Inter-rater reliability and validity of the Australian football league’s kicking and handball tests

Talent identification tests used at the Australian Football League’s National Draft Combine assess the capacities of ath-letes to compete at a professional level. Tests created for the National Draft Combine are also commonly used for talent identification and athlete development in development path-ways. The skills tests created by the Australian Football League required players to either handball (striking the ball with the hand) or kick to a series of 6 randomly generated targets. Asses-sors subjectively rate each skill execution giving a 0-5 score for each disposal. This study aimed to investigate the inter-rater reliability and validity of the skills tests at an adolescent sub-elite level. Male Australian footballers were recruited from sub-elite adolescent teams (n = 121, age = 15.7 ± 0.3 years, height = 1.77 ± 0.07 m, mass = 69.17 ± 8.08 kg). The coaches (n = 7) of each team were also recruited. Inter-rater reliability was as-sessed using Inter-class correlations (ICC) and Limits of Agreement statistics. Both the kicking (ICC = 0.96, p \u3c .01) and handball tests (ICC = 0.89, p \u3c .01) demonstrated strong relia-bility and acceptable levels of absolute agreement. Content validity was determined by examining the test scores sensitivity to laterality and distance. Concurrent validity was assessed by comparing coaches’ perceptions of skill to actual test outcomes. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) examined the main effect of laterality, with scores on the dominant hand (p = .04) and foot (p \u3c .01) significantly higher compared to the non-dominant side. Follow-up univariate analysis reported signifi-cant differences at every distance in the kicking test. A poor correlation was found between coaches’ perceptions of skill and testing outcomes. The results of this study demonstrate both skill tests demonstrate acceptable inter-rater reliable. Partial content validity was confirmed for the kicking test, however further research is required to confirm validity of the handball test

Using conditional kernel density estimation for wind power density forecasting

Of the various renewable energy resources, wind power is widely recognized as one of the most promising. The management of wind farms and electricity systems can benefit greatly from the availability of estimates of the probability distribution of wind power generation. However, most research has focused on point forecasting of wind power. In this paper, we develop an approach to producing density forecasts for the wind power generated at individual wind farms. Our interest is in intraday data and prediction from 1 to 72 hours ahead. We model wind power in terms of wind speed and wind direction. In this framework, there are two key uncertainties. First, there is the inherent uncertainty in wind speed and direction, and we model this using a bivariate VARMA-GARCH (vector autoregressive moving average-generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic) model, with a Student t distribution, in the Cartesian space of wind speed and direction. Second, there is the stochastic nature of the relationship of wind power to wind speed (described by the power curve), and to wind direction. We model this using conditional kernel density (CKD) estimation, which enables a nonparametric modeling of the conditional density of wind power. Using Monte Carlo simulation of the VARMA-GARCH model and CKD estimation, density forecasts of wind speed and direction are converted to wind power density forecasts. Our work is novel in several respects: previous wind power studies have not modeled a stochastic power curve; to accommodate time evolution in the power curve, we incorporate a time decay factor within the CKD method; and the CKD method is conditional on a density, rather than a single value. The new approach is evaluated using datasets from four Greek wind farms

3–20 GHz GaN MMIC Power Amplifier Design Through a COUT Compensation Strategy

This paper presents the design approach for a compact, single-stage, wideband MMIC power amplifier. A method is proposed to compensate the output capacitance of the active device over a frequency range as wide as possible, with minimum impact on the achievable output power, that leads to a 2- element compensating network. A 3- section transformer is then adopted for a real-to-real transformation. The CW characterization shows output power higher than 32dBm and drain efficiency between 35% and 45%, over a fractional bandwidth of 148%, from 3 GHz to 20 GHz

Monitoring the CMS strip tracker readout system

The CMS Silicon Strip Tracker at the LHC comprises a sensitive area of approximately 200 m2 and 10 million readout channels. Its data acquisition system is based around a custom analogue front-end chip. Both the control and the readout of the front-end electronics are performed by off-detector VME boards in the counting room, which digitise the raw event data and perform zero-suppression and formatting. The data acquisition system uses the CMS online software framework to configure, control and monitor the hardware components and steer the data acquisition. The first data analysis is performed online within the official CMS reconstruction framework, which provides many services, such as distributed analysis, access to geometry and conditions data, and a Data Quality Monitoring tool based on the online physics reconstruction. The data acquisition monitoring of the Strip Tracker uses both the data acquisition and the reconstruction software frameworks in order to provide real-time feedback to shifters on the operational state of the detector, archiving for later analysis and possibly trigger automatic recovery actions in case of errors. Here we review the proposed architecture of the monitoring system and we describe its software components, which are already in place, the various monitoring streams available, and our experiences of operating and monitoring a large-scale system

Data acquisition software for the CMS strip tracker

The CMS silicon strip tracker, providing a sensitive area of approximately 200 m2 and comprising 10 million readout channels, has recently been completed at the tracker integration facility at CERN. The strip tracker community is currently working to develop and integrate the online and offline software frameworks, known as XDAQ and CMSSW respectively, for the purposes of data acquisition and detector commissioning and monitoring. Recent developments have seen the integration of many new services and tools within the online data acquisition system, such as event building, online distributed analysis, an online monitoring framework, and data storage management. We review the various software components that comprise the strip tracker data acquisition system, the software architectures used for stand-alone and global data-taking modes. Our experiences in commissioning and operating one of the largest ever silicon micro-strip tracking systems are also reviewed

A survey of risk tolerance to multiple sclerosis therapies

OBJECTIVE: To determine tolerance to various risk scenarios associated with current multiple sclerosis (MS) therapies. METHODS: People with MS from the North American Research Committee on Multiple Sclerosis Registry\u27s online cohort and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society were invited to complete a questionnaire on tolerance to real-world risks associated with a hypothetical therapy. Multiple risks levels were presented, including skin rash, infection, kidney injury, thyroid injury, liver injury, and progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML). RESULTS: Both PML and kidney injury had the lowest risk tolerance (RT) at 1:1,000,000, and thyroid and infection risks had the highest tolerance at 1:1,000. Men, younger individuals, and participants with greater disability reported a higher tolerance to all risk scenarios. Those who were currently taking an MS therapy reported higher tolerance than those not taking any therapy. Participants taking infusion therapies reported high tolerance to all risks, and those taking injectables reported a lower tolerance. CONCLUSION: People with MS displayed a wide range of RT for MS therapies. Our study identified sex, age, disability, and current disease-modifying therapy use to be associated with RT

Emerging dietary patterns: impact on child health

What we eat today and how we decide to produce sufficient food to meet both demand and nutritional requirements will determine the availability, diversity and quality of diets for future generations. Acceptability and normalisation of new dietary patterns must be prioritised to the same extent as education on environmental sustainability and health, because these are important social levers. They can help to reduce the psychosocial barriers and anxieties often connected to the behaviour changes that are needed to transition away from the traditional Western eating habits that are now increasingly subject to critical scrutiny. Without understanding the motivations and facilitators to change eating habits (and then designing and amplifying solutions which make those changes attractive and compelling in the modern world) positive changes to young people’s health and their environment through better food will not come quickly enough to halt potentially catastrophic consequences for people and planet. Changing consumption is seen by experts as the most powerful lever compared to food waste reduction or more efficient food production methods and technological solutions. There is simply not enough on Earth to sustain the increase of intensification required to continue feeding a global population on its current trajectory with a diet so rich in animal produce. However, radical behaviour modification is challenging and therefore cross-sector, bold and perhaps unorthodox leadership is necessary to inspire alteration in the food system, which will have a knock-on effect in terms of changing food environments and therefore food perceptions, narratives and behaviours. There are no ‘quick fix’ solutions, but what is undeniable is that populations can only make effective shifts in dietary patterns if government and the food industry help them to make those changes. This requires budgetary investment in public health information and the implementation of policies that promote ways to eat healthily that are also affordable and environmentally sustainable. The aim is to offer food that tastes as good as it can be made to look so that uptake is maximised and the benefits are cumulative. The inevitable upheaval incurred by making any alteration to entrenched patterns of consumption that have been centuries in the making should not be underestimated, but carrying on as before is no longer credible nor desirable. The aim is to offer ‘nutritious’ food. ‘If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon’ Sir David Attenborough. This Report is our initial contribution to a conversation that has only just begun.It is unlikely to be the last

Antimicrobial Footprints, Fairness, and Collective Harm

This chapter explores the question of whether or not individual agents are under a moral obligation to reduce their ‘antimicrobial footprint’. An agent’s antimicrobial footprint measures the extent to which her actions are causally linked to the use of antibiotics. As such, it is not necessarily a measure of her contribution to antimicrobial resistance. Talking about people’s antimicrobial footprint in a way we talk about our carbon footprint may be helpful for drawing attention to the global effects of individual behaviour and for highlighting that our choices can collectively make a real difference. But can we be morally obligated to make a contribution to resolving a collective action problem when our individual contributions by themselves make no discernible difference? I will focus on two lines of argument in favour of such obligations: whether a failure to reduce one’s antimicrobial footprint is unfair and whether it constitutes wrongdoing because it is harmful. I conclude by suggesting that the argument from collective harm is ultimately more successful