Epidemiology of injuries in First Division Spanish football

Abstract The aim was to examine the injuries sustained by Spanish football players in the First Division and to compare injury-related variables in the context of both competition and training. The injury data were prospectively collected from 16 teams (427 players) using a specific web-based survey during the 2008/2009 season. A total of 1293 injuries were identified (145 were recurring injuries). The overall injury incidence was 5.65 injuries per 1000 h of exposure. Injuries were much more common during competition than during training (43.53 vs. 3.55 injuries per 1000 h of exposure, P menor que 0.05). Most of the injuries (89.6%) involved the lower extremities, and overuse (65.7%) was the main cause. Muscle and tendon injuries were the most common types of injury (53.8%) among the players. The incidence of training injuries was greater during the pre-season and tended to decrease throughout the season, while the incidence of competition injuries increased throughout the season (all P menor que 0.05). In conclusion, the results of this study suggest the need for injury prevention protocols in the First Division of the Spanish Football League to reduce the number of overuse injuries in the muscles and tendons in the lower extremities. In addition, special attention should be paid during the pre-season and the competitive phase II (the last four months of the season) in order to prevent training and competition injuries, respectively.

Un'idea nel palmo di una mano = An idea in the palm of a hand

Una idea en la palma de una mano. Texto en italiano e inglés.

Una Idea Bien Cabe en una Mano. Sobre las maquetas pequeñas como síntesis del espacio arquitectónico = An Idea Fits in the Palm of a Hand

Una Idea Bien Cabe en una Mano. Sobre las maquetas pequeñas como síntesis del espacio arquitectónico = An Idea Fits in the Palm of a Hand

An Idea Fits in The Palm of a Hand

Jewish laws prescribed that when a first-born son was presented in the temple shortly after birth, the offering consisted of two turtle doves or pigeons. And if the family were very poor, a handful of wheat would suffice: the wheat that would fit in the palm of one’s hand. That wonderful Jewish custom, which I learnt about when writing this text, moved me deeply on account of what it shares with my proposal of making models capable of fitting into the palm of one’s hand.

Injuries in strength training: review and practical application

Purpose: This systematic review examines what is known about injuries in strength training. Methods: A systematic search was performed in PubMed and SportDiscus. Studies were included if they examined powerlifters, weightlifters, strongman athletes, bodybuilding athletes, individuals who undertook recreational weight training or weight training to complement athletic performance. Exposure variables were incidence, severity and body part injury. Results: After examining 1214 titles and abstracts, 62 articles were identified as potentially relevant. Finally, 11 were included in this systematic review. Conflicting results were reported on the relationships between injury definition and incidence or severity recorded. The lower back followed by the shoulder and knee are the most frequently affected areas in strength sports. Conclusion: Strength training is safe. However, the variety of injury definitions has makes it difficult to compare different studies in this field. New styles of reporting injuries have appeared, and could make increases these ratios. If methodological limitations in measuring incidence rate and severity injuries can be resolved, more work can be conducted to define the real incidence rate, compare it with others sports, and explore cause and effect relationships in randomized controlled trials. Key Words: strength training, injuries, specific strength sports, severity

Grasp Mapping Between a 3-Finger Haptic Device and a Robotic Hand

This paper presents the implementation of a robust grasp mapping between a 3-finger haptic device (master) and a robotic hand (slave). Mapping is based on a grasp equivalence defined considering the manipulation capabilities of the master and slave devices. The metrics that translate the human hand gesture to the robotic hand workspace are obtained through an analytical user study. This allows a natural control of the robotic hand. The grasp mapping is accomplished defining 4 control modes that encapsulate all the grasps gestures considered.

Incidencia, prevalencia y severidad de las lesiones deportivas en tres programas de entrenamiento para la pérdida de peso. Proyecto PRONAF

La práctica de actividad física y del deporte ha dado muestras indiscutibles sobre su relación con un buen estado de salud, tanto mental como corporal. Sin embargo, también entraña riesgos que pueden mermar la calidad de vida del practicante, siendo uno de los más comunes e importantes el riesgo de sufrir una lesión deportiva. Actualmente, se han dado respuesta a los factores de riesgo internos y externos que pueden afectar a que un deportista, tanto a nivel profesional como recreativo, pueda sufrir una lesión, pero pocos estudios se han realizado para evaluar la incidencia, la prevalencia y la severidad de las lesiones, en personas sedentarias con sobrepeso y obesidad que deciden comenzar a entrenar y/o a realizar actividad física. Incluso en aquellos casos que por razones clínicas, deben incluir el ejercicio físico como una parte integral del tratamiento terapéutico. Por lo tanto, el objetivo del estudio fue analizar la incidencia, prevalencia y severidad de las lesiones deportivas registradas en los protocolos de entrenamiento desarrollados durante el proyecto de Nutrición y Actividad Física para el tratamiento del sobrepeso y la obesidad (PRONAF). Se realizó un análisis descriptivo y se evaluó el efecto y el grado de asociación entre la incidencia de lesión y la composición corporal, el sexo o el protocolo de entrenamiento. Por otro lado, se observó la localización anatómica más común de las lesiones en cada una de las fases. Por último, se propuso una ecuación para estimar el riesgo de lesión en sujetos en sobrepeso y obesidad, antes de comenzar un programa de ejercicio controlado. Un total de 167 adultos con sobrepeso y obesidad sanos (77 hombres, 90 mujeres) fueron evaluados durante el proyecto mediante un registro de lesiones previamente validado. Los principales resultados de este trabajo mostraron que un 47,3% de los participantes sufrió, al menos, una lesión o dolencia durante el programa de intervención, observando una incidencia de 1,22 lesiones por cada 100 horas de entrenamiento. No obstante, se observó que el 80,2% de las lesiones fueron menores (de 1 a 7 días). La rodilla fue la localización que mayor proporción de lesiones registró durante la intervención. Por otro lado, no se observaron asociaciones significativas entre la fase de sobrepeso y la fase de obesidad, ni entre ser hombre o mujer y sufrir más lesiones durante la intervención. Sin embargo, los protocolos de entrenamiento que incluyen cargas, mostraron hasta cinco veces más riesgo de sufrir una lesión que el protocolo que no las incluyó. Por último, se propuso una ecuación para predecir la influencia de las variables fase, lesión previa, protocolo de entrenamiento, sexo y edad para predecir el riesgo de lesión en una población con sobrepeso y obesidad que incluya los protocolos de entrenamiento propuestos en el proyecto PRONAF. ABSTRACT The practice of physical activity and sport has indisputable signs on his relationship with a good health, both mental and physical. However, it is true that also risks that may impair the quality of life of the practitioner, one of the most common and important risk of sports injury. However, although they have responded to factors internal and external risks that may affect an athlete, both professional and recreational may suffer an injury, few studies have been conducted to assess the incidence and prevalence of injuries in sedentary people who decide to start training and / or physical activity. Even in those cases for clinical reasons, such as overweight and obesity, should include exercise as an integral part of therapy. Therefore, the aim of the study was to analyze the incidence, prevalence and severity of sports injuries registered training protocols developed during the project's Nutrition and Physical Activity for the treatment of overweight and obesity (PRONAF). A descriptive analysis was performed and the effect and the degree of association between the incidence of injury and body composition, sex or training protocol was evaluated. Furthermore, the most common anatomical injury location in each of the phases were observed. Finally, an equation for estimating the risk of injury in overweight and obese subjects, before starting a controlled exercise program was proposed A total of 167 healthy adults with overweight and obesity (77 men, 90 women) were evaluated during the project using a previously validated record injuries. The main results of this study showed that 47.3% of participants experienced at least one injury or illness during the intervention program, having an incidence of 1.22 injuries per 100 hours of training. However, it was observed that 80.2% of injuries were lower (1 to 7 days). Knee location was higher proportion of lesions that recorded during the procedure. On the other hand, no significant associations between the phase of overweight and obesity were observed phase or between being male or female and further injury during project. However, training protocols that included loads, showed up to five times the risk of injury to the protocol did not include them. Finally, an equation was proposed to predict the influence of the phase, previous injury, training protocol, sex and age to observe the risk of injury in a population of overweight and obesity with includes the training protocols proposed in the PRONAF project.

Human-computer interaction based on visual hand-gesture recognition using volumetric spatiograms of local binary patterns

A more natural, intuitive, user-friendly, and less intrusive Human–Computer interface for controlling an application by executing hand gestures is presented. For this purpose, a robust vision-based hand-gesture recognition system has been developed, and a new database has been created to test it. The system is divided into three stages: detection, tracking, and recognition. The detection stage searches in every frame of a video sequence potential hand poses using a binary Support Vector Machine classifier and Local Binary Patterns as feature vectors. These detections are employed as input of a tracker to generate a spatio-temporal trajectory of hand poses. Finally, the recognition stage segments a spatio-temporal volume of data using the obtained trajectories, and compute a video descriptor called Volumetric Spatiograms of Local Binary Patterns (VS-LBP), which is delivered to a bank of SVM classifiers to perform the gesture recognition. The VS-LBP is a novel video descriptor that constitutes one of the most important contributions of the paper, which is able to provide much richer spatio-temporal information than other existing approaches in the state of the art with a manageable computational cost. Excellent results have been obtained outperforming other approaches of the state of the art.

Development of a hand-gesture recognition system for human-computer interaction

The aim of this Master Thesis is the analysis, design and development of a robust and reliable Human-Computer Interaction interface, based on visual hand-gesture recognition. The implementation of the required functions is oriented to the simulation of a classical hardware interaction device: the mouse, by recognizing a specific hand-gesture vocabulary in color video sequences. For this purpose, a prototype of a hand-gesture recognition system has been designed and implemented, which is composed of three stages: detection, tracking and recognition. This system is based on machine learning methods and pattern recognition techniques, which have been integrated together with other image processing approaches to get a high recognition accuracy and a low computational cost. Regarding pattern recongition techniques, several algorithms and strategies have been designed and implemented, which are applicable to color images and video sequences. The design of these algorithms has the purpose of extracting spatial and spatio-temporal features from static and dynamic hand gestures, in order to identify them in a robust and reliable way. Finally, a visual database containing the necessary vocabulary of gestures for interacting with the computer has been created.

The EF-hand Ca2+-binding Protein p22 Associates with Microtubules in an N-Myristoylation–dependent Manner

Proteins containing the EF-hand Ca2+-binding motif, such as calmodulin and calcineurin B, function as regulators of various cellular processes. Here we focus on p22, an N-myristoylated, widely expressed EF-hand Ca2+-binding protein conserved throughout evolution, which was shown previously to be required for membrane traffic. Immunofluorescence studies show that p22 distributes along microtubules during interphase and mitosis in various cell lines. Moreover, we report that p22 associates with the microtubule cytoskeleton indirectly via a cytosolic microtubule-binding factor. Gel filtration studies indicate that the p22–microtubule-binding activity behaves as a 70- to 30-kDa globular protein. Our results indicate that p22 associates with microtubules via a novel N-myristoylation–dependent mechanism that does not involve classic microtubule-associated proteins and motor proteins. The association of p22 with microtubules requires the N-myristoylation of p22 but does not involve p22’s Ca2+-binding activity, suggesting that the p22–microtubule association and the role of p22 in membrane traffic are functionally related, because N-myristoylation is required for both events. Therefore, p22 is an excellent candidate for a protein that can mediate interactions between the microtubule cytoskeleton and membrane traffic.