University of Bedfordshire

About: University of Bedfordshire is a education organization based out in Luton, Bedford, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Social work. The organization has 3860 authors who have published 6079 publications receiving 143448 citations. The organization is also known as: University of Luton.

Heat acclimation improves intermittent sprinting in the heat but additional pre-cooling offers no further ergogenic effect

Abstract: The aim of this study was to determine the effect of 10 days of heat acclimation with and without pre-cooling on intermittent sprint exercise performance in the heat. Eight males completed three intermittent cycling sprint protocols before and after 10 days of heat acclimation. Before acclimation, one sprint protocol was conducted in control conditions (21.8 ± 2.2°C, 42.8 ± 6.7% relative humidity) and two sprint protocols in hot, humid conditions (33.3 ± 0.6°C, 52.2 ± 6.8% relative humidity) in a randomized order. One hot, humid condition was preceded by 20 min of thigh pre-cooling with ice packs (−16.2 ± 4.5°C). After heat acclimation, the two hot, humid sprint protocols were repeated. Before heat acclimation, peak power output declined in the heat (P < 0.05) but pre-cooling prevented this. Ten days of heat acclimation reduced resting rectal temperature from 37.8 ± 0.3°C to 37.4 ± 0.3°C (P < 0.01). When acclimated, peak power output increased by ∼2% (P < 0.05, main effect) and no reductions in i...

Refocusing distance of a standard plenoptic camera.

Abstract: Recent developments in computational photography enabled variation of the optical focus of a plenoptic camera after image exposure, also known as refocusing. Existing ray models in the field simplify the camera’s complexity for the purpose of image and depth map enhancement, but fail to satisfyingly predict the distance to which a photograph is refocused. By treating a pair of light rays as a system of linear functions, it will be shown in this paper that its solution yields an intersection indicating the distance to a refocused object plane. Experimental work is conducted with different lenses and focus settings while comparing distance estimates with a stack of refocused photographs for which a blur metric has been devised. Quantitative assessments over a 24 m distance range suggest that predictions deviate by less than 0.35 % in comparison to an optical design software. The proposed refocusing estimator assists in predicting object distances just as in the prototyping stage of plenoptic cameras and will be an essential feature in applications demanding high precision in synthetic focus or where depth map recovery is done by analyzing a stack of refocused photographs.