Positioning Mentoring as a Coach Development Tool: Recommendations for Future Practice and Research

Current thinking in coach education advocates mentoring as a development tool to connect theory and practice. However, little empirical evidence exists to evaluate the effectiveness of mentoring as a coach development tool. Business, education, and nursing precede the coaching industry in their mentoring practice, and research findings offered in these domains could be drawn upon to position mentoring as sports coaching development tool. Given the remote basis of some of mentor–coach relationships in sports coaching, additional learning can be drawn from mentoring conducted by virtual or electronic mediums. This article concludes with a series of reflective questions arising from research findings in other domains, designed to engage the potential coaching organization with the mentoring process.     

Engaging Criminal Justice Students through Service Learning

The increasing popularity of service learning has led to the implementation of the pedagogy across educational levels and disciplines. Evidence of its utilization in criminal justice education spans two decades, most of which include case studies of service-learning courses or projects. These examples of service-learning implementation seem to serve as a best practices guide for other faculty and researchers interested in adopting the pedagogy. By examining responses to offender populations and policy areas by students (n = 37) involved in a service-learning course, the current research adds to this “best practices” approach and is intended to instigate further examination of the benefits of service learning for criminal justice students and the discipline.     

On-chip recalcification of citrated whole blood using a microfluidic herringbone mixer

In vitro assays of platelet function and coagulation are typically performed in the presence of an anticoagulant. The divalent cation chelator sodium citrate is among the most common because its effect on coagulation is reversible upon reintroduction of divalent cations. Adding divalent cations into citrated blood by batch mixing leads to platelet activation and initiation of coagulation after several minutes, thus limiting the time blood can be used before spontaneously clotting. In this work, we describe a herringbone microfluidic mixer to continuously introduce divalent cations into citrated blood. The mixing ratio, defined as the ratio of the volumetric flow rates of citrated blood and recalcification buffer, can be adjusted by changing the relative inlet pressures of these two solutions. This feature is useful in whole blood assays in order to account for differences in hematocrit, and thus viscosity. The recalcification process in the herringbone mixer does not activate platelets. The advantage of this continuous mixing approach is demonstrated in microfluidic vascular injury model in which platelets and fibrin accumulate on a collagen-tissue factor surface under flow. Continuous recalcification with the herringbone mixer allowed for flow assay times of up to 30 min, more than three times longer than the time achieved by batch recalcification. This continuous mixer allows for measurements of thrombus formation, remodeling, and fibrinolysis in vitro over time scales that are relevant to these physiological processes.     

Promoting Prenatal Exercise From a Sociocultural and Life-Course Perspective: An “Embodied” Conceptual Framework

Purpose: Prenatal exercise is a health behavior that is receiving growing attention amid concern that women in Western societies are gaining excess weight during pregnancy and contributing to future obesity in both the mother and child. In this article, we draw on insights from the fields of social epidemiology and social theory of the body to examine existing prenatal exercise interventions and to propose a multidimensional framework intended to guide future theorizing and intervention design. Method: A scoping review of existing prenatal exercise programs and interventions focused on controlling gestational weight gain was conducted. Articles published prior to January 2017 were obtained from PubMed and CINAHL, and relevant articles were identified (n = 62) using specified inclusion and exclusion criteria. Identified articles were further analyzed to classify the level(s) of the socioecological model targeted in the intervention or program. Results: The majority of existing interventions target intrapersonal factors during pregnancy and do not attend to the role that cumulative exposure of social and structural disadvantage over the lifetime—not just during the prenatal period—plays in shaping health outcomes. In response, a multidimensional framework is proposed that includes key concepts that facilitate a life-course perspective, as well as attention to the integration of biological and social factors as they relate to health and health-related behaviors. Conclusion: Efforts to promote prenatal exercise and to improve maternal and infant health should attend to how systemic inequality impacts women’s health.