Tapering practices of strongman athletes: Test-retest reliability study

BACKGROUND: Little is currently known about the tapering practices of strongman athletes. We have developed an Internet-based comprehensive self-report questionnaire examining the training and tapering practices of strongman athletes. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to document the test-retest reliability of questions associated with the Internet-based comprehensive self-report questionnaire on the tapering practices of strongman athletes. The information will provide insight on the reliability and usefulness of the online questionnaire for use with strongman athletes. METHODS: Invitations to complete an Internet questionnaire were sent via Facebook Messenger to identified strongman athletes. The survey consisted of four main areas of inquiry, including demographics and background information, training practices, tapering, and tapering practices. Of the 454 athletes that completed the survey over the 8-week period, 130 athletes responded on Facebook Messenger indicating that they intended to complete, or had completed, the survey. These participants were asked if they could complete the online questionnaire a second time for a test-retest reliability analysis. Sixty-four athletes (mean age 33.3 years, standard deviation [SD] 7.7; mean height 178.2 cm, SD 11.0; mean body mass 103.7 kg, SD 24.8) accepted this invitation and completed the survey for the second time after a minimum 7-day period from the date of their first completion. Agreement between athlete responses was measured using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) and kappa statistics. Confidence intervals (at 95%) were reported for all measures and significance was set at P<.05. RESULTS: Test-retest reliability for demographic and training practices items were significant (P<.001) and showed excellent (ICC range=.84 to .98) and fair to almost perfect agreement (κ range=.37-.85). Moderate to excellent agreements (ICC range=.56-.84; P<.01) were observed for all tapering practice measures except for the number of days athletes started their usual taper before a strongman competition (ICC=.30). When the number of days were categorized with additional analyses, moderate reliability was observed (κ=.43; <.001). Fair to substantial agreement was observed for the majority of tapering practices measures (κrange=.38-.73; P<.001) except for how training frequency (κ=.26) and the percentage and type of resistance training performed, which changed in the taper (κ=.20). Good to excellent agreement (ICC=.62-.93; P<.05) was observed for items relating to strongman events and traditional exercises performed during the taper. Only the time at which the Farmer's Walk was last performed before competition showed poor reliability (ICC=.27). CONCLUSIONS: We have developed a low cost, self-reported, online retrospective questionnaire, which provided stable and reliable answers for most of the demographic, training, and tapering practice questions. The results of this study support the inferences drawn from the Tapering Practices of Strongman Athletes Stud

Confluence Competition 2018

We report on the 2018 edition of the Confluence Competition, a competition of software tools that aim to (dis)prove confluence and related properties of rewrite systems automatically

Dynamic deadweight loss in monopolistic and related market structures

The aim of the paper is to construct a framework in which welfare losses over time generated by alternative market structures may be estimated. An adjustment cost model of the firm under imperfect competition is developed, and consequent industry equilibria determined. A dynamic analogue of Harberger's measure of welfare loss is specified, and for the case of a monopoly industry can be expressed as a function solely of Tobin's average q. The welfare measures calculated are on the basis of the market's expectations of the future profitability of firms; such measures allow a significant additional set of data to be used to construct a forward looking measure of welfare loss, and thus augment existing measures of industry appraisal

Review: Object vision in a structured world

In natural vision, objects appear at typical locations, both with respect to visual space (e.g., an airplane in the upper part of a scene) and other objects (e.g., a lamp above a table). Recent studies have shown that object vision is strongly adapted to such positional regularities. In this review we synthesize these developments, highlighting that adaptations to positional regularities facilitate object detection and recognition, and sharpen the representations of objects in visual cortex. These effects are pervasive across various types of high-level content. We posit that adaptations to real-world structure collectively support optimal usage of limited cortical processing resources. Taking positional regularities into account will thus be essential for understanding efficient object vision in the real world

Optimal Delegation, Unawareness, and Financial Intermediation

We study the delegation problem between an investor and a financial intermediary. The intermediary has private information about the state of the world that determines the return of the investment. Moreover, he has superior awareness of the available investment opportunities and decides whether to reveal some of them to the investor. We show that the intermediary generally has incentives to make the investor aware of investment opportunities at the extremes, e.g. very risky and very safe projects, while leaving the investor unaware of intermediate investment options. We study how the extent to which the intermediary reveals available investment opportunities to the investor depends on the investor's initial awareness and the degree of competition between intermediaries in the market.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Import competition, productivity and multi-product firms

Using detailed firm-product level quarterly data, we develop an estimation framework of a Multi-Product Production Function (MPPF) and analyse firm-product level TFP estimations at various levels (industries, products). After documenting our estimation results, we relate productivity estimates with import competition, using firm and product level measures of import competition. We find that if productivity at the firm level tends to positively react to increased import competition, the multi-product firms response varies according to the relative importance of the product that faces stronger import competition in the firm’s product portfolio. When import competition associated to the main product of a firm increases, the firm tend to increase its efficiency in producing that core product, in which it has a productivity advantage. However, when the degree of foreign competition increases for non core products of a firm, it tends to lower its efficiency in producing those goods

Sweden: Notes on Municipal FM Contracts in Sweden

Swedish municipalities experimented with internal contracting arrangements for property and facilities management services during the early 1990s, and the use of external FM contractors has increased more recently. When external contractors are used, the tendency is for contract scope to expand. Typically, there are several contracts with a duration of three or five years. Output specifications related to performance are seldom found. The Swedish Aff standard form of contract for property management and its related documents are important tools. Over a longer period, the Swedish development from the 19th century dependence on external contractors, followed by a long period of services delivered by municipal employees and ultimately returning to a greater proportion of services that are bought in the market, can be explained as a reflection of changes in knowledge managemen

Market Provision of Program Quality in the Television Broadcasting Industry

This paper uses a simple model of duopoly competition to study the market provision of program quality offered by television broadcasters under three different regimes. In regime 1, two broadcasters are financed only with subscription fees (i.e., fee-based or pay TV). In regime 2, the two broadcasters generate their revenues only from advertising (i.e., free TV). In regime 3, one pay TV broadcaster competes with one free TV broadcaster. We show that the broadcasters in regime 3 (but not in regimes 1 and 2) vertically differentiate their channel programs if, for a given level of advertising market profitability, viewers strongly or weakly dislike the presence of advertising. In such cases, although the two pay TV broadcasters in regime 1 will unambiguously offer higher or lower quality programming than the two free TV broadcasters under regime 2, it is not clear which broadcaster will provide higher or lower program quality in regime 3 because this depends on the degree of horizontal differentiation between the channel programs. However, the levels of quality offered under regimes 1 and 2 fall between the quality levels offered by the two broadcasters in regime