Are the shoulder joint function, stability, and mobility tests predictive of handstand execution?

Handstand is a basic element common across gymnastic disciplines and physical education classes that is frequently evaluated for quality in competition or skill acquisition. The correct handstand execution relies on maintaining balance, for which the shoulders seem particularly important. This study explores the relationship between shoulder joint function and the quality of handstand execution in novice college athletes (n = 111; aged 19-23 years).

Immunoactivation Affects Perceived Body Odor and Facial but Not Vocal Attractiveness.

Several previous studies have shown that in mammals, the health status of conspecifics can be assessed based on perceptual cues. Olfactory, visual, or acoustic cues may lead to avoidant behavior, thus reducing the risk of contagion by close contact with infected individuals. We tested whether immune system activation after immunization leads to perceptible changes in body odor and facial and vocal attractiveness in humans.

Effects of 36 hours of sleep deprivation on military-related tasks: Can ammonium inhalants maintain performance?

Introduction: A lack of sleep can pose a risk during military operations due to the associated decreases in physical and cognitive performance. However, fast-acting ergogenic aids, such as ammonia inhalants (AI), may temporarily mitigate those adverse effects of total sleep deprivation (TSD). Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the acute effect of AI on cognitive and physical performance throughout 36 hours of TSD in military personnel.

Emotional expression in human odour.

Recent work has demonstrated that human body odour alters with changing emotional state and that emotionally laden odours can affect the physiology and behaviour of people exposed to them. Here we review these discoveries, which we believe add to a growing recognition that the human sense of smell and its potential role in social interactions have been underappreciated. However, we also critically evaluate the current evidence, with a particular focus on methodology and the interpretation of emotional odour studies.

Attractive and healthy-looking male faces do not show higher immunoreactivity.

Previous research has indicated that facial attractiveness may provide cues to the functioning of the immune system. Mating with individuals who have a more effective immune system could lead to a higher reproductive success. Our main aim was to test a possible association between immunoreactivity (stimulated by vaccination) and perceived facial attractiveness and healthiness.

The effect of warm-up on peak impact force of the rear hand strike in full-contact combat sports.

Warming up is a generally accepted practice that leads to improved performance and reduces the risk of injury in a wide range of sports. However, the evidence about the influence of warm-up in combat sports is limited and, specifically, little is known about the impact which delays between a warm-up and the start of a match may have on fighters' performance. This study investigates the influence of warm-up and cool-down on one of significant performance predictors in full-contact combat sports, the peak force of a rear hand strike, in a sample of 31 athletes.

Facial attractiveness and preference of sexual dimorphism: A comparison across five populations.

Despite intensive research, evolutionary psychology has not yet reached a consensus regarding the association between sexual dimorphism and attractiveness. This study examines associations between perceived and morphological facial sexual dimorphism and perceived attractiveness in samples from five distant countries (Cameroon, Colombia, Czechia, Iran and Turkey). We also examined possible moderating effects of skin lightness, averageness, age, body mass and facial width.

Losing stinks! The effect of competition outcome on body odour quality.

Dominance hierarchy is often established via repeated agonistic encounters where consistent winners are considered dominant. Human body odour contains cues to psychological dominance and competition, but it is not known whether competition outcome (a marker of a change in dominance hierarchy) affects the hedonic quality of human axillary odour. Therefore, we investigated the effect of winning and losing on odour quality.

Acute fatigue affects reaction times and reaction consistency in Mixed Martial Arts fighters.

Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is a multielement combat sport where fighters need to quickly react to an opponent's movements under fatigued conditions. Research indicates that fast reaction time is important in many sports, but the effect of fatigue has shown negative, null, or even positive influences on reaction time. However, few studies have been conducted in a controlled setting, especially using MMA figthers, whose matches are frequently resolved in a split-second.

Roar of a Champion: Loudness and Voice Pitch Predict Perceived Fighting Ability but Not Success in MMA Fighters.

Historically, antagonistic interactions have been a crucial determinant of access to various fitness-affecting resources. In many vertebrate species, information about relative fighting ability is conveyed, among other things, by vocalization. Previous research found that men's upper-body strength can be assessed from voice.

Predictors of Fighting Ability Inferences Based on Faces.

Facial perception plays a key role in various social interactions, including formidability assessments. People make relatively accurate inferences about men's physical strength, aggressiveness, and success in physical confrontations based on facial cues. The physical factors related to the perception of fighting ability and their relative contribution have not been investigated yet, since most existing studies employed only a limited number of threat potential measures or proxies.

360 Degrees of Facial Perception: Congruence in Perception of Frontal Portrait, Profile, and Rotation Photographs.

Studies in social perception traditionally use as stimuli frontal portrait photographs. It turns out, however, that 2D frontal depiction may not fully capture the entire morphological diversity of facial features. Recently, 3D images started to become increasingly popular, but whether their perception differs from the perception of 2D has not been systematically studied as yet.

Cross-Cultural Evidence for Apparent Racial Outgroup Advantage: Congruence between Perceived Facial Aggressiveness and Fighting Success.

Research into face processing consistently shows an outgroup disadvantage in areas such as recognition memory and emotional identification. Potential ingroup advantage with respect to inferences regarding personality and behavioural outcomes, on the other hand, has not yet been studied. In the present study, we used the faces of male professional mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters of apparent African, European, or mixed-race origin as targets and males from four distant populations that vary in ethnic composition as perceivers.

The Bogazici face database: Standardized photographs of Turkish faces with supporting materials.

Many sets of human facial photographs produced in Western cultures are available for scientific research. We report here on the development of a face database of Turkish undergraduate student targets. High-resolution standardized photographs were taken and supported by the following materials: (a) basic demographic and appearance-related information, (b) two types of landmark configurations (for Webmorph and geometric morphometrics (GM)), (c) facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) measurement, (d) information on photography parameters, (e) perceptual norms provided by raters.

Focal Length Affects Depicted Shape and Perception of Facial Images.

Static photographs are currently the most often employed stimuli in research on social perception. The method of photograph acquisition might affect the depicted subject's facial appearance and thus also the impression of such stimuli. An important factor influencing the resulting photograph is focal length, as different focal lengths produce various levels of image distortion.

Further evidence for links between facial width-to-height ratio and fighting success: Commentary on Zilioli et al. (2014).

Recent research has reported an association between facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) and both fighting performance and judgments of formidability in a sample of mixed martial arts (MMA) combatants. The results provide evidence of fWHR being associated with sporting performance and aggression in men. However, it has been argued that the effect of fWHR might be a by-product of associations between body size and behavioral measures.

Preferred and actual relative height among homosexual male partners vary with preferred dominance and sex role.

Previous research has shown repeatedly that human stature influences mate preferences and mate choice in heterosexuals. In general, it has been shown that tall men and average height women are most preferred by the opposite sex, and that both sexes prefer to be in a relationship where the man is taller than the woman. However, little is known about such partner preferences in homosexual individuals.

Perceived aggressiveness predicts fighting performance in mixed-martial-arts fighters.

Accurate assessment of competitive ability is a critical component of contest behavior in animals, and it could be just as important in human competition, particularly in human ancestral populations. Here, we tested the role that facial perception plays in this assessment by investigating the association between both perceived aggressiveness and perceived fighting ability in fighters' faces and their actual fighting success. Perceived aggressiveness was positively associated with the proportion of fights won, after we controlled for the effect of weight, which also independently predicted perceived aggression.