'Skeleton budget', 'intranet', 'dole', and other strange Words: Bridging the cultural divide in a multicultural classroom

This paper examines the experiences of two academics who had been international students themselves and currently teaching in multicultural settings at tertiary level, with regards to the issues of the teacher using culture specific slang and idiom with otherwise keen and bright groups of students, in Australia. Using the research method of auto-ethnography, it examines and categorises the themes of issues most often faced by the staff members and students-such as the use of different vocabulary and keywords and the prior knowledge required of both the teacher and the students in reaching a shared understanding or inter-subjectivity. These will be discussed in terms of the various realities experienced by the students coming from a diversity of countries and cultures. The paper discusses how these challenges can be identified and addressed and how to prepare for future situations more effectively and in advance. They will be examined within the contexts of culturally responsive teaching, communication competence, the hidden curriculum, instructional scaffolding, understanding and being open to other cultures and acknowledgement of the richness and relevance of the multicultural students’ varied experiences and social realities, from the point of view of the academic discipline of communication studies.

History of amenorrhoea compromises some of the exercise-induced benefits in cortical and trabecular bone in the peripheral and axial skeleton : a study in retired elite gymnasts

Background : Female gymnasts frequently present with overt signs of hypoestrogenism, such as late menarche or menstrual dysfunction. The objective was to investigate the impact of history of amenorrhoea on the exercise-induced skeletal benefits in bone geometry and volumetric density in retired elite gymnasts.
Subjects and methods

24 retired artistic gymnasts, aged 17–36 years, who had been training for at least 15 h/week at the peak of their career and had been retired for 3–18 years were recruited. They had not been engaged in more than 2 h/week of regular physical activity since retirement. Former gymnasts who reported history of amenorrhoea (‘AME’, n = 12: either primary or secondary amenorrhoea) were compared with former gymnasts (‘NO-AME’, n = 12) and controls (‘C’, n = 26) who did not report history of amenorrhoea. Bone mineral content (BMC), total bone area (ToA) and total volumetric density (ToD) were measured by pQCT at the radius and tibia (4% and 66%). Trabecular volumetric density (TrD) and bone strength index (BSI) were measured at the 4% sites. Cortical area (CoA), cortical thickness (CoTh), medullary area (MedA), cortical volumetric density (CoD), stress–strain index (SSI) and muscle and fat area were measured at the 66% sites. Spinal BMC, areal BMD and bone mineral apparent density (BMAD) were measured by DXA.
Results

Menarcheal age was delayed in AME when compared to NO-AME (16.4 ± 0.5 years vs. 13.3 ± 0.4 years, p < 0.001). No differences were detected between AME and C for height-adjusted spinal BMC, aBMD and BMAD, TrD and BSI at the distal radius and tibia, CoA at the proximal radius, whereas these parameters were greater in NO-AME than C (p < 0.05–0.005). AME had lower TrD and BSI at the distal radius, and lower spinal BMAD than NO-AME (p < 0.05) but they had greater ToA at the distal radius (p < 0.05).
Conclusion

Greater spinal BMC, aBMD and BMAD as well as trabecular volumetric density and bone strength in the peripheral skeleton were found in former gymnasts without a history of menstrual dysfunction but not in those who reported either primary or secondary amenorrhoea. History of amenorrhoea may have compromised some of the skeletal benefits associated with high-impact gymnastics training.

Improved 3D thinning algorithms for skeleton extraction

In this study, we focused on developing a novel 3D Thinning algorithm to extract one-voxel wide skeleton from various 3D objects aiming at preserving the topological information. The 3D Thinning algorithm was testified on computer-generated and real 3D reconstructed image sets acquired from TEMT and compared with other existing 3D Thinning algorithms. It is found that the algorithm has conserved medial axes and simultaneously topologies very well, demonstrating many advantages over the existing technologies. They are versatile, rigorous, efficient and rotation invariant.

Flexible multibody approach in forward dynamic simulation of locomotive strains in human skeleton with flexible lower body bones

A method for bone strain estimation is examined in this article. The flexibility of a single bone in an otherwise rigid human skeleton model has been studied previously by various authors. However, in the previous studies, the effect of the flexibility of multiple bones on the musculoskeletal model behavior was ignored. This study describes a simulation method that can be used to estimate the bone strains at both tibias and femurs of a 65-year old Caucasian male subject. The verification of the method is performed by the comparison of the results with other studies available in literature. The results of the study show good correlation with the results of previous empirical studies. A damping effect of the flexible bones on the model is also studied in this paper.

Classifying human actions using an incomplete real-time pose skeleton

Currently, most human action recognition systems are trained with feature sets that have no missing data. Unfortunately, the use of human pose estimation models to provide more descriptive features also entails an increased sensitivity to occlusions, meaning that incomplete feature information will be unavoidable for realistic scenarios. To address this, our approach is to shift the responsibility for dealing with occluded pose data away from the pose estimator and onto the action classifier. This allows the use of a simple, real-time pose estimation (stick-figure) that does not estimate the positions of limbs it cannot find quickly. The system tracks people via background subtraction and extracts the (possibly incomplete) pose skeleton from their silhouette. Hidden Markov Models modified to handle missing data are then used to successfully classify several human actions using the incomplete pose features.

Physical activity and exercise in the maintenance of the adult skeleton and the prevention of osteoporotic fractures

In the prevention of osteoporosis and osteoporoticrelated fractures, strategies aimed at maximizing peak bone mass during childhood and adolescence; maintaining or attenuating bone loss during the adult years; and increasing or preserving muscle mass, strength, power, and function are all considered critical. To this end, physical activity and exercise are recognized as important modifiable lifestyle variables that can strengthen the skeleton and muscles and reduce the risk of falls and subsequent fracture, as well as enhance quality of life... 

An application of the flexible multibody approach used to estimate human skeleton loading

Skeletal loading can be estimated using several approaches. The most common approach is based on utilizing mechanical principles and ground reaction forces as predictors for skeletal loading. This method can be considered as a relatively simple approach since it cannot account for muscle forces. Flexible multibody approach allows for estimating skeletal loading and strains within the bones; once bone flexibility, muscle forces, ground reaction forces and the natural motion of a subject have been accounted for. This paper presents a summary that describes how deformable bodies can be introduced to the standard multibody formulation and explains the benefits and drawbacks. As an example of application, models used to assess tibial strains among two subjects are presented. The results of the multibody simulations are compared to in vivo studies, showing acceptable correlation and method performance.

Kinematic analysis of the skeleton start

The purpose of this study was to describe the kinematics of the skeleton start and to compare one-foot versus two-foot starting techniques. The first two steps of the start of six national team skeleton athletes were videotaped during competition and analyzed. There were similarities between the kinematics of skeleton starts and sprint starts; however, the results showed that despite similar 50 meter start times there were differences between the one-foot and two-foot groups in knee angles off the block, trunk angle, toe height during recovery, support and flight times, and step length. These results suggest that the one-foot and two-foot starts are unique yet both effective techniques.

Multi-Kinect skeleton fusion for physical rehabilitation monitoring

 Kinect has been increasingly applied in rehabilitation as a motion capture device. However, the inherent limitations significantly hinder its further development in this important area. Although a number of Kinect fusion approaches have been proposed, only a few of them was actually considered for rehabilitation. In this paper, we propose to fuse information from multiple Kinects to achieve this. Given the specific scenario of users suffering from limited range of movements, we propose to calibrate depth cameras in multiple Kinects with 3D positions of joints on a human body rather than in a checkerboard pattern, so that patients are able to calibrate Kinects without extra support. Kalman filter is applied for skeleton-wise Kinect fusion since skeleton data (3D positions of joints) and its derivatives are preferred by physiotherapists to evaluate the exercise performance of patients. Various preliminary experiments were conducted to illustrate the accuracy of proposed calibration and fusion approach by comparing with a commercial Vicon system®, confirming the practical use of the system in rehabilitation exercise monitoring.

Spacetime algebraic skeleton

The cosmological constant is shown to have an algebraic meaning: it is essentially an eigenvalue of a Casimir invariant of the Lorentz group acting on the spaces tangent to every spacetime. This is found in the context of de Sitter spacetimes, for which the Einstein equation is a relation between operators. Nevertheless, the result brings, to the foreground the skeleton algebraic structure underlying the geometry of general physical spacetimes. which differ from one another by the fleshening of that structure by different tetrad fields.

An Unprecedented Neolignan Skeleton from Chimarrhis turbinata

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)