Effect of Heel Heights on Female Postural Control During Standing on a Dynamic Support Surface With Sinusoidal Oscillations

The authors aimed to investigate female balance or stability control with comparative analysis of the center of pressure trajectory and plantar pressure distribution with different high-heeled shoes while standing on a dynamic surface with multidirectional perturbations. College females with at least 2 years' history of wearing high-heel shoes voluntarily participated in the test with a Novel Pedar insole (Novel, GmBH, Munich, Germany. With heels height increasing, the pressure time integral obviously transfer to the medial forefoot region, with center of pressure trajectory medially deviated significantly, either under anteroposterior or mediolateral perturbations. The passive plantarflexion position of ankle incurred by high heel increased the range of motion in the frontal plane but decreased ankle stability, thus increasing the challenge of body balance maintenance.     

Understanding user’s travel behavior and city region functions from station-free shared bike usage data

Station-free shared bike (SFSB) is a new travel mode that shared bikes are allowed to park in any proper places. It implies that the users are more likely to park the SFSB as close as their destinations. This advantage makes the SFSB data to be an ideal source to understand the land-use distribution. Inspired by the idea in text mining, this paper proposes a topic-based two-stage SFSB data mining algorithm to understand the SFSB user’s travel behavior and to discover city functional regions. A region, a function and human mobility patterns are treated as a document, a topic and words, respectively. Then, a region is represented by a distribution of functions, and a function is featured by a distribution of mobility patterns. The point-of-interest data is combined to annotate the clustered regions to discover the real functions. At last, the proposed method is tested using 14-day SFSB data in Beijing and the results are estimated by the Satellite Map data. The proposed methods and the results can be applied to infer the individual’s travel purpose through functional regions and to improve land-use planning, etc.     

Modelling the influence of time pressure on reaction time of drivers

Speeding is a major traffic violation and time pressure is one of the leading contributors to speeding. High-speed driving requires an immediate response to perilous events from the driver to avoid a crash. Reaction time is one of the important driving performance measures to assess the driver’s response to the event. Therefore, the current study examined the influence of time pressure on reaction times of the drivers measured for two different perilous events (pedestrians crossing and obstacle overtaking). Eighty-five Indian licensed drivers participated in a driving simulation study designed for three different time pressure conditions: No Time Pressure (NTP), Low Time Pressure (LTP), and High Time Pressure (HTP). The survival analysis technique was used to model the effect of time pressure and driver characteristics with reaction times of the drivers. It was observed that drivers’ reaction times decreased by 18% and 9% in LTP and 28% and 16% in HTP during the pedestrians crossing and obstacle overtaking events, respectively. Further, 1 m/second increase in approach speed resulted in 2% and 4% reduction in reaction times of the drivers in pedestrians crossing and obstacle overtaking events, respectively. Young drivers responded 21% faster than mature drivers during the pedestrians crossing event. Interestingly, sleeping hours and physical fitness played an important role in driver’s reaction to the events. The drivers performing regular physical exercise and having minimum eight-hours of overnight sleep reacted 16% and 17% earlier in pedestrians crossing and obstacle overtaking events, respectively. The overall findings from this study showed enhanced stimulus-response behaviour of the drivers under time pressure driving conditions. The results obtained from the study can give new insight into various safety-related ITS applications.     

Does learning a skill with the expectation of teaching it impair the skill’s execution under psychological pressure if the skill is learned with analogy instructions?

ObjectiveHaving learners practice a motor skill with the expectation of teaching it (versus an expectation of being tested on it) has been revealed to enhance skill learning. However, this improvement in skill performance is lost when the skill must be performed under psychological pressure due to ‘choking under pressure.’ The present study will investigate whether this choking effect is caused by an accrual of declarative knowledge during skill practice and could be prevented if a technique (analogy instructions) to minimize the accrual of declarative knowledge during practice is employed.DesignWe will use a 2 (Expectation: teach/test) x 2 (Instruction: analogy/explicit) x 2 (Posttest: high-pressure/low-pressure) mixed-factor design, with repeated measures on the last factor.MethodsA minimum of 148 participants will be quasi-randomly assigned (based on sex) to one of four groups. Participants in the teach/analogy and teach/explicit groups will practice golf putting with the expectation of teaching putting to another participant, and analogy instructions or explicit instructions, respectively. Participants in the test/analogy and test/explicit groups will practice golf putting with the expectation of being tested on their putting, and analogy instructions or explicit instructions, respectively. The next day all participants will complete low- and high-pressure putting posttests, with their putting accuracy serving as the dependent variable.     

Neurophysiology and neuroanatomy of reflexive and volitional saccades: evidence from studies of humans

This review provides a summary of the contributions made by human functional neuroimaging studies to the understanding of neural correlates of saccadic control. The generation of simple visually guided saccades (redirections of gaze to a visual stimulus or pro-saccades) and more complex volitional saccades require similar basic neural circuitry with additional neural regions supporting requisite higher level processes. The saccadic system has been studied extensively in non-human (e.g., single-unit recordings) and human (e.g., lesions and neuroimaging) primates. Considerable knowledge of this system’s functional neuroanatomy makes it useful for investigating models of cognitive control. The network involved in pro-saccade generation (by definition largely exogenously-driven) includes subcortical (striatum, thalamus, superior colliculus, and cerebellar vermis) and cortical (primary visual, extrastriate, and parietal cortices, and frontal and supplementary eye fields) structures. Activation in these regions is also observed during endogenously-driven voluntary saccades (e.g., anti-saccades, ocular motor delayed response or memory saccades, predictive tracking tasks and anticipatory saccades, and saccade sequencing), all of which require complex cognitive processes like inhibition and working memory. These additional requirements are supported by changes in neural activity in basic saccade circuitry and by recruitment of additional neural regions (such as prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices). Activity in visual cortex is modulated as a function of task demands and may predict the type of saccade to be generated, perhaps via top-down control mechanisms. Neuroimaging studies suggest two foci of activation within FEF - medial and lateral - which may correspond to volitional and reflexive demands, respectively. Future research on saccade control could usefully (i) delineate important anatomical subdivisions that underlie functional differences, (ii) evaluate functional connectivity of anatomical regions supporting saccade generation using methods such as ICA and structural equation modeling, (iii) investigate how context affects behavior and brain activity, and (iv) use multi-modal neuroimaging to maximize spatial and temporal resolution.     

Backwards explanation

We discuss explanation of an earlier event by a later event, and argue that prima facie cases of backwards event explanation are ubiquitous. Some examples: (1) I am tidying my flat because my brother is coming to visit tomorrow. (2) The scarlet pimpernels are closing because it is about to rain. (3) The volcano is smoking because it is going to erupt soon. We then look at various ways people might attempt to explain away these prima facie cases by arguing that in each case the ‘real’ explanation is something else. We argue that none of the explaining-away strategies are successful, and so any plausible account of explanation should either make room for backwards explanation, or have a good story to tell about why it doesn’t have to.

脉压差变化对预测心血管疾病的研究进展

心血管疾病严重威胁人类的生命安全及身心健康,脉压差作为预测心血管疾病的指标近年来也颇受重视,研究结果显示：脉压差和冠心病的发病率呈显著正相关,脉压差升高是动脉硬化及心血管病高危的一个标志,它的作用大于舒张压甚至超过收缩压;提示：脉压差是心血管疾病的一个良好的预测因子,也是反映中老年人血管硬化的一个较好的指标。     

时间压力、个人相关性对不同类型框架下决策的影响

该文以178名大学生为被试,考察三种框架下,时间压力、个人相关性对决策及框架效应的影响。结果表明,风险选择框架中,时间压力大,被试思考点数目少,决策保守;但压力和相关性均没有对框架效应造成影响;判定框架下,相关性越高,思考点数目越多,越不易出现框架效应;决策与思考点数目基本保持一致。     

时间限制和成就动机对职业决策线索加工的影响

采用信息板技术探讨了时间限制条件下成就动机对职业决策线索加工的影响.结果表明:(1)时间限制影响了个体职业选择过程的平均决策时间、信息搜索深度和信息搜索模式,但未对决策满意度造成显著影响;(2)追求成功动机影响决策时的信息搜索模式,避免失败动机影响决策时的信息搜索深度.