Maximal strength and power, muscle mass, endurance and serum hormones in weightlifters and road cyclists

Maximal strength, power, muscle cross-sectional area, maximal and submaximal cycling endurance characteristics and serum hormone concentrations of testosterone, free testosterone and cortisol were examined in three groups of men: weightlifters (n = 11), amateur road cyclists (n = 18) and age-matched controls (n = 12). Weightlifters showed 45-55% higher power values than road cyclists and controls, whereas the differences in maximal strength and muscle mass were only 15% and 20%, respectively. These differences were maintained when average power output was expressed relative to body mass or relative to muscle cross-sectional area. Road cyclists recorded 44% higher maximal workloads, whereas submaximal blood lactate concentration was 50-55% lower with increasing workload than in controls and weightlifters. In road cyclists, workloads associated with blood lactate concentrations of 2 and 4 mmol.l-1 were 50-60% higher and occurred at a higher percentage of maximal workload than in weightlifters or controls. Basal serum total testosterone and free testosterone concentrations were lower in elite amateur cyclists than in age-matched weightlifters or untrained individuals. Significant negative correlations were noted between the individual values of maximal workload, workloads at 2 and 4 mmol.l-1 and the individual values of muscle power output (r = -0.37 to -0.49), as well as the individual basal values of serum total testosterone and free testosterone (r = -0.39 to -0.41). These results indicate that the specific status of the participants with respect to training, resistance or endurance is important for the magnitude of the neuromuscular, physiological and performance differences observed between weightlifters and road cyclists. The results suggest that, in cycling, long-term endurance training may interfere more with the development of muscle power than with the development of maximal strength, probably mediated by long-term cycling-related impairment in anabolic hormonal status.     

The Aptitude–Achievement Function: An Aid for Allocating Educational Resources, with an Advanced Placement Example

We fit a functional relationship between aptitude and achievement test scores and show how to use it to allocate educational resources. As an example we use the PSAT–Mathematics test to predict performance on the College Board's Advanced Placement Test in calculus, as a guide to student and school participation, for school or system assessment, and to project future nationwide expansion. In addition to the PSAT-AP test score relations, we consider the distribution of student ability, school policies of student selection and recruitment, and teacher skill in presenting the material and in motivating students. This overall result provides an indication of just how remarkable was Jaime Escalante's accomplishment in Los Angeles's Garfield High School. We find little evidence for differences in educational quality between such diverse schools as in the inner city of Detroit and the affluent suburb of La Cañada, California. We comment briefly on the role of the AP in international assessments.     

The ``R's of School Reform' and the Politics of Reforming or Replacing Public Schools

Pressures to reform or replace public schools have flowed from a variety of social trends interacting with a growing perception that the schools are performing poorly or are inadequate for the demands of the new global economy they now face. Since the 1980s, many reforms have been attempted, but with little evidence of real improvement, especially in the education of poor and disadvantaged children. As a result, support is growing, at the very least in elite circles, for more radical reforms that would dramatically alter or even privatize public education. Public educators increasingly recognize the threats they face, but have trouble seizing upon the opportunities these threats present because they challenge fundamental aspects of the paradigm and ideology of public education to which they are wedded. This paper focuses on competing views of the policy problems and possible solutions public educators face in this situation, with particular reference to the experience of school reform efforts in the United States.     

Self-confidence and the re-entry experience for North American women

Seven themes emerged in a review of the literatureregarding the experience of North American re-entrywomen. The two most salient appeared to be linked tothe concept of transitions in adulthood and issuesrelated to self-confidence. The other five themes,sex-role stereotyping, discrimination, diverse careerpatterns, multiple roles, and the search for meaning,related to issues that are important in the careerdevelopment of women. These themes are discussed interms of their potential impact on women returning towork or to school. The article concludes withsuggestions for counselling, further research, andtheory development that more accurately reflects theexperience of women.     

Confronting relativism

Conclusion After dealing with student relativism for decades, I have come to the conclusion that it is a view students can fairly easily be talked out of. It is not at all difficult to reveal to students the extent to which they are closet absolutists. It is also not difficult to reveal to them that their fondness for relativism is in large part due to their misunderstanding the nature of absolutism. A number of misconceptions surround absolutism, and students fall victim to these misconceptions. It doesn’t help matters that many of their college professors have fallen victim to these same misconceptions and as a result encourage student relativism. In their minds, by encouraging relativism, they are encouraging tolerance in the classroom. As we have seen, though, absolutism is not synonymous with intolerance. Morality allows us to be tolerant in some cases, but requires us to be intolerant in others. By confronting relativism in the classroom—by correcting students' mistaken beliefs about absolutism—college professors are taking an important step in fostering their students' development as moral beings. Editor’s Note: This essay by William B. Irvine and the subsequent article by Charles Landesman are loosely tied by subject matter. They both address academic dimensions of morality. The former charts from its author’s experience in the classroom a landscape of the relativism that prevails among today's undergraduates. The latter explores the realm of the academic moralists, where we find scholars and philosophers projecting their political longings as unconditional imperatives for a just society. The two territories trade on each other's needs. The dreams of the moralists for diversity or multiculturalism provide alternatives to genuine ethical deliberation in a packaged philosophy that affords students the luxury of never having to formulate their own moral framework. William B. Irvine is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio. Paragon House is to release his Doing Right by Children: Reflections on the Nature of Childhood and the Obligations of Parenthood in 2001.