A SUCCESSFUL ATHLETIC TALENT DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT - A HOLISTIC ECOLOGICAL CASE STUDY OF AN ELITE COLLEGE SOCCER PROGRAM

A holistic ecological approach (HEA) was used to investigate ecological factors influencing the athletic talent development process in an elite men's college soccer program. Methods of data collection included interviews, participant observations, and analysis of documents. College soccer has been experiencing various challenges over the past decade with the expansion of the professional soccer landscape and more professional playing opportunities in North America. College soccer has been disregarded by professional clubs in the U.S., and elite youth players often forego a college career and sign a professional contract. This case study examined the development environment college soccer provides for elite players striving to transition to the elite senior level while pursuing a university degree. The environment studied provides a unique combination where elite athletes are integrated in an elite university environment. Coaches focus on holistic long-term development of players, meaning developing the person behind the player and help develop a growth mindset and other social, psycho-social, and psychological competencies. The environment is centered around a relationship between student-athletes and a support network designed to help players balance their academic, personal, and academic responsibilities. Furthermore, the environment is characterized by a strong, open, and cohesive organizational culture. The university, athletic department, and soccer team share core values that are coherent and build on each other. The imbalanced competition schedule of college soccer was highlighted as a major barrier to long-term development of players and adaptations could make the environment even more successful in transitioning players to the senior elite level.Master of Art

Limb Kinetic Apraxia Is an Independent Predictor for Quality of Life in Parkinson's Disease

Background: Impaired dexterity is a common symptom in Parkinson's disease (PD) and has been related to limb kinetic apraxia (LKA). LKA negatively influenced activities of daily living (ADL) in PD. However, the impact on quality of life (QoL) remains to be clarified, which was the aim of the current study. Methods: Eighty nondemented patients with PD and 60 age-matched, sex-matched healthy individuals participated in this study. The 39-item Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire was used to measure QoL. Dexterity was assessed by the coin rotation (CR) task and the ADL-related Dexterity Questionnaire 24. Nonmotor symptoms were monitored with part I of the Movement Disorder Society-Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale, and motor symptoms were measured with parts II and III of the modified Movement Disorder Society-Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale. Results: Regression analysis revealed that dexterity scores controlled for parkinsonian motor symptoms were a strong and independent predictor of QoL in patients with PD. Conclusion: The study demonstrated that the strong association of impaired dexterity and QoL is independent of bradykinesia, thereby underscoring the clinical relevance of LKA in PD

Exemplar-based inpainting as a solution to the missing wedge problem in electron tomography

A new method for dealing with incomplete projection sets in electron tomography is proposed. The approach is inspired by exemplar-based inpainting techniques in image processing and heuristically generates data for missing projection directions. The method has been extended to work on three dimensional data. In general, electron tomography reconstructions suffer from elongation artifacts along the beam direction. These artifacts can be seen in the corresponding Fourier domain as a missing wedge. The new method synthetically generates projections for these missing directions with the help of a dictionary based approach that is able to convey both structure and texture at the same time. It constitutes a preprocessing step that can be combined with any tomographic reconstruction algorithm. The new algorithm was applied to phantom data, to a real electron tomography data set taken from a catalyst, as well as to a real dataset containing solely colloidal gold particles. Visually, the synthetic projections, reconstructions, and corresponding Fourier power spectra showed a decrease of the typical missing wedge artifacts. Quantitatively, the inpainting method is capable to reduce missing wedge artifacts and improves tomogram quality with respect to full width half maximum measurements. (C) 2018 Published by Elsevier B.V