Remote effects of lower limb stretching: preliminary evidence for myofascial connectivity?

The skeletal muscles and the fibrous connective tissue form an extensive, body-wide network of myofascial chains. As fascia can modify its stiffness, strain transmission along these meridians is supposable. The goal of this trial therefore was to collect pilot data for potential remote effects of lower limb stretching on cervical range of motion (ROM). Twenty-six healthy participants (30 ± 6 years) were included in the matched-pairs intervention study. One group (n = 13) performed three 30 s bouts of static stretching for the gastrocnemius and the hamstrings, respectively. An age- and sex-matched control group (CG; n = 13) remained inactive. Pre- and post-intervention, maximal cervical ROM in flexion/extension was assessed. A repeated measures ANOVA revealed systematic differences between groups (P < .05). ROM increased following stretching (143.3 ± 13.9 to 148.2 ± 14°; P < .05) but remained unchanged in the CG (144.6 ± 16.8 to 143.3 ± 16.8°; P > .05). Our data point towards existence of a strain transfer along myofascial meridians. Further randomised controlled studies on conditions, factors and magnitude of tensile transmission are warranted.     

Der Sportwissenschaftler als Unternehmer im Wissensmarkt

Creative ideas are the driving force behind knowledge production, the producers of which are generally domesticated at universities for the purposes of ensuring the methodological credibility of the knowledge produced, in order to minimise the impact of chance in the creation of new knowledge. The status of producers is determined by indicators designed to simulate the demand for knowledge, precipitate a quantitative and qualitative comparison of elements which are not comparable, and establish legitimacy for the means of control used. Furthermore, incentives for competitive sport research and the symbolic recognition of scientists via sport practice play a particular role for knowledge production in sports science. In order to compensate for the practical world’s unwillingness to pay for sports science expertise relevant to competitive sport, the German Federal Institute of Sports Science (BISp) functions as a simulator of demand for knowledge generated by universities, while the Institute for Applied Training Science with its services exclusively available to umbrella organisations limits the range of incentives to produce (competitive) sporting knowledge. Sports scientists are thus faced with a market situation which favours routine research and standard methods, creates legitimacy at a central level, does not necessarily tackle actual issues faced by (competitive) athletes, stimulates demand for monitoring services, and all in all leaves monoculture-driven gaps which could most likely only be avoided by advocating and applying individual scope for action throughout the research ethos.     

Laudatio auf Herrn Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Wolfgang Mitter anl?sslich der Verleihung der Ehrenmitgliedschaft der DGfE

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

How to detect indications of potential sources of bias in peer review: A generalized latent variable modeling approach exemplified by a gender study

The universalism norm of the ethos of science requires that contributions to science are not excluded because of the contributors’ gender, nationality, social status, or other irrelevant criteria. Here, a generalized latent variable modeling approach is presented that grant program managers at a funding organization can use in order to obtain indications of potential sources of bias in their peer review process (such as the applicants’ gender). To implement the method, the data required are the number of approved and number of rejected applicants for grants among different groups (for example, women and men or natural and social scientists). Using the generalized latent variable modeling approach indications of potential sources of bias can be examined not only for grant peer review but also for journal peer review.     

Early contribution of phonological awareness and later influence of phonological memory throughout reading acquisition

The acquisition of reading skills is known to rely on early phonological abilities, but only a few studies have investigated the independent contribution of the different steps involved in phonological processing. This 1‐year longitudinal study, spanning the initial year of reading instruction, aimed at specifying the development of phonological discrimination, awareness and various aspects of phonological memory and at assessing their respective contributions to early reading acquisition. Our results show an increase in performance at each phonological processing step, but also suggest a qualitative evolution in their relative importance. Hierarchical regression analyses indicate that reading skills are mainly predicted by phonological awareness measured at the kindergarten stage and, subsequently, by phonological memory abilities measured at the end of first grade. More precisely short‐term memory for serial‐order information seems to contribute to the development of decoding abilities, while phonological knowledge stored in long‐term memory seems to influence word recognition.     

Stata commands for importing bibliometric data and processing author address information

Given the recent trend in bibliometrics and information science to use increasingly complex statistical methods, it is necessary to have powerful toolboxes to work with data from Web of Science (Thomson Reuters). We developed such a toolbox with four specific commands for the statistical software package Stata. These commands refer to (1) the import of downloads from Web of Science to Stata, (2) the preprocessing of address information from authors of publications in the downloaded set, (3) the geocoding of address information, and (4) the calculation of the minimum and maximum distance between several co-authors of a single paper. An advantage of developing commands for an established and comprehensive statistical software package (like Stata) is that a large number of further commands are available for the analysis of bibliometric data. We will describe some of these useful commands as well.