The aim of this study was to test the predictions of attentional control theory using the quiet eye period as an objective measure of attentional control. Ten basketball players took free throws in ...two counterbalanced experimental conditions designed to manipulate the anxiety they experienced. Point of gaze was measured using an ASL Mobile Eye tracker and fixations including the quiet eye were determined using frame-by-frame analysis. The manipulation of anxiety resulted in significant reductions in the duration of the quiet eye period and free throw success rate, thus supporting the predictions of attentional control theory. Anxiety impaired goal-directed attentional control (quiet eye period) at the expense of stimulus-driven control (more fixations of shorter duration to various targets). The findings suggest that attentional control theory may be a useful theoretical framework for examining the relationship between anxiety and performance in visuomotor sport skills.
Rooftop gardens ona building have proved to be a good way to improve its storm water management, but many other benefits can be obtained from the installation of these systems, such as reduction of ...energy consumption, decrease of the heat stress, abatement on CO2 emissions, etc. In this paper, the effect from the presence of these rooftop gardens on abuilding’s energy consumption has been investigated by experimental campaigns using a green roof ona public building in a Mediterranean location in Spain. The obtained results demonstrate a substantial improvement by the installation of the green roof onthe building’s cooling energy demand for a standard summer day, in the order of 30%, and a reduction, about 15%, in the heating energy demand for a winter day. Thus, given the longer duration of the summer conditions along the year, a noticeable reduction on energy demand could be obtained. Simulation analysis, using commercial software TRNSYS code, previously calibrated using experimental data for typical summer and winter days, allows for the extrapolation to the entire year of these results deducing noticeable improvement in energy efficiency, in the order of 19%, but with an increase of 6% in the peak power during the winter period.
In this study, we have developed a Ratio type estimator in Stratified sampling to estimate the population average of study variable by using the information of a concomitant variable. By utilizing ...Taylor’s series, we have derived the expressions for Bias and MSE upto first degree of approximation. In numerical illustration, employing a real data set, we have demonstrated that the proposed estimator has highest Percentage relative efficiency when compared to the considered existing estimatrs. Furthermore, we have demonstrated that Separate ratio type estimators have the highest relative efficiency when contrasted with the Combined ratio type estimators.
In this paper, a nonsmooth vector optimization problem with cone and equality constraints is considered. We establish some relations between the notions of vector critical points in the sense of ...Fritz John and in the sense of Karush-Kuhn-Tucker and weakly K-efficient and K-efficient solutions for the constrained vector optimization problem in which every component of the involved functions is locally Lipschitz. These relationships are stated under cone-FJ-pseudo-invexity and cone-KT-pseudo-invexity hypotheses defined for the considered vector optimization problem with cone inequality and also equality constraints and via the Clarke generalized gradient for vector-valued functions.
Management of nitrogen and water plays a significant role in increasing crop productivity. A large amount of nitrogen (N) may be lost through leaching if these resources are not well managed. Wetting ...front detectors (WFDs) and Chameleon soil water sensors were used to adapt water and nitrogen applications with the goal of increasing millet yields, as well as nitrogen and water use efficiency. The trials were laid out as a randomized complete block design with factorial combinations of water and N, and included the following treatments: irrigation to field capacity (fortnightly and weekly), adaptive-water application based on sensor response or rainfed, and N treatments included either fixed nitrogen levels (0, 45, 90 kg N ha−1) or an adaptive-N rate, depending on N content of the soil solution extracted from WFDs. Adaptive management aims to steer water and nitrogen applications towards optimum crop requirements. Treatments that received both high water and nitrogen outperformed other treatments by 11% to 68% in terms of biomass production and 16% to 54% in grain yield, while water use efficiency and irrigation use efficiency values were also higher, ranging from 1.58 to 7.94 kg m−3 and 1.43 to 8.30 kg m−3. Results suggest that integrated adaptive water and nitrogen management should be considered to reduce high N losses and cost of crop production, without a meaningful yield penalty, relative to high production input management.
Ultra-dense networks (UDNs), which can provide extremely high throughput and data rates, have been considered as one of the key techniques for the fifth generation mobile networks. However, it may ...cause severe inter-cell interference and significant energy consumption due to numerous base stations (BSs) being randomly deployed. To mitigate the interference and boost energy efficiency (EE) of the UDN effectively, we propose a cluster-based energy-efficient resource allocation scheme in this paper. The proposed scheme has two stages: clustering stage and resource allocation stage. In clustering stage, we use a modified K-means algorithm in BS-clustering process to dynamically adjust the number of BS-clusters based on the density of BSs. Then, in each BS cluster, we divide user equipments (UEs) into multiple UE-groups with minimum intra-cluster interference. In this way, the complexity of resource allocation can be greatly reduced. While in resource allocation stage, we design a two-step resource blocks assignment algorithm and an iterative energy efficient power allocation algorithm based on a non-cooperative game. Furthermore, we implement simulations under the realistic broadband channel propagation conditions and the simulation results show that the proposed approach can effectively mitigate the interference and improve the EE of UDN.
Physiological traits that control the uptake of carbon dioxide and loss of water are key determinants of plant growth and reproduction. Variation in these traits is often correlated with ...environmental gradients of water, light, and nutrients, suggesting that natural selection is the primary evolutionary mechanism responsible for physiological diversification. Responses to selection, however, can be constrained by the amount of standing genetic variation for physiological traits and genetic correlations between these traits. To examine the potential for constraint on adaptive evolution, we estimated the quantitative genetic basis of physiological trait variation in one population of each of two closely related species (Lobelia siphilitica and L. cardinalis). Restricted maximum likelihood analyses of greenhousegrown half‐sib families were used to estimate genetic variances and covariances for seven traits associated with carbon and water relations. We detected significant genetic variation for all traits in L. siphilitica, suggesting that carbongain and water‐use traits could evolve in response to natural selection in this population. In particular, narrow‐sense heritabilities for photosynthetic rate (A), stomatal conductance (gs), and water‐use efficiency (WUE) in our L. siphilitica population were high relative to previous studies in other species. Although there was significant narrow‐sense heritability for A in L. cardinalis, we detected little genetic variation for traits associated with water use (gs and WUE), suggesting that our population of this species may be unable to adapt to drier environments. Despite being tightly linked functionally, the genetic correlation between A and gs was not strong and significant in either population. Therefore, our L. siphilitica population would not be genetically constrained from evolving high A (and thus fixing more carbon for growth and reproduction) while also decreasing gs to limit water loss. However, a significant negative genetic correlation existed between WUE and plant size in L. siphilitica, suggesting that high WUE may be negatively associated with high fecundity. In contrast, our results suggest that any constraints on the evolution of photosynthetic and stomatal traits of L. cardinalis are caused primarily by a lack of genetic variation, rather than by genetic correlations between these functionally related traits.
Although siRNA techniques have been broadly applied as a tool for gene knockdown, substantial challenges remain in achieving efficient delivery and in vivo efficacy. In particular, the low efficiency ...of target gene silencing in vivo is a critical limiting step to the clinical application of siRNA therapies. Poly(amidoamine) (PAMAM) dendrimers are widely used as carriers for drug and gene delivery; however, in vivo siRNA delivery by PAMAM dendrimers remains to be carefully investigated. In this study, the effectiveness of G5 and G6 PAMAM dendrimers with 8% of their surface amines conjugated to MPEG-5000 was studied for siRNA delivery in vitro and for intramuscular in vivo delivery in mice. The results from the PEG-modified dendrimers were compared to the results from the parent dendrimers as well as Lipofectamine 2000 and INTERFERin. Both PEG-modifed dendrimers protect the siRNA from being digested by RNase and gave high transfection efficiency for FITC-labeled siRNA in the primary vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC) and mouse peritoneal macrophages. The PEG-modified dendrimers achieved knockdown of both plasmid (293A cells) and adenovirus-mediated green fluorescence protein (GFP) expression (Cos7 cells) in vitro with efficiency similar to that shown for Lipofectamine 2000. We further demonstrated in vivo that intramuscular delivery of GFP-siRNA using PEG-modified dendrimer significantly suppressed GFP expression in both transiently adenovirus infected C57BL/6 mice and GFP transgenic mice.
Grain nitrogen (N) uptake (GNup) in winter wheat (
L.) is influenced by multiple components at the plant organ level and by pre- and post-flowering N uptake (Nup). Although spectral proximal ...high-throughput sensing is promising for field phenotyping, it was rarely evaluated for such N traits. Hence, 48 spectral vegetation indices (SVIs) were evaluated on 10 measurement days for the estimation of 34 N traits in four data subsets, representing the variation generated by six high-yielding cultivars, two N fertilization levels (N), two sowing dates (SD), and two fungicide (F) intensities. Close linear relationships (
< 0.001) were found for GNup both in response to cultivar differences (Cv; R
= 0.52) and other agronomic treatments (R
= 0.67 for Cv*F*N, R
= 0.53 for Cv*SD*N and R
= 0.57 for the combined treatments), notably during milk ripeness. Especially near-infrared (NIR)/red edge SVIs, such as the NDRE_770_750, outperformed NIR/visible light (VIS) indices. Index rankings and seasonal R
values were similar for total Nup, while the N harvest index, which expresses the partitioning to the grain, was moderately estimated only during dough ripeness, primarily from indices detecting contrasting senescence between different fungicide intensities. Senescence-sensitive indices, including R787_R765 and TRCARI_OSAVI, performed best for N translocation efficiency and some organ-level N traits at maturity. Even though grain N concentration was best assessed by the red edge inflection point (REIP), the blue/green index (BGI) was more suited for leaf-level N traits at anthesis. When SVIs were quantitatively ranked by data subsets, a better agreement was found for GNup, total Nup, and grain N concentration than for several contributing N traits. The results suggest (i) a good general potential for estimating GNup and total Nup by (ii) red edge indices best used (iii) during milk and early dough ripeness. The estimation of contributing N traits differs according to the agronomic treatment.
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