Objective-To document the incidence of low back pain and other overuse injuries in a group oftriathletes, and to investigate any associations with various physical and triathlon related factors. Methods-By means ofa questionnaire, the physical characteristics, training habits, and the incidences of overuse injuries of 92 Japanese triathletes (70 males, 22 females) were documented. Student's t and x2 tests were used to determine the significance of any associations with injury incidence, as well as differences between subjects experiencing or not experiencing low back pain in the previous year. Results-Low back pain was experienced by 32% ofsubjects in the previous year. The majority (54%) of low back pain episodes lasted under seven days, suggesting mainly soft tissue involvement, and 19% lasted over three months, suggesting involvement of the intervertebral discs. Weekly trunk flexor muscle training frequency was significantly greater (P = 0.035) for the low back pain subjects. Close to significant differences for average weekly cycling time, trunk flexor muscle training time, and low intensity aerobic rining, as well near significant associations for weight training and average weekly triathlon taining load, were also found. No other factors were significantly associated with low back pain. Low back injuries accounted for 28% of all injuries. Only the knee was a more common single site ofinjury (33%/o).Conclusions-The three most common injuries suffered by the triathletes were of the knee, back and shoulder. The low back pain suffered by many triathletes could be of a potentially serious nature. It is suggested that cycling is a major risk factor for low back pain in triathletes. their first sport, that these long term effects can be monitored and investigated more accurately. Data on triathlete injuries are sparse, and the most recent studies were performed some five years ago'`7 This, along with the above mentioned rapid development of the sport -especially in recent years -indicates the strong need for further more comprehensive investigation into triathlon related injuries.It has been argued that triathlon, as a multisport event, causes less overuse injuries than single sports, because of the more even distribution of loads over the body's musculoskeletal structures. Despite this, triathletes still suffer from a high degree of overuse injuries. These overuse injuries also account for as much as 85% of all injuries suffered.3' One commonly injured site is the low back. 15The main purposes of this study were to document the incidence of low back pain and other overuse injuries in a group of triathletes, and to investigate the associations between certain physical and triathlon related factors and the incidence of low back pain. Methods A pilot study was conducted to design a triathlon injury questionnaire to obtain data on the physical characteristics oftriathletes (that is, age, height, weight, body mass index), their training habits (that is, weekly training times and distances, type of training p...

Based on the experimental evidence that impurities contribute to the dissipation properties of solid-state open quantum systems, we provide here a description in terms of nonlinear quantum Langevin equations of the role played by two-level systems in the dynamics of a bosonic degree of freedom. Our starting point is represented by the description of the system-environment coupling in terms of coupling to two separate reservoirs, modeling the interaction with external bosonic modes and two-level systems, respectively. Furthermore, we show how this model represents a specific example of a class of open quantum systems that can be described by nonlinear quantum Langevin equations. Our analysis offers a potential explanation of the parametric effects recently observed in circuit-QED cavity optomechanics experiments.

AbrtractWe are constructing a cryogenic dual compensated calorimeter for loss measurements in superconducting materials. We plan to measure the losses due to incomplete Meissner effect in slowly varying small magnetic fields appropriate for levitation. These measurements bear importance for the realization of the kilogram using the "superconducting magnetic levitation method".

We propose here a scheme, based on the measurement of quadrature phase coherence, aimed at testing the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt Bell inequality in an optomechanical setting. Our setup is constituted by two optical cavities dispersively coupled to a common mechanical resonator. We show that it is possible to generate EPR-like correlations between the quadratures of the output fields of the two cavities, and, depending on the system parameters, to observe the violation of the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality. arXiv:1803.00331v3 [quant-ph]