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Intra- and inter-day reliability of weightlifting variables and correlation to performance during cleans
Get PDFThe purpose of this investigation was to examine intra- and inter-day reliability of kinetic and kinematic variables assessed during the clean, assess their relationship to clean performance, and determine their suitability in weightlifting performance analysis. Eight competitive weightlifters performed 3 sets of single repetition cleans with 90% of their one-repetition maximum. Force-time data were collected via dual force plates with displacement-time data collected via 3-dimensional motion capture, on three separate occasions under the same testing conditions. Seventy kinetic and kinematic variables were analyzed for intra- and inter-day reliability using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) and the coefficient of variation (CV). Pearson’s correlation coefficients were calculated to determine relationships between barbell and body kinematics and ground reaction forces and for correlations to be deemed as statistically significant, an alpha-level of p ≤ 0.005 was set. Eleven variables were found to have ‘good’ to ‘excellent’ intra- and inter-day ICC (0.779-0.994 and 0.974-0.996, respectively) and CV (0.64-6.89% and 1.14-6.37%, respectively), with strong correlations (r = 0.880-0.988) to cleans performed at 90% 1RM. Average resultant force of the weighting 1 (W1) phase demonstrated the best intra- and inter-day reliability (ICC = 0.994 and 0.996 respectively), and very strong correlation (r = 0.981) to clean performance. Average bar power from point of lift off to peak bar height exhibited the highest correlation (r = 0.988) to clean performance. Additional reliable variables with strong correlations to clean performance were found, many of these occurred during or included the W1 phase, which suggests coaches should pay particular attention to the performance of the W1 phase
Crisis and Transition: The Late Foucault and the Vocation of Philosophy
Get PDFThe work of the late Foucault, especially the turn to the care of the self and the problem of subjectivity, has often been regarded as a narcissistic withdrawal from politics. Instead, this essay argues that such a charge ignores how Foucault was responding to arguments highly-critical of individualism developed in the late 1970s, especially Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism (1979). Not only was Foucault concerned with rehabilitating a notion of individualism, his historical reconstruction of the care of the self emphasized that this philosophical practice was not a withdrawal from public space but a new way of conceiving ethics and politics. Focusing on the issues of crisis and transition this essay reconstructs Foucault’s historical reflections on Greek and Roman practices of the care of the self as mediated responses to the crisis of politics in the late 1970s and as re-conceptualizations of the practice of philosophy. In particular, Foucault’s late work is read as the attempt to reconstruct or construct a sense of the vocation of philosophy. The philosophical vocation developed by Foucault is one concerned with the intensification of experience within the subject conceived of as the possibility for a new engagement with the world
Changing Behaviours in Community Sport: A Precis of Sport Programme Practice and the Principle of Empowerment for Participants
Get PDFCommonly referred to and used by wider social policy, youth sport organizations, and some practitioners in the field of sport/social intervention projects, the use of positive youth development (PYD) and an emphasis placed on developing relationships is supported by a relatively robust body of empirical and professional practice evidence. However, there is still room for frameworks and schemas to support the applied practice of community sport coaches and organisers, and the purpose of this paper is to outline the use of empowerment as a conceptual framework, with relevant application and design, within sport/social intervention projects. In order to do so, this paper reviews previous work related to the distinct context of community sport coaching, that specifically uses Jennings et al.’s [1] Critical Youth Empowerment (CYE) model to help explain findings, and signpost potential future practice
The Importance of School Swimming
No full textIntroduction.
This study investigated the value that students
(n=28), teachers (n=19) and parents (n=122)
placed on school-delivered swimming lessons,
with the aim of considering the child’s perspective.
It explores four ‘emergent’ themes: swimming as
a life skill, water safety and drowning prevention,
building confidence in swimming, and swimming
as exercise and fitness. The lead author has a
personal interest in swimming due to competing in
national and international swimming competitions.
This interest reinforced her inquisitiveness of those
who are not so heavily involved in swimming and
what value they give it. Swimming and water safety
have been statutory requirements in the National
Curriculum since 1994 (Department for Education,
2013; Swim England, 2018). This suggests,
therefore, that swimming is valued by governments.
The author was interested to establish if parents,
teachers and primary school children hold the
same opinion
Mental ill health in professional esports athletes: Prevalence and relationships
No full textFew research studies have examined the predictors of mental ill health in esports. This study addresses the gap by investigating the prevalence and relationships of mental ill health in a professional first-person shooter sample. An online survey was disseminated to professional first-person shooter athletes (n = 72). The survey included measures of stressors resulting from professionally competing in esports (competitive, organisational, personal), sleep quality, burnout, as well as outcome measures of mental ill health. We found that 60% of our sample had experienced symptoms of psychological distress (Distress Screener), 78.7% experienced psychological signs of anxiety or depression (GHQ-12), and 23.6% experienced moderately severe to severe symptoms of depression (PHQ-9), all in the previous four weeks. Correlation analyses examined these relationships. We found that competitive and personal stressors significantly and positively associated with the Distress Screener, and personal stressors significantly and positively associated with the PHQ-9. We also found burnout subscales of reduced sense of accomplishment and emotion and physical exhaustion and the sleep subscales of disturbance and daytime dysfunction significantly and positively associated to all outcome measures of mental ill health. We hope our findings can inform the development of evidencebased interventions designed to target specific aspects of stress, sleep, and burnout to improve the mental health of those who compete professionally in esports
Computer Vision-Based Kidney’s (HK-2) Damaged Cells Classification with Reconfigurable Hardware Accelerator (FPGA)
Get PDFIn medical and health sciences, the detection of cell injury plays an important role in diagnosis, personal treatment and disease prevention. Despite recent advancements in tools and methods for image classification, it is challenging to classify cell images with higher precision and accuracy. Cell classification based on computer vision offers significant benefits in biomedicine and healthcare. There have been studies reported where cell classification techniques have been complemented by Artificial Intelligence-based classifiers such as Convolutional Neural Networks. These classifiers suffer from the drawback of the scale of computational resources required for training and hence do not offer real-time classification capabilities for an embedded system platform. Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) offer the flexibility of hardware reconfiguration and have emerged as a viable platform for algorithm acceleration. Given that the logic resources and on-chip memory available on a single device are still limited, hardware/software co-design is proposed where image pre-processing and network training were performed in software, and trained architectures were mapped onto an FPGA device (Nexys4DDR) for real-time cell classification. This paper demonstrates that the embedded hardware-based cell classifier performs with almost 100% accuracy in detecting different types of damaged kidney cells
The Use and Reception of the Prophets in the New Testament
Get PDFThis article explores the use of the Prophets in the New Testament by looking at explicit quotations, clusters of allusions and narrative patterns. It shows that the NT authors applied the Prophets to a range of issues, such as God’s inclusion of the Gentiles, as well as key events in Jesus’ life. It also demonstrates that they generally used a Greek translation of the Prophets, though sometimes a revised or indeed Christian version of the text. Like the Jews of Alexandria, they believed that this was inspired by God, though that did not prevent them modifying the text to make the application seem more obvious to the readers
Assessing pre-pandemic carbon footprint of diet transitions in UK nations and regions
Get PDFFood supply chains hold significant embodied carbon emissions that need to be mitigated and neutralized. This study aimed to explore the historical Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions associated with household food consumption at a local scale i.e. across the eight English regions and the four nations that comprise the United Kingdom (UK). UK EatWell guidelines were used to explore the potential change in emissions and food costs in a scenario of transitions to healthier diets across the study areas. These emissions were calculated based on food consumption data before the advent of the Covid-pandemic i.e. between the years 2001 and 2018. Spatial data analysis was used to explore if the study areas had any significant correlations with respect to the emissions during the study period. The results displayed a potential reduction in GHG emissions for all study areas in the explored scenario. Further impacts include a reduction in household food costs across a majority of the areas during the study period. However, a consistent trend of significant correlations among the study areas was absent. This study concludes that local or regional policymaking should take precedence over national regulations to achieve healthier diets that are both carbon-neutral and affordable for the households
An event-based Intelligent Vehicle Rerouting for Efficient Traffic Management for Connected Vehicles
No full textThe continual increase in the number of vehicles on the roads in the UK has impacted the journey travel time and often causes severe congestion. Connected vehicles can reduce these challenges while increasing traffic safety, by sharing information about problems on the roads. This paper proposes an incident-based vehicle rerouting approach for efficient traffic management. Contrary to other methods where vehicles take possible alternative routes on receiving an incident alert, the system proposed applies the average incident clearance time on the route to compute and update route travel times based on the real-time traffic information. It compares the updated travel times with other available routes before making any rerouting decisions. Datasets from Highways England and the Office of National Statistics were used to develop a central template for classes of incidents and clearance time and integrated into the application. The solution was implemented in Objective Modular Network Testbed in C++ with a Realistic Vehicular Simulator and Sub-Urban Mobility. The solution reduced the congestion and improved travel times by 17.86 % on average. Overall, vehicles with positive, negative, and no impact on travel were 48.30%, 30.30%, and 21%, respectively. This approach also reduced traffic emissions, and other researchers can apply the central incident clearance time template to improve traffic management
Reference values for performance test outcomes relevant to English female soccer players
Get PDFThe purpose of this study was to present reference standards for physical performance test outcomes relevant to elite female soccer players. We analysed mixed-longitudinal data (n = 1715 observations) from a sample of 479 elite youth and senior players as part of the English Football Association’s national development programme (age range: 12.7 to 36.0 years). Semi-parametric generalized additive models for location, scale and shape (GAMLSS) estimated age-related reference centiles for 5-m sprinting, 30-m sprinting, countermovement jump (CMJ) height, and Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery Test Level 1 (Yo-Yo IR1) performance. The estimated reference centiles indicated that the median of the distribution of physical performance test scores varied non-linearly with advancing chronological age, improving until around 25 years for each performance variable. These are the first reference ranges for performance test outcomes in elite English female soccer players. These data can assist practitioners when interpreting physical test performance outcomes to track an individual’s progress over time and support decision making regarding player recruitment and development