Exercise performance and cardiovascular health variables in 70-year-old male soccer players compared to endurance-trained,strength-trained and untrained age-matched men

Abstract

The aim was to investigate performance variables and indicators of cardiovascular health profile in elderly soccer players (SP, n = 11) compared to endurance-trained (ET, n = 8), strength-trained (ST, n = 7) and untrained (UT, n = 7) age-matched men. The 33 men aged 65–85 years underwent a testing protocol including measurements of cycle performance, maximal oxygen uptake (VO₂max) and body composition, and muscle fibre types and capillarisation were determined from m. vastus lateralis biopsy. In SP, time to exhaustion was longer (16.3 ± 2.0 min; P < 0.01) than in UT (+48%) and ST (+41%), but similar to ET (+1%). Fat percentage was lower (P < 0.05) in SP (–6.5% points) than UT but not ET and ST. Heart rate reserve was higher (P < 0.05) in SP (104 ± 16 bpm) than UT (+21 bpm) and ST (+24 bpm), but similar to ET (+2 bpm), whereas VO₂max was not significantly different in SP (30.2 ± 4.9 ml O₂ · min^?1 · kg^?1) compared to UT (+14%) and ST (+9%), but lower (P < 0.05) than ET (?22%). The number of capillaries per fibre was higher (P < 0.05) in SP than UT (53%) and ST (42%) but similar to ET. SP had less type IIx fibres than UT (?12% points). In conclusion, the exercise performance and cardiovascular health profile are markedly better for lifelong trained SP than for age-matched UT controls. Incremental exercise capacity and muscle aerobic capacity of SP are also superior to lifelong ST athletes and comparable to endurance athletes.     

Expertise seeking: A review

Expertise seeking is the activity of selecting people as sources for consultation about an information need. This review of 72 expertise-seeking papers shows that across a range of tasks and contexts people, in particular work-group colleagues and other strong ties, are among the most frequently used sources. Studies repeatedly show the influence of the social network – of friendships and personal dislikes – on the expertise-seeking network of organisations. In addition, people are no less prominent than documentary sources, in work contexts as well as daily-life contexts. The relative influence of source quality and source accessibility on source selection varies across studies. Overall, expertise seekers appear to aim for sufficient quality, composed of reliability and relevance, while also attending to accessibility, composed of access to the source and access to the source information. Earlier claims that seekers disregard quality to minimise effort receive little support. Source selection is also affected by task-related, seeker-related, and contextual factors. For example, task complexity has been found to increase the use of information sources whereas task importance has been found to amplify the influence of quality on source selection. Finally, the reviewed studies identify a number of barriers to expertise seeking.     

Developing Students’ Reflections on the Function and Status of Mathematical Modeling in Different Scientific Practices: History as a Provider of Cases

Mathematical models and mathematical modeling play different roles in the different areas and problems in which they are used. The function and status of mathematical modeling and models in the different areas depend on the scientific practice as well as the underlying philosophical and theoretical position held by the modeler(s) and the practitioners in the extra-mathematical domain. For students to experience the significance of different scientific practices and cultures for the function and status of mathematical modeling in other sciences, students need to be placed in didactical situations where such differences are exposed and made into explicit objects of their reflections. It can be difficult to create such situations in the teaching of contemporary science in which modeling is part of the culture. In this paper we show how history can serve as a means for students to be engaged in situations in which they can experience and be challenged to reflect upon and criticize, the use of modeling and the significance of the context for the function and status of modeling and models in scientific practices. We present Nicolas Rashevsky’s model of cell division from the 1930s together with a discussion of disagreement between him and some biologists as one such episode from the past. We illustrate how a group of science students at Roskilde University, through their work with this historical case, experienced that different scientific cultures have different opinions of the value of a model as an instrument for gaining scientific knowledge; that the explanatory power of a model is linked not only to the context of its use, but also to the underlying philosophical and theoretical position held by the modeler(s) and the scientists discussing the model and its use. The episode’s potential to challenge students to reflect upon and criticize the modeling process and the function of models in an extra mathematical domain is discussed with respect to the notions of internal and external reflections.     

An Arendtian perspective on inclusive education: towards a reimagined vocabulary

Inclusive education currently appears to be undergoing a crisis and re-examination. This paper presents a new approach to thinking about inclusiveness in the school context. Many positions within inclusive education seem to take political, social and ethical perspectives as a starting point, which has allowed inclusive movements and initiatives around the world to succumb to neo-liberal policy-making and has neglected the development of an educational vocabulary that is theoretically and conceptually appropriate for confronting teachers’ central concerns regarding inclusive practices. The concepts of suspension, bearing with strangers and enlarged thought inspired by Hannah Arendt provide a basis for a re-imagining of inclusive education and for outlining a future school in which inclusiveness is embedded in the very way we think and position ourselves as teachers and pupils.     

Marketing/R&D integration in the pharmaceutical industry

Integrating marketing and R&D inputs is one of the fundamental challenges in managing innovation. In the pharmaceutical industry, considering its reputed ‘technology push’ model of innovation, the challenge of integrating marketing and R&D could hardly be greater. Thus, the recent trend among pharmaceutical firms of implementing Marketing/R&D integrating mechanisms calls for upgrading our conceptualization of the innovation process in this industry. It also raises important questions regarding Marketing's contribution in new product development, and how to organize to assure that contribution is leveraged. We use the case of a pharmaceutical firm which recently implemented Marketing/R&D integrating mechanisms to examine Marketing's new roles. We find that the extreme conditions surrounding innovation in the pharmaceutical industry, notably the need to cope with Knightean uncertainty, highlight important contributions of Marketing input in R&D that deserve more attention. We suggest that Marketing's most important contribution under these conditions lies in ‘not getting it wrong’ rather than ‘getting it right,’ in setting minimum criteria in project evaluations rather than definite targets, and in refocusing the attention of R&D staff through the very process of providing this input. Given the value of these contributions, modern pharmaceutical firms would indeed be ill advised to think of drug discovery as merely a linear process. Drug development has become an interactive process where the timing, type and impact of Marketing involvement is balanced and managed via certain organizational mechanisms throughout the R&D process, which is an iterative one.     

The effect of textile air permeability on the drag of high-speed winter sports apparel

In a number of sport disciplines characterized by high velocities, aerodynamic performance of sports apparel is a concern. The goal is often to reduce the aerodynamic drag force and thereby increase speed. In the design of optimized competition apparel the fabric properties will be very important. One fabric property which has traditionally been considered an influencing parameter on aerodynamic performance is the air permeability. In this paper the effect of air-permeability, treated as an independent variable, upon aerodynamic drag on a bluff body is investigated. Similar multilayer textiles with internal membranes regulating air permeability were tested on cylindrical models in wind tunnel experiments in order to identify a possible relation between air-permeability and drag force. A weak dependence of flow transition on air-permeability could be found, but this could be considered to have a limited effect on the aerodynamic performance of sports garments.     

Infant-directed speech does not always involve exaggerated vowel distinctions: Evidence from Danish

This study compared the acoustic properties of 26 (100% female, 100% monolingual) Danish caregivers' spontaneous speech addressed to their 11- to 24-month-old infants (infant-directed speech, IDS) and an adult experimenter (adult-directed speech, ADS). The data were collected between 2016 and 2018 in Aarhus, Denmark. Prosodic properties of Danish IDS conformed to cross-linguistic patterns, with a higher pitch, greater pitch variability, and slower articulation rate than ADS. However, an acoustic analysis of vocalic properties revealed that Danish IDS had a reduced or similar vowel space, higher within-vowel variability, raised formants, and lower degree of vowel discriminability compared to ADS. None of the measures, except articulation rate, showed age-related differences. These results push for future research to conduct theory-driven comparisons across languages with distinct phonological systems.     

Young people’s experiences of parental involvement in youth sport

Recently parental involvement in youth sport has intensified, challenging the understanding of youth sports as an arena where adolescents can develop their identity and autonomy. On this background, our study explores how adolescents understand and negotiate their parents’ involvement in sport and how they define ideal and undesirable forms of parental involvement. Our empirical setting is Norway, and we draw on data from 16 focus group interviews among 13–14-year-olds (n?=?92) recruited from two lower secondary schools. The analysis shows that young people distinguish between different aspects of the sport activity when defining ideal and undesirable forms of parental involvement. When discussing sport as a healthy activity necessary for physical and social development, the young people interviewed approve of parents’ role in regulating and encouraging participation. When considering the athletic aspects and peer sociability, however, they see parental involvement as mostly undesirable. The analysis also shows that the adolescents generally describe their parents as attentive to the boundaries their children draw for them about levels and types of involvement. Therefore, young people should be seen not only as subjected to parental involvement but also as active co-constructors of valid parental roles in and beyond the sporting arena.     

Pollution monitoring by dosimetry and passive diffusion sampling for evaluation of environmental conditions for paintings in microclimate frames

Pollutants and their potential degradation of paintings have been measured for the first time in microclimate frames (mc-frames), which are used to protect paintings. The pollutants that were measured include both inorganic pollutants, which originate mainly from external sources, and organic pollutants from mainly internal sources. Those originating from the outdoors enter rooms and subsequently mc-frames at a rate depending on the ventilation rates (air exchange rates) of the mc-frames. The concentration of gaseous pollutants emitted within the mc-frames will depend on net emission rates of the materials used to make the mc-frames, their design, and their ventilation rates. In the EU PROPAINT project measurements of gaseous air pollutants and climatic conditions were performed at various locations both inside and outside different state-of-the-art mc-frames. Diffusive passive pollution gas samplers were used together with different types of dosimeters. Results show that the dosimeters respond to either the photo-oxidizing conditions or the level of volatile organic acids in the environments both in the museums and within the mc-frames. Two dosimeters, the Early Warning Organic (EWO) made from a synthetic polymer and the Resin Mastic coated Piezo electric Quartz Crystals (RM-PQC) respond to photo-oxidation and showed higher values outside than inside the mc-frames. Two other dosimeters, the Glass Slide Dosimeter (GSD) and the Lead coated Piezo electric Quartz Crystals (L-PQC) respond to volatile organic acids and yielded higher values inside than outside the mc-frames. This study emphasizes the need for further work to determine environmental damage functions for paintings, in particular for the effects of organic acids. Such information is essential for the evaluation of the protective effects of mc-frames for paintings. The use of mc-frames is increasing and it is very important to know that this protective measure does not introduce new risks.