Developmental contexts and features of elite academy football players: Coach and player perspectives

Player profiling can reap many benefits; through reflective coach-athlete dialogue that produces a profile the athlete has a raised awareness of their own development, while the coach has an opportunity to understand the athlete's viewpoint. In this study, we explored how coaches and players perceived the development features of an elite academy footballer and the contexts in which these features are revealed, in order to develop a player profile to be used for mentoring players. Using a Delphi polling technique, coaches and players experienced a number of 'rounds' of expressing their opinions regarding player development contexts and features, ultimately reduced into a consensus. Players and coaches had differing priorities on the key contexts of player development. These contexts, when they reflect the consensus between players and coaches were heavily dominated by ability within the game and training. Personal, social, school, and lifestyle contexts featured less prominently. Although 'discipline' was frequently mentioned as an important player development feature, coaches and players disagreed on the importance of 'training'

On evil and computational creativity

This paper touches upon the philosophical concept of evil in the context of creativity in general, and computational creativity in particular. In this work, dark creativity is introduced and linked to two important pre-requisites of creativity (i.e. freedom and constraints). A hybrid computational system is then presented; it includes one swarm intelligence algorithm, Stochastic Diffusion Search – mimicking the foraging behaviour of one species of ant, Leptothorax acervorum – and one physiological mechanism – imitating the behaviour of Human Immunodeficiency Virus. The aim is to outline an integration strategy deploying the search capabilities of the swarm intelligence algorithm and the destructive power of the digital virus. The swarm intelligence algorithm determines the colour attribute of the dynamic areas of interest within the input image, and the digital virus modifies the state of the input image, creating the projection of ‘evil’ over time (evil is used here as excessive use of underlying freedom). The paper concludes by exploring the significance of sensorimotor couplings and the impact of intentionality and genuine understanding of computational systems in the light of the philosophical concept of weak and strong computational creativity

Improved treatment completion for tuberculosis patients: The case for a dedicated social care team

OBJECTIVES: The increasing social needs of people with Tuberculosis (TB), and the poor adherence to anti-TB therapy (ATT) associated with homelessness, drug or alcohol abuse, and prison history, led us to introduce a social care team (SCT) to support patient engagement with care within this low TB incidence setting. METHODS: Using a risk assessment, patients with social risk factors (SRF) for non-adherence to ATT are identified and a referral made to the SCT, who then provide intensive casework support for areas including homelessness, housing, benefits, debt and immigration. Retrospective data analysis of the social care database from 2017 to 2019 was conducted. Patients who were (n = 170) and were not referred to the SCT (n = 734) were compared. RESULTS: Patients referred were significantly more likely to complete treatment for TB than those not (88.2% versus 77.7% respectively, p = 0.0025), irrespective of receipt of Directly/Video Observed Therapy and adjusting for confounders. CONCLUSIONS: This paper demonstrates important evidence for the positive impact of a dedicated SCT within a TB service, and these improved treatment outcomes provide a strong argument for development of similar SCTs within UK TB services and similar healthcare settings

The impact of employee level and work stress on mental health and GP service use: an analysis of a sample of Australian government employees

BACKGROUND: This study sought to identify the extent to which employee level and work stressors were associated with mental health problems experienced by Australian government employees, and with their use of primary care services. METHODS: 806 government employees aged between 40 and 44 years were surveyed as part of an epidemiological study conducted in Australia. Data collected from participants included sociodemographic attributes, physical health, psychological measures and work stressors relating to job control, job demands, job security and skills discretion at work. For 88% of these participants, information on visits made to general practitioners (GPs) for the six months before and after their survey interview was obtained from health insurance records. RESULTS: When work stress and personal factors were taken into account, men at more junior levels reported better mental health, more positive affect and used fewer GP services. Women at middle-management levels obtained less GP care than their more senior counterparts. Both men and women who reported higher levels of work stress were found to have poorer mental health and well-being. The impact of such stressors on GP service use, however, differed for men and women. CONCLUSION: Measures of work stress and not employee level affect the mental health and well-being of government employees. For governments with responsibility for funding health care services, reducing work stress experienced by their own employees offers potential benefits by improving the health of their workforce and reducing outlays for such services

On the role of computers in creativity-support systems

We report here on our experiences with designing computer-based creativity-support systems over several years. In particular, we present the design of three different systems incorporating different mechanisms of creativity. One of them uses an idea proposed by Rodari to stimulate imagination of the children in writing a picture-based story. The second one is aimed to model creativity in legal reasoning, and the third one uses low-level perceptual similarities to stimulate creation of novel conceptual associations in unrelated pictures.We discuss lessons learnt from these approaches, and address their implications for the question of how far creativity can be tamed by algorithmic approaches

Workdays, in-between workdays and the weekend: a diary study on effort and recovery

Contains fulltext : 55892.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)16 p

The future problem solving program international: an intervention to promote creative skills in portuguese adolescents

The Future Problem Solving Program International (FPSPI) is an internationally applied educational program that involves young people. Its theoretical foundation is both the Creative Problem Solving Model and the Futurist Thinking. It aims to promote creative and critical thinking through a futurist approach to problems. This study intended to analyze the effects of the program on creative skills evaluated by the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (Figural Version). The participants’ perceptions of the efficacy of the program were also assessed. This intervention was carried out with 131 adolescents over a period of 7 months in an extra-curricular context. The evaluation of the program takes into account periods both before and after interventions, using similar experimental and control groups. The results showed significant statistical differences for the all skills studied and very positive perceptions of the efficacy of FPSPI. Two significant gender differences in creative performance were also found. The results are described and discussed in order to promote awareness for future research concerning this program(undefined)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Altered orbitofrontal sulcogyral patterns in gambling disorder: a multicenter study

Gambling disorder is a serious psychiatric condition characterized by decision-making and reward processing impairments that are associated with dysfunctional brain activity in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). However, it remains unclear whether OFC functional abnormalities in gambling disorder are accompanied by structural abnormalities. We addressed this question by examining the organization of sulci and gyri in the OFC. This organization is in place very early and stable across life, such that OFC sulcogyral patterns (classified into Types I, II, and III) can be regarded as potential pre-morbid markers of pathological conditions. We gathered structural brain data from nine existing studies, reaching a total of 165 individuals with gambling disorder and 159 healthy controls. Our results, supported by both frequentist and Bayesian statistics, show that the distribution of OFC sulcogyral patterns is skewed in individuals with gambling disorder, with an increased prevalence of Type II pattern compared with healthy controls. Examination of gambling severity did not reveal any significant relationship between OFC sulcogyral patterns and disease severity. Altogether, our results provide evidence for a skewed distribution of OFC sulcogyral patterns in gambling disorder and suggest that pattern Type II might represent a pre-morbid structural brain marker of the disease. It will be important to investigate more closely the functional implications of these structural abnormalities in future work.Y.L. was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31600929) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (010914380002). G.S. was supported by a Veni grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (Grant No. 016.155.218). J.J. was supported by the Academy of Finland (Grant No. 295580), the Finnish Medical Foundation, and the Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies. V.K. was supported by the Academy of Finland (Grant No. 256836) and the Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies. S.G. and H.R.S. were supported by the Danish Council for Independent Research in Social Sciences through a grant to Thomas Ramsøy (“Decision Neuroscience Project”; Grant No. 0601-01361B) and by the Lundbeck Foundation through a Grant of Excellence (“ContAct”; Grant No. R59 A5399). A.G. was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) HE2597/15–1, HE2597/15–2, and DFG Graduiertenkolleg 1589/2 “Sensory Computation in Neural Systems”. N.R.-S. was supported by a research grant by the Senatsverwaltung für Gesundheit und Soziales, Berlin, Germany (Grant No. 002–2008/I B 35). C.M.R.d.L. and J.C.P. were supported by a grant from the Spanish Government (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Secretaría de Estado de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación; Convocatoria 2017 de Proyectos I+D de Excelencia, Spain; co-funded by the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional, FEDER, European Union; Grant No. PSI2017–85488-P). J.-C. D. was supported by “LABEX ANR-11-LABEX-0042” of Université de Lyon within the program Investissements d’Avenir (ANR-11-IDEX-007) operated by the French National Research Agency and by a grant from the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale (Grant No. DPA20140629796)

A Model for Transgenerational Imprinting Variation in Complex Traits

Despite the fact that genetic imprinting, i.e., differential expression of the same allele due to its different parental origins, plays a pivotal role in controlling complex traits or diseases, the origin, action and transmission mode of imprinted genes have still remained largely unexplored. We present a new strategy for studying these properties of genetic imprinting with a two-stage reciprocal F mating design, initiated with two contrasting inbred lines. This strategy maps quantitative trait loci that are imprinted (i.e., iQTLs) based on their segregation and transmission across different generations. By incorporating the allelic configuration of an iQTL genotype into a mixture model framework, this strategy provides a path to trace the parental origin of alleles from previous generations. The imprinting effects of iQTLs and their interactions with other traditionally defined genetic effects, expressed in different generations, are estimated and tested by implementing the EM algorithm. The strategy was used to map iQTLs responsible for survival time with four reciprocal F populations and test whether and how the detected iQTLs inherit their imprinting effects into the next generation. The new strategy will provide a tool for quantifying the role of imprinting effects in the creation and maintenance of phenotypic diversity and elucidating a comprehensive picture of the genetic architecture of complex traits and diseases