The self-practice of sport psychologists : Do they practice what they preach?

The maturation processes of applied sport psychologists have received little research attention despite trainees and practitioners having often reported experiencing challenging circumstances when working with clients. Within clinical psychology literature the self-practice of cognitive techniques, alongside self-reflection, has been advocated as a means of addressing such circumstances, and as a significant source of experiential learning. The present study sought to identify the possible types of, and purposes for, self-practice amongst twelve UK-based sport psychology practitioners. Thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews indicated all participants engaged in self-practice for reasons such as managing the self, enhancing understanding of intervention, and legitimising intervention. Some participants also described limitations to self-practice. Subsequently, three overriding themes emerged from analysis: a) the professional practise swamp, b) approaches to, and purposes for, self-practice, and, c) limitations of self-practice. It is concluded that self-practice may provide a means of better understanding self-as-person and self-as-practitioner, and the interplay between both, and is recommended as part of on-going practitioner maturationPeer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

A Preliminary Investigation into the Use of Humor in Sport Psychology Practice

‘Creative efforts’, such as the use of humor,have been found to be beneficial to the nurse-patient, teacher-student , and psychologist-patient alliance. Potentially humoruse might benefit the working alliance in applied sport psychology, yet to datethere is limited research. Sportpsychology consultants (n = 55) completedan online survey that explored humor use within their practice. Statisticalanalyses revealed most participants used humor for adaptive purposes such as tofacilitate the working alliance, reinforce knowledge, and create healthylearning environments. Therefore, possible client change is likely to befacilitated by practitioners’ personal qualities and skills such as humor useand humor style. Recommendations are made for sport psychology practitioners inrelation to humor use and further research.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

From Large Urban to Small Rural Schools: An Empirical Study of National Board Certification and Teaching Effectiveness Final Report

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) is a professional organization that provides national certification to teachers who apply for and meet the Board's standards of performance for "accomplished" educators. This study responds to a request from the NBPTS to analyze National Board certification among high school teachers in understudied subject areas and locales to help fill gaps in the research literature. The research team selected two new locales for this analysis, the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the Chicago public schools. Chicago, a racially and ethnically diverse city with a population of more than 2.8 million, has one of the largest urban school districts in the country. Kentucky, by contrast, is a largely rural state with some suburban and urban areas, including the Louisville/Jefferson County metro area, population 750,000. Together, these two locales encompass a full range of public school settings

Using Executive Coaching As A Tool For Personal and Professional Leadership Development Within Business School Education

This paper reflects what has been learned in using Executive Coaching as fill educational method within an Executive MBA program. Students work in a one-on-one coaching relationship throughout the program. This paper presents a rationale for such an educational method, examines the nature of executive coaching, and introduces a model of coaching used in the program. The article provides lessons learned in creating and implementing this executive coaching program as a tool to develop students as leaders. It concludes with some thoughts regarding executive coaching as an educational method for personal and professional leadership development

Constraints on the anisotropy of dark energy

If the equation of state of dark energy is anisotropic there will be additional quadrupole anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background induced by the time dependent anisotropic stress quantified in terms of $\Delta w$. Assuming that the entire amplitude of the observed quadrupole is due to this anisotropy, we conservatively impose a limit of $|\Delta w| < 2.1\times 10^{-4}$ for any value of $w\ge -1$ assuming that $\Omega_{\rm m}<0.5$. This is considerably tighter than that which comes from SNe. Stronger limits, upto a factor of 10, are possible for specific values of $\Omega_{\rm m}$ and $w$. Since we assume this component is uncorrelated with the stochastic component from inflation, we find that both the expectation value and the sample variance are increased. There no improvement in the likelihood of an anomalously low quadrupole as suggested by previous work on an elliptical universe

Volume Weighted Measures of Eternal Inflation in the Bousso-Polchinski Landscape

We consider the cosmological dynamics associated with volume weighted measures of eternal inflation, in the Bousso-Polchinski model of the string theory landscape. We find that this measure predicts that observers are most likely to find themselves in low energy vacua with one flux considerably larger than the rest. Furthermore, it allows for a satisfactory anthropic explanation of the cosmological constant problem by producing a smooth, and approximately constant, distribution of potentially observable values of Lambda. The low energy vacua selected by this measure are often short lived. If we require anthropically acceptable vacua to have a minimum life-time of 10 billion years, then for reasonable parameters a typical observer should expect their vacuum to have a life-time of approximately 12 billion years. This prediction is model dependent, but may point toward a solution to the coincidence problem of cosmology.Comment: 35 pages, 8 figure

Anthropic Distribution for Cosmological Constant and Primordial Density Perturbations

The anthropic principle has been proposed as an explanation for the observed value of the cosmological constant. Here we revisit this proposal by allowing for variation between universes in the amplitude of the scale-invariant primordial cosmological density perturbations. We derive a priori probability distributions for this amplitude from toy inflationary models in which the parameter of the inflaton potential is smoothly distributed over possible universes. We find that for such probability distributions, the likelihood that we live in a typical, anthropically-allowed universe is generally quite small.Comment: 12 pages, 2 tables. v3: Replaced to match published version (minor corrections of form

Genomic analyses of an Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae urinary tract co‐infection using long‐read nanopore sequencing.

Escherichia coli (E.coli) and Klebsiella pneumoniae (K. pneumoniae) isolates presenting with the same antimicrobial susceptibility profile were recovered from the same catheter sample of urine (CSU). Both strains were recovered from a patient with a long-standing indwelling urinary catheter. Each isolate had their DNA extracted following culture. Nanopore long-read sequencing was used to build the plasmids and chromosomes from each strain to closure to discern potential horizontal propagation of resistance-encoding plasmids and the relationship between resistance genes and insertion sequences. Plasmids derived from resistance strains in the urinary microbiota remain poorly characterized. The same 11 antimicrobial resistance (AMR) genes were found in plasmids from each strain. The 185,239-bp FIB(K) pKBM1, from the K. pneumoniae strain additionally encoded the 5 AMR genes: sul2, strA, strB, blaTEM-1B, and blaCTX-M-15. A multimeric array of AMR genes and IS26 insertions sequences were found in the plasmids from both isolates. Both plasmids from each isolate were similar. Horizontal transfer of plasmids, followed by subsequent plasmid rearrangement is likely to have occurred during the course of infection. Furthermore, the resistance region in the plasmids shared similarity against the internationally prevalent plasmid, pKPN3-307_typeA, commonly identified in K. pneumoniae ST307. Biofilm formation in catheterized patients may allow close cell-contact between strains. Horizontal propagation of resistance genes may occur, leading to polymicrobial infections

Silicon redistribution, acid site loss and the formation of a core-shell texture upon steaming SAPO-34 and their impact on catalytic performance in the methanol-to-olefins (MTO) reaction

IBM has received funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC, Centre for Doctoral Training in Critical Resource Catalysis, EP/I017008/1) and Scotland's Chemistry departments (ScotCHEM). IBM also received a scholarship from the SCI and Santander. Johnson Matthey is thanked for in-kind contributions and hosting IBM in their R&D labs. ABN gratefully acknowledges support from the EPSRC (grants EP/L017008/1 and EP/R023751/1). The research data supporting this publication can be accessed at: https://doi.org/10.17630/09ddc03e-f121-4e79-9b55-674f64d9c8c4 [62].SAPO-34 is a commercially-implemented silicoaluminophosphate catalyst for selective high yield production of ethene and propene from methanol, but high temperature regeneration in the presence of steam leads to its deactivation. A comprehensive investigation of the effect of prolonged hydrothermal treatment on the structure and properties of SAPO 34 explains the changes in its catalytic methanol-to-olefins (MTO) performance. Microcrystalline powdered SAPO-34 (ca. 3 µm crystals, Al17.1P15.6Si3.3O72) and two batches of larger single crystals of SAPO-34 of different Si concentration (20-100 µm; Al17.3P14.7Si4.0O72 and Al17.7P12.3Si5.9O72 ) were steamed (pH2O = 0.95 atm) at 873–1023 K for up to 240 h. The acidity (NH3-TPD), crystallinity (PXRD), framework cation environment (solid-state 27Al, 29Si and 31P MAS NMR) and porosity were followed for all materials; larger crystals were amenable to single crystal X-ray diffraction, FIB-SEM and synchrotron IR microspectroscopy, including operando study during methanol and dimethyl ether conversions. Some level of steaming improved the lifetime of all SAPO-34 materials in MTO catalysis without affecting their olefin selectivity, although more severe conditions led to the formation of core-shell structures, microporosity loss and eventually at 1023 K, recrystallization to a dense phase. All these irreversible changes occurred faster in crystals with higher Si contents. The initial increase in catalytic lifetime results from an activated reduction in acid site density (Eact = 146(18) kJ mol⁻1), a result of redistribution of Si within the SAPO framework without porosity loss. Operando IR with online product analysis during methanol conversion suggests similar reaction pathways in calcined and steamed crystals, but with greatly reduced methoxy group densities in the latter. The gradual development of optically dark crystal cores upon progressive steaming was shown by FIB-SEM to be due to the formation of regions with meso- and macropores, and these were shown by IR mapping to possess low hydroxyl densities.PostprintPostprintPeer reviewe