Effects of cricket ball colour and illuminance levels on catching behaviour in professional cricketers

In recent years there have been many alterations to equipment and technology in professional cricket, including the introduction of white balls during day-night matches. In the present study simulated slip-catching performance and movement initiation time were examined in professional cricketers when ball colour and illuminance levels differed. Five male professional cricketers (mean age: 27.3 +/- 1.4 years) volunteered to catch a total of 60 cricket balls, 20 (10 red and 10 white) under each of three illuminance levels (571, 1143 and 1714 lux). Balls were projected from a ball machine at 20 m s(-1) (45 mph) over a distance of 8.4 m, to the subject's dominant side. Catching performance was measured using an established catching scale. Movement initiation times for each hand were also calculated for each trial using a motion-analysis system. Data were submitted to separate two-way (ball colour [2] x illuminance level [3]) repeated measures analysis of variance. No significant effects were obtained for ball colour or illuminance levels for either catching performance or movement initiation time. Neither ball colour nor light level (within the range tested) affected slip-catching performance and movement initiation times in professional cricketers. Therefore it was concluded that the changes made to ball colour and light conditions in professional cricket were not detrimental to catching performance.     

Competition and the premedical student.

Administered a digit symbol and a motor manipulation task to 20 premedical, 15 premedical dropout, and 20 liberal art undergraduate students. Ss were led to believe they were competing against another student like themselves. However, the 2nd member of each pair was actually a confederate of e, making it possible to experimentally manipulate success and failure. There were no performance differences among the groups on the initial trial of each of the 2 tasks. Under competitive conditions, however, improvement in performance was significantly greater for premedical ss than for premedical dropouts, and greater for these latter ss than for the liberal arts ss. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The damped transient behaviour of finite beams and plates

The direct Finite Element Analysis which was successfully employed in the solution of dynamic flexural traveling wave problems is extended herein to provide the transient behaviour of finite beams and plates in which shear deformation and rotatory inertia are considered. The particle and angular velocities are exponentially damped so that the static solutions for these problems are obtained with the same analysis which provided the dynamic and transient cases. Three special cases are chosen as examples. In the first, a sinusoidally varying shear force is applied at the tip of a cantilever beam. The resonant characteristics of this beam for both the undamped and damped cases are studied. In the second, a step shear loading is applied to a cantilever beam and its damped dynamic history is studied. Finally, a circular plate whose outer edge is simply supported is impacted at its inner edge by a step moment and its damped transient behaviour is determined. The idea of the methods is potentially applicable to dynamic problems in general.     

The use of remotely sensed data to detect channel hydromorphology; River Tummel,Scotland

Colour aerial photography and multi‐spectral imagery acquired from airborne platforms for the River Tummel, Scotland, was used in conjunction with field survey to assess the feasibility of monitoring hydromorphology and human alteration within the river corridor. The study was undertaken to investigate the possibility of remotely sensing the physical status of a nation's rivers at the national scale to comply with the requirement of the European Water Framework Directive. Visual assessment and unsupervised and supervised automated classifications of the imagery were undertaken and compared with field survey data. In the absence of overhanging vegetation canopies most features above the water line of interest were visible on the imagery. Below the water line, morphology and substrate composition together with bank materials on vertically cut banks are less easily detected. The overall accuracy of automated classification procedures, compared to field survey, was 60% for the colour aerial photography and 68% for the multi‐spectral imagery. Supervised classification was superior to unsupervised classification procedures. Sun glint on water surfaces and shadows caused by high banks, trees and buildings were observed as the cause of most misclassification of features. Overall, the study demonstrates that remotely sensed digital imagery has the potential to allow panoptic mapping of river hydromorphology and human impacts. The possibilities and constraints, in light of the findings of this study, are discussed. In the context of new legislation which requires environmental protection agencies to have robust tools for monitoring the physical status, as part of meeting the objective of good ecological status, of rivers across an entire nation, remote sensing appears to provide a way forward. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Auditory-phonetic projection and lexical structure in the recognition of sine-wave words.

Speech remains intelligible despite the elimination of canonical acoustic correlates of phonemes from the spectrum. A portion of this perceptual flexibility can be attributed to modulation sensitivity in the auditory-to-phonetic projection, although signal-independent properties of lexical neighborhoods also affect intelligibility in utterances composed of words. Three tests were conducted to estimate the effects of exposure to natural and sine-wave samples of speech in this kind of perceptual versatility. First, sine-wave versions of the easy and hard word sets were created, modeled on the speech samples of a single talker. The performance difference in recognition of easy and hard words was used to index the perceptual reliance on signal-independent properties of lexical contrasts. Second, several kinds of exposure produced familiarity with an aspect of sine-wave speech: (a) sine-wave sentences modeled on the same talker; (b) sine-wave sentences modeled on a different talker, to create familiarity with a sine-wave carrier; and (c) natural sentences spoken by the same talker, to create familiarity with the idiolect expressed in the sine-wave words. Recognition performance with both easy and hard sine-wave words improved after exposure only to sine-wave sentences modeled on the same talker. Third, a control test showed that signal-independent uncertainty is a plausible cause of differences in recognition of easy and hard sine-wave words. The conditions of beneficial exposure reveal the specificity of attention underlying versatility in speech perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Use of unusual storage temperatures to improve the amino acid profile of potatoes for novel flavoring applications

To investigate the potential of potato culls as a source of novel flavorings, free amino acid profiles of juice from tubers stored at 0°C, 12°C or 24°C were analysed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry after separation on cation exchange resin and derivatization with N-methyl-t-butyl-dimethyl-silyl-trifluoroacetamide. Juices were also incubated for 42 h with or without a commercial protease for comparison. Storage at all three temperatures increased glutamine concentration. The relative percentages of asparagine and glutamine decreased while several other amino acids increased in the juice of potatoes stored at 0°C and 24°C. Small shifts in free amino acid profile, increasing alanine, valine, aspartic acid, asparagine and arginine levels, were obtained by incubating juice from potatoes stored at 0°C without added protease while the protease produced substantial increases but with emphasis on leucine and isoleucine and phenylalanine, which increased bitterness. Since storage alone increased the concentration of single amino acids such as alanine, methionine and phenylalanine by several fold, it may be the preferred means of improving potato culls for novel flavor applications where bitterness must be minimized.     

Generality and consistency of relations between the alientation syndrome and cognitive processes.

"Twenty male undergraduates were administered an auditory projective technique, a word association technique, and a sentence completion technique, and engaged in two personal interviews with a clinical psychologist. Each of these procedures was designed to provide an independent measure of the Ss' relative standing on a motivational syndrome termed 'alientation'." This syndrome is defined and the results on the auditory projection test are interpreted as indicating that personality is likely to influence selective perception and retention. "These over-all findings of general and consistent relations between motivation and cognitive processes were interpreted as favorable evidence for the development of a general theory of cognition." 34 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Rorschach and TAT indices of homosexuality in overt homosexuals, neurotics, and normal males": Erratum.

Reports an error in the original article by Anthony Davids, Mark Joelson, and Charles McArthur (Journal of Abnormal & Social Psychology, 1956[Sept], 53, 161-172). In the section on TAT results, under the heading of Signs suggested for further confirmation (p. 168), it states incorrectly (line 15) that the sign of a strong unresolved attachment to a father or father figure was scored in stories composed for Card 8. The sign was in fact scored in stories composed for TAT Card 7. (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1958-02891-001). Rorschach and TAT protocols of 20 male overt homosexuals, 20 male neurotics, and 20 normal male students were compared in order to determine whether proposed homosexual signs were discriminative. The homosexual group gave a significantly greater mean number of the Rorschach and TAT signs than did either nonhomosexual group. "Within the homosexual group, correlation between the number of Rorschach signs and number of TAT signs produced by each S proved significant, serving as a check on the validity of both schemes and indicating the consistency of these 2 diverse measures of homosexuality." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)