The Y Can’t Do It All: Examining the Decline of Participation in Youth Athletics

Nationally, since 2008, participation in youth sports (ages 6-17) has dropped significantly. The declining trend--from 45% down to 37%-- can be attributed to many factors The rising cost associated with general participation in programs, especially at the middle and high school levels Early specialization in one sport along with the introduction of hypercompetitiveness in younger age groups The need for coaches to have much more training and certification to get a foot in the door at schools and recreation programs around the country. These factors cause a significant divide between underprivileged and privileged youth, creating a situation of haves and have-nots with respect to youth participation in sports. My 30-hour service learning project afforded me hands-on experience instructing youth martial arts classes at the Greater Portland Branch YMCA, where I worked directly with youth from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. Specific information on participation trends was acquired through interviews with management, and a review of recent literature in Sports Medicine and Recreation and Leisure Studies journals provided data on national trends

A brief history of the British Neuroscience Association

As the British Neuroscience Association commemorates 50 years of existence in 2018, this article recalls its founding as a discussion group, its establishment as the Brain Research Association, its transition to a professional society encompassing all aspects of neuroscience research, both clinical and non-clinical, and its re-branding as the British Neuroscience Association in the late 1990s. Neuroscience as a branch of life science has expanded hugely in the last 25 years and the British Neuroscience Association has adapted, frequently working with partner societies, to serve as an interdisciplinary hub for professionals working in this exciting and crucial field. The authors have attempted to highlight some key events in the Association’s history and acknowledge the contributions made by many people over half a century

A new power calculator

Describes a new on-line statistical tool for calculating power in simple experimental designs. Power is an important concept in statistics, if only for the very practical reason that many grantgiving bodies now require a minimum power of 80 per cent to be built into the design of any study eligible for funding. At the same time, though the idea is essentially quite simple, standard textbooks often make the calculations appear mysterious. The provision of computer programs or tables to enable the necessary calculations, though functional, provides no insight into what is going on. The development of a visual aid or ‘nomogram’ by Douglas Altman was a major step forward, making the calculation – at least for a typical independent groups scenario – almost instantaneous. But Altman’s version used only two alpha levels (both 2-tailed), and given the design, the use of even two levels made the diagram somewhat overcrowded. Moreover, it provided no insights into the underlying principles on which it operated

Predictors of anxiety after stroke: a systematic review of observational studies

Background: Anxiety disorders or symptoms are relatively common following stroke. A better understanding of the predictors of anxiety in stroke patients may improve the management of these disorders. The current review was conducted to determine the predictors of anxiety following stroke. Methods: Relevant articles concerning population, hospital or rehabilitation-based studies were identified by searching 10 electronic databases up to May 2014. Methodological quality appraisal, including the validity of prognostic models and data extraction were conducted by three reviewers. Results: A total of 18 studies were identified. Data from three population-based studies including 8130 patients, 8 hospital-based studies including 1199 patients, and 7 rehabilitation-based studies including 1103 patients was evaluated. Pre-stroke depression, stroke severity, early anxiety and dementia or cognitive impairment following stroke were the main predictors of post stroke anxiety. Older age, physical disability or impairment, and use of antidepressant drugs were not associated with presence of anxiety. Limitations of studies included wide variation in screening tools and cut-off scores, variability in the time frame of screening for anxiety, use of extensive exclusion criteria and questionable statistical internal and external validity of the models. Conclusions: Lack of methodological and statistical rigour affects the validity of proposed models to predict anxiety after stroke. Future research should focus on testing proposed models on both internal and external samples to ultimately inform future clinical practice

Design, validation and dissemination of an undergraduate assessment tool using SimMan® in simulated medical emergencies

Background: Increasingly, medical students are being taught acute medicine using whole-body simulator manikins. Aim: We aimed to design, validate and make widely available two simple assessment tools to be used with Laerdal SimMan (R) for final year students. Methods: We designed two scenarios with criterion-based checklists focused on assessment and management of two medical emergencies. Members of faculty critiqued the assessments for face validity and checklists revised. We assessed three groups of different experience levels: Foundation Year 2 doctors, third and final year medical students. Differences between groups were analysed, and internal consistency and interrater reliability calculated. A generalisability analysis was conducted using scenario and rater as facets in design. Results: A maximum of two items were removed from either checklist following the initial survey. Significantly different scores for three groups of experience for both scenarios were reported (p0.90). Internal consistency was poor (alpha<50.5). Generalizability study results suggest that four cases would provide reliable discrimination between final year students. Conclusions: These assessments proved easy to administer and we have gone some way to demonstrating construct validity and reliability. We have made the material available on a simulator website to enable others to reproduce these assessments

Rock avalanches and other landslides in the central Southern Alps of New Zealand: a regional study considering possible climate change impacts

Slope instabilities in the central Southern Alps, New Zealand, are assessed in relation to their geological and topographic distribution, with emphasis given to the spatial distribution of the most recent failures relative to zones of possible permafrost degradation and glacial recession. Five hundred nine mostly late-Pleistocene- to Holocene-aged landslides have been identified, affecting 2% of the study area. Rock avalanches were distinguished in the dataset, being the dominant failure type from Alpine slopes about and east of the Main Divide of the Alps, while other landslide types occur more frequently at lower elevations and from schist slopes closer to the Alpine Fault. The pre-1950 landslide record is incomplete, but mapped failures have prevailed from slopes facing west-northwest, suggesting a structural control on slope failure distribution. Twenty rock avalanches and large rockfalls are known to have fallen since 1950, predominating from extremely steep east-southeast facing slopes, mostly from the hanging wall of the Main Divide Fault Zone. Nineteen occurred within 300 vertical metres above or below glacial ice; 13 have source areas within 300 vertical metres of the estimated lower permafrost boundary, where degrading permafrost is expected. The prevalence of recent failures occurring from glacier-proximal slopes and from slopes near the lower permafrost limit is demonstrably higher than from other slopes about the Main Divide. Many recent failures have been smaller than those recorded pre-1950, and the influence of warming may be ephemeral and difficult to demonstrate relative to simultaneous effects of weather, erosion, seismicity, and uplift along an active plate margi

Skepticism about Reasoning

Less discussed than Hume’s skepticism about what grounds there could be for projecting empirical hypotheses is his concern with a skeptical regress that he thought threatened to extinguish any belief when we reflect that our reasoning is not perfect. The root of the problem is the fact that a reflection about our reasoning is itself a piece of reasoning. If each reflection is negative and undermining, does that not give us a diminution of our original belief to nothing? It requires much attention to detail, we argue, to determine whether or not there is a skeptical problem in this neighborhood. For consider, if we subsequently doubt a doubt we had about our reasoning, should that not restore some confidence in our original belief? We would then have instead an alternating sequence of pieces of skeptical reasoning that cancel each others’ effects on our justification in the original proposition, at least to some degree. We will argue that the outcome of the sequence of reflections Hume is imagining depends on information about a given case that is not known a priori. We conclude this from the fact that under three precise, explanatory, and viable contemporary reconstructions of what this kind of reasoning about reasoning could be like and how it has the potential to affect our original beliefs, a belief-extinguishing regress is not automatic or necessary. The outcome of the sequence of reflections depends on further information whose character we will explain