Which starting style is faster in sprint running--standing or crouch start?

The purpose of this study was to further understand the biomechanical differences between the standing and crouch starting methods, and to investigate whether one of the starting styles provides better acceleration and proves to be faster. Six university track team sprinters performed 2 x 3 x 50 m trials. Digitised video, photocell timing, and velocity data revealed that during the first steps of the performance the standing start produced higher body centre of mass horizontal velocity than the crouch start. This may be due to the longer distance between the feet in the standing start, which caused longer push-off phases, and the work against gravity in the crouch start. However, this advantage in horizontal velocity disappeared by the 10 m mark, where similar velocities were recorded with both start styles. Further, there was no statistically significant difference between the two starting styles in horizontal velocity at the 25 m mark, nor in the time to reach the 25 m or 50 m mark. Regarding relay running, where athletes need to decide to adopt either a crouch start without starting blocks or a standing start, there seems to be no specific reason for outgoing athletes to use a crouch start, although this area warrants further investigation.     

Explaining Post-War Cinema Attendance in Great Britain

This paper models the interaction between cinema admissions and cinema supply in response to changes in exogenous variables, chiefly competition from television viewing. The relationship is estimated empirically by applying near Vector Autoregression (VAR) techniques to a long run of British annual data from 1950 to 1997. The results indicate that sustained negative shocks to cinema demand throughout most of the period reduced the supply of screens, inducing further falls in admissions and closures until a new equilibrium was attained. More recently, the introduction of multiplex cinemas has interrupted and partially reversed this downward demand-supply spiral.     

Counselor Educators' Experiences Preparing Preservice School Counselors: A Phenomenological Study

The authors conducted a phenomenological study to explore the experiences of 32 school counselor educators preparing preservice school counselors. Analysis of data from 3 focus groups revealed 3 themes: breadth versus depth, balancing specialties and professor partiality, and preparation versus practice. These results highlight the need for collaboration across counseling specialties at the preservice level.     

Reflections on the Academic Policy Analysis Process and the UK Identity Cards Scheme

There is an increasing rhetoric from politicians for universities to become more involved in policy analysis and policy research. In this article, we reflect on our experiences of the analysis we conducted into the legislation to introduce biometric identity cards in the United Kingdom. We highlight how our work had direct consequences for the ongoing policy deliberation around this controversial piece of legislation. In particular, we highlight our role in the debate surrounding the government's figures for identity fraud and the concerns about the likely cost of the scheme to the government and taxpayer. We end the article by discussing some of the practical realities of such a foray into real politik.     

In search of invariant athletic behaviour in sport: An example from championship squash match‐play

Analysis of competitive sport performance from a priori observation is frequently used to prepare an athlete for a future contest. This practice necessarily assumes that the observed athletic behaviours are invariant, in that the data from an earlier contest apply to the next. We report different analyses of championship squash matches from 1987 and 1988 in search of such invariance and thus a general signature of athletic behaviour. The results show that once the preceding condition to an athletic response (shot) becomes more detailed, by either accounting for where on court the previous shot was played to, or by pairing the previous shot with its own antecedent, the corresponding response becomes more predictable (P > 0.25). This is especially the case for a squash champion when the forehand and backhand characteristics of his shot response are accounted for. The finding that the champion is more consistent if his forehand and backhand shot responses to a preceding shot are analysed separately, shows that the level of analytic detail is an important consideration if the derived information from sport analysis is to prepare an athlete reliably for future sport competition. Finally, we consider sport competition from an ecological perspective with regard to the natural organization and stability of non‐linear systems in an attempt to explain the empirical data.     

Governing teachers’ work and learning through data: Australian insights

This article reveals the multiple ways in which data are constituted as a vehicle for governing teachers’ work and learning. Drawing on the concept of governance, including in relation to the sociology of numbers, and data from one school in Queensland, Australia, the research reveals how teachers’ work and learning were constituted through practices of: establishing specific ‘targets’, including various ‘audacious goals’ for school and national testing; focusing upon ‘aligning’ all forms of school, regional and national data collected within the school; and participating in various ‘data conversations’ about specific students with senior members of staff. While the research reveals how teachers found such practices beneficial for improving their practice with students, it also shows how this learning was always and everywhere framed within a broader discourse of data, and how this data-centric focus came to constitute what was valued about their work and learning, and that of their students.     

Individual Differences in Children's Corepresentation of Self and Other in Joint Action

Previous research has shown that children aged 4–5 years, but not 2–3 years, show adult‐like interference from a partner when performing a joint task (Milward, Kita, & Apperly, 2014). This raises questions about the cognitive skills involved in the development of such “corepresentation (CR)” of a partner (Sebanz, Knoblich, & Prinz, 2003). Here, individual differences data from one hundred and thirteen 4‐ to 5‐year‐olds showed theory of mind (ToM) and inhibitory control (IC) as predictors of ability to avoid CR interference, suggesting that children with better ToM abilities are more likely to succeed in decoupling self and other representations in a joint task, while better IC is likely to help children avoid interference from a partner's response when selecting their own response on the task.     

English Premiership Academy knee injuries: lessons from a 5 year study

This study addresses the epidemiology of knee injuries in adolescent males. Data were collected prospectively from 41 Premiership soccer academies over a 5 year period from July 2000 to June 2005. A total of 12,306 player seasons were registered in the U9 to the U16 age categories with a total of 1750 recordable injuries specific to the knee joint. There was a mean incidence of 0.71 (95% confidence interval ± 0.05) knee injuries per player per year, and a median of 17 (inter-quartile range 9-38) training days and 2 (inter-quartile range 1-4) matches missed per knee injury. Knee injuries were found to be most common in the 14-16 year age group. Six hundred and nine (35% of total) injuries were classed as severe resulting in more than 28 days' absence. Injuries were more likely to be sustained in a competitive or match-play environment (862 or 52%) than in training (796 or 48%), and a non-contact mechanism was implicated in 823 (55%) of recorded cases. Peaks in injury numbers were seen in early season and subsequent to the winter break. Sprain was the most common diagnosis recorded, with the medial collateral ligament affected in 23% of all knee injuries. Knee injuries are common in elite youth footballers. In this uninsured age group, it could be argued that earlier medical intervention may reduce long-term damage to the immature skeleton.