Methodological Quality and Reporting of Regression Models for Ordinal Responses in Sports Field: A Scoping Review

Treballs Finals de Grau en Estadística UB-UPC, Facultat d'Economia i Empresa (UB) i Facultat de Matemàtiques i Estadística (UPC), Curs: 2022-2023, Tutor: Daniel Fernández Martínez i Martí Casals ToqueroThe integration of statistical methods in sports science has become essential for decision-making in performance analysis, injury prevention, and athlete outcomes. This work presents a scoping review following PRISMA guidelines to explore the application of ordinal regression models in the sports field. A comprehensive search of articles published, until March 4, 2023, identified 34 included studies. This search included widely recognized databases such as Web of Science, PubMed, and specialized journals of sports statistics, such as Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, and Journal of Sports Analytics. The analysis reveals that 26.5% of these articles were published in statistics and sports statistics journals. However, a significant majority (82.4%) of the studies did not provide data and code repositories. Notably, R emerged as the primary software used for analysis in 38.8% of the studies. Football had the highest representation (28.6%), followed by basketball (17.1%). The most commonly reported ordinal model was the proportional odds model (32.3%), followed by the mixed effects proportional odds model (11.8%), while a relevant proportion (29.4%) did not report the model used. Furthermore, 23.5% of articles proposed novel models. Validation test for proportional odds model were not conducted in 53.3% of cases. This review underscores the importance of improved reporting practices, inclusivity in sport representation, and statistical education in advancing sports analytics. In addition to the scoping review, a real case example to demonstrate the application of the proportional odds model and the mixed effects proportional odds model in the sports field is provided. This case example aims to showcase the practical implementation of these statistical methods and their potential impact on decision-making in sports analytics

Extrapolating base-line trunk shrinkage reference equations across olive orchards

preprintMaximum daily trunk shrinkage is a common measurement in irrigation scheduling of fruit trees. But the strong relationship between these measurements and the environment severely limit field applications. Reference baselines are the solution for understanding the influence of environmental conditions. Nevertheless, the extrapolation out of the original conditions is not clear. The aim of this study was to compare several approaches to estimate a reference baseline in an olive orchard where there were no previous data from other seasons. Two orchards, separated 60. m, with different tree density were used. Orchard 1 had greater tree density than orchard 2, though the age and the cultivar were the same. Trunk diameters of both orchards were similar but the crown volume of orchard 2 was slightly lower than orchard 1. The current reference baselines of maximum daily trunk diameter in both orchards were not significantly different between them (p<0.05). In orchard 1, the previous reference baseline was calculated in a 5-year study (the so called multi-seasons approach). The multi-seasons approach was not significantly different in slope but it was in the y-interception to the current reference baselines in both orchards (p<0.05). This approach over-estimated the values in both orchards. Two additional approaches were tested. These latter approaches used data before massive pit hardening to estimate the current reference baseline. One of them used the early data to estimate a complete reference baseline (the so-called early approach). The other (the so-called y-early approach) used the same data only to estimate the y-interception and assumed that the slope was the same as in the multi-seasons approach. The early approach under-estimated the value of maximum daily trunk shrinkage. The early-y approach provided a satisfactory estimation of the reference baseline and improved those obtained with the multi-seasons approach. The limitations and uses in irrigation scheduling are also discussed.MINECO AGL2010-19201-CO4-03AECID D/030431/1

Parental feeding responses to experimental short-term partner removal in a species with male and female brood desertion

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Single-Walled Carbon Nanohorns as Promising Nanotube-Derived Delivery Systems to Treat Cancer

Cancer has become one of the most prevalent diseases worldwide, with increasing incidence in recent years. Current pharmacological strategies are not tissue-specific therapies, which hampers their efficacy and results in toxicity in healthy organs. Carbon-based nanomaterials have emerged as promising nanoplatforms for the development of targeted delivery systems to treat diseased cells. Single-walled carbon nanohorns (SWCNH) are graphene-based horn-shaped nanostructure aggregates with a multitude of versatile features to be considered as suitable nanosystems for targeted drug delivery. They can be easily synthetized and functionalized to acquire the desired physicochemical characteristics, and no toxicological effects have been reported in vivo followed by their administration. This review focuses on the use of SWCNH as drug delivery systems for cancer therapy. Their main applications include their capacity to act as anticancer agents, their use as drug delivery systems for chemotherapeutics, photothermal and photodynamic therapy, gene therapy, and immunosensing. The structure, synthesis, and covalent and non-covalent functionalization of these nanoparticles is also discussed. Although SWCNH are in early preclinical research yet, these nanotube-derived nanostructures demonstrate an interesting versatility pointing them out as promising forthcoming drug delivery systems to target and treat cancer cells

Nanoparticles to Target and Treat Macrophages:The Ockham's Concept?

Nanoparticles are nanomaterials with three external nanoscale dimensions and an average size ranging from 1 to 1000 nm. Nanoparticles have gained notoriety in technological advances due to their tunable physical, chemical, and biological characteristics. However, the administration of functionalized nanoparticles to living beings is still challenging due to the rapid detection and blood and tissue clearance by the mononuclear phagocytic system. The major exponent of this system is the macrophage. Regardless the nanomaterial composition, macrophages can detect and incorporate foreign bodies by phagocytosis. Therefore, the simplest explanation is that any injected nanoparticle will be probably taken up by macrophages. This explains, in part, the natural accumulation of most nanoparticles in the spleen, lymph nodes, and liver (the main organs of the mononuclear phagocytic system). For this reason, recent investigations are devoted to design nanoparticles for specific macrophage targeting in diseased tissues. The aim of this review is to describe current strategies for the design of nanoparticles to target macrophages and to modulate their immunological function involved in different diseases with special emphasis on chronic inflammation, tissue regeneration, and cancer

Identification of the water stress level in olive trees during pit hardening using the trunk growth rate indicator.

Water scarcity is generating an increasing interest in deficit irrigation scheduling. The trunk diameter fluctuations are daily cycles that have been suggested as tools for irrigation scheduling. The trunk growth rate (TGR) was suggested as the best indicator for olive trees during pit hardening. The aim of this work is to clarify how the TGR could be used to identify water stress levels. The experiment was performed during the 2017 season, in a commercial, super-high-density orchard in Carmona (Seville, Spain). Four different irrigation treatments were performed according to midday stem water potential values and TGR. The data obtained were very variable and both indicators presented a wide range of water status throughout the season. The maximum trunk diameter data clearly showed the pattern of the trees water status but the comparison between treatments and the identification of the water stress level was not possible. The average TGR was linked to the midday stem water potential, but with a minimum amount of data. Irrigation scheduling based on the average TGR was difficult because of the great increases in some daily TGR values. For clarity, the pool of data was grouped by midday stem water potential. These water stress levels were characterized using the weekly frequency of TGR values. The increase of water stress reduced the frequency of values between -0.1 and 0.3mm day-1 from 60% to less than 25%. Moderate water stress levels increased the percentage of values lower than -0.3mm day-1 from 7% to 37%. The most severe water stress conditions increased the TGR values between -0.3 and -0.1mm day-1 from 16% up to 22%.IRNASINSTITUTO DE LA GRASACSI

Factors explaining informal linguistic usage among Catalan schoolchildren: initial language, social networks, competence and vehicular language for teaching

The linguistic model of joint teaching in Catalan generally implemented in the school system since 1993 establishes that Catalan is the vehicular language for teaching in Catalonia and seeks to promote the use of Catalan among pupils. However, in contrast to the hopes of some sectors, the adoption of this model has had much less of an effect than expected on interpersonal use among pupils. This article assesses the impact of the adoption of Catalan as the main teaching language on the informal linguistic usages of Catalan school pupils using materials collected in the School and Usage project, which includes declared and experimental data and observations of the linguistic beliefs and behaviour of pupils in the sixth year at primary school in Catalonia. The importance of different variables - the pupils' initial language, the composition of their social networks, the importance of the linguistic environment, their competence in Catalan and Spanish and the school linguistic model - for the configuration of these practices is then analysed