EXPLORING WOMEN ATHLETES’ SELF-COMPASSION, SPORT PERFORMANCE PERCEPTIONS, AND WELL-BEING ACROSS THE COMPETITIVE SEASON: A MIXED METHODS APPROACH

Self-compassion is an adaptive self-attitude that can directly help people during difficult and challenging times (Neff, 2003a, 2003b, 2011). Within sport, self-compassion has been noted as a resource for women athletes when facing challenges and emotionally difficult experiences, while promoting psychological well-being (e.g., Ferguson, Kowalski, Mack, & Sabiston, 2014, 2015; Mosewich, Ferguson, McHugh, & Kowalski, 2019). Challenges women face in sport related to performance perceptions, body-related well-being, and eudaimonic well-being are often associated with self-criticism, evaluation, focus on competition outcomes, and social comparison (e.g., Gordon & LeBeouf, 2015), which have the potential to detract from athletes’ experiences. However, the role of self-compassion in women athletes’ sport performance perceptions and well-being over a competitive season has not been explored. To address these gaps in the literature, the purpose of this sequential explanatory mixed methods (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018) program was to explore and describe the role of self-compassion in women athletes’ sport performance perceptions, eudaimonic well-being, and body-related well-being over a competitive sport season. The first study in this research program was a quantitative pre-post competition design. The purpose of Study 1 was to explore if self-compassion is related to, and explains unique variance beyond self-criticism on, young women athletes’ sport performance perceptions before and after a regular season competition. Study 1 included 82 women athletes who completed two survey packages within 5 days of a regular season competition (one pre- and one post-competition). The results highlighted that self-compassion was positively related to sport performance perceptions (rs = .21, p < .05 and .29, p < .01) and contributed between 3.4% and 8.1% unique variance in performance perceptions beyond self-criticism. Further, self-criticism was negatively related to one sport performance perception measure (r = -.24, p < .05). Expanding on Study 1, Study 2 was a quantitative longitudinal multilevel measurement burst design, and the purpose was to examine women athletes’ self-compassion, sport performance perceptions, eudaimonic well-being, and body-related well-being at multiple time points across a regular competitive sport season. Study 2 included 120 women athletes who completed a series of questionnaire packages distributed across their regular competitive season. Study hypotheses were examined through correlation, regression, latent growth curve model, and multilevel model analyses. Self-compassion was positively correlated with measures of sport performance perceptions (rs = .17 to .87, ps = .07 to < .001) and measures of well-being (rs = .16 to .82, ps = .05 to < .001). Self-compassion contributed unique variance beyond self-criticism in measures of sport performance perceptions (R2s = .04 to .68, ps = .09 to < .001) and measures of well-being (R2s = .03 to .67, ps = .09 to < .001). Further, self-compassion and some well-being measures, including meaning, vitality, and body appreciation were stable over time (not significant slope), while global sport performance perceptions, and well-being measures, including autonomy and relatedness, mastery, intuitive eating, and self-criticism varied over time (significant slope; slopes ranged from -.19 to .04, ps = .07 to < .001). Study 3 was a qualitative pre-post competition design and the purpose was to explore and describe the role of self-compassion in women athletes’ sport performance perceptions and well-being within the context of an athlete-identified important competitive event. This collective case study included nine women athletes who completed pre- and post-competition interviews (up to 5 days before/after). The data was represented through a holistic case description and themes. The holistic case description highlights the temporal and contextual processes through the Preparing, Competing, and Reflecting stages of the athlete-identified important competitive events. The overarching theme Continuing to Excel in Sport and the two sub-themes (a) Re-framing Criticism and (b) A Determined Approach together describe how the athletes benefited from self-compassionate perspectives in their important competitive events. The results highlight that women athletes utilize self-compassion to promote their sport performance perceptions and well-being in a variety of contexts and ways to excel in sport. Together the studies highlight that (a) self-compassion is related to sport performance perceptions, eudaimonic well-being, and body-related well-being, (b) self-compassion contributes unique variance beyond self-criticism in athletes’ sport performance perceptions, eudaimonic well-being, and body-related well-being, (c) self-compassion plays a facilitating and protective role in women athletes’ sport performance perceptions, eudaimonic well-being, and body-related well-being, (d) that self-compassion is stable across the regular competitive season, and (e) that women athletes describe self-compassion as both protective and facilitative in competitive contexts

Aligned Multi-Task Gaussian Process

Multi-task learning requires accurate identification of the correlations between tasks. In real-world time-series, tasks are rarely perfectly temporally aligned; traditional multi-task models do not account for this and subsequent errors in correlation estimation will result in poor predictive performance and uncertainty quantification. We introduce a method that automatically accounts for temporal misalignment in a unified generative model that improves predictive performance. Our method uses Gaussian processes (GPs) to model the correlations both within and between the tasks. Building on the previous work by Kazlauskaiteet al. [2019], we include a separate monotonic warp of the input data to model temporal misalignment. In contrast to previous work, we formulate a lower bound that accounts for uncertainty in both the estimates of the warping process and the underlying functions. Also, our new take on a monotonic stochastic process, with efficient path-wise sampling for the warp functions, allows us to perform full Bayesian inference in the model rather than MAP estimates. Missing data experiments, on synthetic and real time-series, demonstrate the advantages of accounting for misalignments (vs standard unaligned method) as well as modelling the uncertainty in the warping process(vs baseline MAP alignment approach)

30 days wild: development and evaluation of a large-scale nature engagement campaign to improve well-being

There is a need to increase people’s engagement with and connection to nature, both for human well-being and the conservation of nature itself. In order to suggest ways for people to engage with nature and create a wider social context to normalise nature engagement, The Wildlife Trusts developed a mass engagement campaign, 30 Days Wild. The campaign asked people to engage with nature every day for a month. 12,400 people signed up for 30 Days Wild via an online sign-up with an estimated 18,500 taking part overall, resulting in an estimated 300,000 engagements with nature by participants. Samples of those taking part were found to have sustained increases in happiness, health, connection to nature and pro-nature behaviours. With the improvement in health being predicted by the improvement in happiness, this relationship was mediated by the change in connection to nature

Daily life stress and the cortisol awakening response : testing the anticipation hypothesis

Acknowledgments We thank Paul Stewart for his contribution to data collection and Dr Matthew Jones for programming the handheld computers. Author Contributions Conceived and designed the experiments: WS DJP. Performed the experiments: DJP. Analyzed the data: WS. Wrote the paper: WS DJP.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Development and initial validation of the bronchiectasis exacerbation and symptom tool (BEST)

BACKGROUND: Recurrent bronchiectasis exacerbations are related to deterioration of lung function, progression of the disease, impairment of quality of life, and to an increased mortality. Improved detection of exacerbations has been accomplished in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease through the use of patient completed diaries. These tools may enhance exacerbation reporting and identification. The aim of this study was to develop a novel symptom diary for bronchiectasis symptom burden and detection of exacerbations, named the BEST diary. METHODS: Prospective observational study of patients with bronchiectasis conducted at Ninewells Hospital, Dundee. We included patients with confirmed bronchiectasis by computed tomography, who were symptomatic and had at least 1 documented exacerbation of bronchiectasis in the previous 12\u2009months to participate. Symptoms were recorded daily in a diary incorporating cough, sputum volume, sputum colour, dyspnoea, fatigue and systemic disturbance scored from 0 to 26. RESULTS: Twenty-one patients were included in the study. We identified 29 reported (treated exacerbations) and 23 unreported (untreated) exacerbations over 6-month follow-up. The BEST diary score showed a good correlation with the established and validated questionnaires and measures of health status (COPD Assessment Test, r =\u20090.61, p =\u20090.0037, Leicester Cough Questionnaire, r =\u2009-\u20090.52,p =\u20090.0015, St Georges Respiratory Questionnaire, r =\u20090.61,p &lt;\u20090.0001 and 6\u2009min walk test, r =\u2009-\u20090.46,p =\u20090.037). The mean BEST score at baseline was 7.1 points (SD 2.2). The peak symptom score during exacerbation was a mean of 16.4 (3.1), and the change from baseline to exacerbation was a mean of 9.1 points (SD 2.5). Mean duration of exacerbations based on time for a return to baseline symptoms was 15.3\u2009days (SD 5.7). A minimum clinically important difference of 4 points is proposed. CONCLUSIONS: The BEST symptom diary has shown concurrent validity with current health questionnaires and is responsive at onset and recovery from exacerbation. The BEST diary may be useful to detect and characterise exacerbations in bronchiectasis clinical trials

Exciton entanglement in two coupled semiconductor microcrystallites

Entanglement of the excitonic states in the system of two coupled semiconductor microcrystallites, whose sizes are much larger than the Bohr radius of exciton in bulk semiconductor but smaller than the relevant optical wavelength, is quantified in terms of the entropy of entanglement. It is observed that the nonlinear interaction between excitons increases the maximum values of the entropy of the entanglement more than that of the linear coupling model. Therefore, a system of two coupled microcrystallites can be used as a good source of entanglement with fixed exciton number. The relationship between the entropy of the entanglement and the population imbalance of two microcrystallites is numerically shown and the uppermost envelope function for them is estimated by applying the Jaynes principle.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figure

Measurement of cortisol in saliva: a comparison of measurement error within and between international academic-research laboratories

Objective: Hundreds of scientific publications are produced annually that involve the measurement of cortisol in saliva. Intra- and inter-laboratory variation in salivary cortisol results has the potential to contribute to cross- study inconsistencies in findings, and the perception that salivary cortisol results are unreliable. This study rigor- ously estimates sources of measurement variability in the assay of salivary cortisol within and between established international academic-based laboratories that specialize in saliva analyses. One hundred young adults (Mean age: 23.10 years; 62 females) donated 2 mL of whole saliva by passive drool. Each sample was split into multiple- 100 µL aliquots and immediately frozen. One aliquot of each of the 100 participants’ saliva was transported to academic laboratories (N = 9) in the United States, Canada, UK, and Germany and assayed for cortisol by the same commercially available immunoassay. Results: 1.76% of the variance in salivary cortisol levels was attributable to differences between duplicate assays of the same sample within laboratories, 7.93% of the variance was associated with differences between laboratories, and 90.31% to differences between samples. In established-qualified laboratories, measurement error of salivary cortisol is minimal, and inter-laboratory differences in measurement are unlikely to have a major influence on the determined values

Supersymmetric mass spectra and the seesaw type-I scale

We calculate supersymmetric mass spectra with cMSSM boundary conditions and a type-I seesaw mechanism added to explain current neutrino data. Using published, estimated errors on SUSY mass observables for a combined LHC+ILC analysis, we perform a theoretical $\chi^2$ analysis to identify parameter regions where pure cMSSM and cMSSM plus seesaw type-I might be distinguishable with LHC+ILC data. The most important observables are determined to be the (left) smuon and selectron masses and the splitting between them, respectively. Splitting in the (left) smuon and selectrons is tiny in most of cMSSM parameter space, but can be quite sizeable for large values of the seesaw scale, $m_{SS}$. Thus, for very roughly $m_{SS} \ge 10^{14}$ GeV hints for type-I seesaw might appear in SUSY mass measurements. Since our numerical results depend sensitively on forecasted error bars, we discuss in some detail the accuracies, which need to be achieved, before a realistic analysis searching for signs of type-I seesaw in SUSY spectra can be carried out.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figure

Characterization of sclerostin’s response within white adipose tissue to an obesogenic diet at rest and in response to acute exercise in male mice

This study examined the effect of a high-fat diet (HFD) on sclerostin content within subcutaneous inguinal visceral white adipose tissue (iWAT), and visceral epididymal WAT (eWAT) depots at rest and in response to acute aerobic exercise. Male C57BL/6 mice (n=40, 18 weeks of age) underwent 10 weeks of either a low-fat diet (LFD) or HFD. Within each diet group, mice were assigned to either remain sedentary (SED) or perform 2h of endurance treadmill exercise at 15 m·min-1 with 5° incline (EX), creating 4 groups: LFD+SED (N=10), LFD+EX (N=10), HFD+SED (N=10), and HFD+EX (N=10). Serum and WAT depots were collected 2h post-exercise. Serum sclerostin showed a diet-by-exercise interaction, reflecting HFD+EX mice having higher concentration than HFD-SED (+31%, p=0.03), and LFD mice being unresponsive to exercise. iWAT sclerostin content decreased post-exercise in both 28 kDa (-31%, p=0.04) and 30 kDa bands (-36%, main effect for exercise, p=0.02). iWAT b-catenin (+44%, p=0.03) and GSK3b content were elevated in HFD mice compared to LFD (+128%, main effect for diet, p=0.005). Monomeric sclerostin content was abolished in eWAT of HFD mice (-96%, main effect for diet, p<0.0001), was only detectable as a 30 kDa band in LFD mice and was unresponsive to exercise. b-catenin and GSK3b were both unresponsive to diet and exercise within eWAT. These results characterized sclerostin’s mobilization to WAT depots in response to acute exercise, which appears to be specific to a reduction in iWAT and identified a differential regulation of sclerostin’s form/post-translational modifications depending on diet and WAT depot.This research was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC grant to P. Klentrou # 2020-00014). N. Kurgan, B. Baranowski and Joshua Stoikos hold NSERC doctoral scholarships

Bridging flavour violation and leptogenesis in SU(3) family models

We reconsider basic, in the sense of minimal field content, Pati-Salam x SU(3) family models which make use of the Type I see-saw mechanism to reproduce the observed mixing and mass spectrum in the neutrino sector. The goal of this is to achieve the observed baryon asymmetry through the thermal decay of the lightest right-handed neutrino and at the same time to be consistent with the expected experimental lepton flavour violation sensitivity. This kind of models have been previously considered but it was not possible to achieve a compatibility among all of the ingredients mentioned above. We describe then how different SU(3) messengers, the heavy fields that decouple and produce the right form of the Yukawa couplings together with the scalars breaking the SU(3) symmetry, can lead to different Yukawa couplings. This in turn implies different consequences for flavour violation couplings and conditions for realizing the right amount of baryon asymmetry through the decay of the lightest right-handed neutrino. Also a highlight of the present work is a new fit of the Yukawa textures traditionally embedded in SU(3) family models.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figures, Some typos correcte