Factors associated with minimal changes in countermovement jump performance throughout a competitive division I collegiate basketball season

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the study was to assess factors that contribute to countermovement jump (CMJ) performance in women’s basketball athletes. Thirteen female athletes participated and were tested for maximal oxygen uptake (VO_2max) and heart rate (HR_max). Athletes were monitored, daily for a total of 21 weeks with heart rate-based wearable devices and CMJ performance and body weight were tested weekly after one day of recovery. 3-jump average height (CMJ_avg), maximum height jump (CMJ_max), and CMJ power (Watts) were calculated and recorded. Playing intensities >85% HR_max, HR_avg, HR_max and training load were averaged for three consecutive days prior to the recovery day. After the season, data was grouped as changes in CMJ power from week one: Large (≤ ?4.39% change), Moderate (?4.4% to ?0.62% change), and Minimal (≥ ?0.61% change) changes. Fixed-effects models revealed a main effect of group (p ≤ 0.05) for CMJ_avg, CMJ_max, VO_2max, weekly percent changes in body weight and for 3-day training load, HR_avg, and playing time at >85% HR_max. When athletes experienced minimal changes in CMJ performance, relative to large changes, they produced greater power, jumped higher, avoided negative changes in weekly body weight, had a greater preseason VO_2max and 3-day average workloads appeared to have an impact on CMJ performance     

Information ethics in the context of smart devices

In this paper, we employ Extended Cognition as a background for a series of thought experiments about privacy and common used information technology devices. Laptops and smart phones are now widely used devices, but current privacy standards do not adequately address the relationship between the owners of these devices and the information stored on them. Law enforcement treats laptops and smart phones are potential sources of information about criminal activity, but this treatment ignores the use of smart devices as extensions of users’ cognitive capability. In Philosophy of Mind, Extended Cognition is a metaphysical theory about the relationship between consciousness or cognitive activity and various external tools or aids that agents employ in the service of cognition. Supporters of Extended Cognition argue that mental activity must be understood as taking place both within the brain and by way of tools such as a logician’s pen and paper, a mathematician’s calculator, or a writer’s word processing program. While Extended Cognition does not have universal support among philosophers of mind, the theory nevertheless describes how agents interact with their “smart devices.” We explore the the implications of taking Extended Cognition seriously with regard to privacy concerns by way of a series of thought experiments. By comparing the differences in expectations of privacy between a citizen and the government, between an employee of a corporate firm, and between citizens alone, we show that expectations of privacy and injury are significantly affected by taking the cognitive role of smart devices into account.     

Development and Experimental Application of an HPLC Procedure for the Determination of Capsaicin and Dihydrocapsaicin in Serum Samples from Human Subjects

Total capsaicins are extracted from 2 mL aliquots of serum or plasma using methyl-isobutyl ketone, evaporation of the extract to dryness and reconstitution with 200 μL of acetonitrile. The HPLC mobile phase is 40:60 water:acetonitrile. The absorbance of the eluent is monitored at 205 nm. Standardisation uses a known mixture of pure capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin. Accuracies are 98.9 and 100.6 % for capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin respectively. Inter batch reproducibility for both is 15 %. The limits of detection are 2.6 and 3.8 ng/mL for capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin respectively. Analyses of sera obtained previously from human subjects who had eaten chilli containing meals showed that in those that absorbed capsaicins (N = 30) then the median, mean and SD of their serum capsaicin were: 13.4, 18.9 and 16.3 ng/mL. The corresponding data for those sera (N = 13) that had measurable levels of dihydrocapsaicin were: 6.9, 7.5 and 3.6 ng/mL. This procedure is suitable for use in prospective studies of the metabolism of orally ingested chilli.     

Cardiorespiratory Adaptations to Training at Specified Intensities

Abstract

Sixteen college men were randomly divided into three training groups and one control group in a study of selected cardiorespiratory adaptations to six weeks of training exercises eliciting either 120, 150, or 180 heart rates. Training consisted of walking on the motor driven treadmill for 10 min. a day, 3 days per week. Highly significant differences were found in the analysis of pre-post Balke treadmill test scores. The Åstrand-Ryhming nomogram prediction of aerobic capacity also showed highly significant changes due to training. Analysis of group differences revealed that the 180 training group's improvement was significantly different from all other groups in both tests. The 150 group was found to be significantly different from the 120 and control groups in the Balke test analysis. No changes were noted in resting pulse rate nor in the pulse rate—oxygen consumption relationship. However, there were small positive differences in the grade required to elicit the training heart rates. The study supports the hypothesis that intense activity is necessary to bring about the changes associated with cardiorespiratory endurance.     

London Revisited: South Korea at the Olympics of 1948 and 2012

1948 was South Korea's first ever appearance in the Olympics – a poor country, forced to adjust to division on the peninsula, with a limited athletic presence. But South Korea won its first medals and contributed to the tortuous process of securing its international standing. Sixty-four years later, by the time of its second appearance in a London Olympics South Korea had become a powerful economy with a high international profile and a strong athletic representation – coming 5th in the final medal table. This study compares and contrasts not just the two London Olympics in terms of athletic performances but also the changed roles for South Korea within both the global sporting community and broader international society. Despite the continuing division on the peninsula, the two London Olympics provide symbols and markers of the aspirations, achievements and failures of South Korean policy-makers and their people.     

Cardiorespiratory Adaptations to Training at Specified Frequencies

Abstract

Twenty young male volunteers were randomly assigned to one of four training groups or a control group in a study of the effect of various training frequencies on cardiorespiratory endurance. Training consisted of treadmill running at a rate of seven miles per hour for a ten-minute period. As each subject completed a ten-minute run the grade was increased one percent for the next training period. The group trained for one, two, three or five days per week for five weeks. Improvement was measured by pre- and post-administration of the Balke treadmill test, the Åstrand-Ryhming (A-R) test of physical fitness, the Taylor, Buskirk and Henschel test of maximal oxygen intake, and by maintaining a record of the number of training sessions completed. While the Balke test indicated significantly greater improvement for those in the five-day group, the other methods of measurement favored either the two- or three-day groups. Pre-training correlations among the three tests indicated that the A-R test was significantly related to the Balke and oxygen intake tests but that the latter tests were not related.     

Using automated analysis to assess middle school students' competence with scientific argumentation

Argumentation is fundamental to science education, both as a prominent feature of scientific reasoning and as an effective mode of learning—a perspective reflected in contemporary frameworks and standards. The successful implementation of argumentation in school science, however, requires a paradigm shift in science assessment from the measurement of knowledge and understanding to the measurement of performance and knowledge in use. Performance tasks requiring argumentation must capture the many ways students can construct and evaluate arguments in science, yet such tasks are both expensive and resource-intensive to score. In this study we explore how machine learning text classification techniques can be applied to develop efficient, valid, and accurate constructed-response measures of students' competency with written scientific argumentation that are aligned with a validated argumentation learning progression. Data come from 933 middle school students in the San Francisco Bay Area and are based on three sets of argumentation items in three different science contexts. The findings demonstrate that we have been able to develop computer scoring models that can achieve substantial to almost perfect agreement between human-assigned and computer-predicted scores. Model performance was slightly weaker for harder items targeting higher levels of the learning progression, largely due to the linguistic complexity of these responses and the sparsity of higher-level responses in the training data set. Comparing the efficacy of different scoring approaches revealed that breaking down students' arguments into multiple components (e.g., the presence of an accurate claim or providing sufficient evidence), developing computer models for each component, and combining scores from these analytic components into a holistic score produced better results than holistic scoring approaches. However, this analytical approach was found to be differentially biased when scoring responses from English learners (EL) students as compared to responses from non-EL students on some items. Differences in the severity between human and computer scores for EL between these approaches are explored, and potential sources of bias in automated scoring are discussed.     

Assessment matters: Early intervention: Using assessment to reduce student attrition

Brian A. Vander Schee describes how incorporating the College Student Inventory into an existing freshman seminar measurably improved student retention.