Sports Talent vs. Giftedness

Na sportovní talent a nadání je v České republice tradičně nahlíženo jako na statické atributy. Jsou považovány za souhrn vloh uplatňovaných v konkrétní sportovní disciplíně, když za talent je považována vyšší míra predispozic oproti nadání. V textu je toto tradiční pojetí porovnáváno s dynamickými přístupy uplatňovanými v psychologii a sportovní psychologii, především pak s Diferencovaným modelem talentu a nadání Gagného a Emergeneticko-epigenetickým modelem vývoje talentu Simontona. Je vytvořená nová definice termínů, kdy jsou považovány za synonyma. Formuje se tak podklad pro multidisciplinární, holistický přístup pro identifikaci sportovního talentu a jeho rozvoj.Czech kinanthropology views sports talent and giftedness as static attributes. They are considered to be a sum of predispositions within a specific sport discipline. Talent, in contrast to giftedness, denotes predispositions of a higher quality, with physical abilities playing only a minor role in both of them. This paper compares this conventional interpretation with dynamic approaches utilised in psychology and sport psychology, primarily with Gagné’s Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent and Simonton’s Emergenetic and Epigenetic Model of Talent. A new definition of terms is proposed where talent and giftedness are regarded as synonyms with appropriate physical abilities as their significant constituents. A base for a multidisciplinary holistic approach to sports talent identification and its development is thus being formed

Mental Skills Among Czech Athletes: Validation Of The Czech Version Of OMSAT-3* Questionnaire

Ottawský dotazník mentálních dovedností ve sportu (Ottawa Mental Skills Assessment Tool, OMSAT-3*, Durand-Bush, Salmela, & Green-Demers, 2001) je diagnostický nástroj, který se ve světě hojně využívá k posouzení kvality mentálních dovedností profesionálních i amatérských sportovců. Článek se zabývá vznikem české verze. OMSAT-3* obsahuje celkem čtyřicet osm otázek. Zaměřují se na dvanáct mentálních dovedností rozdělených do tří skupin – základní dovednosti (sebedůvěra, odhodlání a stanovování cílů), psycho-somatické dovednosti (reakce na stres, zvládání strachu, relaxace a aktivace) a kognitivní dovednosti (zaměření pozornosti, opětovné zaměření pozornosti, imaginace, mentální trénink a plánování soutěže či zápasu). Česká verze dotazníku byla verifikovaná na sportovcích (n – 254) ve věkovém rozmezí 11–42 let, kteří byli zaměřeni na 26 sportovních disciplín a měli různou výkonnostní úroveň. Reliabilita škál byla potvrzena u stanovování cílů, sebedůvěry, odhodlání, aktivace, zaměření pozornosti, plánování soutěže a mentálního tréninku. U sportovně zkušenějších jedinců byla prokázána reliabilita škály i v případě reakce na stres. Zbývající dimenze (relaxace, zvládání strachu, imaginace a opětovné zaměření pozornosti) vykázaly příliš nízkou vnitřní konzistenci. Validita české verze kanadského dotazníku ani jeho faktorová struktura tak nebyla potvrzena. Na základě rozboru nedostatků posuzovaného překladu byl navržen upravený OMSAT-3* – modifikovaná verze.The Ottawa Mental Skills Assessment Tool, OMSAT-3*, (Durand-Bush, N., Salmela, J. H., & GreenDemers, I., 2001) is a dialogic tool used all around the world to assess the quality of mental skills of both professional and amateur athletes. This article deals with the translation and formation of a Czech version. It analyses the findings related to sports talent with an emphasis on sports talent identification and mental skills. OMSAT-3* is comprised of forty-eight questions. The questionnaire focuses on twelve psychological characteristics of mental skills, which are divided into three groups – Foundation skills (self-confidence, commitment and goal-setting), Psychosomatic skills (stress control, fear control, relaxation and activation) and Cognitive skills (focusing, refocusing, imagery, mental practise and competition planning). The Czech version of the questionnaire was administrated to athletes (n-254) aged between 11 and 42 years from 26 sport disciplines of various performance levels. The scale of reliability was verified in goal-setting, self-confidence, commitment, activation, focusing, competition planning and mental practise, with population more experienced in sport also in stress control. The remaining dimensions (relaxation, fear control, imagery and refocusing) show reduced internal consistency. Neither the validity of the Czech version of the questionnaire nor its factor structure were therefore confirmed. Based on an analysis of the translation deficiencies, a new Czech version of the OMSAT-3* questionnaire was created

Cell segmentation methods for label-free contrast microscopy: review and comprehensive comparison

Because of its non-destructive nature, label-free imaging is an important strategy for studying biological processes. However, routine microscopic techniques like phase contrast or DIC suffer from shadow-cast artifacts making automatic segmentation challenging. The aim of this study was to compare the segmentation efficacy of published steps of segmentation work-flow (image reconstruction, foreground segmentation, cell detection (seed-point extraction) and cell (instance) segmentation) on a dataset of the same cells from multiple contrast microscopic modalities

Quantitative Phase Dynamics of Cancer Cell Populations Affected by Blue Light

Increased exposition to blue light may induce many changes in cell behavior and significantly affect the critical characteristics of cells. Here we show that multimodal holographic microscopy (MHM) within advanced image analysis is capable of correctly distinguishing between changes in cell motility, cell dry mass, cell density, and cell death induced by blue light. We focused on the effect of blue light with a wavelength of 485 nm on morphological and dynamical parameters of four cell lines, malignant PC-3, A2780, G361 cell lines, and the benign PNT1A cell line. We used MHM with blue light doses 24 mJ/cm2, 208 mJ/cm2 and two kinds of expositions (500 and 1000 ms) to acquire real-time quantitative phase information about cellular parameters. It has been shown that specific doses of the blue light significantly influence cell motility, cell dry mass and cell density. These changes were often specific for the malignant status of tested cells. Blue light dose 208 mJ/cm2 × 1000 ms affected malignant cell motility but did not change the motility of benign cell line PNT1A. This light dose also significantly decreased proliferation activity in all tested cell lines but was not so deleterious for benign cell line PNT1A as for malignant cells. Light dose 208 mJ/cm2 × 1000 ms oppositely affected cell mass in A2780 and PC-3 cells and induced different types of cell death in A2780 and G361 cell lines. Cells obtained the least damage on lower doses of light with shorter time of exposition

Autophagy modulators influence the content of important signalling molecules in PS-positive extracellular vesicles

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are important mediators of intercellular communication in the tumour microenvironment. Many studies suggest that cancer cells release higher amounts of EVs exposing phosphatidylserine (PS) at the surface. There are lots of interconnections between EVs biogenesis and autophagy machinery. Modulation of autophagy can probably affect not only the quantity of EVs but also their content, which can deeply influence the resulting pro-tumourigenic or anticancer effect of autophagy modulators. In this study, we found that autophagy modulators autophinib, CPD18, EACC, bafilomycin A1 (BAFA1), 3-hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), rapamycin, NVP-BEZ235, Torin1, and starvation significantly alter the composition of the protein content of phosphatidylserine-positive EVs (PS-EVs) produced by cancer cells. The greatest impact had HCQ, BAFA1, CPD18, and starvation. The most abundant proteins in PS-EVs were proteins typical for extracellular exosomes, cytosol, cytoplasm, and cell surface involved in cell adhesion and angiogenesis. PS-EVs protein content involved mitochondrial proteins and signalling molecules such as SQSTM1 and TGF ss 1 pro-protein. Interestingly, PS-EVs contained no commonly determined cytokines, such as IL-6, IL-8, GRO-a, MCP-1, RANTES, and GM-CSF, which indicates that secretion of these cytokines is not predominantly mediated through PS-EVs. Nevertheless, the altered protein content of PS-EVs can still participate in the modulation of the fibroblast metabolism and phenotype as p21 was accumulated in fibroblasts influenced by EVs derived from CPD18-treated FaDu cells. The altered protein content of PS-EVs (data are available via ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD037164) also provides information about the cellular compartments and processes that are affected by the applied autophagy modulators

Cisplatin enhances cell stiffness and decreases invasiveness rate in prostate cancer cells by actin accumulation

We focused on the biomechanical and morphological characteristics of prostate cancer cells and their changes resulting from the effect of docetaxel, cisplatin, and long-term zinc supplementation. Cell population surviving the treatment was characterized as follows: cell stiffness was assessed by atomic force microscopy, cell motility and invasion capacity were determined by colony forming assay, wound healing assay, coherence-controlled holographic microscopy, and real-time cell analysis. Cells of metastatic origin exhibited lower height than cells derived from the primary tumour. Cell dry mass and CAV1 gene expression followed similar trends as cell stiffness. Docetaxel- and cisplatin-surviving cells had higher stiffness, and decreased motility and invasive potential as compared to non-treated cells. This effect was not observed in zinc(II)-treated cells. We presume that cell stiffness changes may represent an important overlooked effect of cisplatin-based anti-cancer drugs. Atomic force microscopy and confocal microscopy data images used in our study are available for download in the Zenodo repository (https://zenodo.org/, Digital Object Identifiers:10.5281/zenodo.1494935)

Assessment of retinal vein pulsation through video-ophthalmoscopy and simultaneous biosignals acquisition

The phenomenon of retinal vein pulsation is still not a deeply understood topic in retinal hemodynamics. In this paper, we present a novel hardware solution for recording retinal video sequences and physiological signals using synchronized acquisition, we apply the photoplethysmographic principle for the semi-automatic processing of retinal video sequences and we analyse the timing of the vein collapse within the cardiac cycle using of an electrocardiographic signal (ECG). We measured the left eyes of healthy subjects and determined the phases of vein collapse within the cardiac cycle using a principle of photoplethysmography and a semi-automatic image processing approach. We found that the time to vein collapse (Tvc) is between 60ms and 220ms after the R-wave of the ECG signal, which corresponds to 6% to 28% of the cardiac cycle. We found no correlation between Tvc and the duration of the cardiac cycle and only a weak correlation between Tvc and age (0.37, p=0.20), and Tvc and systolic blood pressure (-0.33, p=0.25). The Tvc values are comparable to those of previously published papers and can contribute to the studies that analyze vein pulsations

Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Kinanthropology

Proceedings of the 12th Conference of Sport and Quality of Life 2019 gatheres submissions of participants of the conference. Every submission is the result of positive evaluation by reviewers from the corresponding field. Conference is divided into sections – Analysis of human movement; Sport training, nutrition and regeneration; Sport and social sciences; Active ageing and sarcopenia; Strength and conditioning training; section for PhD students

Self-confidence, commitment and goal-setting in Czech athletes at different performance levels

Background: Numerous studies rank self-confidence, commitment and goal-setting among the foundation mental skills in athletes, conditioning the development of elite performance and also contributing to achieving first rate results during competition. Their quality is, therefore, essential for top performance. Objective: The goal of this study is a comparison of self-confidence, commitment and goal-setting in Czech athletes performing at different performance levels. The secondary aim is to compare the values gathered in Canadian and Czech populations. Methods: The Czech version of the OMSAT-3* questionnaire was distributed to 241 athletes at regional (n = 63), national (n = 115) and international levels (n = 63). Only the part of the questionnaire focusing on the selected mental skills (3 out of 12 scales) was used. Subsequently, the data were compared with the Canadian population (N = 335) used for standardization of the original questionnaire. Results: The values among Czech athletes manifest that the differences in mean values is statistically significant in all mental skills (goal-setting p = .03, self-confidence p < .01, commitment p = .03). Differences among groups dependent on the current level of performance are significantly higher in goal-setting (p = .05, d = 0.46) self-confidence (p < .01, d = 0.63), and commitment (p < .01, d = 0.55) of athletes at international level compared to regional level and in self-confidence (p < .01, d = 0.46) and commitment (p < .01, d = 0.49) of athletes at national level compared to regional level. There is no significant difference among national and international athletes. Canadian respondents show statistically significant higher mean values than Czech athletes in all selected mental skills. Conclusions: The level of self-confidence, goal-setting, and commitment in Czech athletes differs according to performance level. Czech athletes show lower values in all mental skills considered compared to the Canadian sample