Melatonin and resistance exercise alone have been shown to increase the levels of growth hormone (GH). The purpose of this
study was to determine the effects of ingestion of a single dose of melatonin and heavy resistance exercise on serum GH, somatostatin
(SST), and other hormones of the GH/insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) axis. Physically active males (n = 30) and females
(n = 30) were randomly assigned to ingest either a melatonin supplement at 0.5 mg or 5.0 mg, or 1.0 mg of dextrose placebo.
After a baseline blood sample, participants ingested the supplement and underwent blood sampling every 15 min for 60 min,
at which point they underwent a single bout of resistance exercise with the leg press for 7 sets of 7 reps at 85% 1-RM. After
exercise, participants provided additional blood samples every 15 min for a total of 120 min. Serum free GH, SST, IGF-1, IGFBP-1,
and IGFBP-3 were determined with ELISA. Data were evaluated as the peak pre- and post-exercise values subtracted from baseline
and the delta values analyzed with separate three-way ANOVA (p < 0.05). In males, when compared to placebo, 5.0 mg melatonin
caused GH to increase (p = 0.017) and SST to decrease prior to exercise (p = 0.031), whereas both 0.5 and 5.0 mg melatonin
were greater than placebo after exercise (p = 0.045) and less than placebo for SST. No significant differences occurred for
IGF-1; however, males were shown to have higher levels of IGFBP-1 independent of supplementation (p = 0.004). The 5.0 mg melatonin
dose resulted in higher IGFBP-3 in males (p = 0.017). In conclusion, for males 5.0 mg melatonin appears to increase serum
GH while concomitantly lowering SST levels; however, when combined with resistance exercise both melatonin doses positively
impacts GH levels in a manner not entirely dependent on SST. 相似文献
We present the evolution and current state of the Mr. Racer car racing controller that excelled at the corresponding TORCS competitions of the last years. Although several heuristics and black-box optimization methods are employed, the basic idea of the controller architecture has been to take over many of the mechanisms human racing drivers apply. They learn the track geometry, plan ahead, and wherever necessary, adapt their plans to the current circumstances quickly. Mr. Racer consists of several modules that have partly been adapted and optimized separately, where the final tuning is usually done with respect to a certain racing track during the warmup phase of the TORCS competitions. We also undertake an experimental evaluation that investigates how the controller profits from adding some of the modules to a basic configuration and which modules are most important for reaching the best possible performance. 相似文献
The computation of a six-dimensional density matrix is the crucial step for the evaluation of kinetic energy in electronic structure calculations. For molecules with heavy nuclei, one has to consider a very refined mesh in order to deal with the nuclear cusps. This leads to high computational time and needs huge memory for the computation of the density matrix. To reduce the computational complexity and avoid discretization errors in the approximation, we use mesh-free canonical tensor products in electronic structure calculations. In this paper, we approximate the six-dimensional density matrix in an efficient way and then compute the kinetic energy. Accuracy is examined by comparing our computed kinetic energy with the exact computation of the kinetic energy. 相似文献
This paper explores the limitations of contemporary interface design and offers the potential of more profound forms of interaction by drawing on the rich and much older heritage of interactive art. Whilst HCI design is preoccupied with making the computer more simple to use, installation work, kinetic sculpture, and interactive multimedia art forms have generally been more concerned with the predicament of human/technological negotiation, whilst remaining a salient form of human communication. HCI activity sets out to make the complex systems of computing easy to understand and use, whilst interactive art often uses simple technology to make complex, inspiring and esoteric statements and experiences. In many ways the more simple and 'low resolution' the technology the more immersive, acute and intimate the experience. 'Low resolution' examples such as telephone-sex-lines are explored alongside more immersive systems, such as biofeedback interfaces, and other interactive experiments drawn from the 'technic' strand of art history. 相似文献
Conventionally drought severity is assessed based on drought indices. Recently the Reconnaissance Drought Index (RDI) was
proposed to assess drought severity based on the precipitation to potential evapotranspiration ratio (P/PET). In this paper
RDI is studied as a bivariate index under a set of assumptions and simplifications. The paper presents a simple computational
procedure for estimating the P/PET ratio for selected reference periods varying from 3 to 12 months, for any return period
of drought. Alternatively, based on this procedure, the severity of any drought episode is rationally assessed. A bivariate
probability analysis is employed based on the assumption that P and PET values are normally distributed and often negatively
correlated. Examples for the application of the proposed procedure are presented using data from several meteorological stations
in Greece. It is shown that the assumption of normality of both P and PET holds for long periods at all examined stations. 相似文献
Managing the resources in a large Web serving system requires knowledge of the resource needs for service requests of various types. In order to investigate the properties of Web traffic and its demand, we collected measurements of throughput and CPU utilization and performed some data analyses. First, we present our findings in relation to the time-varying nature of the traffic, the skewness of traffic intensity among the various types of requests, the correlation among traffic streams, and other system-related phenomena. Then, given such nature of web traffic, we devise and implement an on-line method for the dynamic estimation of CPU demand.
Assessing resource needs is commonly performed using techniques such as off-line profiling, application instrumentation, and kernel-based instrumentation. Little attention has been given to the dynamic estimation of dynamic resource needs, relying only on external and high-level measurements such as overall resource utilization and request rates. We consider the problem of dynamically estimating dynamic CPU demands of multiple kinds of requests using CPU utilization and throughput measurements. We formulate the problem as a multivariate linear regression problem and obtain its basic solution. However, as our measurement data analysis indicates, one is faced with issues such as insignificant flows, collinear flows, space and temporal variations, and background noise. In order to deal with such issues, we present several mechanisms such as data aging, flow rejection, flow combining, noise reduction, and smoothing. We implemented these techniques in a Work Profiler component that we delivered as part of a broader system management product. We present experimental results from using this component in scenarios inspired by real-world usage of that product. 相似文献
Subsistence farming communities are dependent on the landscape to provide the resource base upon which their societies can be built. A key component of this is the role of climate and the feedback between rainfall, crop growth, land clearance and their coupling to the hydrological cycle. Temporal fluctuations in rainfall alter the spatial distribution of water availability, which in turn is mediated by soil-type, slope and landcover. This pattern ultimately determines the locations within the landscape that can support agriculture and controls sustainability of farming practices. The representation of such a system requires us to couple together the dynamics of human and ecological systems and landscape change, each of which constitutes a significant modelling challenge on its own. Here we present a proto-type coupled modelling system to simulate land-use change by bringing together three simple process models: (a) an agent-based model of subsistence farming; (b) an individual-based model of forest dynamics; and (c) a spatially explicit hydrological model which predicts distributed soil moisture and basin scale water fluxes. Using this modelling system we investigate how demographic changes influence deforestation and assess its impact on forest ecology, stream hydrology and changes in water availability. 相似文献
We discuss the calculus of variations in tensor representations with a special focus on tensor networks and apply it to functionals of practical interest. The survey provides all necessary ingredients for applying minimization methods in a general setting. The important cases of target functionals which are linear and quadratic with respect to the tensor product are discussed, and combinations of these functionals are presented in detail. As an example, we consider the representation rank compression in tensor networks. For the numerical treatment, we use the nonlinear block Gauss?CSeidel method. We demonstrate the rate of convergence in numerical tests. 相似文献