Search

Purpose: The purpose of the current study was to compare responses to graded exercise testing (GXT) on 2 popular commercial rowing ergometers. Methods: A cohort of 23 subelite male rowers (age 20 [2] y, height 1.88 [0.06] m, body mass 82.0 [8.8] kg) performed a GXT on both stationary (Concept2 [C2]) and dynamic (RowPerfect3 [RP3]) rowing ergometers. Physiological responses including oxygen consumption (VO2), heart rate (HR), blood lactate concentration (BLa), stroke rate (SR), and minute ventilation (VE) were recorded. BLa data were plotted graphically and anaerobic threshold was identified using the Dmax method. Workload, HR, and VO2 at Dmax were interpolated. Physiological responses at maximal exercise and at Dmax were compared, along with response across a discrete range of submaximal workloads. Results: At maximal exercise, no significant differences in HR, VO2, or BLa were observed (P >.05); however, VEpeak was significantly higher during RP3 tests (T = 2.943, P <.05). No significant differences in HR, VO2, or BLa at Dmax were observed (P >.05). When comparing across submaximal workloads, HR was significantly higher with the RP3 at 2 distinct workloads (210 and 240 W; P <.05), while SR was higher during RP3 testing at all workloads (F = 56.7, P <.05). When SR was fixed as a covariate, the effect of ergometer on HR response was not significant. A significant workload by ergometer interaction effect was observed for SR with higher data recorded on the RP3 (F = 3.48, P <.01). Levels of agreement for GXT-derived measures of anaerobic threshold (Dmax) were deemed unacceptable. Conclusions: These results indicate that while some differences in HR and VE response were observed between ergometers, these differences were a result of SR alterations between ergometer type. While no differences in response at Dmax were observed, the poor levels of agreement between ergometers suggests that prescription of GXT-derived threshold for training should ideally be specific to the rowing ergometer upon which the test was performed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluated the reliability of the portable Lactate Pro 2 analyzer (LP2), and its validity compared to a laboratory-based analyzer, YSI 1500 Sport (YSI). Blood samples (n = 258) were collected during 44 graded incremental rowing tests, with data from 17 tests used to quantify load, heart rate, and oxygen consumption at lactate threshold. Inter-LP2 reliability was high with coefficient of variation = 3.3%; Bland Altman 95% limits of agreement varied from ± 0.3 mmol.L−1 for blood lactate (BLa) ≤4.0 mmol.L−1 to −1.6 to +1.4 mmol.L−1 for BLa >8.0 mmol.L−1, with minimal systematic bias. Despite LP2 measurements being ~1.42 times higher than YSI measurements, no significant differences (P >.05) were detected when quantifying load, heart rate, or oxygen consumption data at lactate threshold. The results support using different LP2 devices interchangeably, especially when BLa ≤ 8 mmol.L−1, and using the LP2 to identify training intensities at lactate threshold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: We present a case of a bilateral reversed palmaris longus muscle and a systematic review of the literature on this anatomical variation. Methods: Routine dissection of a 90-year-old male cadaver revealed a rare bilateral reversed palmaris longus. This was documented photographically, and length and relation to anatomical landmarks were recorded. This finding stimulated a systematic review of the literature on the reversed palmaris longus variation, from which measurements were collated and statistical analysis performed to determine the prevalence, average length, relationship to side and sex, and to discuss its clinical and evolutionary implications. Results: The average length of the muscle belly and tendon of reversed palmaris longus was 135 mm and 126 mm, respectively. Statistical analysis revealed no disparity in presentation due to sex and side; however, bilateral reversed palmaris longus has only been reported in males. A high proportion (70.8%) of reversed palmaris longus were discovered in the right upper limb compared to the left. Conclusion: Variations in palmaris longus are purported to be as a result of phylogenetic regression. Clinically, patients with this variant may present with pain or swelling of the distal forearm, often as a result of intense physical exertion related to occupation or sport. Clinicians should be aware of this muscle variant as its presence could lead to confusion during tendon allograft harvesting procedures in reconstructive and tendon grafting surgery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently missing from critical literature on public engagement with academic research is a public-centric analysis of the wider contemporary context of developments in the field of public engagement and participation. Drawing on three differently useful strands of the existing theoretical literature on the public, this article compares a diverse sample of 100 participatory public engagement initiatives in order to first, analyse a selection of the myriad ways that the public is being constituted and supported across this contemporary field and second, identify what socio-cultural researchers might learn from these developments. Emerging from this research is a preliminary map of the field of public engagement and participation. This map highlights relationships and divergences that exist among diverse forms of practice and brings into clearer view a set of tensions between different contemporary approaches to public engagement and participation. Two ‘frontiers’ of participatory public engagement that socio-cultural researchers should attend are also identified. At the first, scholars need to be critical regarding the particular versions of the public that their preferred approach to engagement and participation supports and concerning how their specific identifications with the public relate to those being addressed across the wider field. At the second frontier, researchers need to consider the possibilities for political intervention that public engagement and participation practice could open out, both in the settings they are already working and also in the much broader, rapidly developing and increasingly complicated contemporary field of public engagement and participation that this article explores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article begins to map out a novel approach to analysing contemporary contexts of public crisis, relationships between them and possibilities that these scenes hold out for politics. The article illustrates and analyses a small selection of examples of these kinds of contemporary scenes and calls for greater attention to be given to the conditions and consequences of different forms and practices of public and political mediation. In offering a three-fold typology to delineate differences between ‘abject’, ‘audience’ and ‘agentic’ publics the article begins to draw out how political and public futures may be seen as being bound up with how the potentialities, capacities and qualities that publics are imagined to have and resourced to perform. Public action and future publics are therefore analysed here in relation to different versions of contemporary crisis and the political concerns and publics these crises work to articulate, foreground and imaginatively and practically support. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article outlines how Creating Publics, a new research and development project at the Open University in Great Britain, is working to accomplish the task of public engagement in social science research. It outlines the background of this project and how it is approaching the challenge of thinking and testing more ways of performing engagement, knowledge mobilization and research dissemination. It hopes to contribute to the broader discussion about the present state of higher education.

Spectacular forms of politics are proliferating and a reappraisal of political spectacle is underway. This article intervenes in debates about the constitution and value of contemporary spectacles by analysing how three, ostensibly very different, governmental, popular media and social movement participative experiments were set up and enacted. To explore the public value of making democracy spectacular, the article considers some of the fraught (but not always insidious) ways these participative events tested-out novel forms of democratic practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The existence of a "fifth" compartment in the leg capable of developing distinct chronic exertional compartment syndrome remains a subject of controversy. Hypothesis: Specific pressure recordings and dissection will confirm or disprove the existence of a fifth compartment. Study Design: Empirical anatomic study. Methods: Radiopaque dye was injected directly into the tibialis posterior muscle of 25 embalmed cadaveric legs while intracompartmental pressure was monitored. Radiographs demonstrated dye distribution, and dissection-documented fascial and epimysial layers. Results: Evidence was found that the fibular origin of the flexor digitorum longus muscle, when present, could create subcompartments within the deep posterior compartment. The nature of this attachment varied from being absent, to small (<8 cm), to extensive (>8 cm). The attachment partially covered the tibialis posterior muscle in the majority of the 14 legs that developed high pressures, and it was limited or absent in the 11 legs that did not. Radiographs demonstrated that the dye was confined to the tibialis posterior muscle in four legs. Conclusions: No consistent fifth compartment exists in the leg; however, subcompartments within the deep posterior compartment created by the fibular origin of the flexor digitorum Iongus muscle may develop pressures congruent with chronic exertional compartment syndrome. SClinical Relevance: Potential deep posterior subcompartments demand accurate pressure investigation. A modified technique to decompress the entire deep posterior compartment, including the tibialis posterior muscle, is necessary for successful treatment of chronic exertional compartment syndrome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]