The Relationship Between Sport Participation, Perceived Athletic Competence and Performance in University Sprinters

Purpose: There is a need for research that investigates confidence, performance, and previous sports involvement among particular sports such as in track and field sprinters. The objective of this study was to investigate relations between previous sport participation, perceived athletic competence, and performance results in university track and field sprinters. Methods: The perceived athletic competence scale and previous sport participation questionnaire were implemented in the form of an online survey. The best performance times were collected from an online results database. All of the participants were enrolled in university and were members of their respective school’s track and field team. Measures of variability and descriptive statistics were calculated, and Analysis of Variance and t-tests were implemented to analyze potential differences amongst the variables of this study. Results: There were a total of 42 university track and field sprinters between the age of 18 and 23. The highest participated sports (sum) were track and field sprints (624), soccer (234), hockey (189), and basketball (164). A repeated measure ANOVA revealed a significant decrease in sports participation across all and between each of the three age groups (ages 8 to 13, 14 to 17, and 18+). Sports participation was the highest in the 8 to 13 age group. A bivariate correlation and linear regression analyses showed statistical insignificance between sport participation and perceived athletic competence. There was a low positive, but not statistically significant relationship from the 8 to 13 age group. Lastly, there was a statistically non-significant positive correlation for the first age (8 to 13) group and sprint performance times. Conclusion: The findings of the study contribute to the areas of sport participation, sport specialization, and athlete development by confirming what is already presently known while adding new support for track and field sprinting as a late specialization sport and the need for further analysis and investigation in the future with a more diverse sample and a larger sample size

Investing in Justice: A Literature Review in Support of the Case for Improved Access

The focus of this report is return on investment (ROI) and social return on investment (SROI) research in justice. There is a growing access to justice crisis around the world. Notwithstanding the prevalence of legal problems in everyday life, people do not have adequate access to the justice information, resources and mechanisms that they need to navigate the complexities of law. This gap in access to justice negatively impacts everyone. It also comes with significant costs – to individuals and societies. Complicating this global crisis is a lack of understanding of the nature, extent, costs and potential solutions of and for the access to justice problem. In this report, we examine research on return on investment and social return on investment in justice, two particularly promising areas of study that offer insights on the monetary and non-monetary benefits to individuals, investors and the state of making justice more accessible

Status Report: Working Data Document

In 2013, the Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters ( Action Committee ) published the Access to Civil and Family Justice: A Roadmap for Change report which contains 9 justice development goals that offer a guide for addressing Canada\u27s access to justice challenges. In late 2016 to early 2017, the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice (in support of the Action Committee) conducted the first ever national access to justice development goal survey ( Survey ) in order to measure progress, and to identify gaps, challenges and success in the access to justice work that is being done in Canada

Association between psychotropic drug prescription and suicide rates in Scotland:Population study

Aims and method: Rates of prescriptions of antidepressants and suicide are inversely correlated at an epidemiological level. Less attention has been paid to relationships between other drugs used in mental health and suicide rates. Here we tested relationships between prescriptions of anxiolytics and antipsychotics and suicide rates in Scotland. Results: Suicide rates were inversely correlated with prescriptions of antidepressants and antipsychotics over 14 years (2004–2018), and positively with prescriptions of anxiolytics. Clinical implications: This illustrates the role of medications used in mental health in suicide prevention, and highlights the importance of identifying causal mechanisms that link anxiolytics with suicide

Modelling polarity-driven laminar patterns in bilayer tissues with mixed signalling mechanisms

Recent advances in high-resolution experimental methods have highlighted the significance of cell signal pathway crosstalk and localised signalling activity in the development and disease of numerous biological systems. The investigation of multiple signal pathways often introduces different methods of cell-cell communication, i.e. contact-based or diffusive signalling, which generates both a spatial and temporal dependence on cell behaviours. Motivated by cellular mechanisms that control cell-fate decisions in developing bilayer tissues, we use dynamical systems coupled with multilayer graphs to analyse the role of signalling polarity and pathway crosstalk in fine-grain pattern formation of protein activity. Specifically, we study how multilayer graph edge structures and weights influence the layer-wise (laminar) patterning of cells in bilayer structures, which are commonly found in glandular tissues. We present sufficient conditions for existence, uniqueness and instability of homogeneous cell states in the large-scale spatially discrete dynamical system. Using methods of pattern templating by graph partitioning to generate quotient systems in combination with concepts from monotone dynamical systems, we exploit the extensive dimensionality reduction to provide existence conditions for the polarity required to induce fine-grain laminar patterns with multiple spatially dependent intracellular components. We then explore the spectral links between the quotient and large-scale dynamical systems to extend the laminar patterning criteria from existence to convergence for sufficiently large amounts of cellular polarity in the large-scale dynamical system, independent of spatial dimension and number of cells in the tissue

The Cost of Experiencing Everyday Legal Problems Related to Loss of Employment and Loss of Housing

In 2014, the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice (CFCJ) conducted a national survey to determine the costs, extent and consequences of serious civil and family justice problems experienced by the Canadian public. Findings from the CFCJ’s national “Everyday Legal Problems and the Cost of Justice in Canada” survey (Cost of Justice survey) confirm that civil and family legal problems result in significant monetary costs to the individuals who experience them as well as to the publicly funded services that individuals access for support when dealing with legal problems. With Canadians spending almost as much to resolve their legal problems as they do on food for a year, it is hardly surprising that for many people, the financial burdens associated with experiencing a serious civil or family justice problem cause or contribute to other legal, social, family, health and personal problems . A significant number of Canadians also report losing their job and/or their housing as a direct consequence of one or more legal problems

Structural and wetting properties of nature\u27s finest silks (order Embioptera)

Insects from the order Embioptera (webspinners) spin silk fibres which are less than 200 nm in diameter. In this work, we characterized and compared the diameters of single silk fibres from nine species—Antipaluria urichi, Pararhagadochir trinitatis, Saussurembia calypso, Diradius vandykei, Aposthonia ceylonica, Haploembia solieri, H. tarsalis, Oligotoma nigra and O. saundersii. Silk from seven of these species have not been previously quantified. Our studies cover five of the 10 named taxonomic families and represent about one third of the known taxonomic family-level diversity in the order Embioptera. Naturally spun silk varied in diameter from 43.6 ± 1.7 nm for D. vandykei to 122.4 ± 3.2 nm for An. urichi. Mean fibre diameter did not correlate with adult female body length. Fibre diameter is more similar in closely related species than in more distantly related species. Field observations indicated that silk appears shiny and smooth when exposed to rainwater. We therefore measured contact angles to learn more about interactions between silk and water. Higher contact angles were measured for silks with wider fibre diameter and higher quantity of hydrophobic amino acids. High static contact angles (ranging up to 122° ± 3° for An. urichi) indicated that silken sheets spun by four arboreal, webspinner species were hydrophobic. A second contact angle measurement made on a previously wetted patch of silk resulted in a lower contact angle (average difference was greater than 27°) for all four species. Our studies suggest that silk fibres which had been previously exposed to water exhibited irreversible changes in hydrophobicity and water adhesion properties. Our results are in alignment with the ‘super-pinning’ site hypothesis by Yarger and co-workers to describe the hydrophobic, yet water adhesive, properties exhibited by webspinner silk fibres. The physical and chemical insights gained here may inform the synthesis and development of smaller diameter silk fibres with unique water adhesion properties

Antidepressant use and risk of adverse outcomes in people aged 20–64 years: cohort study using a primary care database

Background: Antidepressants are one of the most commonly prescribed medications in young and middle-aged adults, but there is relatively little information on their safety across a range of adverse outcomes in this age group. This study aimed to assess associations between antidepressant treatment and several adverse outcomes in people aged 20–64 years diagnosed with depression. Methods: We conducted a cohort study in 238,963 patients aged 20–64 years registered with practices across the UK contributing to the QResearch primary care database. Only patients with a first diagnosis of depression were included. Outcomes were falls, fractures, upper gastrointestinal bleed, road traffic accidents, adverse drug reactions and all-cause mortality recorded during follow-up. Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate hazard ratios associated with antidepressant exposure adjusting for potential confounding variables. Results: During 5 years of follow-up, 4651 patients had experienced a fall, 4796 had fractures, 1066 had upper gastrointestinal bleeds, 3690 had road traffic accidents, 1058 had experienced adverse drug reactions, and 3181 patients died. Fracture rates were significantly increased for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (adjusted hazard ratio 1.30, 95% CI 1.21–1.39) and other antidepressants (1.28, 1.11–1.48) compared with periods when antidepressants were not used. All antidepressant drug classes were associated with significantly increased rates of falls. Rates of adverse drug reactions were significantly higher for tricyclic and related antidepressants (1.54, 1.25–1.88) and other antidepressants (1.61, 1.22–2.12) compared with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Trazodone was associated with a significantly increased risk of upper gastrointestinal bleed. All-cause mortality rates were significantly higher for tricyclic and related antidepressants (1.39, 1.22–1.59) and other antidepressants (1.26, 1.08–1.47) than for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors over 5 years but not 1 year, and were significantly reduced after 85 or more days of treatment with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Mirtazapine was associated with significantly increased mortality rates over 1 and 5 years of follow-up. Conclusions: Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors had higher rates of fracture than tricyclic and related antidepressants but lower mortality and adverse drug reaction rates than the other antidepressant drug classes. The association between mirtazapine and increased mortality merits further investigation. These risks should be carefully considered and balanced against potential benefits for individual patients when the decision to prescribe an antidepressant is made