The Impact of Intercollegiate Athletics Financial Inequalities

Inequality within intercollegiate athletics has roots as deep as the enterprise itself. From a macro perspective, financial inequality in intercollegiate athletics stems from free-market forces influencing intercollegiate athletics, specifically the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), television broadcasting, and the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). Because the NCAA operates on behalf of its member institutions, these inequalities trickle down to all conferences, universities, and athletic programs, to specific sports, and finally to student-athletes. The goal of this paper is to respond to Zimbalist (2013), add to the conversation about financial inequality in intercollegiate athletics, and describe how national inequalities translate into inequalities on campus. An analysis of the structure of intercollegiate athletics that perpetuates these inequalities is presented, Activity-Based Costing (ABC) is introduced, and practical ideas to assist in creating a more financially equitable model of intercollegiate athletics are presented

The morality of evidence: the second annual lecture for<i>Restorative Justice: An International Journal</i>

In the past two decades restorative justice (RJ) has been the subject of more rigorous criminological research than perhaps any other strategy for crime prevention and victim support. A misalignment between practice and research, however, has resulted in much confusion about what practices are, or are not, supported by the existing research base. This confusion raises the moral problem of doing things to people without evidence those things do no harm. In what has become a wide array of justice practices called ‘restorative,’ there are serious risks of both direct and indirect harm in promoting--or even condoning-- untested practices: 1) Many practices remain untested, despite claims that tests of some RJ practices support all RJ practices, so that the untested practices may be causing harm directly; 2) Practices that have been rigorously tested and found to be effective are not widely used, while untested RJ practices have arguably caused harm indirectly by diverting resources from practices known to be effective; 3) Victims of violent crime are indirectly harmed by the diversion of RJ resources to property crime, where evidence shows RJ is less effective. We therefore assert a moral obligation for RJ practitioners to assure that their work does no harm by promoting rigorous evaluations of what they are doing, and encouraging investment in tested strategies for the kinds of victims and offenders with whom RJ is known to have the strongest effects.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20504721.2015.104986

Restorative Justice: The Evidence

This 2007 report reviews a wealth of restorative justice evidence from the UK and abroad

Conceptualising the policy practice and behavioural research relationship

BackgroundPolicy is frequently identified in the behavioural nutrition and physical activity research literature as a necessary component of effective research and practice. The purpose of this commentary is to promote a dialogue to contribute towards the further development of conceptual understandings and theories of the relationship between policy practice and behavioural research and how these two activities might work synergistically to improve public health outcomes.MethodsDrawing on policy and public health literature, this commentary presents a a conceptual model of the interaction and mediation between nutrition and physical activity-relevant policy and behavioural nutrition and physical activity research, environments, behaviours and public health implications. The selling of food in school canteens in several Australian states is discussed to illustrate components of the relationship and the interactions among its components.ResultsThe model depicts a relationship that is interdependent and cyclic. Policy contributes to the relationship through its role in shaping environmental and personal-cognitive determinants of behaviours and through these determinants it can induce behaviour change. Behavioural research describes behaviours, identifies determinants of behaviour change and therefore helps inform policy development and monitor and evaluate its impact.ConclusionThe model has implications for guiding behavioural research and policy practice priorities to promote public health outcomes. In particular, we propose that policy practice and behavioural research activities can be strengthened by applying to each other the theories from the scientific disciplines informing these respective activities. Behavioural science theories can be applied to help understand policy-making and assist with disseminating research into policy and practice. In turn, policy science theories can be applied to support the \u27institutionalisation\u27 of commitments to ongoing behavioural research.<br /

explorase: Multivariate Exploratory Analysis and Visualization for Systems Biology

The datasets being produced by high-throughput biological experiments, such as microarrays, have forced biologists to turn to sophisticated statistical analysis and visualization tools in order to understand their data. We address the particular need for an open-source exploratory data analysis tool that applies numerical methods in coordination with interactive graphics to the analysis of experimental data. The software package, known as explorase, provides a graphical user interface (GUI) on top of the R platform for statistical computing and the GGobi software for multivariate interactive graphics. The GUI is designed for use by biologists, many of whom are unfamiliar with the R language. It displays metadata about experimental design and biological entities in tables that are sortable and filterable. There are menu shortcuts to the analysis methods implemented in R, including graphical interfaces to linear modeling tools. The GUI is linked to data plots in GGobi through a brush tool that simultaneously colors rows in the entity information table and points in the GGobi plots.

The Probability Mass Function of the Kaplan-Meier Product-Limit Estimator

Kaplan andMeier’s 1958 article developed a nonparametric estimator of the survivor function from a right censored dataset. Determining the size of the support of the estimator as a function of the sample size provides a challenging exercise for students in an advanced course in mathematical statistics. We devise two algorithms for calculating the support size and calculate the associated probability mass function for small sample sizes and particular probability distributions for the failure and censoring times

Visual pathway function and structure in Wolfram syndrome: Patient age, variation and progression

Background/aimsTo report alterations in visual acuity and visual pathway structure over an interval of 1–3 years in a cohort of children, adolescents and young adults who have Wolfram syndrome (WFS) and to describe the range of disease severity evident in patients with WFS whose ages differed by as much as 20 years at first examination.MethodsAnnual, prospective ophthalmological examinations were performed in conjunction with retinal nerve fibre layer (RNFL) analysis. Diffusion tensor MRI-derived fractional anisotropy was used to assess the microstructural integrity of the optic radiations (OR FA).ResultsMean age of the 23 patients with WFS in the study was 13.8 years (range 5–25 years). Mean log minimum angle resolution visual acuity was 0.66 (20/91). RNFL thickness was subnormal in even the youngest patients with WFS. Average RNFL thickness in patients with WFS was 57±8 µ or ~40% thinner than that measured in normal (94±10 µ) children and adolescents (P&lt;0.01). Lower OR FA correlated with worse visual acuity (P=0.006). Subsequent examinations showed declines (P&lt;0.05) in visual acuity, RNFL thickness and OR FA at follow-up intervals of 12–36 months. However, a wide range of disease severity was evident across ages: some of the youngest patients at their first examination had deficits more severe than the oldest patients.ConclusionThe genetic mutation of WFS causes damage to both pregeniculate and postgeniculate regions of the visual pathway. The damage is progressive. The decline in visual pathway structure is accompanied by declines of visual function. Disease severity differs widely in individual patients and cannot be predicted from their age.</jats:sec