Carlos Alberto Cordente Martínez

Relación del nivel de actividad física, presión arterial y adiposidad corporal en adolescentes madrileños

Fundamento: La creciente preocupacion por la salud ha suscitado un enorme interes en el estudio de los factores que inciden sobre ella. El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la influencia del nivel de actividad fisica (NAF) en la salud de los adolescentes y determinar su relacion con la presion arterial (PA) y la composicion corporal. Metodos: La investigacion se realizo entre noviembre de 2002 y febrero de 2003 utilizando el Cuestionario Modificable de Actividad Fisica para Adolescentes que mide el nivel de actividad fisica. Tambien se midieron la composicion corporal y la presion arterial, en una muestra compuesta por 554 adolescentes de 35 centros educativos de Madrid, con edades comprendidas entre 12 y 18 anos. Resultados: Resultaron inactivos el 13,2% de los varones y el 36,4% de las mujeres. Los promedios para las PA sistolica/diastolica fueron de 125,6/71,3 mmHg en los varones y 118/69,4 mmHg en las mujeres, pero solo se detecto influencia del nivel de actividad fisica en la PA diastolica para los varones. Presentaron tendencia al sobrepeso el 48,27% de las mujeres frente al 13,53% de los hombres. En el caso de las mujeres se encontro relacion entre adiposidad corporal y nivel de actividad fisica. Conclusiones: El nivel de actividad fisica se presenta como un factor asociado a la salud de los adolescentes, si bien se manifiesta de forma distinta en cada sexo. En los hombres afecta significativamente a la PA diastolica, mientras que en las mujeres su influencia se detecta en el grado de adiposidad corporal.

Modeling the basin of attraction as a two-dimensional manifold from experimental data: applications to balance in humans.

We present a method of modeling the basin of attraction as a three-dimensional function describing a two-dimensional manifold on which the dynamics of the system evolves from experimental time series data. Our method is based on the density of the data set and uses numerical optimization and data modeling tools. We also show how to obtain analytic curves that describe both the contours and the boundary of the basin. Our method is applied to the problem of regaining balance after perturbation from quiet vertical stance using data of an elite athlete. Our method goes beyond the statistical description of the experimental data, providing a function that describes the shape of the basin of attraction. To test its robustness, our method has also been applied to two different data sets of a second subject and no significant differences were found between the contours of the calculated basin of attraction for the different data sets. The proposed method has many uses in a wide variety of areas, not just human balance for which there are many applications in medicine, rehabilitation, and sport.

Anabolic drugs consumption of high school students participating in school championships of physical education

This paper aims to analyse the use of anabolic drugs among Greek students participating in school championships of physical education (PE). In order to do it, a survey was conducted during the 2008 to 2009 academic year in suburban, urban and metropolitan areas in Greece. The sample was 2,535 high school students from the 10 to 12th grade, participating in the school physical education championships. The results showed that 9.6% of boys and 3.7% of girls reported that they had used anabolic drugs sometime in the past whereas 11.2% boys and 4.8% girls reported that they would intend to use them in the future. This confirms that anabolic steroids are an important problem among adolescents, and educational programs should increase their knowledge about these drugs. Information should come not only from the state, but also from coaches, teachers, trainers and parents.

How construction trends of Universities sport facilities will be affected by financial crisis: A survey

This paper aims to analyse how the financial crisis is going to affect the trends in the construction of sport facilities in the Spanish Universities. The method is a survey conducted with 180 people including three different groups: Students, architects and sport facility managers. The results show that a high percentage of the respondents agree the use, construction and renewal of sport facilities in Spanish Universities will continue increasing within the next three years. Regarding the architectural trends, the wellness and recreational centres will be more successful than other options such as climbing walls or centres integrating sports and arts. Perhaps, these trends are more affected by cultural and social factors than by the economy.

Sex-differences in elite-performance track and field competition from 1983 to 2015

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to assess the veracity of the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s assertion that sex-differences in athletic performance in elite-standard track and field competition is of the order of 10–12%. Exponential curves were fitted to the data of selected track and field events of the finals of all IAAF World Championships and Olympic Games from 1983 to 2016. For each curve, the coefficient of determination R2 was calculated, in combination the corresponding 95% confidence intervals for the curve constants. Sex-differences were evaluated via differences in the fitted curves between men and women. Mean performances of winners, as well as overall performance means of all participants, were also analyzed. The calculated sex-difference was 8.2 ± 1.0% – 11.8 ± 2.1% for sprints, 10.3 ± 3.3% – 12.8 ± 4.0% for middle and long-distance events, 9.7 ± 2.9% – 13.1 ± 2.9% for relays and 14.2 ± 2.2% – 25.0 ± 4.4% for jumps. This study therefore confirms that the percentage difference accepted by the CAS is appropriate for elite-standard track and field events.

WRAPPING A MOBILE ROBOT WITH RT-CORBA

Abstract Building complex controllers is a major challenge and it is widely accepted that object technology can help with the problem. This is of special relevance in the field of complex robot control, in particular when distribution is necessary. CORBA is a suitable technology for deployment and is well demonstrated in the experimental field and in commercial robots. In this paper we describe the implementation of a real-time object wrapper for a mobile robot using Real-time CORBA technology. This type of wrapping enables the implementation of networked robot control systems with increased degrees of predictability.

PCT: Component-based Process Control Testbed

In the last years industrial control systems have increased their complexity, using a great variety of hardware and software elements of all kinds. In larger systems a big number of different protocols, communication networks and architectures can be found. System components are not centralized but distributed over the plant and they communicate with each other through several channels. Industrial control systems are usually organized in layers, and information used within/among them needs to be integrated. The general trend is to develop heterogeneous and distributed control systems, where system integration is a hard issue. CORBA is an open standard that provides a flexible middleware capable of integrating complex applications in heterogeneous environments, and could be a good choice when developing a control system. Nevertheless, CORBA has some limitations regarding to hard real-time applications, so it is only suitable for developing soft real-time systems. This paper describes the Process Control Testbed (PCT) of the IST Hard Real-time CORBA project (HRTC), which has been used to analyze and evaluate CORBA advantages and disadvantages in distributed real-time control systems development. The PCT system has been designed and implemented using CORBA and RTCORBA. A new version is being implemented using CCM Technology in the IST COMPARE project.

Hyperandrogenic athletes: performance differences in elite-standard 200m and 800m finals

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to examine whether the difference in elite-standard track and field performance between women athletes with and without hyperandrogenism reaches the 10–12% difference in performance between men and women, using only results from elite-standard track and field final competitions. Officially available data from two hyperandrogenic women (Caster Semenya and Dutee Chand) were compared with the characteristic performance of 200m and 800m elite-standard finals. The finishing times of Caster Semenya, before her ineligibility to compete in 2009 and after the suspension of the 2011 IAAF Hyperandrogenism Regulations were found to be respectively 1.24% and 1.49% faster than the predicted performance in 800m finals. When compared with the result of the second classified, the difference was respectively 0.65% and 2.08%. The analysis of the finishing times of Dutee Chand did not lead to any conclusions due to the lack of available data. The present study indicates that the percentage difference in performance between women with and women without hyperandrogenism does not reach the 3% difference requested by the Court of Arbitration for Sport for the reinstatement of the Hyperandrogenism Regulations, neither does it reach the 10% accepted range of difference in performance between men and women.

Chapter 8 – Automated Driving

This chapter introduces the main technology bricks and some related socioeconomic aspects of automated driving. Vehicles automation technology is advancing at a vertiginous pace. However, the complexity behind some highly uncertain and dynamic driving scenarios imposes the need to distinguish between the different automation levels. This chapter starts from these considerations to elaborate thereafter on the maturity of the currently used technologies—situation awareness, risk assessment, decision-making, human–machine interaction, planning, control—and their near future possibilities. The introduction of connectivity among vehicles and with the digital world brings a number of new opportunities, when combined with automation, that are introduced with the focus on cooperative automated driving. After presenting this technological panorama, different relevant projects are described with the aim to understand the differences between the existing prototypes and the upcoming products and services. In this connection, Verification and Validation is still a contention point that will need to provide solutions to open problems that are also evoked in the chapter. To finalize with a full picture, the current regulatory pathways and some ethical issues are also described.

Embedded Component Technology for Complex Control Systems

Abstract The question of finding the best technology for software-based controller deployment is still open. One of the main problems is that computing infrastructures for controllers are composed by heterogeneous hardware and software platforms scattered over a set of heterogeneous networkig infrastructures. The standardised object-oriented efforts done around the the OMG specifications try to overcome some of the difficulties raised by this heterogeneity. Inside the Distributed Object Computing (DOC) landscape, CORBA is a well known framework for the construction of modularised, object oriented, distributed applications. The CORBA object model, however, is not enough when confronting the problems related to deplyment, configuration and evolutionary maintenance of systems. This paper describes the ECF component technology specifically built for the construction of component-based, distributed embedded systems.