The aims of this study were to determine how custom-fit compression shorts affect athletic performance and to examine the mechanical properties of the shorts. Ten male and 10 female track athletes on a university's nationally competitive track team, specializing in sprint or jump events, participated in the study. Testing utilized the compression shorts with loose-fitting gym shorts as the control garment. Several significant effects were revealed for the custom-fit compressive garment. Although 60 m sprint time was not affected, hip flexion angle was reduced. Skin temperature increased more and at a faster rate during a warm-up protocol. Muscle oscillation was decreased during vertical jump landing. Countermovement vertical jump height increased when the participants were wearing the custom-fit compression garment. In materials testing, the elasticity of the compressive garment provides increased flexion and extension torque at the end range of extension and flexion, respectively, and may assist the hamstrings in controlling the leg at the end of the swing phase in sprinting. The compressive garment significantly reduced impact force by 27% compared with American football pants alone. Through various mechanisms, these findings may translate into an effect on athletic performance and a reduction in injuries.

Background-Women with anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction have different neuromuscular strategies than noninjured women during functional tasks after ligament reconstruction and rehabilitation.

The current operational NCEP Global Forecast System (GFS) cumulus convection schemes are updated with a scale-aware parameterization where the cloud mass flux decreases with increasing grid resolution. The ratio of advective time to convective turnover time is also taken into account for the scale-aware parameterization. In addition, the present deep cumulus convection closure using the quasi-equilibrium assumption is no longer used for grid sizes smaller than a threshold value. For the shallow cumulus convection scheme, the cloud-base mass flux is modified to be given by a function of mean updraft velocity. A simple aerosol-aware parameterization where rain conversion in the convective updraft is modified by aerosol number concentration is also included in the update. Along with the scale- and aerosol-aware parameterizations, more changes are made to the schemes. The cloud-base mass-flux computation in the deep convection scheme is modified to use convective turnover time as the convective adjustment time scale. The rain conversion rate is modified to decrease with decreasing air temperature above the freezing level. Convective inhibition in the subcloud layer is used as an additional trigger condition. Convective cloudiness is enhanced by considering suspended cloud condensate in the updraft. The lateral entrainment in the deep convection scheme is also enhanced to more strongly suppress convection in a drier environment. The updated NCEP GFS cumulus convection schemes display significant improvements especially in the summertime continental U.S. precipitation forecasts.

This investigation was conducted to determine the effects of a physical conditioning program on clubhead speed, consistency, and putting distance control in 10 men and 6 women National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I golfers. Supervised strength, power, and flexibility training was performed 3 times per week for 11 weeks. Performance tests were conducted before and after the training period. Significant (p < 0.05) increases were noted for all strength, power, and flexibility tests from pre- to posttraining of between 7.3 and 19.9%. Clubhead speed increased significantly (1.6%), equating to approximately a 4.9-m increase in driving distance. Putting distance control significantly improved for the men-only group (29.6%), whereas there was no significant difference in putting distance control for the total and women-only groups. Eleven weeks of golf-specific physical conditioning increased clubhead speed without a negative effect on consistency or putting distance control in intercollegiate men and women golfers.

A method that enables a mass-flux cumulus parameterization scheme (CPS) to work seamlessly in various model grids across CPS gray-zone resolutions is proposed. The convective cloud-base mass flux, convective inhibition, and convective detrainment in the simplified Arakawa–Schubert (SAS) scheme are modified to be functions of the convective updraft fraction. The combination of two updraft fractions is used to modulate the cloud-base mass flux; the first one depends on the horizontal grid space and the other is a function of the grid-scale and convective vertical velocity. The convective inhibition and detrainment of hydrometeors are also modified to be a function of the grid-size-dependent convective updraft fraction. A set of sensitivity experiments with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model is conducted for a heavy rainfall case over South Korea. The results show that the revised SAS CPS outperforms the original SAS. At 3 and 1 km, the precipitation core over South Korea is well reproduced by the experiments with the revised SAS scheme. On the contrary, the simulated precipitation is widespread in the case of the original SAS experiment and there are multiple spurious cores when the CPS is removed at those resolutions. The modified mass flux at the cloud base is found to play a major role in organizing the grid-scale precipitation at the convective core. A 1-month simulation at 3 km confirms that the revised scheme produces slightly better summer monsoonal precipitation results as compared to the typical model setup without CPS.