Second chances: Investigating athletes’ experiences of talent transfer

Talent transfer initiatives seek to transfer talented, mature individuals from one sport to another. Unfortunately talent transfer initiatives seem to lack an evidence-based direction and a rigorous exploration of the mechanisms underpinning the approach. The purpose of this exploratory study was to identify the factors which successfully transferring athletes cite as facilitative of talent transfer. In contrast to the anthropometric and performance variables that underpin current talent transfer initiatives, participants identified a range of psychobehavioral and environmental factors as key to successful transfer. We argue that further research into the mechanisms of talent transfer is needed in order to provide a strong evidence base for the methodologies employed in these initiatives

What are the priority research questions for digital agriculture?

There is a need to identify key existing and emerging issues relevant to digitalisation in agricultural production that would benefit from a stronger evidence base and help steer policy formulation. To address this, a prioritisation exercise was undertaken to identify priority research questions concerning digital agriculture in the UK, but with a view to also informing international contexts. The prioritisation exercise uses an established and effective participatory methodology for capturing and ordering a wide range of views. The method involves identifying a large number of participants and eliciting an initial long list of research questions which is reduced and refined in subsequent voting stages to select the top priorities by theme. Participants were selected using purposive sampling and snowballing to represent a number of sectors, organisations, companies and disciplines across the UK. They were each invited to submit up to 10 questions according to certain criteria, and this resulted in 195 questions from a range of 40 participants (largely from England with some representation from Scotland and Wales). Preliminary analysis and clustering of these questions through iterative analysis identified seven themes as follows: data governance; data management; enabling use of data and technologies; understanding benefits and uptake of data and technologies; optimising data and technologies for performance; impacts of digital agriculture; and new collaborative arrangements. Subsequent stages of voting, using an online ranking exercise and a participant workshop for in-depth discussion, refined the questions to a total of 27 priority research questions categorised into 15 gold, 7 silver and 5 bronze, across the 7 themes. The questions significantly enrich and extend previous clustering and agenda setting using literature sources, and provide a range of new perspectives. The analysis highlights the interconnectedness of themes and questions, and proposes two nexus for future research: the different dimensions of value, and the social and institutional arrangements to support digitalisation in agriculture. These emphasise the importance of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity, and the need to tackle the binary nature of current analytical frames. These new insights are equally relevant to contexts outside the UK. This paper highlights the need for research actions to inform policy, not only instrumentally by strengthening the evidence base, but also conceptually, to prompt new thinking. To our knowledge this methodology has not been previously applied to this topic

Scene: Performance and Ireland

This double issue of Scene is the first special issue of a peer-reviewed international journal since the early 2000s to focus on Performance Studies as it relates to Ireland. It provides a forum for examining a range of artistic practices as well as for studying different indigenous, migrant, and diasporic Irish cultures through the lenses of performance and performativity. Collectively, the articles included here examine the pivotal role that performance has played in constructing and negotiating Irish identities within and beyond the island of Ireland, historically as well as in contemporary life and artistic practice. The scope of this special issue is aligned with the interdisciplinary field of Performance Studies, particularly in relation to visuality, spectacle and display. As such, it also connects with Shannon Jackson’s claim that ‘visual culture seems to require performance for its seeing to be shown’ (Jackson 2005: 164). We have included contributions on regional, national, and international theatre, performance and audio/visual cultures relating to Ireland, in addition to using performance as a frame for examining wider sociocultural and political engagements with Irishness. The fourteen articles included here offer fresh perspectives on the global field of Irish Studies by supplementing the traditional literary leanings of that field with examinations of more ephemeral, experiential and multimedia phenomena. This special issue includes examinations of Ireland and Irishness from the perspectives of performance studies and visual culture and draws attention to ways in which these two fields productively intersect

Performance and Ireland

This double issue of Scene is the first special issue of a peer-reviewed international journal since the early 2000s to focus on Performance Studies as it relates to Ireland. It provides a forum for examining a range of artistic practices as well as for studying different indigenous, migrant, and diasporic Irish cultures through the lenses of performance and performativity. Collectively, the articles included here examine the pivotal role that performance has played in constructing and negotiating Irish identities within and beyond the island of Ireland, historically as well as in contemporary life and artistic practice. The scope of this special issue is aligned with the interdisciplinary field of Performance Studies, particularly in relation to visuality, spectacle and display. As such, it also connects with Shannon Jackson’s claim that ‘visual culture seems to require performance for its seeing to be shown’ (Jackson 2005: 164). We have included contributions on regional, national, and international theatre, performance and audio/visual cultures relating to Ireland, in addition to using performance as a frame for examining wider sociocultural and political engagements with Irishness. The fourteen articles included here offer fresh perspectives on the global field of Irish Studies by supplementing the traditional literary leanings of that field with examinations of more ephemeral, experiential and multimedia phenomena. This special issue includes examinations of Ireland and Irishness from the perspectives of performance studies and visual culture and draws attention to ways in which these two fields productively intersect

Cortical Tracking of Sung Speech in Adults vs Infants: A Developmental Analysis.

Here we duplicate a neural tracking paradigm, previously published with infants (aged 4 to 11 months), with adult participants, in order to explore potential developmental similarities and differences in entrainment. Adults listened and watched passively as nursery rhymes were sung or chanted in infant-directed speech. Whole-head EEG (128 channels) was recorded, and cortical tracking of the sung speech in the delta (0.5-4 Hz), theta (4-8 Hz) and alpha (8-12 Hz) frequency bands was computed using linear decoders (multivariate Temporal Response Function models, mTRFs). Phase-amplitude coupling (PAC) was also computed to assess whether delta and theta phases temporally organize higher-frequency amplitudes for adults in the same pattern as found in the infant brain. Similar to previous infant participants, the adults showed significant cortical tracking of the sung speech in both delta and theta bands. However, the frequencies associated with peaks in stimulus-induced spectral power (PSD) in the two populations were different. PAC was also different in the adults compared to the infants. PAC was stronger for theta- versus delta- driven coupling in adults but was equal for delta- versus theta-driven coupling in infants. Adults also showed a stimulus-induced increase in low alpha power that was absent in infants. This may suggest adult recruitment of other cognitive processes, possibly related to comprehension or attention. The comparative data suggest that while infant and adult brains utilize essentially the same cortical mechanisms to track linguistic input, the operation of and interplay between these mechanisms may change with age and language experience.This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 694786)