∈[0,1]and with mixed data f∈L^(p)(Q;R^(n)),g∈Lp/(p-1)(Ω;R^(n))for p∈(1,n).This problem naturally arises in various applications such as dynamics of non-Newtonian fluid theory,electro-rheology,radiation of heat,plastic moulding and many others.Building on the idea of level-set inequality on fractional maximal distribution functions,it enables us to carry out a global regularity result of the solution via fractional maximal operators.Due to the significance of M_(α)and its relation with Riesz potential,estimates via fractional maximal functions allow us to bound oscillations not only for solution but also its fractional derivatives of orderα.Our approach therefore has its own interest.

Growth of RB Population in the Conversion Phase of Chlamydia Life Cycle

Upon infecting a host cell,the reticulate body(RB)form of the Chlamydia bacteria simply proliferates by binary fission for an extended period.Available data show only RB units in the infected cells 20 hours post infection(hpi),spanning nearly half way through the development cycle.With data collected every 4 hpi,conversion to the elementary body(EB)form begins abruptly at a rapid rate sometime around 24 hpi.By modeling proliferation and conversion as simple birth and death processes,it has been shown that the optimal strategy for maximizing the total(mean)EB population at host cell lysis time is a bang-bang control qualitatively replicating the observed conversion activities.However,the simple birth and death model for the RB proliferation and conversion to EB deviates in a significant way from the available data on the evolution of the RB population after the onset of RB-to-EB conversion.By working with a more refined model that takes into account a small size threshold eligibility requirement for conversion noted in the available data,we succeed in removing the deficiency of the previous models on the evolution of the RB population without affecting the optimal bang-bang conversion strategy.

Exploring the molecular mechanism of Epimedium brevicornu Maxim.in treating breast cancer via network pharmacology and in vitro experiments Author links open overlay panel

Objective To evaluate the therapeutic effects of Epimedium brevicornu Maxim.(EBM,Yin Yang Huo)on breast cancer using network pharmacology and in vitro validation.It also aimed to explore the novel targets and mechanisms of EBM in the treatment of breast cancer to facilitate the discovery of new drugs and their clinical application.Methods Network pharmacology was used to identify and screen the components and targets of EBM for breast cancer treatment.Molecular docking was further screened the effective components and targets of EBM.Wound-healing assays and flow cytometry analysis were used to detect the ability of two compounds to intervene in the migration and apoptosis of MDA-MB-231 cells,and their mechanism of action was further explored using western blotting experiments.Results EBM contained 19 active components.Among them wereβ-anhydroicaritin(Anhy)and isoliquiritigenin(Iso),which were selected for in vitro experiments.Treatment resulted in a dose-dependent suppression of MDA-MB-231 cell viability,with an IC50 of 23.73μmol/L for Iso and 21.28μmol/L for Anhy.In the wound healing assay,cells in Anhy and Iso groups exhibited considerable inhibition of migration at 48 h.In flow cytometry analysis,treatment with Iso(20μmol/L)for 96 h resulted in significantly higher levels of both early and late apoptosis in the Iso group than that in the control group(P=.004 and P=.014,respectively).Additionally,both Iso(20μmol/L)and Anhy(10 and 20μmol/L)induced cell necrosis at 96 h.Western blotting revealed that Anhy and Iso increased the expression of Bax and TBK1/NAK.Conclusion These findings suggested that Anhy and Iso,the two components of EBM,inhibit MDA-MB-231 cell proliferation and migration of and induce their apoptosis,providing substantial support for future studies on breast cancer.

A Study of EM Algorithm as an Imputation Method: A Model-Based Simulation Study with Application to a Synthetic Compositional Data

Compositional data, such as relative information, is a crucial aspect of machine learning and other related fields. It is typically recorded as closed data or sums to a constant, like 100%. The statistical linear model is the most used technique for identifying hidden relationships between underlying random variables of interest. However, data quality is a significant challenge in machine learning, especially when missing data is present. The linear regression model is a commonly used statistical modeling technique used in various applications to find relationships between variables of interest. When estimating linear regression parameters which are useful for things like future prediction and partial effects analysis of independent variables, maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) is the method of choice. However, many datasets contain missing observations, which can lead to costly and time-consuming data recovery. To address this issue, the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm has been suggested as a solution for situations including missing data. The EM algorithm repeatedly finds the best estimates of parameters in statistical models that depend on variables or data that have not been observed. This is called maximum likelihood or maximum a posteriori (MAP). Using the present estimate as input, the expectation (E) step constructs a log-likelihood function. Finding the parameters that maximize the anticipated log-likelihood, as determined in the E step, is the job of the maximization (M) phase. This study looked at how well the EM algorithm worked on a made-up compositional dataset with missing observations. It used both the robust least square version and ordinary least square regression techniques. The efficacy of the EM algorithm was compared with two alternative imputation techniques, k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN) and mean imputation (), in terms of Aitchison distances and covariance.

A Study on the Implicatures in Chinese Advertising from the Perspective of Flouting the Maxims of Cooperative Principle

Advertising language is very critical in advertising and also contributes much to producing advertising effect. As one of the most important pragmatic principles, the Cooperative Principle (CP) is adopted much in linguistic researches. Also, by analyzing a large number of Chinese advertisements with CP, the author finds that it is common that advertisers try to generate implicatures by flouting the maxims of CP. This paper brings a clear look of the Cooperative Principle and its maxims. It also sheds new light on the interpretation of Chinese advertisements.

VARIATIONAL ANALYSIS FOR THE MAXIMAL TIME FUNCTION IN NORMED SPACES

For a general normed vector space,a special optimal value function called a maximal time function is considered.This covers the farthest distance function as a special case,and has a close relationship with the smallest enclosing ball problem.Some properties of the maximal time function are proven,including the convexity,the lower semicontinuity,and the exact characterizations of its subdifferential formulas.

Kinematic calibration under the expectation maximization framework for exoskeletal inertial motion capture system

This study presents a kinematic calibration method for exoskeletal inertial motion capture (EI-MoCap) system with considering the random colored noise such as gyroscopic drift.In this method, the geometric parameters are calibrated by the traditional calibration method at first. Then, in order to calibrate the parameters affected by the random colored noise, the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm is introduced. Through the use of geometric parameters calibrated by the traditional calibration method, the iterations under the EM framework are decreased and the efficiency of the proposed method on embedded system is improved. The performance of the proposed kinematic calibration method is compared to the traditional calibration method. Furthermore, the feasibility of the proposed method is verified on the EI-MoCap system. The simulation and experiment demonstrate that the motion capture precision is significantly improved by 16.79%and 7.16%respectively in comparison to the traditional calibration method.

Optimal Shape Factor and Fictitious Radius in the MQ-RBF:Solving Ill-Posed Laplacian Problems

To solve the Laplacian problems,we adopt a meshless method with the multiquadric radial basis function(MQRBF)as a basis whose center is distributed inside a circle with a fictitious radius.A maximal projection technique is developed to identify the optimal shape factor and fictitious radius by minimizing a merit function.A sample function is interpolated by theMQ-RBF to provide a trial coefficient vector to compute the merit function.We can quickly determine the optimal values of the parameters within a preferred rage using the golden section search algorithm.The novel method provides the optimal values of parameters and,hence,an optimal MQ-RBF;the performance of the method is validated in numerical examples.Moreover,nonharmonic problems are transformed to the Poisson equation endowed with a homogeneous boundary condition;this can overcome the problem of these problems being ill-posed.The optimal MQ-RBF is extremely accurate.We further propose a novel optimal polynomial method to solve the nonharmonic problems,which achieves high precision up to an order of 10^(−11).

The study of a neutron spectrum unfolding method based on particle swarm optimization combined with maximum likelihood expectation maximization

The neutron spectrum unfolding by Bonner sphere spectrometer(BSS) is considered a complex multidimensional model,which requires complex mathematical methods to solve the first kind of Fredholm integral equation. In order to solve the problem of the maximum likelihood expectation maximization(MLEM) algorithm which is easy to suffer the pitfalls of local optima and the particle swarm optimization(PSO) algorithm which is easy to get unreasonable flight direction and step length of particles, which leads to the invalid iteration and affect efficiency and accuracy, an improved PSO-MLEM algorithm, combined of PSO and MLEM algorithm, is proposed for neutron spectrum unfolding. The dynamic acceleration factor is used to balance the ability of global and local search, and improves the convergence speed and accuracy of the algorithm. Firstly, the Monte Carlo method was used to simulated the BSS to obtain the response function and count rates of BSS. In the simulation of count rate, four reference spectra from the IAEA Technical Report Series No. 403 were used as input parameters of the Monte Carlo method. The PSO-MLEM algorithm was used to unfold the neutron spectrum of the simulated data and was verified by the difference of the unfolded spectrum to the reference spectrum. Finally, the 252Cf neutron source was measured by BSS, and the PSO-MLEM algorithm was used to unfold the experimental neutron spectrum.Compared with maximum entropy deconvolution(MAXED), PSO and MLEM algorithm, the PSO-MLEM algorithm has fewer parameters and automatically adjusts the dynamic acceleration factor to solve the problem of local optima. The convergence speed of the PSO-MLEM algorithm is 1.4 times and 3.1 times that of the MLEM and PSO algorithms. Compared with PSO, MLEM and MAXED, the correlation coefficients of PSO-MLEM algorithm are increased by 33.1%, 33.5% and 1.9%, and the relative mean errors are decreased by 98.2%, 97.8% and 67.4%.

Efficient,rapid and incremental extraction of bioactive compounds from the flowers of Hibiscus manihot L.

Flavonoids are the primary functional components in the flowers of Hibiscus manihot L.(HMLF).In this study,an efficient and green ionic liquid-high-speed homogenization coupled with microwave-assisted extraction(IL-HSH-MAE)technique was firstly established and implemented to extract seven target flavonoids from HMLF.Single-factor experiments and Box-Behnken design(BBD)were utilized to maximize the extraction conditions of IL-HSH-MAE,which were as follows:0.1 M of[C4mim]Br,homogenate speed of 7,000 rpm,homogenate time of 120 s,liquid/solid ratio of 24 mL/g,extraction temperature of 62℃and extraction time of 15 min.The maximal total extraction yield of seven target flavonoids attained 22.04 mg/g,which was considerably greater than the yields obtained by IL-HSH,IL-MAE,60%ethanol-HSH-MAE and 60%ethanol-MAE.These findings suggested that the IL-HSH-MAE method can be exploited as a rapid and efficient approach for extracting natural products from plants.The process also possesses outstanding superiority in being environmentally friendly and having a high extraction efficiency and is expected to be a luciferous prospect extraction technology.

Adapting Grice's maxims in the teaching of writing

Grice's maxims,which define the conditions for efficient spoken communication,can be adapted to the teaching of writing by providing both teachers and writers with a way of understanding successful and unsuccessful written correspondence in mono-and cross-cultural settings.A survey of lay readers' responses to a sample letter which show that,while there are individual differences in the way these maxims are interpreted,readers expect clarity,brevity,and sincerity,and writing which fails to meet these expectations will be unfavorably received.Also discussed are the issues of contrastive rhetoric,and ways of helping writers to position themselves in relation to their real or imagined reader.

Solving the k-Independent Sets Problem of Graphs by Gröbner Bases

The aim of this paper is to given an algebraic computational method for finding maximal independent sets as well as the independent number of an arbitrary finite graph of n vertices G by strengthening the problem of finding maximal independent sets of G to the problem of finding k-independent sets in G for. It is shown that the existence of k-independent sets in G is equivalent to the existence of solutions of a system of multivariate polynomial equations. It follows that the problem of finding k-independent sets can be realized by using Gröbner bases of polynomial ideals. Since the number of k-independent sets is finite, the triangular equations composed by Gröbner bases are easier to be solved. Consequently, the maximal independent sets and the independent number of G are obtained after solving at most n such equations. Finally, the numerical example is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of this algebraic computational method.

Study of Optimal Frequency to the Repairable System Due to Failure Finding Interval to Maximize Availability System

This research article is based on a study of optimal frequency to the repairable system due to the failure finding interval to maximize as well as minimize the availability of some components devices. We studied together maintenance and corrective actions that carried out item of failure and periodic failure finding designed to check whether a system is still working. The model is proved as well as useful application in detecting the problem related to finding failure tasks of different scheme devices by maximization. The model formulated and the numerical application to the relevant mathematical model have been discussed to demonstrate the article quality. Therefore based on probability analytic development, the optimal maintenance policy is then obtained as solution of an optimization problem in which the maintenance cost rate is the objective function and the risk of corrective maintenance is the constraint function. Finally, the solution to the optimal device in the considered development model has been well adjusted due to derivation to the experimental observation rather than theory which will be taken into consideration in the next applied practical design research related and the system device provided that, the proactive device agreed with using the exponential distribution to the survive distribution function which can not be considered as valid.

Study on the Development and Implementation of Different Big Data Clustering Methods

Clustering is an unsupervised learning method used to organize raw data in such a way that those with the same (similar) characteristics are found in the same class and those that are dissimilar are found in different classes. In this day and age, the very rapid increase in the amount of data being produced brings new challenges in the analysis and storage of this data. Recently, there is a growing interest in key areas such as real-time data mining, which reveal an urgent need to process very large data under strict performance constraints. The objective of this paper is to survey four algorithms including K-Means algorithm, FCM algorithm, EM algorithm and BIRCH, used for data clustering and then show their strengths and weaknesses. Another task is to compare the results obtained by applying each of these algorithms to the same data and to give a conclusion based on these results.

State-Independent Proofs of Bell＇s Theorem Without Inequalities and Bell Inequality for Four-Qubit System

A state-dependent proof of Bell's theorem without inequalities using the product state of any two maximally entangled states (Bell states) of two qubits for two observers in an ideal condition, each of which possesses two qubits,is proposed. It is different from the other proofs in which there exists a fundamental requirement that certain specific suitable Bell states have been chosen. Moreover, in any non-ideal situation, a common Bell inequality independent of the choices of the 16-product states is derived, which is used to test the contradiction between quantum mechanics and local reality theory in the reach of current experimental technology.

Propulsive performance and flow field characteristics of a 2-D flexible fin with variations in the location of its pitching axis

The thrust coefficients and propulsive efficiency of a two-dimensional flexible fin with heaving and pitching motion were computed using FLUENT. The effect of different locations of the pitching axis on propulsive performance was examined using three deflexion modes which are respectively, modified Bose mode, cantilever beam with uniformly distributed load and cantilever beam with non-uniformly distributed load. The results show that maximum thrust can be achieved with the pitching axis at the trailing edge, but the highest propulsive efficiency can be achieved with the pitching axis either 1/3 of the chord length from the leading edge in modified Bose mode, or 2/3 of the chord length from the leading edge in cantilever beam mode. At the same time, the effects of the Strouhal number and maximal attack angle on the hydrodynamics performance of the flexible fin were analyzed. Parameter interval of the maximum thrust coefficient and the highest propulsive efficiency were gained. If the Strouhal number is low, high propulsive efficiency can be achieved at low αmax , and vice versa.

A Comparative Study on Chemical Composition of Supercritical CO_2 Extraction Products in Peels of Trichosanthes kirilowii Maxim. from Changqing District

[Objective] This study aimed to investigate the differences in chemical composition of supercritical CO2 extraction products in peels of Trichosanthes kirilowii Maxim. from Changqing district. [Method] Supercritical fluidextraction （SFE） and GCMS method were applied to determine and analyze the chemical components of the extracts in peels of three strains of Trichosanthes kirilowii Maxim. [Result] The chemical components of supercritical CO2 extraction products in peels of three strains of Trichosanthes kirilowii Maxim. varied., and the number of chemical components with normalized percentage content higher than 1% was 5, 7 and 8, respectively. There are 14 kinds of common components, and the relative content of hexadecanoic acid was the highest. [Conclusion] Supercritical CO2 extracts in peels of different strains of Trichosanthes kirilowii Maxim. contain different chemical components, providing scientific basis for breeding excellent varieties and the development and utilization of Trichosanthes kirilowii Maxim.

Model of the Rake Receiver for CDMA2000 Reverse Link

To improve performance of receiver, the pilot channel is added to reverse channels of CDMA2000 In this paper, the structure of reverse channels is outlined and the principle of Rake receiver is discussed, then the model of the Rake receiver is set up and some computer simulations are performed.