Potential Risk Factors for Concussion in Volleyball; High-Velocity Attacks and Head Exposures

Context: There are 3.8 million concussions a year in the United States from sports and physical activity. The concussion rate in collegiate volleyball players is 5% with the majority of these occurring as a result of contact with the equipment (the ball).4, It has been determined that the average speed of a volleyball kill in elite-level college volleyball is 50-70 mph.5 Objective: This study analyzed the opportunities created during a volleyball match that could result in head impacts with the ball and lead to a concussion. Methods: Using VolleyMetrics, a software that offers videos of volleyball matches, 48 Mid-season ACC volleyball games (20 in 2016 and 28 in 2022) were coded to record high-velocity kills, head impacts in front-row and back-row players, and occurrences when the front-row player’s heads were over the net during blocking. Data were collected to answer if there were differences between 2016 and 2022 in the percentage of high-velocity attacks, the percentage of heads over the net, and the number of heads hit as well as in which rows. Results: A Kruskal Wallis H Test through SPSS Version 29 concluded that there was not a significant difference in the percentage of high-velocity attacks and the percentage of heads over the net in 2016 and 2022. The average percentage of high-velocity attacks was 59.21%. There was an average of 250 attacks a game from the 48 games analyzed, therefore, 148 of the 250 attacks would be deemed high-velocity. This is 148 times there is an opportunity for a concussion to occur. Conclusion: Although the difference between time periods was not significant, the incidence rates for hits to the head might explain the number of concussions that are seen in volleyball. For front-row players, the overall incidence rate of ball hits to the head was 6.8 per every 1000 exposures. There was an increase in the incidence rate of back row players hit in the head from 1.7 per every 1000 exposures in 2016 to 4.6 per every 1000 exposures in 2022. While we are unable to determine if these impacts to the head with the ball resulting in a concussion, the incidence of head hits is concerning as they may lead to injury.Bachelor of Art

Drones: A Projection of Force Abroad

After the events that took place on September 11th, 2001, the United States military drastically increased their use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). This type of projection of force abroad has not come without scrutiny. Both the legality and effectiveness of use have come under question. This study sets out to understand whether the use of drones by the United States is an effective way to fight terrorism abroad. In order to measure success, the study looks at the legality of strikes with regards to how the United States frames their use of drones. The study also looks at the foreign policy goals of the United States usage of drones, specifically through the lenses of liberal-interventionism, in order to determine whether the usage of drones is effective in combating terrorism abroad. The study will focus on drone usage against al Qaeda and the Taliban, primarily in the countries of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen. Subsequently, the United States drone usage is a useful instrument because of the way it eliminates key targets and facilities of US enemies abroad.Ope

Symphony no. 1

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit

Secular trends of blood isolates in patients from a rural area population hospitalized in a tertiary center in a small city in Greece

BACKGROUND: Most of the studies evaluating the secular trends of blood isolates come from tertiary hospitals in urban areas. We sought to study the trends of the antimicrobial resistance of blood isolates in patients from a rural population hospitalized in a tertiary hospital in a small city in Greece. METHODS: We retrospectively collected and analysed data for the first positive blood culture obtained for each admission for each patient hospitalized in General Hospital of Tripolis, Tripolis, Peloponnesus, Greece during a 5 year period (16/05/2000 – 15/05/2005). RESULTS: Sixty-seven thousand and seventy patients were hospitalized during the study period from whom 3,206 blood cultures were obtained. A higher increase of the number of obtained blood cultures than the number of admissions was noted during the study period (p < 0.001). Three hundred and seventy-three (11.6%) blood cultures were positive. Coagulase-negative staphylococci (35.9%), Escherichia coli (29%), and Staphylococcus aureus (18.2%) were the most commonly isolated pathogens. Among the Staphylococcus aureus isolates, the proportion of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) was 17.2% (5/29). The proportion of Escherichia coli resistant to trimethoprim and sulfamethoxazole, ampicillin and cefuroxime was 29.6% (32/108), 25.0% (27/108), and 8.3% (9/108) respectively. Imipenem-resistance was noted in 3.4% (1/29) of Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates. There were only 6 (1.6%) Acinetobacter baummanii blood isolates during the study period. CONCLUSION: The antimicrobial resistance of isolates from patients receiving care at the studied tertiary hospital in a small city in Greece is considerably less compared to that noted in tertiary hospitals in larger cities of the country

The Art of Building Reception: Aris Konstantinidis behind the Global Published Life of his Weekend House in Anavyssos (1962–2014)

Aris Konstantinidis’s Weekend House in Anavyssos (1962–1964) holds an emblematic place within his oeuvre. This article uncovers the architect’s own role in building the global reception of this project through a tripartite account of its global published life from the printed page to the digital website over the last five decades (1962–2014). Konstantinidis created a uniquely hermetic zone around his work by adopting a publishing practice that combines his own photographs as narrative and his accompanying text as an architectural manifesto of his regional modernism. Highlighting turning points in the published life of this building, the article relates the original gaze of the architect to the gaze adopted by each subsequent researcher of his work. The conclusion recalibrates the gaze of the contemporary architectural historian towards an architectural work that has effectively been doubly built to be received as canonical, as well as an architectural persona that is often easily romanticised in its dominant interpretations

Chinese Students in the Classroom and Across Campus Dataset

This study was undertaken to examine the impact of English language proficiency on the social and academic acculturation of Chinese first year students in American colleges and universities. The dataset consists of information taken from a total of seven interviews conducted with current sophomores and juniors at Colgate University. Questions were asked about their English backgrounds prior to coming to Colgate and their first year experiences at the university

Effects of air pollution on <em>Pinus halepensis</em> (Mill.): Pollution levels in Attica, Greece.

Air quality in the Athens basin is well known to be poor, damaging building materials and human health, but there is no information available on concentrations or the impact of oxidants on ecosystems in rural areas outside the basin. A short-term monitoring campaign, coupled with a survey using the O3 bioindicator Bel-W3 tobacco demonstrated that phytotoxic concentrations of O3 occurred throughout Attica, within a 75 km radius of the city. There was relatively little injury produced in the industrial centre of the city and maximum injury was found about 40 km to the SE. Visible lesions identical to those of O3 injury were found on Aleppo pine at all sites in the cooler months. In the summer the needles were very chlorotic, possibly due to photo-oxidation of chlorophylls mediated by heat or drought. This chlorosis may mask oxidant symptoms in the summer. NO2 diffusion tube data and needle analysis suggested that the effects of sulphur and NO2 are probably confined to the Athens basin