A Descriptive Study of Preparation for a Career in Health Club Management

This study was designed to describe the most important tasks being carried out in the operation of commercial health clubs, and also tasks for which health club managers perceive a deficiency in their preparation. A survey was designed and mailed to all (106) health clubs throughout Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota that were members of the International Physical Fitness Association. Subjects were asked to indicate the degree of emphasis that selected tasks receive within their health clubs, and also their perception of the training they received to perform the tasks. Data collection occurred over approximately an eight week period. The overall response rate was 25%. A large majority of the respondents indicated that the tasks of sales techniques and safe techniques received very high emphasis. Perception of training for these tasks was reported as excellent by 50% and 41.7% of the respondents, respectively. Purchasing equipment was the only task for which a high percentage (41.7%) of the respondents indicated their training was poor. Accordingly, only a small number of the respondents indicated that this task received very high emphasis within their health clubs. Females represented slightly less than two-thirds of the respondents and males represented about one-third of the respondents. The average age of respondents was 29.9 years, with a range from 18 to 61 years. The average number of years experience as a health club manager was slightly less than four, with a range from o to 20. The most frequent salary range was $10,001 to$20,000 and the least frequent salary range was above $40,000. The three most frequently reported types of training were self-taught, an in-house training program, and a bachelor\u27s degree. Only nine degrees were in health-related fields. Two degrees were in business-related fields. Due to the low response rate, additional study of commercial health club management is needed. In order to increase the response rate, research utilizing telephone surveys or personal interviews is suggested. Further study of the educational background of health club managers and also the study of professional preparation programs for commercial health club managers at the university level is recommended

A Standardized Set of MoClo-Compatible Inducible Promoter Systems for Tunable Gene Expression in Yeast.

Small-molecule control of gene expression underlies the function of numerous engineered gene circuits that are capable of environmental sensing, computation, and memory. While many recently developed inducible promoters have been tailor-made for bacteria or mammalian cells, relatively few new systems have been built for Saccharomyces cerevisiae, limiting the scale of synthetic biology work that can be done in yeast. To address this, we created the yeast Tunable Expression Systems Toolkit (yTEST), which contains a set of five extensively characterized inducible promoter systems regulated by the small-molecules doxycycline (Dox), abscisic acid (ABA), danoprevir (DNV), 1-naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA), and 5-phenyl-indole-3-acetic acid (5-Ph-IAA). Assembly was made to be compatible with the modular cloning yeast toolkit (MoClo-YTK) to enhance the ease of use and provide a framework to benchmark and standardize each system. Using this approach, we built multiple systems with maximal expression levels greater than those of the strong constitutive TDH3 promoter. Furthermore, each of the five classes of systems could be induced at least 60-fold after a 6 h induction and the highest fold change observed was approximately 300. Thus, yTEST provides a reliable, diverse, and customizable set of inducible promoters to modulate gene expression in yeast for applications in synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, and basic research

Application of Random Matrix Theory to Biological Networks

We show that spectral fluctuation of interaction matrices of yeast a core protein interaction network and a metabolic network follows the description of the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble (GOE) of random matrix theory (RMT). Furthermore, we demonstrate that while the global biological networks evaluated belong to GOE, removal of interactions between constituents transitions the networks to systems of isolated modules described by the Poisson statistics of RMT. Our results indicate that although biological networks are very different from other complex systems at the molecular level, they display the same statistical properties at large scale. The transition point provides a new objective approach for the identification of functional modules.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figure

Missouri 2011 Soft Red Winter Wheat Performance Tests

This report is published by the MU Variety Testing Program, Division of Plant Sciences, University of Missouri. The work was supported by fees from companies and organizations submitting varieties for evaluation. The large number of varieties available makes selection of a superior variety difficult. To select intelligently, producers need a reliable, unbiased, up-to-date source of information that will permit valid comparisons among available varieties. The objective of the MU Variety Testing Program is to provide this information. Tests are conducted under as close to uniform conditions as possible. Small plots are used to reduce the chance of soil and other variations occurring among variety plots. Results obtained should aid individual growers in judging the relative merits of many of the commercial wheat varieties available in Missouri