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Sport Participation for People with Disabilities: Exploring the Potential of Reverse Integration and Inclusion through Wheelchair Basketball
Get PDFReverse integration is defined as the inclusion of able-bodied people into disability sport. For decades, there have been movements towards integrating people with a disability in mainstream society. There has been a lack of research supporting the movement of able-bodied involvement in disability sport, known as reverse integration. In this study, the real-life experiences and motivations of 11 national wheelchair basketball players (four able-bodied and seven with a disability) were explored, identifying the potential of reverse integration and what influenced the players involvement. Thematic analysis was employed using a deductive approach. The social-relational model was used as a framework to help interpret the findings. The results highlighted that health and social benefits were key factors towards prolonged engagement in wheelchair basketball, and it was reported that reverse integration led to an increased mutual understanding of the impact of (dis)ability. All participants reported positive experiences and supported able-bodied involvement, suggesting that able-bodied players play a key role and help to grow the sport locally. However, involvement of able-bodied players was not supported at international level. This challenges the concept of inclusion at higher level and whether the sport could be more inclusive. These findings could provide direction to coaches and policymakers for developing further inclusive opportunities at all levels. Further research may explore coach education programs and learning experiences of becoming an inclusive coach to ensure coaches know how to create, stimulate and coach in inclusive sport environments
The Role of Cognition and Social Factors in Competition: How Do People with Intellectual Disabilities Respond to Opponents?
Get PDFExploring pacing behaviour in people with intellectual disabilities (ID) in competition will help to better understand the impact of cognition and social environment in sports, providing support for the shaping of proper inclusive sports environments. The present experimental study aimed to (1) compare the pacing behaviour and performance between people with and without ID who are inexperienced in cycling and (2) investigate how these are influenced by an opponent. Participants with (n = 8) and without ID (n = 10) performed two randomised 4-km maximal cycling trials, alone and against an opponent. Non-parametric tests for repeated measures data (p ≤ 0.05) revealed that people with ID cycled slower, but with higher inter-individual variation (both conditions) and paced themselves differently compared to people without ID when competing against an opponent. In contrast to the previous literature in athletes without ID, the presence of a faster opponent resulted in a decrease in the performance in the participants with ID. The negative influence of the opponent highlights the potential difficulties people with ID experience to adequately use their opponents to enhance their self-regulatory processes and optimize their pacing and performance in maximal exercise trials. Coaches who want to offer inclusive sports environments for people with ID could take these findings into consideration
Modelling and design of hierarchical fibre-graphene nanoplatelets reinforced elasto-viscoplastic polymer matrix composites to improve crashworthiness and energy absorption
Get PDFToday, light-weighting for energy efficiency without sacrificing safety and performance attributes has become a primary focus in the automotive industry. In the field of modelling graphene nanocomposites' structural applications under severe loading conditions, literature is limited. In addition, the existing work only employs the so-called one-site (OS) modelling. This study develops an approach to study 3-phases hierarchical fibres/graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs)-reinforced polymer matrix composites utilising OS modelling and what is known as multi-site (MS) modelling. The MS modelling accounts for material anisotropy considering the interaction between neighbouring inclusions. Applicability of both models is then assessed for automotive components' crashworthiness response under combined mechanical and rate-dependent plasticity or viscoplasticity behaviours. A coherent micromechanical design is employed with elastic platelets and elasto-viscoplastic matrix assumptions. The micromechanics modelling combines rate-dependent constitutive laws and thermomechanical properties for the nonlinear response of composite materials. The heterogeneous material problem is resolved in the first instance for a thermoelastic case. The thermomechanical kinematic integral equation is used to derive the strain concentration tensor. Using the generalised Mori–Tanaka (GMT) homogenisation scheme, effective thermomechanical properties are obtained. For the nonlinear behaviour, a linearisation of the classical J2 rate-dependent model is considered with an isotropic hardening. Based on an implicit integration scheme, a consistent tangent modulus is obtained and serves as a uniform modulus for homogenisation of the rate-dependent thermomechanical composite material. An application is therefore performed on a short glass -fibres/graphene nanoplatelet/ Polyamide-Nylon 6 (GNP/PA6) composite. The current study's archival value is to provide an auspicious approach for a consistent design and application of this category of materials for automotive structural components
On the Accuracy, Media Representation, and Public Perception of Psychological Scientists’ Judgments of Societal Change
Get PDFAt the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, psychological scientists frequently made on-the-record predictions in public media about how individuals and society would change. Such predictions were often made outside these scientists’ areas of expertise, with justifications based on intuition, heuristics, and analogical reasoning (Study 1; N = 719 statements). How accurate are these kinds of judgments regarding societal change? In Study 2, we obtained predictions from scientists (N = 717) and lay Americans (N = 394) in Spring 2020 regarding the direction of change for a range of social and psychological phenomena. We compared them to objective data obtained at 6 months and 1 year. To further probe how experience impacts such judgments, 6 months later (Study 3), we obtained retrospective judgments of societal change for the same domains (Nscientists = 270; Nlaypeople = 411). Bayesian analysis suggested greater credibility of the null hypothesis that scientists’ judgments were at chance on average for both prospective and retrospective judgments. Moreover, neither domain-general expertise (i.e., judgmental accuracy of scientists compared to laypeople) nor self-identified domain-specific expertise improved accuracy. In a follow-up study on meta-accuracy (Study 4), we show that the public nevertheless expects psychological scientists to make more accurate predictions about individual and societal change compared to most other scientific disciplines, politicians, and nonscientists, and they prefer to follow their recommendations. These findings raise questions about the role psychological scientists could and should play in helping the public and policymakers plan for future events
Revisiting economic distance and its role in foreign subsidiary survival
Get PDFIn this study, we argue the coexistence of arbitrage and costs associated with economic distance engender a non-linear relationship between foreign subsidiary survival and economic distance. Specifically, we suggest that low to medium economically distant countries offer scope of economic arbitrage, whereas the cost of operating in medium to high economically distant countries is substantially high. We construct an index of economic distance using arguments from the eclectic paradigm of international production and organisational learning theory and base our measurement on the Mahalanobis method of distance calculation. Empirical analysis is conducted by applying the Cox's proportional hazard model to a sample of 1771 Finnish foreign direct investments. Results suggest that subsidiary survival has an inverted U-shaped relationship with economic distance. Firms with host country experience and wholly owned subsidiaries are able to mitigate the costs of operating in economically distant countries, while joint ventures are better suited for economically similar countries
Image Editing based Data Augmentation for Illumination-insensitive Background Subtraction
Get PDFA core challenge in background subtraction (BGS) is handling videos with sudden illumination changes in consecutive frames. While the use of data augmentation has been shown to increase robustness, the modelling of realistic illumination changes remains less explored and is usually limited to global, static brightness adjustments. In this paper, we focus on tackling the problem of background subtraction using augmented training data, and propose an augmentation method which vastly improves the model's performance under challenging illumination conditions. In particular, our framework consists of a local component that considers direct light/shadow and lighting angles, and a global component that considers the overall contrast, sharpness and color saturation of the image. It generates realistic, structured training data with different illumination conditions, enabling our deep learning system to be trained effectively for background subtraction even when significant illumination changes take place. We further propose a post-processing method that removes noise from the output binary map of segmentation, resulting in a cleaner, more accurate segmentation map that can generalise to multiple scenes of different conditions. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system outperforms existing work, with the highest F-measure score of 81.27% obtained by the full system. To facilitate the research in the field, we open the source code of this project at: https://github.com/dksakkos/illumination_augmentatio
Moral regulation and a good moral panic: UK Polish migrant workers and the 2016 EU Referendum
Get PDFThe UK 2016 EU Referendum has introduced a period of uncertainty for both the indigenous population and for non-British citizens. This uncertainty is considered within a framework of the recent revisions in the sociology of moral panics through an analysis of interviews with Polish migrant workers. This analysis reveals two main discursive framing logics. The first logic refers to a self-reported anti-Polish migrant moral panic discourse that – according to respondents – was exploited by British anti-migrant campaigners. The second type of articulation illustrates the good moral panic logic, namely, a panicking discourse appearing among respondents about the vulnerability of their community in post-Referendum Britain. This article, however, problematises the good moral panic logic by eliciting competing narratives found in the interview data. The latter did not aim merely at stimulating caring attitudes but referred also to moral regulation techniques to manage Brexit-oriented risks and avoid the trap of becoming a vulnerable migrant
A Broken Profession both Mentally and Physically: Is Well-being the Foundation to a Healthy and Resilient Future?
No full textRecent years have seen an increasing body of literature surrounding well-being within the legal profession. The literature illustrates a profession with high levels of stress and mental health problems. The problem of poor mental health exists throughout the legal sector at all levels including students, junior lawyers, senior lawyers and the judiciary. There are numerous consequences of poor mental problems for individuals, universities, employers, the reputation of the profession and wider society. For individuals, the long-term impact on their mental and physical health; for employers, low productivity and increased sickness absence; and for the profession and wider society, unethical practice with adverse consequences for clients as lawyers struggle to cope.This article advocates for the integration of well-being into the law school curriculum. Whilst universities offer well-being services, these are usually an adjunct, distinct from the law programme. As a professional degree there has been an increased focus on skills training and ethics. Historically, well-being has not been a core component of any undergraduate law degree. The author will assert that an appreciation and understanding of well-being is as fundamental as skills and ethics within the context of a professional education. Well-being should be a core component and pervasive throughout the law school curriculum, to provide students with the tools and mechanisms to have a healthy and balanced student life that can form the basis of a healthy and balanced career
Skin Application of Menthol Enhances Maximal Isometric Lifting Performance
Get PDFOver, DM, Arjomandkhah, N, Beaumont, JD, Goodall, S, and Barwood, MJ. Skin application of menthol enhances maximal isometric lifting performance. J Strength Cond Res 37(3): 564–573, 2023—Topical application of menthol to the skin improves perception (i.e., makes subjects feel cooler) and changes submaximal neuromuscular recruitment facilitating force generation. We explored the effect of menthol (0.2% concentration; sprayed on the legs), on perception and maximal, dynamic (DLT) and isometric (IMLT) (weight) lifting tasks. Nine resistance-trained male subjects (mean ± SD: 24 ± 5 years; 75.7 ± 8.8 kg; 174 ± 10 cm; 5 repetition maximum deadlift [5RM] 132.3 ± 28.5 kg) were tested using a repeated measures design; we hypothesized that performance would improve. Before completing the DLT (i.e., deadlift performance 75% 1RM) and a midthigh pull dynamometer IMLT, subjects were sprayed with (∼125 ml) of menthol or control spray. Performance, electromyography (root mean squared [rmsEMG], rectus femoris [RF], biceps femoris [BF], and medial gastrocnemius [MG]), perceptions (leg thermal sensation [TSlegs] and comfort [TClegs] and perceived exertion [RPE] and readiness to train), heart rate, and skin temperature were measured. Data were compared using analysis of variance (effect size
) and t test to a 0.05 alpha level supported by Bayesian analysis. Dynamic lifting task performance was unchanged, although BF rmsEMG was higher (i.e., greater muscle activation in final [10th] repetition). Isometric lifting task force production was higher in the menthol spray (148 ± 30 kgf) condition (control spray 140 ± 30 kgf; p = 0.035,
= 0.444) with corresponding higher rmsEMG (BF 3.8 ± 1.46 vs. control spray 2.9 ± 0.34 V; p = 0.049,
= 0.403). TSlegs was lower after menthol spray before IMLT; subjects felt slightly cool. Menthol spray enhances isometric weightlifting performance with corresponding changes in neuromuscular activity, partially supporting our hypothesis
Predicting Sleeping Quality using Convolutional Neural Networks
Get PDFIdentifying sleep stages and patterns is an essential part of diagnosing and treating sleep disorders. With the advancement of smart technologies, sensor data related to sleeping patterns can be captured easily. In this paper, we propose a Convolution Neural Network (CNN) architecture that improves the classification performance. In particular, we benchmark the classification performance from different methods, including traditional machine learning methods such as Logistic Regression (LR), Decision Trees (DT), k-Nearest Neighbour (k-NN), Naive Bayes (NB) and Support Vector Machine (SVM), on 3 publicly available sleep datasets. The accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, precision, recall, and F-score are reported and will serve as a baseline to simulate the research in this direction in the future