The Athlete Life Quality Scale: Development and Psychometric Analysis

Quality of life (QOL) is a widely researched topic in many fields (Dijkers, 1999). However, there is a dearth of information regarding athletes’ QOL contained within the extant sport psychology literature. Few attempts have been made to identify factors that influence athletes’ quality of life (Chelladurai & Riemer, 1997; Riemer & Chelladurai, 1998). Unfortunately, this research has primarily focused on performance as the predominant factor in athletes’ life quality, thus ignoring other salient aspects of athletes’ experiences. These may include, but are not limited to, physical health (Gould, Jackson, & Finch, 1993), relationships with significant others (Scanlan, Stein, & Ravizza, 1989), and time demands/overtraining (Kellmann, 2002). The purpose of the current study was to develop a valid and reliable instrument designed to assess athletes\u27 quality of life. Initial items were generated using existing literature focusing predominantly on Pflaum\u27s (1973) quality of life factors. After a pilot test to assess initial reliability, the questionnaire was given to 19 Division I athletes. Data analysis included principle components analysis and orthogonal (varimax) rotation. In addition, Cronbach\u27s (1951) alpha was used to assess reliability. Results of the exploratory factor analysis revealed an overall scale alpha of .83 which exceeded Nunnally and Bernstein\u27s (1994) suggested .80 level. Furthermore, the results suggest the development of a reliable and valid scale with five possible subscales including: general life satisfaction, physical satisfaction, primary social satisfaction, and recovery/social satisfaction. Finally, recommendations for future research are provided

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NMFS MARINE RECREATIONAL FISHERIES STATISTICS SURVEY WITH AN EMPHASIS ON ECONOMIC VALUATION

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Comparison and Mapping Facilitate Relation Discovery and Predication

Relational concepts play a central role in human perception and cognition, but little is known about how they are acquired. For example, how do we come to understand that physical force is a higher-order multiplicative relation between mass and acceleration, or that two circles are the same-shape in the same way that two squares are? A recent model of relational learning, DORA (Discovery of Relations by Analogy; Doumas, Hummel & Sandhofer, 2008), predicts that comparison and analogical mapping play a central role in the discovery and predication of novel higher-order relations. We report two experiments testing and confirming this prediction

When almost is not even close: Remarks on the approximability of HDTP

A growing number of researchers in Cognitive Science advocate the thesis that human cognitive capacities are constrained by computational tractability. If right, this thesis also can be expected to have far-reaching consequences for work in Artificial General Intelligence: Models and systems considered as basis for the development of general cognitive architectures with human-like performance would also have to comply with tractability constraints, making in-depth complexity theoretic analysis a necessary and important part of the standard research and development cycle already from a rather early stage. In this paper we present an application case study for such an analysis based on results from a parametrized complexity and approximation theoretic analysis of the Heuristic Driven Theory Projection (HDTP) analogy-making framework

Design of a regulated lentiviral vector for hematopoietic stem cell gene therapy of globoid cell leukodystrophy

Globoid cell leukodystrophy (GLD) is a demyelinating lysosomal storage disease due to the deficiency of the galactocerebrosidase (GALC) enzyme. The favorable outcome of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell (HSPC)-based approaches in GLD and other similar diseases suggests HSPC gene therapy as a promising therapeutic option for patients. The path to clinical development of this strategy was hampered by a selective toxicity of the overexpressed GALC in the HSPC compartment. Here, we presented the optimization of a lentiviral vector (LV) in which miR-126 regulation was coupled to codon optimization of the human GALC cDNA to obtain a selective and enhanced enzymatic activity only upon transduced HSPCs differentiation. The safety of human GALC overexpression driven by this LV was extensively demonstrated in vitro and in vivo on human HSPCs from healthy donors. No perturbation in the content of proapoptotic sphingolipids, gene expression profile, and capability of engraftment and mutlilineage differentiation in chimeric mice was observed. The therapeutic potential of this LV was then assessed in a severe GLD murine model that benefited from transplantation of corrected HSPCs with longer survival and ameliorated phenotype as compared to untreated siblings. This construct has thus been selected as a candidate for clinical translatio