55,308 research outputs found
Interpreting and Implementing the Long Term Athlete Development Model: English Swimming Coachesâ Views on the (Swimming) LTAD in Practice
The LTAD (Long Term Athlete Development) model has come to represent a sports-wide set of principles that significantly influences national sports policy in England. However, little is known about its impact âon the ground.â This study is concerned with how national sporting bodies have adapted the model to their specific requirements and how local interpretation and implementation of this is operationalized and delivered. Interpretation and implementation of the LTAD model used in English swimming was investigated through interviews with six elite and five non-elite swimming coaches in the north of England. While there were concerns with aspects of the Amateur Swimming Association (ASA) regulations governing competition for age-group swimmers, the major concern expressed by participants was with over-emphasizing volumes of training, leading to the neglect of technique
A Laplace Transform Method for Molecular Mass Distribution Calculation from Rheometric Data
Polydisperse linear polymer melts can be microscopically described by the
tube model and fractal reptation dynamics, while on the macroscopic side the
generalized Maxwell model is capable of correctly displaying most of the
rheological behavior. In this paper, a Laplace transform method is derived and
different macroscopic starting points for molecular mass distribution
calculation are compared to a classical light scattering evaluation. The
underlying assumptions comprise the modern understanding on polymer dynamics in
entangled systems but can be stated in a mathematically generalized way. The
resulting method is very easy to use due to its mathematical structure and it
is capable of calculating multimodal molecular mass distributions of linear
polymer melts
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Joined-up food policy? The trials of governance, public policy and the food system
To address the policy malfunctions of the recent past and present, UK food policy needs to link policy areas that in the past have been dealt with in a disparate manner, and to draw on a new ecological public health approach. This will need a shift within the dominant trade liberalizationânational economic competitiveness paradigm that currently informs UK food policy, and the international levels of the EU and the WTO trade rules, and grants the large corporate players in the food system a favoured place at the policyâmaking tables. The contradictions of the food system have wrought crises that have engendered widespread institutional change at all levels of governance. Recent institutional reforms to UK food policy, such as the FSA and DEFRA, reflect a bounded approach to policy integration. Initiatives seeking a more integrated approach to food policy problems, such as the Social Exclusion Unitâs access to shops report, and the Policy Commission on the Future of Food and Farming, can end up confined to a particular policy sector framed by particular interestsâa process of âpolicy confinementâ. However, the UK can learn from the experience of Norway and Finland who have found their own routes to a more joinedâup approach to public health and a sustainable food supply by, for example, introducing a national food policy council to provide integrated policy advice. Also, at the local and community levels in the UK, policy alternatives are being advanced in an ad hoc fashion by local food initiatives. More structuralâlevel interventions at the regional and local governance levels are also needed to address the social dimensions of a sustainable food suppl
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