The impact of division II revenue and non-revenue sport participation on student engagement

The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file.Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on August 8, 2007)Vita.Thesis (Ed. D.) University of Missouri-Columbia 2006.The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of NCAA Division II revenue and non-revenue sport participation on student engagement. The engagement measurement for the study was selected items from the National Survey of Student Engagement's The College Student Report. The institution studied was a four-year, regional, public institution in Missouri. A case study methodology employing quantitative statistical analysis was utilized to investigate the impact of athletics participation on empirically derived process indicators of involvement in educationally purposeful activities. The independent variable was participation in intercollegiate athletics at the selected institution. Two categories of independent variable included: athletes and nonathletes and revenue sport and non-revenue sport participants. The dependent variables for the study were selected measures of student engagement from The College Student Report acquired from the cooperating institution's Office of Assessment, Information, and Analysis. Data were analyzed using the following statistical analysis procedures: exploratory factor analysis, descriptive statistics analysis, univariate analysis of covariance, and discriminant function analysis. Exploratory factor analysis was employed to examine commonalities of survey items and to reduce the number of dependent variables for the remaining statistical procedures. Univariate analysis of covariance examined differences between the categories of independent variables. Finally, discriminant function analysis was conducted to determine if an individuals engagement reports could predict group membership. Exploratory factor analysis of 42 survey items yielded 11 components consisting of 29 measures. The 29 measures were treated as dependent variables for subsequent analyses. Descriptive analysis indicated mean differences in both categories of independent variable. However, descriptive analysis suggested that athletes were largely as engaged as their non-athlete peers. Similarly, descriptive analysis suggested that revenue sport participants were similarly engaged compared to their non-revenue sport counterparts. However, univariate ANCOVA analyses uncovered three significant differences between both categories of independent variable. Finally, discriminant analyses generated one significant function for each grouping variable. However, analysis of these results revealed that it is likely that these functions would lead to the incorrect classification of individuals into groups.Includes bibliographical reference

Investment in sensory structures, testis size, and wing coloration in males of a diurnal moth species: trade-offs or correlated growth?

For dioecious animals, reproductive success typically involves an exchange between the sexes of signals that provide information about mate location and quality. Typically, the elaborate, secondary sexual ornaments of males signal their quality, while females may signal their location and receptivity. In theory, the receptor structures that receive the latter signals may also become elaborate or enlarged in a way that ultimately functions to enhance mating success through improved mate location. The large, elaborate antennae of many male moths are one such sensory structure, and eye size may also be important in diurnal moths. Investment in these traits may be costly, resulting in trade-offs among different traits associated with mate location. For polyandrous species, such trade-offs may also include traits associated with paternity success, such as larger testes. Conversely, we would not expect this to be the case for monandrous species, where sperm competition is unlikely. We investigated these ideas by evaluating the relationship between investment in sensory structures (antennae, eye), testis, and a putative warning signal (orange hindwing patch) in field-caught males of the monandrous diurnal painted apple moth Teia anartoides (Lepidoptera: Lymantriidae) in southeastern Australia. As predicted for a monandrous species, we found no evidence that male moths with larger sensory structures had reduced investment in testis size. However, contrary to expectation, investment in sensory structures was correlated: males with relatively larger antennae also had relatively larger eyes. Intriguingly, also, the size of male orange hindwing patches was positively correlated with testis size

Combining evolutionary inference and metabolomics to identify plants with medicinal potential

Plants have been a source of medicines in human cultures for millennia. The past decade has seen a decline in plant-derived medicines due to the time-consuming nature of screening for biological activity and a narrow focus on individual candidate plant taxa. A phylogenetically informed approach can be both more comprehensive in taxonomic scope and more systematic, because it allows identification of evolutionary lineages with higher incidence of medicinal activity. For these reasons, phylogenetics is being increasingly applied to the identification of novel botanic sources of medicinal compounds. These biologically active compounds are normally derived from plant secondary or specialized metabolites generally produced as induced responses and often playing a crucial role in plant defense against herbivores and pathogens. Since these compounds are typically bioactive they serendipitously offer potential therapeutic properties for humans, resulting in their use by traditional societies and ultimately drug lead development by natural product chemists and pharmacologists. The expression of these metabolites is likely the result of coevolutionary processes between plants and the other species with which they interact and effective metabolites are thus selected upon through evolution. Recent research on plant phylogeny coupled with metabolomics, which is the comprehensive analysis of metabolite profiles, has identified that related taxa produce similar secondary metabolites, although correlations are dependent also on environmental factors. Modern mass spectrometry and bioinformatic chemical networking tools can now assist high throughput screening to discover structurally related and potentially new bioactive compounds. The combination of these metabolomic approaches with phylogenetic comparative analysis of the expression of metabolites across plant taxa could therefore greatly increase our capacity to identify taxa for medicinal potential. This review examines the current status of identification of new plant sources of medicine and the current limitations of identifying plants as drug candidates. It investigates how ethnobotanic knowledge, phylogenetics and novel approaches in metabolomics can be partnered to help in characterizing taxa with medicinal potential

Spatial variation in avian bill size is associated with humidity in summer among Australian passerines

Background: Climate imposes multiple selection pressures on animal morphology. Allen’s Rule proposes thatgeographic variation in the appendage size of endotherms, relative to body size, is linked to climatic variation,thereby facilitating heat exchange and body temperature regulation. Thus relatively larger appendages tend to befound in animals in warmer climates. Despite growing understanding of the role of the avian bill as an organ forheat exchange, few studies have tested the ecological significance of bill size for heat dissipation across speciesand environmental gradients. Amongst those that have, most have focused on the relationship with ambienttemperature, but there is growing evidence that humidity also has a strong influence on heat dissipation. Inparticular, increasing humidity reduces the potential for evaporative cooling, favouring radiative and convectiveheat loss via the bill, and hence potentially favouring larger bills in humid environments. Here, we usedphylogenetically-controlled analyses of the bill morphology of 36 species of Australian passerines to explore therelationship between bill size and multiple aspects of climate.Results: Humidity during the hot summer months (December-February) was positively associated with relative billsurface area across species. There was no overall association between bill size and summer temperatures per se, butthe association with humidity was mediated by temperature, with a significant interaction indicating strongerassociations with humidity at cooler summer temperatures. This is consistent with the idea that larger bills maybecome disadvantageous in humid conditions as ambient temperature approaches body temperature. Relative billsize was similar among closely related species, with phylogeny explaining 63.3% of the variance, and there wassignificant variation among species in their response to humidity. However, the relationship between relative billsize and humidity was not associated with phylogeny.Conclusions: Our results are consistent with the idea that body temperature regulation underlies continent-widepatterns of bill size variation in a broad range of Australian passerines, and suggests that Allen’s Rule may apply tohumidity gradients as well as temperature gradients. They add to growing evidence that a narrow focus ontemperature alone in studies of responses to climate change may limit our understanding of species’ sensitivities toclimatic variation, and of their capacity to adapt

Functional Movement Screen Detected Asymmetry & Normative Values Among College-Aged Students

# Background The Functional Movement Screen (FMS™) is a popular test used by sports medicine professionals to identify dysfunctional movement patterns by analyzing mobility and stability during prescribed movements. Although the FMS™ has been a popular topic of research in recent years, normative data and asymmetries in college-aged students have not been established through research. # Purpose The objective was to determine normative FMS™ scores, report frequency counts for FMS™ asymmetries, and determine if the number of sports seasons and number of different sports an individual participated in during high school varied between university students that showed FMS™ identified asymmetries. # Study Design Cross-sectional Study # Methods One hundred university students completed the FMS™ and an associated survey to determine which sport(s) and for how many seasons they participated in each sport(s) during high school. Total FMS™ scores were assessed as well as identifying the presence of an asymmetry during a FMS™ screen. An asymmetry within the FMS™ was defined as achieving an unequal score on any of the screens that assessed right versus left movements of the body. # Data Analysis Data analysis included descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation was utilized to investigate the relationship between number of sports played and number of sport seasons. Shapiro Wilk test for normality, and Mann Whitney U test was employed to investigate group differences in number of sports played. All analyses were conducted using SPSS software. # Results Statistically significant correlations (r = .286, r^2^ = .08, p < 0.01) were found for both number of sport seasons and number of sports with FMS™ total score. In addition, participants without FMS™-detected asymmetries played significantly more seasons and more sports than their peers that presented asymmetries (U = 946.5, z = -1.98, p = 0.047). Finish with the actual p-value in parenthesis. # Conclusion Participating in multiple sports and multiple sport seasons during high school was associated with higher FMS™ total scores. Results suggest that participating in multiple sports and multiple sport seasons was associated with fewer asymmetries, which may decrease subsequent injury risk. # Level of Evidence 3

Australian songbird body size tracks climate variation: 82 species over 50 years.

The observed variation in the body size responses of endotherms to climate change may be explained by two hypotheses: the size increases with climate variability (the starvation resistance hypothesis) and the size shrinks as mean temperatures rise (the heat exchange hypothesis). Across 82 Australian passerine species over 50 years, shrinking was associated with annual mean temperature rise exceeding 0.012°C driven by rising winter temperatures for arid and temperate zone species. We propose the warming winters hypothesis to explain this response. However, where average summer temperatures exceeded 34°C, species experiencing annual rise over 0.0116°C tended towards increasing size. Results suggest a broad-scale physiological response to changing climate, with size trends probably reflecting the relative strength of selection pressures across a climatic regime. Critically, a given amount of temperature change will have varying effects on phenotype depending on the season in which it occurs, masking the generality of size patterns associated with temperature change. Rather than phenotypic plasticity, and assuming body size is heritable, results suggest selective loss or gain of particular phenotypes could generate evolutionary change but may be difficult to detect with current warming rates.The work was partly supported by the Australian Research Council (DP120102651); JLG was partly supported by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT150100139); TA is funded by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT180100354); WJS is funded by Arcadia

Gender Differences in Publication Output: Towards an Unbiased Metric of Research Performance

We examined the publication records of a cohort of 168 life scientists in the field of ecology and evolutionary biology to assess gender differences in research performance. Clear discrepancies in publication rate between men and women appear very early in their careers and this has consequences for the subsequent citation of their work. We show that a recently proposed index designed to rank scientists fairly is in fact strongly biased against female researchers, and advocate a modified index to assess men and women on a more equitable basis

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

Rationale, design and methods for a community-based study of clustering and cumulative effects on chronic disease process and their effects on ageing: the Busselton healthy ageing study

Background: The global trend of increased life expectancy and increased prevalence of chronic and degenerative diseases will impact on health systems. To identify effective intervention and prevention strategies, greater understanding of the risk factors for and cumulative effects of chronic disease processes and their effects on function and quality of life is needed. The Busselton Healthy Ageing Study aims to enhance understanding of ageing by relating the clustering and interactions of common chronic conditions in adults to function. Longitudinal (3–5 yearly) follow-up is planned. Methods/design: Phase I (recruitment) is a cross-sectional community-based prospective cohort study involving up to 4,000 ‘Baby Boomers’ (born from 1946 to 1964) living in the Busselton Shire, Western Australia. The study protocol involves a detailed, self-administered health and risk factor questionnaire and a range of physical assessments including body composition and bone density measurements, cardiovascular profiling (blood pressure, ECG and brachial pulse wave velocity), retinal photography, tonometry, auto-refraction, spirometry and bronchodilator responsiveness, skin allergy prick tests, sleep apnoea screening, tympanometry and audiometry, grip strength, mobility, balance and leg extensor strength. Cognitive function and reserve, semantic memory, and pre-morbid intelligence are assessed. Participants provide a fasting blood sample for assessment of lipids, blood glucose, C-reactive protein and renal and liver function, and RNA, DNA and serum are stored. Clinically relevant results are provided to all participants. The prevalence of risk factors, symptoms and diagnosed illness will be calculated and the burden of illness will be estimated based on the observed relationships and clustering of symptoms and illness within individuals. Risk factors for combinations of illness will be compared with those for single illnesses and the relation of combinations of illness and symptoms to cognitive and physical function will be estimated. Discussion: This study will enable a thorough characterization of multiple disease processes and their risk factors within a community-based sample of individuals to determine their singular, interactive and cumulative effects on ageing. The project will provide novel cross-sectional data and establish a cohort that will be used for longitudinal analyses of the genetic, lifestyle and environmental factors that determine whether an individual ages well or with impairment