The Athletic Trainer’s Perspective on Athletics’ Drug Policy and Program at the Junior and Community College Level

The National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) has only a position statement in regards to drug testing policy and procedure when compared to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) detailed drug testing program handbook.The NJCAA position statement brings about speculation of how drug testing is monitored and enforced on this level, and if there is a drug education program being implemented by every institution. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to look at the quality of drug policy and intervention programs through the athletic trainer at different institutions within the NJCAA. This considers whether perception of policy and intervention programs measure up to the NCAA drug policy and program guidelines.METHODS: A survey was developed in Qualtrics based on guidelines presented in the NCAA drug testing program handbook. After receiving approval from the institutional review board, a study was sent out to 200 institutions within the NJCAA that had a listed athletic trainer. Email requests for participation were sent with follow-up reminders sent at the two- and four-week marks. The survey remained open for a period of five weeks. After the survey was closed, nonparametric analysis was used to see whether the perceived characteristics of institutional guidelines were in line with the NCAA\u27s guideline on banned drugs, drug education guidelines, and institutional drug testing. RESULTS: Descriptive statistical analysis was used to describe the relationship between the characteristics of institutional guidelines and the NCAA’s guideline on banned drugs, drug education guidelines, and institutional drug testing. The average, median, and mode was taken for each question. In running a descriptive analysis, it was shown that the average answer for awareness of policy was “yes;” however the average answer whether they had read the either policy was “no.” When asked if the institution athletics department had a substance use/abuse education program, the most reported and average answer was “no.” Likert scale questions 9.2, 9.4, and 9.9 regarding characteristics of that institution’s drug policy and program showed significant findings. The average answer to these questions was “somewhat disagree,” but the answer that was most reported was “disagree.” CONCLUSION: The results of the survey showed that there is some following of NCAA guidelines despite the lack of detailed guidelines from the NJCAA. When it came to whether an institution’s drug testing policy and program shared characteristics of the NCAA’s handbook on drug testing, most athletic trainers in the NJCAA who completed the survey either agreed or somewhat agreed to most of the Likert scale questions. However, questions 9.2, 9.4, and 9.9 from the survey showed a lack of agreement on average and within mode. These questions covered some key characteristics of the NCAA\u27s handbook.Overall, the NJCAA could enforce better drug testing guidelines with either a handbook, like the NCAA\u27s, or by outlining them in more detail in their position statement

Aquilegia, Vol. 37 No. 1, Spring 2013, Newsletter of the Colorado Native Plant Society

https://epublications.regis.edu/aquilegia/1141/thumbnail.jp

Human cloning in film: horror, ambivalence, hope

Fictional filmic representations of human cloning have shifted in relation to the 1997 announcement of the birth of Dolly the cloned sheep, and since therapeutic human cloning became a scientific practice in the early twentieth century. The operation and detail of these shifts can be seen through an analysis of the films The Island (2005) and Aeon Flux (2005). These films provide a site for the examination of how these changes in human cloning from fiction to practice, and from horror to hope, have been represented and imagined, and how these distinctions have operated visually in fiction, and in relation to genre

Aquilegia, Vol. 37 No. 3, Summer 2013, Newsletter of the Colorado Native Plant Society

https://epublications.regis.edu/aquilegia/1143/thumbnail.jp

Aquilegia, Vol. 37 No. 6, Winter 2013, Newsletter of the Colorado Native Plant Society

https://epublications.regis.edu/aquilegia/1146/thumbnail.jp

Is the urbanisation of young adults reducing their driving?

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd In recent decades, in many developed countries, licence-holding, car ownership and driving, amongst young adults have declined. One of the explanations advanced for these declines is the urbanisation of young adults, their growing concentration in the denser areas of larger cities. This study analyses the changing spatial patterns and travel behaviour of young adults over time using a complete national dataset for England between 2001 and 2011. It uses a fractional response model to analyse the changing relationship between the proportion of young adults driving to work, and using public transport to get to work, and population density and settlement size. It finds that urbanisation contributed to less driving and more public transport use amongst young adults aged 16–34. These changes followed a change in national planning policy which encouraged higher density development in urban areas. These policies caused a re-urbanisation of the population as a whole, with the strongest trends amongst young adults. The re-urbanisation of the population was accompanied by a widening of the differentials in travel behaviour between those in the densest areas and the largest settlements (who drove less) and the rest. These findings cast new light on the controversy over ‘residential self-selection’. They suggest that a change in planning policy probably caused a modest national fall in driving. Residential self-selection, which is often considered a barrier to such policies, facilitated those outcomes

Is UV-Induced Electron-Driven Proton Transfer Active in a Chemically Modified A•T DNA Base Pair?

Transient electronic and vibrational absorption spectroscopies have been used to investigate whether UV-induced electron-driven proton transfer (EDPT) mechanisms are active in a chemically modified adenine-thymine (A·T) DNA base pair. To enhance the fraction of biologically relevant Watson-Crick (WC) hydrogen-bonding motifs and eliminate undesired Hoogsteen structures, a chemically modified derivative of A was synthesized, 8-(tert-butyl)-9-ethyladenine (8tBA). Equimolar solutions of 8tBA and silyl-protected T nucleosides in chloroform yield a mixture of WC pairs, reverse WC pairs, and residual monomers. Unlike previous transient absorption studies of WC guanine-cytosine (G·C) pairs, no clear spectroscopic or kinetic evidence was identified for the participation of EDPT in the excited-state relaxation dynamics of 8tBA·T pairs, although ultrafast (sub-100 fs) EDPT cannot be discounted. Monomer-like dynamics are proposed to dominate in 8tBA·T.</p

Practical Tools to Implement Massive Parallel Pyrosequencing of PCR Products in Next Generation Molecular Diagnostics

Despite improvements in terms of sequence quality and price per basepair, Sanger sequencing remains restricted to screening of individual disease genes. The development of massively parallel sequencing (MPS) technologies heralded an era in which molecular diagnostics for multigenic disorders becomes reality. Here, we outline different PCR amplification based strategies for the screening of a multitude of genes in a patient cohort. We performed a thorough evaluation in terms of set-up, coverage and sequencing variants on the data of 10 GS-FLX experiments (over 200 patients). Crucially, we determined the actual coverage that is required for reliable diagnostic results using MPS, and provide a tool to calculate the number of patients that can be screened in a single run. Finally, we provide an overview of factors contributing to false negative or false positive mutation calls and suggest ways to maximize sensitivity and specificity, both important in a routine setting. By describing practical strategies for screening of multigenic disorders in a multitude of samples and providing answers to questions about minimum required coverage, the number of patients that can be screened in a single run and the factors that may affect sensitivity and specificity we hope to facilitate the implementation of MPS technology in molecular diagnostics