Injury rate,mechanism, and risk factors of hamstring strain injuries in sports: A review of the literature

Hamstring strains are one of most common sports injuries. The purpose of this literature review is to summarize studies on hamstring strain injury rate, mechanism, and risk factors in the last several decades with a focus on the prevention and rehabilitation of this injury. Hamstring injury commonly occurs in sporting events in which high speed sprinting and kicking are frequently performed, such as Australian football, English rugby, American football, and soccer. Basic science studies have demonstrated that a muscle strain injury occurs due to excessive strain in eccentric contraction instead of force, and that elongation speed and duration of activation before eccentric contraction affect the severity of the injury. Hamstring strain injury is likely to occur during the late swing phase and late stance phase of sprint running. Shortened optimum muscle length, lack of muscle flexibility, strength imbalance, insufficient warm-up, fatigue, lower back injury, poor lumbar posture, and increased muscle neural tension have been identified as modifiable risk factors while muscle compositions, age, race, and previous injuries are non-modifiable risk factors. The theoretical basis of some of these risk factors, however, is lacking, and the results of clinical studies on these risk factors are inconsistent. Future studies are needed to establish the cause-and-effect relationships between those proposed risk factors and the injury.     

Arts participation: Comparing the elderly and non-elderly

Conclusions From this brief examination of the leisure activities of older Americans, several previous findings have been validated with national, representative data and a few surprises have been discovered in arts participation. As expected, those younger than 65 years of age were more active than seniors in nearly all of the leisure activities tested. In addition, the elderly were more likely to participate in in-home rather than out-of-home activities.The most intriguing finding concern the elderly's arts participation. While leisure activities decline as one grows older, participation in passive arts activities in the home and out of the home decline far less than for leisure activities and more participatory arts activities. Unlike other activities discussed, few significant difference existed between the younger and older groups in the away from home art activities. Those 65 and older were more willing to attend fine arts performances, such as opera, musical plays, stage plays, and ballet. It is also notable that the differences in frequency of the away from home arts activities are in not great between the older and younger groups. Finally, this study does dispel somewhat the idea that the elderly prefer solitary activities. The elderly are a diverse and widely varying group of citizens who in some cases maintain their patronage of the arts while other leisure activities decline.     

Practices and opinions reported by coordinators of graduate programs

Information is presented about the organization of graduate studies, based on questionnaire responses of 582 coordinators of Canadian graduate programs. These coordinators, who were representative of disciplines and geographic regions, provided information about a wide range of matters, including enrolments, staff, admissions, supervision, research, publications, financial support, teaching experience, and completion rates and times. Many substantial differences were noted among the percentage frequencies of responses for departments classified by discipline and size. For example, students were perceived to choose their doctoral theses topics themselves much more frequently in education, social sciences, and humanities than in engineering, medical sciences, physical sciences, and biological sciences. Also, departments with smaller numbers of full-time graduate students tended to provide all doctoral students, with some teaching experience to a greater extent than did larger departments.     

Pourquoi entrer a l'Universite? L'Exemple d'une universite de lettres et sciences humaines

The large number of secondary school graduates entering higher education is transforming the nature of universities, particularly in literature and the humanities, by changing the relative numbers of students enrolled in different academic years. At the same time this influx is accompanied by a significant failure rate in the first academic year, calling into question the efficacy of the university system. A national issue with local repercussions, the struggle against failure in the first year is leading to much heart-searching among the universities, whose staff are trying hard to understand why certain students abandon their studies. The enquiry described in this article reveals the co-existence of two student populations: those who enter university as an active choice and those who do so by default. In the case of the first group, entry to university represents an investment for the future which must be carefully managed. In the second case it is a matter of going into higher education as a faute de mieux solution in an economic context in which work is scarce.     

A developmental study of school performance explanations of 6 to 11-year-olds: Causal differentiation and internality norm

Children's explanations of their performances are characterized by an increase of internal explanations over external ones. Originally considered a manifestation of cognitive development, this change has more recently been considered as an appropriation of a social norm. Two investigations are presented analyzing development of causal explanations of success and failure in mathematics and drawing. In the first study, two measures of causal attribution are compared in order to show that the use of unipolar scales is more suitable for illustrating differences in causal factors progressively operated by children. The hypothesis of the appropriation of a norm of internality is investigated in the second study. Results do not confirm this hypothesis and further, they cannot be interpreted solely in terms of cognitive development. They are discussed in the frame of a theory of socio-cognitive development.