White blankets may make you smarter and other questionable social science findings

Looking for amazing research that will make the nightly news or turn an administrator's head? If you find it, be warned. The findings may have been reported out of context or based on faulty logic.     

Facilitation of licking by response-contingent electric shock

Licking behavior of rats maintained by lick-contingent water reinforcement, produced electric shocks under three conditions. Shock occurred 1 sec before, simultaneous with, or 1 sec after water reinforcement. Rates of licking rose above prepunished levels at .2-, .4-, and .6-mA intensities but were suppressed at .8 mA for all three groups. Facilitation and suppression effects were the same for the three pairing conditions. Discriminative and elicited functions of shock did not appear to account for this facilitative effect.     

Match-to-match variability in high-speed running activity in a professional soccer team

ABSTRACT

This study investigated variability in competitive high-speed running performance in an elite soccer team. A semi-automated tracking system quantified running performance in 12 players over a season (median 17 matches per player, 207 observations). Variability [coefficient of variation (CV)] was compared for total sprint distance (TSD, >25.2 km/h), high-speed running (HSR, 19.8–25.2 km/h), total high-speed running (THSR, ≥19.8 km/h); THSR when the team was in and out of ball possession, in individual ball possession, in the peak 5 min activity period; and distance run according to individual maximal aerobic speed (MAS). Variability for % declines in THSR and distance covered at ≥80% MAS across halves, at the end of play (final 15 min vs. mean for all 15 min periods) and transiently (5 min period following peak 5 min activity period), was analysed. Collectively, variability was higher for TSD versus HSR and THSR and lowest for distance run at ≥80% MAS (CVs: 37.1%, 18.1%, 19.8% and 11.8%). THSR CVs when the team was in/out of ball possession, in individual ball possession and during the peak 5 min period were 31.5%, 26.1%, 60.1% and 23.9%. Variability in THSR declines across halves, at the end of play and transiently, ranged from 37.1% to 142.6%, while lower CVs were observed in these metrics for running at ≥80% MAS (20.9–53.3%).These results cast doubt on the appropriateness of general measures of high-speed activity for determining variability in an elite soccer team, although individualisation of HSR thresholds according to fitness characteristics might provide more stable indicators of running performance and fatigue occurrence.     

COMMUNITY COLLEGES IN THE POST‐13 ERA: INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSES TO TAX LIMITATION

The Jarvis‐Gann amendment to the California constitution cut property taxes by almost 60%. The state's community‐college system, the largest and among the oldest in the country, depends heavily on property taxes, and consequently faces a constrained future. This study sought some indication of the responses these constraints would bring. Based on six case studies, in the late summer of 1978, colleges’ major responses appear to have been general cuts across all programs and activities. Where these were insufficient, colleges often cut community‐service activities, eliminated weekend or evening classes, spent excess reserves, or deferred major expenditures for maintenance or compliance with legal obligations. The result, for the present, is roughly the same mix and level of services, although convenience and flexibility have been reduced. The future looks much bleaker: salaries, at first effectively frozen by state law, will have to increase; state support in lieu of property taxes will stabilize or decline; and enrollments will also stabilize or decline. In these circumstances colleges will either have to reduce the services they provide or, as the concluding analysis in this paper suggests, seek legislative permission to begin charging moderate tuition.     

OP-ED Whatever happened to 'heightened consciousness'?

The uses of a great professor are only partly to give us knowledge; his [sic] real purpose is to take his students beyond knowledge into the transcendental domain of the unknown, the future and the dream to expand the limits of the human consciousness. (Eiseley 1987: 118)     

The relative contribution of training intensity and duration to daily measures of training load in professional rugby league and union

ABSTRACT

This study examined the relative contribution of exercise duration and intensity to team-sport athlete’s training load. Male, professional rugby league (n = 10) and union (n = 22) players were monitored over 6- and 52-week training periods, respectively. Whole-session (load) and per-minute (intensity) metrics were monitored (league: session rating of perceived exertion training load [sRPE-TL], individualised training impulse, total distance, BodyLoad?; union: sRPE-TL, total distance, high-speed running distance, PlayerLoad?). Separate principal component analyses were conducted on the load and intensity measures to consolidate raw data into principal components (PC, k = 4). The first load PC captured 70% and 74% of the total variance in the rugby league and rugby union datasets, respectively. Multiple linear regression subsequently revealed that session duration explained 73% and 57% of the variance in first load PC, respectively, while the four intensity PCs explained an additional 24% and 34%, respectively. Across two professional rugby training programmes, the majority of the variability in training load measures was explained by session duration (~60–70%), while a smaller proportion was explained by session intensity (~30%). When modelling the training load, training intensity and duration should be disaggregated to better account for their between-session variability.