Search Results (791)

This study investigated the effects of high-definition transcranial alternating current stimulation (HD-tACS) on cognitive–motor dual-task performance and upper-limb multi-joint motor control. Sixteen right-handed healthy male participants completed a double-blind, randomized crossover experiment involving active tACS and sham tACS conditions separated by a one-week washout interval. A 4 × 1 HD-tACS montage was applied over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex at 5 Hz for 20 min. Participants performed a synchronous cognitive–motor dual-task paradigm that combined an N-back working memory task with an upper-limb throwing task under different task difficulty levels. Task performance outcomes included accuracy, reaction time, release velocity, peak velocity, movement duration, and dual-task cost. Upper-limb motor control outcomes included elbow and wrist joint range of motion, peak angular velocity, and peak joint flexion and extension moments. Accuracy showed a significant Stimulation × Time interaction. Under active stimulation, adjusted accuracy increased by 5.4 percentage points in N1 and 10.1 percentage points in N2, whereas the corresponding changes under sham stimulation were not significant. Reaction time, release velocity, peak velocity, and movement duration showed no significant stimulation-related changes. Release-velocity DTC also showed a significant Stimulation × Time interaction across N1 and N2. Under active stimulation, the signed DTC shifted upward, indicating a smaller release-velocity decrement relative to N0. The task-specific follow-up was significant for N2 but not N1; however, the Stimulation × Time × Task interaction was not significant. Most upper-limb kinematic and kinetic outcomes showed no significant stimulation-related changes. Active HD-tACS was associated with higher accuracy and a favorable shift in release-velocity DTC, while most motor, kinematic, and kinetic outcomes were unchanged. The effects were limited to selected behavioral outcomes and did not differ significantly between N1 and N2. Full article

Background: While the biomechanical, physiological, and nutritional determinants of table tennis (TT) performance have already been summarized, a dedicated synthesis of players’ anthropometric and motor characteristics is still lacking. This review aimed to synthesize current evidence across different ages, genders, and competitive levels. Methods: BASE, PubMed, ScienceDirect, Scopus, Semantic Scholar, and Web of Science databases were searched for study selection. Cross-sectional studies investigating the anthropometric and motor characteristics of healthy TT players aged 7–40 years were considered eligible. Results: Thirty-one studies were included. Eighteen studies focused on motor characteristics, seven on anthropometric traits, and six examined both. Conclusions: Adult male TT players predominantly exhibit an endomorph–ectomorph profile with greater lean mass, whereas females show an endomorph–ectomorph somatotype. Moreover, higher-ranked athletes generally display greater lean mass. Compared to specific strength-based sports athletes, TT players tend to have lower limb circumferences and lower lean and muscle mass, while showing higher body fat than specific speed- and agility-based sports. Higher-level players tend to demonstrate faster reaction and movement times, as well as superior change-of-direction abilities. Compared to other racket sports, they tend to exhibit superior coincidence-anticipation timing under high stimulus velocities and distinctive motor coordination. In terms of strength, TT players show proficiency in horizontal jumps and dynamic back strength, despite lower vertical explosive power. The identified characteristics provide a descriptive profile of table tennis players and may inform future longitudinal research investigating their potential relevance for talent identification and development. Full article

Background: Radiology and ultrasound technologists are exposed to sustained static postures, repetitive movements, equipment handling, and patient-positioning tasks that increase the risk of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WRMSDs). During Ramadan, increased healthcare demand associated with Umrah may further increase occupational workload in Madinah. Objective: To estimate the 7-day prevalence of WRMSDs and identify occupational factors associated with pain intensity among radiology and ultrasound technologists working during Ramadan in Madinah. Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted among 237 radiology and ultrasound technologists working in Madinah during Ramadan 1447/2026. Participants were recruited using online convenience and snowball sampling through professional networks and social-media platforms. The survey included the Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire (NMQ), a 0–10 Numeric Pain Rating Scale (NPRS), and demographic and occupational variables. Bivariate analyses and multivariable linear regression with robust standard errors were used to examine factors associated with pain intensity. Results: Overall, 89.5% of participants reported WRMSDs during the preceding 7 days. The lower back (56.5%) and neck (40.5%) were the most affected regions. Mean pain intensity was 5.55 ± 2.28. Higher pain intensity was associated, after adjustment for the variables included in the model, with older age, working as an ultrasound technologist, managing 11–20 or more than 30 patients per shift, and frequent night-shifts, with the strongest association observed among participants working at least three-night-shifts per week (B = 3.27, 95% CI 2.43–4.10). BMI, sex, years of experience and shift duration were not independently associated with pain intensity after adjustment. Conclusions: WRMSDs were highly prevalent among radiology and ultrasound technologists working during Ramadan in Madinah. Night-shift frequency and very high patient workload showed the largest occupational associations with pain intensity. These findings identify workload distribution and night-shift scheduling as potential areas for occupational health evaluation during periods of increased healthcare demand. Because of the cross-sectional design, the findings should be interpreted as associations rather than causal effects. Full article

Background/Objectives: Low back pain (LBP) is a leading cause of disability worldwide, and exercise-based rehabilitation is recognized as an effective management strategy. However, adherence to exercise remains challenging. Fully immersive virtual reality (VR) exercise interventions may enhance engagement and clinical outcomes. This study aimed to examine the effect of a fully immersive VR exercise game on pain, fear-avoidance beliefs, and disability in individuals with chronic non-specific LBP. Methods: A single-blinded randomized controlled trial was conducted, involving 28 participants aged 18–60 years with chronic non-specific LBP. Participants were randomly allocated to either a VR exercise group with standard education (n = 14) or a conventional home exercise group with standard education (n = 14). Both groups performed their assigned intervention once per day for two weeks. Outcomes included the Fear-Avoidance Beliefs Questionnaire (FABQ), Numeric Pain Rating Scale (NPRS), Oswestry Disability Index (ODI), Back Beliefs Questionnaire (BBQ), and functional performance tests (six-minute walk test, repeated sit-to-stand, and trunk flexion). Measures were assessed at baseline and after a 2-week intervention period. Exercise adherence was recorded using a self-reported log. Results: No significant within- or between-group differences were observed for FABQ scores. However, a significant between-group difference was reported for pain reduction in the VR group (p = 0.044). No significant differences were reported for disability or belief-related outcomes, or for physical performance outcomes, including the 6 min walk test, repeated sit-to-stand test, and trunk flexion test. Conclusions: A fully immersive VR exercise intervention resulted in greater short-term pain reduction compared to conventional exercise in individuals with chronic non-specific LBP. However, it had little impact on fear-avoidance beliefs or disability, highlighting the need for multimodal approaches that address broader biopsychosocial factors. Full article

Background: Impaired lumbopelvic control and inefficient bending mechanics are associated with low back pain and functional limitations. The Founder Exercise is a movement retraining strategy intended to promote hip-dominant movement, trunk control, and postural awareness during forward bending. However, empirical evidence examining movement performance following Founder Exercise instruction is limited. This study examined immediate pre-to-post differences in hip hinge kinematics and movement confidence surrounding a standardized Founder Exercise instructional session in healthy adults. Methods: A within-subject pretest-posttest design was used. Thirty-three healthy adults (72.7% female; mean age, 25.1 ± 2.9 years) completed assessments of foot orientation, sagittal-plane joint kinematics, and movement confidence before and after a single Founder Exercise instructional session. Joint kinematics were assessed using two-dimensional video analysis. Paired-samples t-tests or Wilcoxon signed-rank tests, as appropriate based on the distributions of the paired differences, were used to evaluate the kinematic outcomes. The exploratory summed confidence score and individual ordinal confidence items were evaluated using Wilcoxon signed-rank tests. Holm adjustments were applied separately to the 11 kinematic comparisons and the 10 individual-item comparisons. Results: Statistically significant immediate pre-to-post differences were observed in several kinematic variables. Hip flexion increased from 80.7° ± 18.1° at pretest to 104.6° ± 14.3° at posttest, shoulder flexion increased from 62.8° ± 23.9° to 145.3° ± 13.9°, and craniovertebral angle decreased from 25.7° ± 12.9° to 11.2° ± 10.0° (all p < 0.001). The summed score from the unvalidated, study-specific confidence scale was higher at posttest (median = 49.0, IQR = 40.0–50.0) than at pretest (median = 40.0, IQR = 36.0–50.0; p < 0.001). After Holm adjustment of the individual ordinal-item analyses, statistically significant differences remained for five of the 10 items; all confidence findings were considered exploratory. No statistically significant differences were observed in knee flexion or ankle motion after Holm adjustment. Conclusions: A brief Founder Exercise instructional session was followed by immediate differences in selected two-dimensional hip hinge angles and higher exploratory movement-confidence scores in healthy adults. These findings do not establish changes in lumbopelvic control, muscle activation, spinal loading, movement efficiency, or clinical outcomes. Controlled studies incorporating direct measures of lumbar and pelvic motion, muscle activity, external forces, and clinically relevant outcomes are needed before biomechanical or clinical conclusions can be drawn. Full article

Due to the explosive growth in cloud-native infrastructures, the attack surface has dramatically increased in modern enterprise identity systems, where privilege escalation has become a major security risk. Conventional rule-based intrusion detection systems fall short in identifying multi-hop privilege inheritance paths and lateral movements over heterogeneous and dynamic identity graphs. This study introduces PEGraphSec-Net, a graph-theoretical framework for detecting privilege-escalation-relevant identity behavior, modeling cloud identity interactions as dynamic heterogeneous graphs of users, services, roles, tokens, and workloads. The core contribution of this framework is a graph-based detection pipeline—an Identity Relationship Graph Constructor, a Privilege-Escalation Path Encoder, and a Temporal Graph Attention Detection layer—evaluated on privilege-escalation-relevant attack categories using a documented proxy identity-graph construction derived from the UNSW-NB15 network-traffic benchmark, and benchmarked against six non-graph tabular classifiers (CNN, LightGBM, XGBoost, Random Forest, SVM, and MLP) trained under identical preprocessing; this pipeline achieves 98.78% accuracy, a weighted F1-score of 0.98692 (macro F1-score of 0.91828), and an AUC of 1.000 on the held-out test partition. PEGraphSec-Net is further benchmarked against three graph neural network baselines (GCN, GAT, and GraphSAGE) trained on the identical identity-graph topology and node attributes; all three substantially underperform PEGraphSec-Net (best case, GraphSAGE: 63.66% accuracy, 0.239 macro F1-score), indicating that a large share of PEGraphSec-Net’s performance derives from its explicit privilege-path encoding and temporal attention mechanisms rather than from the graph topology alone. An Adaptive Containment and Isolation Engine and a Mitigation Policy Reinforcement Optimizer are further proposed as risk-scoring and reward-driven policy-learning components, whose contribution is validated through module-wise ablation on classification performance; live containment action and reinforcement-learning-specific evaluation are left for future validation. The term “privilege escalation” is used throughout to denote the evaluated proxy attack categories (Exploits, Backdoor/Backdoors, and Reconnaissance) under a documented, decade-old (2015) network-intrusion benchmark, rather than production cloud-native IAM behavior, for which native-dataset validation remains an open direction. SHAP-based interpretability analysis links the model’s top-ranked traffic-level features back to the identity-graph risk, role, and trust-transition attributes they populate, evidencing that the learned representation captures semantically meaningful identity-behavior patterns within this proxy setting. Full article

The current study examined the control of long-range regressive eye movements during sentence reading. Skilled readers were asked to read single-line sentences for comprehension. As a secondary task, they identified a probe word presented to the right of each sentence, and then went back to check the corresponding target word for spelling errors that had been added after reading. The regression target was located either close to or far from the probe. Consistent with prior work, initial regressions were larger for far than for near targets, and the finding of far targets required more eye movements and more search time. We replicated previous descriptions of visuomotor regression strategies but also discovered a novel strategy in which readers frequently send their initial regressions to the center of the line, followed by subsequent saccades. Apparently, this happened primarily when spatial knowledge on saccade target location was lacking. Spatial memory and reading skill made distinct contributions to regression targeting. Memory skills strongly determined primary regressions, especially to near targets, whereas reading speed influenced the time needed to attain targets with subsequent saccades. Full article

Hydraulic conductivity (K) is essential for understanding groundwater movement in shallow alluvial aquifers. Upstream of the Siret–Moldova confluence, Romania, this parameter is poorly constrained, because available K values come from only 34 wells reported in existing hydrogeological documentation. This study provides the first directional geostatistical characterization of K in this shallow alluvial aquifer and evaluates the spatial reliability of the mapped zones. K values ranged from 9.96 to 171.73 m/day. Because the raw data were positively skewed, the values were log-transformed before geostatistical modelling. Spatial continuity and anisotropy were examined using omnidirectional and directional semivariograms. Three theoretical models were tested—Spherical, Gaussian and Exponential—and their performance was compared using cross-validation statistics and prediction standard-error maps. The Gaussian and Spherical models showed comparable performance; however, the Gaussian model was retained because it produced marginally lower errors and a smoother spatial pattern (ME = 0.0055, RMSE = 0.4870, RMSSE = 0.8697, R² = 0.6712). The back-transformed K map shows three main zones: lower values in the northern and eastern sectors, intermediate values in the central sector, and the highest values toward the west. This pattern is consistent with coarser Moldova River alluvial deposits in the west and more heterogeneous lithological conditions in the central area. The prediction standard-error maps indicate the areas where the interpolated hydraulic conductivity (K) is more reliably constrained. The resulting map provides a preliminary spatial representation of the main hydraulic-conductivity zones and indicates where additional K measurements are needed before detailed groundwater-flow modelling or local groundwater-resource assessment. Full article

Through textual analysis of 15 English-language articles by seven predominantly U.S.-based sex worker journalists published between 2014 and 2025 across 11 online platforms, this article examines how sex worker journalists aim to influence public opinion around anti-porn policy. Sex workers report on legislation such as the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), age-verification laws, the Stop Internet Sexual Exploitation Act (SISEA), and the Survivors of Human Trafficking Fight Back Act, maintaining that these laws cause harm to sex workers. In the process, they challenge sex work stigma perpetuated by the mainstream media and stake alternative validity claims. They also construct sex worker expertise based on their lived experience in the sex trades through new modes of address and by citing sex workers alongside other progressive organizers. This, furthermore, supports coalition building between the sex workers’ rights movement and other movements for social justice. Full article

Resource-constrained Internet-of-Things (IoT) terminals require encryption engines that combine low silicon cost with adequate throughput, a balance that is hard to reach with general-purpose software alone. This paper presents an LBlock lightweight block cipher coprocessor tightly coupled to an open-source RISC-V (Hummingbird E203) core through the NICE custom-instruction interface. LBlock serves here as a compact Feistel-cipher benchmark targeting legacy and low-volume IoT deployments rather than as a substitute for newer standards such as ASCON. We exploit two structural properties of LBlock: first, its 4-bit S-boxes map naturally onto the six-input look-up tables (LUTs) of modern FPGAs, so the entire substitution layer is realized as eight parallel single-LUT-depth tables instead of multi-cycle table lookups. Second, the LBlock key schedule is a one-way feedback-free recurrence, which lets us refactor key expansion from an independent multi-cycle sequential module into a pure combinational function that is fused with the round function and executed in the same clock cycle. The resulting encryption core performs one round per cycle, reducing core-only single-block latency from 226 cycles in the baseline implementation to 34 cycles, while the complete NICE coprocessor operation requires 85 cycles including data movement, instruction issue, computation, and write-back. The design is described in Chisel and integrated as a coprocessor with three custom instructions. On an FPGA-based SoC, the coprocessor produces outputs identical to the LBlock test vectors and accelerates encryption by 121.45× over a software baseline on the same core, while the encryption core reaches 321.7 MHz (643 Mbps) on Artix-7 and up to 472.2 MHz (944 Mbps) on Virtex-7 while occupying only 187 LUTs, as validated across three FPGA families. These results show that matching the algorithmic symmetry of LBlock to the underlying hardware fabric yields a lightweight and low-overhead cryptographic accelerator suitable for RISC-V IoT endpoints. Full article

Background/Objectives: This cross-sectional study examined whether daily screen time, sitting time, and physical activity were associated with musculoskeletal pain-site count among university students. Methods: A total of 255 students aged 18–25 years were included. Musculoskeletal pain during the previous 12 months was assessed in nine anatomical regions using the Extended Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire. The primary outcome was pain-site count. Poisson regression with robust standard errors was used for the primary analysis, and region-specific outcomes were examined using multivariable logistic regression. Results: Multisite pain was reported by 81 students (31.8%). The most common pain regions were the neck (29.0%), lower back (25.9%), and shoulder (22.7%). In the adjusted Poisson model, each additional hour of daily screen time was associated with a 10% higher pain-site count (IRR = 1.10, 95% CI: 1.04–1.15), and each additional hour of sitting time was associated with a 7% higher pain-site count (IRR = 1.07, 95% CI: 1.03–1.11). Higher physical activity was associated with a lower pain-site count (IRR = 0.93 per 1000 MET-min/week, 95% CI: 0.88–0.98). Female sex and younger age were also associated with higher pain-site count. In region-specific analyses, screen time was associated with neck pain, whereas sitting time was associated with lower back, shoulder, and upper back pain. Conclusions: Musculoskeletal pain burden in university students was associated with multiple movement-related behaviors. These findings may inform screening and future longitudinal or intervention studies addressing screen use, sitting time, and physical activity. Full article

Manual lifting is a common occupational activity associated with an increased risk of low back disorders. In this study, 22 participants from UPMC Hamot, organized into 11 pairs, were recruited. A combination of motion capture techniques and an injury assessment tool was used to investigate the relationships among body anthropometrics, three-dimensional trunk and lower-limb kinematics, and lumbar spinal loading. Potential differences in lifting mechanics were observed between male and female participants. Males exhibited greater trunk flexion and higher compressive loading, while females demonstrated greater hip and knee flexion with reduced trunk motion. These findings indicate that spinal loading during lifting is influenced by an interaction between anthropometric characteristics and movement coordination patterns, with variable behavioral trends affecting load distribution across the trunk and lower extremities. The results provide biomechanical insight that may inform the development of bio-ergonomic training techniques aimed at reducing lumbar spine loading and minimizing injury risk in occupational lifting tasks. Full article

The figure of Cesare Borgia occupies a complex and revealing place in the political thought of Niccolò Machiavelli. This article argues that the historical Cesare complicates Machiavelli’s more schematic presentation of military autonomy in The Prince. Whereas Chapter VII foregrounds Cesare’s dependence on Alexander VI, fortuna, French assistance, and contingent political circumstances, Chapter XIII presents a compressed movement from French auxiliaries and mercenary captains to “own” arms. By reconstructing the composition, financing, and command structures of Cesare’s forces, the article shows that his attempts to reduce dependence remained incomplete. His military power remained structurally dependent on papal finance, French backing, mercenary captains, intermediaries, and temporary forms of local recruitment. Cesare therefore did not consolidate the kind of stable territorial military apparatus that Machiavelli elsewhere identified as essential to durable rule. His rapid collapse after Alexander VI’s death reflects the fragility of a principality built on external, negotiated, and revocable support. The article thus reframes Cesare not as a historical exemplar of achieved Machiavellian military self-sufficiency, but as a figure whose career exposes the tension between Machiavelli’s theoretical use of armi proprie and the composite realities of warfare in Renaissance Italy. Full article

Objective assessment of low back pain (LBP) is challenging due to subtle, task-dependent movement impairments that are poorly captured by existing sensing technologies. Motion Tape (MT), which is a self-adhesive elastic fabric skin strain sensor, enables skin-conforming measurement of localized biomechanical strain during functional movement, but its discriminative utility for LBP remains unclear. We examine this question in a multi-sensor, multi-movement setting and analyze whether MT signals encode discriminative structure that distinguishes individuals with LBP from healthy controls. Using data from 20 participants performing 19 functional movements with six sensors, we evaluate movement-specific classification under a leave-pair-out protocol and examine which movements, sensor placements, and features are most informative. Our analysis reveals that group separation is highly selective: only a small subset of movements, most notably forward flexion, consistently supports accurate classification, while many movements remain at near-chance level. We find that temporal dynamics features help in resolving difficult cases that global strain statistics fail to separate, and that informative signals are spatially localized to the lower lumbar spine. In contrast, pretrained time-series foundation models show negligible sensitivity to participant-level structure in MT signals. Overall, the findings from this exploratory study establish when and how MT sensing can effectively differentiate individuals with LBP from healthy controls, providing a principled foundation for larger-scale validation. Full article

Background/Objectives: Pain behaviors observed during movement may complement self-reported and performance-based assessment in chronic nonspecific low back pain (NSLBP). The Pain Behaviour Scale (PaBS) quantifies clinician-observed pain behavior severity during functional tasks, but no Turkish version has been evaluated. This study translated and culturally adapted the PaBS into Turkish and examined its reliability, agreement, measurement error, and construct validity. Methods: This cross-cultural adaptation and psychometric validation study included 102 adults with chronic NSLBP. The PaBS was translated, back-translated, reviewed by an expert panel, and pilot tested. Participants completed clinical questionnaires and standardized physical performance tests. Two independent raters scored the PaBS at baseline; one rater repeated scoring after one week. Reliability was analyzed using ICCs. Measurement error, agreement, and construct validity were assessed using SEM, MDC95, percentage agreement, Cohen’s kappa, Bland–Altman analysis, and predefined correlation hypotheses. Results: Total-score interrater reliability was excellent (ICC = 0.95), and intrarater reliability was high (ICC = 0.96), although the latter should be interpreted cautiously because participant status changed between sessions. MDC95 values were 2.05 and 1.85. Individual behavior agreement ranged from 81.4% to 100.0%, but item-level findings should be supplementary. All construct-validity correlations were in the expected direction; however, most were stronger than predefined expectations, and only 1 of 13 hypotheses met both direction and magnitude. Conclusions: The Turkish PaBS appears reliable for assessing observed pain behavior severity during functional movement in adults with chronic NSLBP. Construct-validity findings should be considered preliminary because stronger-than-expected correlations may reflect construct overlap with disability, fear-avoidance, and physical performance. Full article