“It’s my dream to work with Olympic athletes”: Neophyte sport psychologists’ expectations and initial experiences regarding service delivery

We examined trainee practitioners' initial experiences of applied sport psychology practice. Semi-structured interviews (4) were conducted over 6 months with 7 full-time MSc students before, during, and after the applied sport psychology module, when they were working with clients. Participants also kept reflective diaries over an 8-week period whilst working with clients. Findings included: (a) motivations and expectations of an ASP practice career, (b) perceptions of service delivery, (c) emotional demands, and (d) pivotal experiences. Findings extend previous literature on the initial stages of practitioner development, providing micro-level detail on aspects of the intense development process during this pivotal perio

Generalising unit-refutation completeness and SLUR via nested input resolution

We introduce two hierarchies of clause-sets, SLUR_k and UC_k, based on the classes SLUR (Single Lookahead Unit Refutation), introduced in 1995, and UC (Unit refutation Complete), introduced in 1994. The class SLUR, introduced in [Annexstein et al, 1995], is the class of clause-sets for which unit-clause-propagation (denoted by r_1) detects unsatisfiability, or where otherwise iterative assignment, avoiding obviously false assignments by look-ahead, always yields a satisfying assignment. It is natural to consider how to form a hierarchy based on SLUR. Such investigations were started in [Cepek et al, 2012] and [Balyo et al, 2012]. We present what we consider the "limit hierarchy" SLUR_k, based on generalising r_1 by r_k, that is, using generalised unit-clause-propagation introduced in [Kullmann, 1999, 2004]. The class UC, studied in [Del Val, 1994], is the class of Unit refutation Complete clause-sets, that is, those clause-sets for which unsatisfiability is decidable by r_1 under any falsifying assignment. For unsatisfiable clause-sets F, the minimum k such that r_k determines unsatisfiability of F is exactly the "hardness" of F, as introduced in [Ku 99, 04]. For satisfiable F we use now an extension mentioned in [Ansotegui et al, 2008]: The hardness is the minimum k such that after application of any falsifying partial assignments, r_k determines unsatisfiability. The class UC_k is given by the clause-sets which have hardness <= k. We observe that UC_1 is exactly UC. UC_k has a proof-theoretic character, due to the relations between hardness and tree-resolution, while SLUR_k has an algorithmic character. The correspondence between r_k and k-times nested input resolution (or tree resolution using clause-space k+1) means that r_k has a dual nature: both algorithmic and proof theoretic. This corresponds to a basic result of this paper, namely SLUR_k = UC_k.Comment: 41 pages; second version improved formulations and added examples, and more details regarding future directions, third version further examples, improved and extended explanations, and more on SLUR, fourth version various additional remarks and editorial improvements, fifth version more explanations and references, typos corrected, improved wordin

Hallmarks of cancer-the new testament.

Diagnosis and treatment of disease demand a sound understanding of the underlying mechanisms, determining any Achilles' heel that can be targeted in effective therapies. Throughout history, this endeavour to decipher the origin and mechanism of transformation of a normal cell into cancer has led to various theories-from cancer as a curse to an understanding at the level of single-cell heterogeneity, meaning even among a single sub-type of cancer there are myriad molecular challenges to overcome. With increasing insight into cancer genetics and biology, the disease has become ever more complex to understand. The complexity of cancer as a disease was distilled into key traits by Hanahan and Weinberg in their seminal 'Hallmarks of Cancer' reviews. This lucid conceptualization of complex cancer biology is widely accepted and has helped advance cancer therapeutics by targeting the various hallmarks but, with the advancement in technologies, there is greater granularity in how we view cancer as a disease, and the additional understanding over the past decade requires us to revisit the hallmarks of cancer. Based on extensive study of the cancer research literature, we propose four novel hallmarks of cancer, namely, the ability of cells to regress from a specific specialized functional state, epigenetic changes that can affect gene expression, the role of microorganisms and neuronal signalling, to be included in the hallmark conceptualization along with evidence of various means to exploit them therapeutically

Effects of Post-Translational Modifications of Fibrinogen on Clot Formation, Clot Structure, and Fibrinolysis: A Systematic Review

OBJECTIVE: Post-translational modifications of fibrinogen influence the occurrence and progression of thrombotic diseases. In this systematic review, we assessed the current literature on post-translational modifications of fibrinogen and their effects on fibrin formation and clot characteristics. Approach and Results: A systematic search of Medline, Embase, Cochrane Library, and Web of Science was performed to find studies reporting post-translational modifications of fibrinogen and the effects on clot formation and structure. Both in vitro studies and ex vivo studies using patient material were included. One hundred five articles were included, describing 11 different modifications of fibrinogen. For the best known and studied modifications, conclusions could be drawn about their effect on clot formation and structure. Oxidation, high levels of nitration, and glycosylation inhibit the rate of polymerization, resulting in dense clots with thinner fibers, while low levels of nitration increase the rate of polymerization. Glycation showed different results for polymerization, but f

Identification of the Staphylococcus aureus MSCRAMM clumping factor B (ClfB) binding site in the αC-domain of human fibrinogen

Clumping factor B (ClfB) of Staphylococcus aureus binds to cytokeratin 10 and to fibrinogen. In this study the binding site in human fibrinogen was localized to a short region within the C terminus of the Aα-chain. ClfB only bound to the Aα-chain of fibrinogen in a ligand-affinity blot and in solid-phase assays with purified recombinant fibrinogen chains. A variant of fibrinogen with wild-type Bβ- and γ-chains but with a deletion that lacked the C-terminal residues from 252–610 of the Aα-chain did not support adherence of S. aureus Newman expressing ClfB. A series of truncated mutants of the recombinant Aα-chain were tested for their ability to support adherence of S. aureus Newman ClfB+, which allowed the binding site to be localized to a short segment of the unfolded flexible repeated sequence within the C terminus of the Aα-chain. This was confirmed by two amino acid substititions within repeat 5 of the recombinant Aα-chain which did not support adherence of Newman ClfB+. Lactococcus lactis expressing ClfB mutants with amino acid substitutions (N256 and Q235) located in the putative ligand-binding trench between domains N2 and N3 of the A-domain were defective in adherence to immobilized fibrinogen and cytokeratin 10, suggesting that both ligands bind to the same or overlapping regions

The psychology of dynamic balance and peak performance in sport: correction theory

This article introduces a new approach to understanding peak performance and dysfunctional performance in sport, correction theory. Correction theory, based within a control theory and dynamical systems perspective, assumes that dynamic balance (a state in which a robust complex system will self-correct in response to imbalance) underwrites individual functioning. The central thesis presented in this article is that an interdependent relationship exists between peak performance and dysfunctional performance in sport. Peak performance is, in part, a (corrective) response to dysfunctional performance and vice versa. An overview of correction theory is presented, based on two propositions relating to balance. Implications of correction theory for understanding sporting performance are briefly considered.N/

Answering Non-Monotonic Queries in Relational Data Exchange

Relational data exchange is the problem of translating relational data from a source schema into a target schema, according to a specification of the relationship between the source data and the target data. One of the basic issues is how to answer queries that are posed against target data. While consensus has been reached on the definitive semantics for monotonic queries, this issue turned out to be considerably more difficult for non-monotonic queries. Several semantics for non-monotonic queries have been proposed in the past few years. This article proposes a new semantics for non-monotonic queries, called the GCWA*-semantics. It is inspired by semantics from the area of deductive databases. We show that the GCWA*-semantics coincides with the standard open world semantics on monotonic queries, and we further explore the (data) complexity of evaluating non-monotonic queries under the GCWA*-semantics. In particular, we introduce a class of schema mappings for which universal queries can be evaluated under the GCWA*-semantics in polynomial time (data complexity) on the core of the universal solutions.Comment: 55 pages, 3 figure