Using inertial measurement units for quantifying the most intense jumping movements occurring in professional male volleyball players.

The purpose of this study was to use an inertial measurement unit (IMU) to analyze variations in the jump outcomes concerning weekly training days, and the dependencies between the number of jumps per minute and the jump height. An experimental research design was adopted across three weeks of the final play-off of a volleyball championship. Through an IMU, the external load of seven male elite volleyball athletes of a top rating team from Portuguese 1st Division (age: 30.5 ± 3.5 years; height: 200.2 ± 6.3 cm; body mass: 93.0 ± 8.1 kg; BMI: 23.1 ± 2.3 kg/m2) was monitored. Repeated measures ANOVA was executed to compare the outcomes between training days. It was observed a similar density of jumps during the week. However, when comparing MD-1 to MD-2, a more significant average number of jumps per minute was observed in MD-1 (1.3 ± 0.2 vs. 1.0 ± 0.2). Additionally, a positive, large and significant correlation was registered between the number of jumps and the height of the jump. Those results highlight the benefits of the specific training, leading to greater stimulation and improvement, in a game-like context, of the stretching-shortening cycle, observed in every jump action in volleyball.

Proteostasis networks in aging: novel insights from text-mining approaches.

Aging is a topic of paramount importance in an increasingly elderly society and has been the focus of extensive research. Protein homeostasis (proteostasis) decline is a hallmark in aging and several age-related diseases, but which specific proteins and mechanisms are involved in proteostasis (de)regulation during the aging process remain largely unknown. Here, we used different text-mining tools complemented with protein-protein interaction data to address this complex topic. Analysis of the integrated protein interaction networks identified novel proteins and pathways associated to proteostasis mechanisms and aging or age-related disorders, indicating that this approach is useful to identify previously unknown links and for retrieving information of potential novel biomarkers or therapeutic targets.

Study of NAD-interacting proteins highlights the extent of NAD regulatory roles in the cell and its potential as a therapeutic target.

Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) levels are essential for the normal physiology of the cell and are strictly regulated to prevent pathological conditions. NAD functions as a coenzyme in redox reactions, as a substrate of regulatory proteins, and as a mediator of protein-protein interactions. The main objectives of this study were to identify the NAD-binding and NAD-interacting proteins, and to uncover novel proteins and functions that could be regulated by this metabolite. It was considered if cancer-associated proteins were potential therapeutic targets. Using multiple experimental databases, we defined datasets of proteins that directly interact with NAD - the NAD-binding proteins (NADBPs) dataset - and of proteins that interact with NADBPs - the NAD-protein-protein interactions (NAD-PPIs) dataset. Pathway enrichment analysis revealed that NADBPs participate in several metabolic pathways, while NAD-PPIs are mostly involved in signalling pathways. These include disease-related pathways, namely, three major neurodegenerative disorders: Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, and Parkinson's disease. Then, the complete human proteome was further analysed to select potential NADBPs. TRPC3 and isoforms of diacylglycerol (DAG) kinases, which are involved in calcium signalling, were identified as new NADBPs. Potential therapeutic targets that interact with NAD were identified, that have regulatory and signalling functions in cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.

Intentional Replantation as a Starting Approach for a Multidisciplinary Treatment of a Mandibular Second Molar: A Case Report.

Intentional replantation (IR) may offer a solution for persistent periapical lesions associated with endodontically treated teeth. A 35-year-old male patient presented with pain associated with the left mandibular second molar and hypoesthesia. Upon clinical examination, increased probing pocket depth in the mid-buccal surface was detected. Cone beam computed tomography revealed a previous non-surgical root canal treatment, with root canal filling material extrusion adjacent to the inferior alveolar nerve, a fractured instrument in the mesial root, and a large periapical radiolucency involving both teeth 37 and 36. A diagnosis of symptomatic post-treatment apical periodontitis was established. After discussing treatment options with the patient, an IR of tooth 37 was performed. Extra-oral procedures were completed in 17 min. At 9 months, hypoesthesia resolution was reported, and apical healing was radiographically observed. After 2.5 years, the replanted tooth showed extensive root resorption. An extraction with alveolar ridge preservation, using leukocyte-platelet rich fibrin (L-PRF), was performed. Six months after tooth extraction and regeneration, implant placement surgery was carried out. IR presents a valid treatment modality for the management of post-treatment apical periodontitis. When orthograde retreatment or apical microsurgery prove to be unfeasible, IR is a unique procedure with the potential to promote tooth preservation in properly selected cases. Although unsuccessful after 2.5 years, the IR of tooth 37 allowed for bone regeneration, the maintenance of tooth 36 vitality, and hypoesthesia resolution.

Modelling patient trajectories using multimodal information.

BACKGROUND: Electronic Health Records (EHRs) aggregate diverse information at the patient level, holding a trajectory representative of the evolution of the patient health status throughout time. Although this information provides context and can be leveraged by physicians to monitor patient health and make more accurate prognoses/diagnoses, patient records can contain information from very long time spans, which combined with the rapid generation rate of medical data makes clinical decision making more complex. Patient trajectory modelling can assist by exploring existing information in a scalable manner, and can contribute in augmenting health care quality by fostering preventive medicine practices (e.g. earlier disease diagnosis). METHODS: We propose a solution to model patient trajectories that combines different types of information (e.g. clinical text, standard codes) and considers the temporal aspect of clinical data. This solution leverages two different architectures: one supporting flexible sets of input features, to convert patient admissions into dense representations; and a second exploring extracted admission representations in a recurrent-based architecture, where patient trajectories are processed in sub-sequences using a sliding window mechanism. RESULTS: The developed solution was evaluated on two different clinical outcomes, unexpected patient readmission and disease progression, using the publicly available Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care (MIMIC)-III clinical database. The results obtained demonstrate the potential of the first architecture to model readmission and diagnoses prediction using single patient admissions. While information from clinical text did not show the discriminative power observed in other existing works, this may be explained by the need to fine-tune the clinicalBERT model. Finally, we demonstrate the potential of the sequence-based architecture using a sliding window mechanism to represent the input data, attaining comparable performances to other existing solutions. CONCLUSION: Herein, we explored DL-based techniques to model patient trajectories and propose two flexible architectures that explore patient admissions on an individual and sequence basis. The combination of clinical text with other types of information led to positive results, which can be further improved by including a fine-tuned version of clinicalBERT in the architectures. The proposed solution can be publicly accessed at https://github.com/bioinformatics-ua/PatientTM.

The complexity landscape of viral genomes.

BACKGROUND: Viruses are among the shortest yet highly abundant species that harbor minimal instructions to infect cells, adapt, multiply, and exist. However, with the current substantial availability of viral genome sequences, the scientific repertory lacks a complexity landscape that automatically enlights viral genomes' organization, relation, and fundamental characteristics. RESULTS: This work provides a comprehensive landscape of the viral genome's complexity (or quantity of information), identifying the most redundant and complex groups regarding their genome sequence while providing their distribution and characteristics at a large and local scale. Moreover, we identify and quantify inverted repeats abundance in viral genomes. For this purpose, we measure the sequence complexity of each available viral genome using data compression, demonstrating that adequate data compressors can efficiently quantify the complexity of viral genome sequences, including subsequences better represented by algorithmic sources (e.g., inverted repeats). Using a state-of-the-art genomic compressor on an extensive viral genomes database, we show that double-stranded DNA viruses are, on average, the most redundant viruses while single-stranded DNA viruses are the least. Contrarily, double-stranded RNA viruses show a lower redundancy relative to single-stranded RNA. Furthermore, we extend the ability of data compressors to quantify local complexity (or information content) in viral genomes using complexity profiles, unprecedently providing a direct complexity analysis of human herpesviruses. We also conceive a features-based classification methodology that can accurately distinguish viral genomes at different taxonomic levels without direct comparisons between sequences. This methodology combines data compression with simple measures such as GC-content percentage and sequence length, followed by machine learning classifiers. CONCLUSIONS: This article presents methodologies and findings that are highly relevant for understanding the patterns of similarity and singularity between viral groups, opening new frontiers for studying viral genomes' organization while depicting the complexity trends and classification components of these genomes at different taxonomic levels. The whole study is supported by an extensive website (https://asilab.github.io/canvas/) for comprehending the viral genome characterization using dynamic and interactive approaches.

Within-Week Variations and Relationships between Internal and External Intensities Occurring in Male Professional Volleyball Training Sessions.

The purpose of the study was to test the within-week variations of the internal and external training intensity outcomes organized by days of the week. An 8-month observational period was conducted during the 2020-2021 season. The training sessions and matches of an elite volleyball team were monitored daily. The data comes from 14 players (two setters, five middle blockers, five outside hitters, and two opposites) of an elite team from the Portuguese 1st League (age: 21.7 ± 4.19 years of age; experience: 6.2 ± 3.8 years; body mass: 85.7 ± 8.69 kg; height: 192.4 ± 6.25 cm; BMI: 23.1 ± 1.40 kg/m2). The CR10 Borg scale was applied daily to measure the training intensity. The rate of perceived exertion (RPE) and the session-RPE were extracted as the internal outcomes. The external intensity was measured using an inertial measurement unit (IMU). The number of jumps, height average of jumps (JHA), minimum jump (MJ), maximal jump (MXJ), range jump (RJ), number of jumps (NJ), and training session density (D) were extracted as external intensity outcomes. The results showed that there was a difference between RPE and S-RPE (F (1.98) = 6.31, p = 0.01, η2 = 0.36, and F (1.73) = 28.30, p = 0.001, η2 = 0.72), as well as JHA and NJ (F (2.14) = 4.76, p = 0.02, η2 = 0.30, and F (1.77) = 4.77, p = 0.02, η2 = 0.30) within the microcycle. When analyzing the correlations between internal and external intensity, it was observed that there was a negative correlation between the Maximum Jump (4, 3, and 1 days before the Match day) (r2 = 0.34, r2 = 0.40, r2 = 0.41, respectively) and the Range Jump (3 and 1 days before the Match day (r2 = 0.33, r2 = 0.38, respectively) with the RPE (4 days before the Match day) and Maximum Jump (5, 4, 3, and 1 days before the Match day (r2 = 0.35, r2 = 0.39, r2 = 0.44, r2 = 0.34, respectively) and Range Jump (5, 4, 3, and 1 days before the Match day) (r2 = 0.34, r2 = 0.35, r2 = 0.40 and r2 = 0.36, respectively) with S_RPE (4 days before the Match day). Such findings show that higher internal intensities are correlated with lower external intensities in sessions further away from the game day. Such results could be an important tool for coaches to reflect, plan, monitor, and execute the training unit according to the temporal distance to the competition.

Chemical identification and indexing in PubMed full-text articles using deep learning and heuristics.

The identification of chemicals in articles has attracted a large interest in the biomedical scientific community, given its importance in drug development research. Most of previous research have focused on PubMed abstracts, and further investigation using full-text documents is required because these contain additional valuable information that must be explored. The manual expert task of indexing Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms to these articles later helps researchers find the most relevant publications for their ongoing work. The BioCreative VII NLM-Chem track fostered the development of systems for chemical identification and indexing in PubMed full-text articles. Chemical identification consisted in identifying the chemical mentions and linking these to unique MeSH identifiers. This manuscript describes our participation system and the post-challenge improvements we made. We propose a three-stage pipeline that individually performs chemical mention detection, entity normalization and indexing. Regarding chemical identification, we adopted a deep-learning solution that utilizes the PubMedBERT contextualized embeddings followed by a multilayer perceptron and a conditional random field tagging layer. For the normalization approach, we use a sieve-based dictionary filtering followed by a deep-learning similarity search strategy. Finally, for the indexing we developed rules for identifying the more relevant MeSH codes for each article. During the challenge, our system obtained the best official results in the normalization and indexing tasks despite the lower performance in the chemical mention recognition task. In a post-contest phase we boosted our results by improving our named entity recognition model with additional techniques. The final system achieved 0.8731, 0.8275 and 0.4849 in the chemical identification, normalization and indexing tasks, respectively. The code to reproduce our experiments and run the pipeline is publicly available. Database URL https://github.com/bioinformatics-ua/biocreativeVII_track2.

A Pilot Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial Comparing Piezo Versus Conventional Rotary Surgery for Removal of Impacted Mandibular Third Molars.

BACKGROUND: The extraction of impacted mandibular third molars is a frequent dental surgery, interfering with patients' quality of life. Ultrasonic surgery is an alternative to osteotomy with conventional rotary instruments. This study compares postoperative signals and symptoms after extracting impacted mandibular third molars using ultrasonic surgery or conventional rotary osteotomy. METHODS: A pilot randomized controlled clinical trial was conducted. Thirty patients were randomly divided into the test group (ultrasonic technique) and a control group (conventional rotatory technique). All surgeries were timed. Swelling parameters, trismus and paraesthesia were evaluated on the day of surgery and the third, fifth and seventh postoperative days. Intraoperative bleeding was evaluated during surgery. Postoperative pain was evaluated daily by the patient through a visual analogue scale and the number of ingested analgesics. RESULTS: Pain, swelling and trismus present beneficial results with the ultrasonic technique but without statistical significance. Intraoperative bleeding was significantly lower with ultrasonic surgery (t(28) = 3.258; p = 0.003). Operating time was significantly higher in extractions involving osteotomy and cutting crown and roots either with the conventional technique (p = 0.020) or ultrasonic technique (p = 0.039). Regardless of the surgical difficulty, no statistically significant results were detected between techniques regarding the procedure duration. CONCLUSIONS: The beneficial postoperative signs and symptoms make ultrasonic surgery a favourable therapeutic option, especially when the integrity of noble anatomical structures is the most important risk factor. Further studies with larger samples are needed to support the use of piezosurgery as a valid option for impacted mandibular third molar extraction.

The Effects of 32 Weeks of Multicomponent Training with Different Exercises Order in Elderly Women's Functional Fitness and Body Composition.

Background and objectives: Starting the multicomponent training sessions with aerobic-based exercises or resistance-based exercises may have different effects on functional fitness and body composition. Thus, the aim of this study was to assess the effects of the order of exercises in elderly women's physical fitness and body composition by multicomponent training. Materials and Methods: A sample of 91 elderly females, aged between 60 and 81, were randomly divided into three groups (A, B, C). Each group performed the following order of exercises: Group A consisted of warm-up followed by aerobic training, strength training, stretching and cool down; Group B consisted of warm-up followed by strength training, aerobic training, stretching and cool down; while the control group (C) did not perform any exercise. Functional fitness and body composition were assessed at 3 moments of the 32 weeks (baseline and after each 16-week) intervention. One-way ANOVA for comparison between groups, ANOVA for repeated measures and multiple linear regression were used for statistical analysis. Results: The results showed that the functional fitness and body composition varied over the 32 weeks of multicomponent training. However, group A seems to show higher improvements in more variables. Conclusion: In the current study, group A obtained better results in most of the evaluated parameters. Thus, to improve functional fitness, warm-up, followed by aerobic training, strength training and relaxation may be the most suitable training for elderly women.

The Relationship between Executive Functions and Gross Motor Skills in Rural Children Aged 8-10 Years.

Considering that cognitive and motor dimensions of human beings grow together, and that primary school age is one of the most important stages of children's cognitive and motor development, the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between executive functions and gross motor skills in rural children aged 8-10 years. This descriptive and correlational research was conducted with 93 Iranian rural primary school children aged 8 to 10 years. A Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) questionnaire and the Test of Gross Motor Development, second edition (TGMD-2) were used to collect data on executive functions and gross motor skills, respectively. The results showed that most of the correlations between criterion and predictor variables were moderate. In the regression results we observed that among the components of executive functions, inhibition, working memory, planning/organizing, and organization had a significant relationship with gross motor skills, but no relationship was found between other components and motor skills. As a result, it can be said that in predicting cognitive development and specifically mentioned executive functions, gross motor skills are an important and effective factor among rural children and, given the importance of cognitive development and executive functions in childhood, it seems that by helping to develop their gross motor skills, executive functions will also be strengthened. Finally, possible future studies are addressed, which could investigate the effect of different aspects of motor skill classifications on executive functions.

Implantoplasty Improves Clinical Parameters over a 2-Year Follow-Up: A Case Series.

Background and Objectives: Peri-implantitis treatment is still undefined. Regenerative treatment is expensive and technically demanding due to the need to handle biomaterials, membranes and different methodologies of decontamination. Resective treatment and implantoplasty might be a viable solution. This case series presents a 24 month retrospective observational study of 10 peri-implantitis patients treated with implantoplasty. Materials and Methods: In the present case series, 10 peri-implantitis patients (20 implants) were treated with a resective approach and implantoplasty. Previous to implantoplasty, all patients underwent non-surgical treatment. This surgery consisted in a full-thickness flap and implant surface exposure. The exposed non-osseointegrated implant body was submitted to implantoplasty. The flap was apically repositioned and sutured. Patients were accompanied for 24 months. Results: The mean initial probing depth (PD) (PD = 5.37 ± 0.86 mm), bleeding on probing (BoP = 0.12 ± 0.06%) and suppuration (Sup = 0.01 ± 0.01%) decreased significantly at the 12 month evaluation (PD = 2.90 ± 0.39 mm; BoP = 0.01 ± 0.01% and Sup = 0.00 ± 0.00%). Between the 12 and 24 month evaluations, there were no significant clinical changes (PD = 2.85 ± 0.45 mm; BoP = 0.01 ± 0.01% and Sup = 0.00 ± 0.00%). Mucosal recession (MR) had a significant increase between the baseline and the first 12 months (0.69 ± 0.99 mm vs. 1.96 ± 1.33 mm), but there were no significant changes between the 12th and 24th month (1.94 ± 1.48 mm). The success rate was 100% without implant fracture or loss. Conclusions: Resective surgery and implantoplasty might be a valid option in some specific peri-implantitis cases. Properly designed clinical trials are needed to confirm this possibility.

Trail running injury risk factors: a living systematic review.

OBJECTIVE: To review and frequently update the available evidence on injury risk factors and epidemiology of injury in trail running. DESIGN: Living systematic review. Updated searches will be done every 6 months for a minimum period of 5 years. DATA SOURCES: Eight electronic databases were searched from inception to 18 March 2021. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA: Studies that investigated injury risk factors and/or reported the epidemiology of injury in trail running. RESULTS: Nineteen eligible studies were included, of which 10 studies investigated injury risk factors among 2 785 participants. Significant intrinsic factors associated with injury are: more running experience, level A runner and higher total propensity to sports accident questionnaire (PAD-22) score. Previous history of cramping and postrace biomarkers of muscle damage is associated with cramping. Younger age and low skin phototypes are associated with sunburn. Significant extrinsic factors associated with injury are neglecting warm-up, no specialised running plan, training on asphalt, double training sessions per day and physical labour occupations. A slower race finishing time is associated with cramping, while more than 3 hours of training per day, shade as the primary mode of sun protection and being single are associated with sunburn. An injury incidence range 0.7-61.2 injuries/1000 hours of running and prevalence range 1.3% to 90% were reported. The lower limb was the most reported region of injury, specifically involving blisters of the foot/toe. CONCLUSION: Limited studies investigated injury risk factors in trail running. Our review found eight intrinsic and nine extrinsic injury risk factors. This review highlighted areas for future research that may aid in designing injury risk management strategies for safer trail running participation.PROSPERO registration numberCRD42021240832.

NAPRT Expression Regulation Mechanisms: Novel Functions Predicted by a Bioinformatics Approach.

The nicotinate phosphoribosyltransferase (NAPRT) gene has gained relevance in the research of cancer therapeutic strategies due to its main role as a NAD biosynthetic enzyme. NAD metabolism is an attractive target for the development of anti-cancer therapies, given the high energy requirements of proliferating cancer cells and NAD-dependent signaling. A few studies have shown that NAPRT expression varies in different cancer types, making it imperative to assess NAPRT expression and functionality status prior to the application of therapeutic strategies targeting NAD. In addition, the recent finding of NAPRT extracellular form (eNAPRT) suggested the involvement of NAPRT in inflammation and signaling. However, the mechanisms regulating NAPRT gene expression have never been thoroughly addressed. In this study, we searched for NAPRT gene expression regulatory mechanisms in transcription factors (TFs), RNA binding proteins (RBPs) and microRNA (miRNAs) databases. We identified several potential regulators of NAPRT transcription activation, downregulation and alternative splicing and performed GO and expression analyses. The results of the functional analysis of TFs, RBPs and miRNAs suggest new, unexpected functions for the NAPRT gene in cell differentiation, development and neuronal biology.

Effects of Congested Fixture on Men's Volleyball Load Demands: Interactions with Sets Played.

The purpose of this study was to compare the external load, internal load, and technical efficacy between the first and the second matches (M1 and M2) occurring in congested fixtures (two matches in two days) using the number of sets as a moderating factor. An observational analytic research design was adopted. Data from official volleyball matches were collected during the first competitive period of the championship, comprising 14 competitive games within 10 weeks. Ten male elite volleyball athletes (age: 21.7 ± 4.19 years of age; experience: 6.2 ± 3.8 years; body mass: 85.7 ± 8.69 kg; height: 192.4 ± 6.25 cm; BMI: 23.1 ± 1.40 kg/m2) participated in this study. Players were monitored for external load (number of jumps and height of jumps) and internal load (using the rate of perceived exertion-RPE). Additionally, notational analysis collected information about attack efficacy and receptions made during matches. The mixed ANOVA revealed no significant interaction between time (M1 vs. M2) and number of sets for number of jumps per minute (p = 0.235; ηp2 = 0.114), mean jump height (p = 0.076; ηp2 = 0.193), RPE (p = 0.261; ηp2 = 0.106), attack efficacy (p = 0.346; ηp2 = 0.085), Positive reception (p = 0.980; ηp2 = 0.002) and Perfect reception (p = 0.762; ηp2 = 0.022). In conclusion, congested fixtures do not seem to affect the performance of volleyball players negatively.

A two-stage workflow to extract and harmonize drug mentions from clinical notes into observational databases.

BACKGROUND: The content of the clinical notes that have been continuously collected along patients' health history has the potential to provide relevant information about treatments and diseases, and to increase the value of structured data available in Electronic Health Records (EHR) databases. EHR databases are currently being used in observational studies which lead to important findings in medical and biomedical sciences. However, the information present in clinical notes is not being used in those studies, since the computational analysis of this unstructured data is much complex in comparison to structured data. METHODS: We propose a two-stage workflow for solving an existing gap in Extraction, Transformation and Loading (ETL) procedures regarding observational databases. The first stage of the workflow extracts prescriptions present in patient's clinical notes, while the second stage harmonises the extracted information into their standard definition and stores the resulting information in a common database schema used in observational studies. RESULTS: We validated this methodology using two distinct data sets, in which the goal was to extract and store drug related information in a new Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) Common Data Model (CDM) database. We analysed the performance of the used annotator as well as its limitations. Finally, we described some practical examples of how users can explore these datasets once migrated to OMOP CDM databases. CONCLUSION: With this methodology, we were able to show a strategy for using the information extracted from the clinical notes in business intelligence tools, or for other applications such as data exploration through the use of SQL queries. Besides, the extracted information complements the data present in OMOP CDM databases which was not directly available in the EHR database.

A Recommender System to Help Refining Clinical Research Studies.

The process of refining the research question in a medical study depends greatly on the current background of the investigated subject. The information found in prior works can directly impact several stages of the study, namely the cohort definition stage. Besides previous published methods, researchers could also leverage on other materials, such as the output of cohort selection tools, to enrich and to accelerate their own work. However, this kind of information is not always captured by search engines. In this paper, we present a methodology, based on a combination of content-based retrieval and text annotation techniques, to identify relevant scientific publications related to a research question and to the selected data sources.

Variations of Trail Runner's Fitness Measures across a Season and Relationships with Workload.

Trail running involves off-road running over different surfaces of positive and negative unevenness. Given these particularities and the associated physical demands, it is essential to understand this relationship and how fitness levels influence performance. This study aimed to analyze fitness level variations during different times of the season and establish a relationship between changes in fitness levels and accumulated load. Twenty-five trail running athletes (age: 36.23 ± 8.30 years) were monitored over 52 weeks. Three periods of assessment were implemented, while load between those periods was calculated. Athletes were monitored daily by global positioning systems. The collected data included distance covered, duration, and rate of perceived exertion (RPE), which were used to obtain session-RPE. Additionally, maximal aerobic speed, vertical jump, and dynamic balance were tested periodically. Moderate inverse correlations were found between assessment 1 and 2 for total sRPE and vertical jump: countermovement jump (VJ: CMJ) (r = -0.349), and Y balance test: left posterolateral (YBT: LPL) (r = -0.494). Similar correlations were found between assessment 2 and 3 for total sRPE and VJ: CMJ (r = -0.397), and vertical jump: drop jump (VJ: DJ) (r = -0.395). The results suggest that trail running coaches should monitor and assess dose-response relationships and possible anterior asymmetries of dynamic balance performance.

Evaluation of a Dielectric-Only Transmitarray for Generating Multi-Focusing Near-Field Spots Using a Cluster of Feeds in the Ka-Band.

A transmitarray antenna is evaluated to generate a multi-focusing spot area in the Fresnel region of the antenna in the Ka-band. The antenna is designed to focus the radiated field at a certain point using a central feeding configuration. The number of feeds is increased to create as many focusing spots as feeds. The feeds are placed along an arc defined in the principal planes of the transmitarray, radiating independent near-field spots and providing a solution with a wide-angle spot scanning without an antenna displacement and a high isolation between feeds. To validate this concept, a transmitarray based on dielectric-only cells is designed and simulated under full-wave conditions. Then, this design is manufactured using a 3D printing technique, and the prototype is measured in a planar acquisition range. Measurements are performed for different feed positions in order to validate the multi-focusing capability of the antenna. Measurements and simulations show a high agreement and validate the proposed design technique.

Running-related injuries in Portuguese trail runners: a retrospective cohort study.

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to characterize trail running injuries within a cohort of Portuguese male and female recreational trail running athletes. METHODS: The study was retrospective (12 months), with data collected through an online survey. A total of 719 athletes participated (529 male and 190 female, average age: 38.01±7.78 years). A valid questionnaire was used to collect: 1) demographic information; 2) general information; 3) training typology; 4) physical information; 5) injuries (body location, number, type, reason, treatment, time without practice); and 6) general information concerning the effects of injuries on respondents' daily lives. RESULTS: The results revealed that 87.8% of the sample contracted an injury resulting from this practice, with the toenails (24.8%), knees (17.5%), and ankles (14.5%) being the most-often reported locations of injuries and blisters (20%), irritation (chafing) (14%), superficial wounds (12%), sprains (11%), and iliotibial band syndrome (7%) being the most common injuries. The result of 10.0 injuries per 1000 h was found, with a negative and medium correlation (r=-0.344; P=0.000) between total exposure time and injuries per 1000 h. It was also found that those who do not perform warm-up have a significantly increased injury rate (P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The gathered evidence demonstrated a large number of dermatological and musculoskeletal injuries, and these tended to have higher incidences in athletes with less exposure time and who devalue warm-up exercises.