Exploring student-athlete support services at two NCAA Division I universities

The purpose of this study was to utilize an exploratory research design to help identify current student-athlete support services educational programs at two NCAA Division I institutions. The researcher considered the overall student-athlete experience by identifying and describing what resources student athlete support services provide, how student-athletes are or are not utilizing these services and applying high impact educational practices to these services. It is clear that just within a single division, overall athletic spending and funding can drastically vary across institutions. This overall discrepancy helped establish a cause for concern in the overall resources and educational programming received by Division I student-athletes. Two NCAA Division I institutions were studied using 24 semi-structured interviews with student-athletes and administrators and presented several themes including: (1) the utilization of structured programming as a driving force to student-athlete support services, (2) the student-athlete perspective on available support services and benefits, (3) the student-athlete barriers to utilizing student-athlete support services, (4) the student-athlete/athletics split campus “bubble” and (5) the implementation of high impact educational practices. The researcher also explore what services are missing and how they could be implemented in the intercollegiate athletics setting moving forward. The results presented are likely of importance to college administrators interested in understanding how to develop meaningful student-athlete support services directly related to high impact educational practices, while supporting student-athlete interests and constraints. For example, administrators can learn to establish programming for their students on campus and create a comfortable climate and connection between athletics student-athlete support services and on-campus resources while striving for positive outcomes in academic progress rates (APR), graduation success rates (GSR), and grade point averages (GPA)

Investigating the Differences in Twitter Content and Effectiveness Between Individual and Team Sport Athletes

While the existing literature has categorized Twitter conversations and examined gender differences in professional athletes¡¯ online self-presentation initiatives, researchers have neglected to examine the differences in Twitter presentation between individual and team sport athletes. This study examined the differences in self-promotional content and effectiveness of Twitter activity between individual and team sport athletes. The authors utilized content analysis to categorize Twitter activity while a comparison not only between different types of athletes but also within categories was conducted by analyzing composite variables. While the findings confirmed the existence of content contrasts in the promotional category, no significant differences were observed in the remaining tweet categories. The analysis of fan perceptions identified team athlete tweets as more effective aside from the promotional category. Independently, the professional category was found to be most effective amongst team athlete tweets, while the athlete exchange category was deemed most effective amongst individual athlete tweets. The current study contributed to the understanding of self-promotional tactics utilized by two categories of athletes (i.e., individual and team) through the investigation of content of tweets and fan perception analysis. Key implications for the academic field and the sport marketing industry and recommendations for future research were discussed

What can motivate Lady Health Workers in Pakistan to engage more actively in tuberculosis case-finding?

BACKGROUND: Many interventions to motivate community health workers to perform better rely on financial incentives, even though it is not clear that monetary gain is the main motivational driver. In Pakistan, Lady Health Workers (LHW) are responsible for delivering community level primary healthcare, focusing on rural and urban slum populations. There is interest in introducing large-scale interventions to motivate LHW to be more actively involved in improving tuberculosis case-finding, which is low in Pakistan. METHODS: Our study investigated how to most effectively motivate LHW to engage more actively in tuberculosis case-finding. The study was embedded within a pilot intervention that provided financial and other incentives to LHW who refer the highest number of tuberculosis cases in three districts in Sindh province. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 LHW and 12 health programme managers and analysed these using a framework categorising internal and external sources of motivation. RESULTS: Internal drivers of motivation, such as religious rewards and social recognition, were salient in our study setting. While monetary gain was identified as a motivator by all interviewees, programme managers expressed concerns about financial sustainability, and LHW indicated that financial incentives were less important than other sources of motivation. LHW emphasised that they typically used financial incentives provided to cover patient transport costs to health facilities, and therefore financial incentives were usually not perceived as rewards for their performance. CONCLUSIONS: This study indicated that interventions in addition to, or instead of, financial incentives could be used to increase LHW engagement in tuberculosis case-finding. Our finding about the strong role of internal motivation (intrinsic, religious) in Pakistan suggests that developing context-specific strategies that tap into internal motivation could allow infectious disease control programmes to improve engagement of community health workers without being dependent on funding for financial incentives

Loss-to-follow-up and delay to treatment initiation in Pakistan's national tuberculosis control programme

BACKGROUND: Researchers and policy-makers have identified loss to follow-up as a major programmatic problem. Therefore, the objective of this study is to quantify TB related pre-treatment loss to follow up and treatment delay in private sector health care facilities in Pakistan. METHODS: This was a retrospective, descriptive cohort study using routinely collected programmatic data from TB referral, diagnosis and treatment registers. Data from 48 private healthcare facilities were collected using an online questionnaire prepared in ODK Collect, for the period October 2015 to March 2016. Data were analysed using SPSS. We calculated the: (1) number and proportion of patients who were lost to follow-up during the diagnostic period, (2) number and proportion of patients with pre-treatment loss to follow-up, and (3) the number of days between diagnosis and initiation of treatment. RESULTS: One thousand five hundred ninety-six persons with presumptive TB were referred to the laboratory. Of these, 96% (n = 1538) submitted an on-the-spot sputum sample. Of the 1538 people, 1462 (95%) people subsequently visited the laboratory to submit the early morning (i.e. the second) sample. Hence, loss to follow-up during the diagnostic process was 8% overall (n = 134). Of the 1462 people who submitted both sputum samples, 243 (17%) were diagnosed with sputum smear-positive pulmonary TB and 231 were registered for anti-TB treatment, hence, loss in the pre-treatment phase was 4.9% (n = 12). 152 persons with TB (66%) initiated TB treatment either on the day of TB diagnosis or the next day. A further 79 persons with TB (34%) commenced TB treatment within a mean time of 7 days (range 2 to 64 days). CONCLUSION: Concentrated efforts should be made by the National TB Control Programme to retain TB patients and innovative methods such as text reminders and behavior change communication may need to be used and tested

Continuous-time quantum walks for MAX-CUT are hot

By exploiting the link between time-independent Hamiltonians and thermalisation, heuristic predictions on the performance of continuous-time quantum walks for MAX-CUT are made. The resulting predictions depend on the number of triangles in the underlying MAX-CUT graph. We extend these results to the time-dependent setting with multi-stage quantum walks and Floquet systems. The approach followed here provides a novel way of understanding the role of unitary dynamics in tackling combinatorial optimisation problems with continuous-time quantum algorithms.Comment: 25 pages, 29 figure

Student first? A case study examining the student-athlete support services at an NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) Institution

The purpose of this study was to examine the current student-athlete support services at an NCAA Division I FBS level institution through the lens of high impact educational practices. The researchers considered the overall college athlete experience by identifying and describing what resources student-athlete support services provide, how college athletes are (or are not) utilizing these services and applying high impact educational practices to these services. Employing a qualitative approach, 14 semi-structured interviews with college athletes and administrators presented several themes addressing the implementation of high impact educational practices. The results presented are of importance to athletics administrators interested in understanding how to develop meaningful student-athlete support services, while supporting college athlete interests and constraints. Athletics administrators can learn to establish on-campus programming for their college athletes in addition to creating a comfortable climate and connection between college athlete support services and on-campus resources

Student first? A case study examining the student-athlete support services at an NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) Institution

The purpose of this study was to examine the current student-athlete support services at an NCAA Division I FBS level institution through the lens of high impact educational practices. The researchers considered the overall college athlete experience by identifying and describing what resources student-athlete support services provide, how college athletes are (or are not) utilizing these services and applying high impact educational practices to these services. Employing a qualitative approach, 14 semi-structured interviews with college athletes and administrators presented several themes addressing the implementation of high impact educational practices. The results presented are of importance to athletics administrators interested in understanding how to develop meaningful student-athlete support services, while supporting college athlete interests and constraints. Athletics administrators can learn to establish on-campus programming for their college athletes in addition to creating a comfortable climate and connection between college athlete support services and on-campus resources

Development of an HPLC method for formic acid analysis through peak exclusion approach

High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) is a chemical analysis technique that gives both the quantitative and qualitative analysis of liquid samples. A certain set of parameters, called HPLC method, are defined for analysis of every discrete mixture. Often literature is not available or specifically reported expensive HPLC apparatus is not available for every set of mixtures. Present study concentrated on analysis of formic acid from a mixture of methanol, formaldehyde and water. Formic acid is a basic carboxylic acid that has growing industrial and commercial uses, especially as a refrigerant. A C-18 column was utilized for the analysis by optimizing the parameters like dimensions of the stationary column, nature of mobile phase, flow rate of mobile phase and wavelength of the ultraviolet detector. Comprehendible and reproducible results for the analysis of formic acid were obtained on 25 cm long C-18 stationary column, by tuning the combined effect of water as mobile phase at a flow rate of 1 mL/min and by excluding the unnecessary peaks at 250 nm wavelength of ultraviolet detector, called peak exclusion approach. The calibration curve was found to be linear over the range of 1.25 % v/v formic acid solution in methanol up to 100 % pure formic acid. Limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantitation (LOQ) were found to be 2.25 % and 6.83 %, respectively

Dielectric Properties of Graphene/Titania/Polyvinylidene Fluoride (G/TiO2/PVDF) Nanocomposites

Flexible electronics have gained eminent importance in recent years due to their high mechanical strength and resistance to environmental conditions, along with their effective energy storage and energy generating abilities. In this work, graphene/ceramic/polymer based flexible dielectric nanocomposites have been prepared and their dielectric properties were characterized. The composite was formulated by combining graphene with rutile and anatase titania, and polyvinylidene fluoride in different weight ratios to achieve optimized dielectric properties and flexibility. After preparation, composites were characterized for their morphologies, structures, functional groups, thermal stability and dielectric characterizations by using scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermal gravimetric analysis and impedance spectroscopy. Dielectric results showed that prepared flexible composite exhibited dielectric constant of 70.4 with minor leakage current (tanδ) i.e., 0.39 at 100 Hz. These results were further confirmed by calculating alternating current (AC) conductivity and electric modulus which ensured that prepared material is efficient dielectric material which may be employed in electronic industry for development of next generation flexible energy storage devices

Facile synthesis of ternary graphene nanocomposites with doped metal oxide and conductive polymers as electrode materials for high performance supercapacitors

Abstract Supercapacitors (SCs) due to their high energy density, fast charge storage and energy transfer, long charge discharge curves and low costs are very attractive for designing new generation of energy storage devices. In this work we present a simple and scalable synthetic approach to engineer ternary composite as electrode material based on combination of graphene with doped metal oxides (iron oxide) and conductive polymer (polypyrrole) with aims to achieve supercapacitors with very high gravimetric and areal capacitances. In the first step a binary composite with graphene mixed with doped iron oxide (rGO/MeFe2O4) (Me = Mn, Ni) was synthesized using new single step process with NaOH acting as a coprecipitation and GO reducing agent. This rGO/MnFe2O4 composite electrode showed gravimetric capacitance of 147 Fg−1 and areal capacitance of 232 mFcm−2 at scan rate of 5 mVs−1. In the final step a conductive polypyrrole was included to prepare a ternary composite graphene/metal doped iron oxide/polypyrrole (rGO/MnFe2O4/Ppy) electrode. Ternary composite electrode showed significantly improved gravimetric capacitance and areal capacitance of 232 Fg−1 and 395 mFcm−2 respectively indicating synergistic impact of Ppy additives. The method is promising to fabricate advanced electrode materials for high performing supercapacitors combining graphene, doped iron oxide and conductive polymers