Ncaa Division-I Student Athletes\u27 Lived Experiences of An in-Season Concussion

An estimated 1.6-3.8 million people suffer a concussion annually in the United States. Concussions are becoming an increasingly mainstream topic, especially with the amount coverage of concussions in different media outlets. Furthermore, peers such as athletic trainers, friends, coaches, and parents that may influence their experience of concussions. The purpose of this study was to examine NCAA Division I student-athletes\u27 lived experiences of an in-season concussion. A phenomenological approach was used. The following open-ended question was asked: Can you tell me about your experience of having your most recent concussion? The research participants consisted of 4 in-season collegiate student-athletes, 18-21 years old. The participants were withheld from activity per the institution\u27s concussion policy and interviewed within six months of their return to play. Interviews were tape recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. Pseudonyms were used to ensure participant anonymity and confidentiality. The researcher used triangulation to maintain validity by using member checks, peer reviews, other members of the research team, a bracketing interview. 6 major themes developed from the research including: Focus on Symptoms, Emotional Response to Injury, Experiences of Concussion Testing, Fear of Failing to Meet Teammate Expectations, Support From Friends and Family, and Effect on School. Emotional Response to Injury and Symptoms were the most prevalent themes with their experiences following suit with previous research. Some participants seemed to struggle with schoolwork, which supports the cognitive rest theories that are currently being used to help treat concussions in some areas. Overall concussions are very individualized injuries and athletic trainers should be aware of athletes\u27 personalities and use compassion to help them recover from their concussion

Sub-shot-noise shadow sensing with quantum correlations

The quantised nature of the electromagnetic field sets the classical limit to the sensitivity of position measurements. However, techniques based on the properties of quantum states can be exploited to accurately measure the relative displacement of a physical object beyond this classical limit. In this work, we use a simple scheme based on the split-detection of quantum correlations to measure the position of a shadow at the single-photon light level, with a precision that exceeds the shot-noise limit. This result is obtained by analysing the correlated signals of bi-photon pairs, created in parametric downconversion and detected by an electron multiplying CCD (EMCCD) camera employed as a split-detector. By comparing the measured statistics of spatially anticorrelated and uncorrelated photons we were able to observe a significant noise reduction corresponding to an improvement in position sensitivity of up to 17% (0.8dB). Our straightforward approach to sub-shot-noise position measurement is compatible with conventional shadow-sensing techniques based on the split-detection of light-fields, and yields an improvement that scales favourably with the detector’s quantum efficiency

The Lived Experience of an In-Season Concussion Amongst NCAA Division I Student-Athletes

International Journal of Exercise Science 7(1) : 62-74, 2014. The clinical presentation and recovery from a sports-related concussion has been well-documented in the sports medicine literature; however, the post-injury experience of the injured individual has been largely unexplored. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine collegiate student-athletes’ lived experiences of an in-season concussion. Four NCAA Division I student-athletes who suffered an in-season concussion were interviewed utilizing an existential phenomenological approach to capture the lived experience of the injury. Five major themes developed from the participants’ experiences: 1) symptoms and emotional response to injury, 2) experiences of concussion testing, 3) fear of failing to meet teammate expectations, 4) support from friends and family, and 5) effect on school. These results provide documented evidence of multiple clinical concerns and anecdotal reports of student-athletes unwillingness to report concussion symptoms, potential dishonesty in reporting post-injury symptoms, negative effects on academic performance, challenges of concussion assessment, and the need to monitor student-athletes activity levels outside athletics. The results of this study can help sports medicine clinicians improve their understanding of the injured student-athlete’s perceptions following an in-season concussion

Computational evaluation of the impact of incorporated nitrogen and oxygen heteroatoms on the affinity of polyaromatic ligands for carbon dioxide and methane in metal–organic frameworks

Density functional theory is employed to explore the binding of carbon dioxide and methane in a series of isoreticular metal–organic frameworks, with particular emphasis on understanding the impact of directly incorporated nitrogen and oxygen heteroatoms on the affinity of the ligand for CO2 and CH4. While the strongest binding sites for both CO2 and CH4 were found to be directly above the aromatic rings of the core of the ligand, the introduction of heteroatoms to the core systems was shown to significantly alter both the binding strength and preferred binding locations of CH4 and CO2. The presence of pyrazine rings within the ligand was observed to create new binding sites for both CO2 and CH4 and, in the case of CO2, severely reduce the binding strength or entirely eliminate binding sites that were prominent in the analogous carbocyclic ligands. These results suggest that while the presence of framework nitrogen and oxygen heteroatoms provides a route to ligands with enhanced affinity for methane, a similar increase in affinity for CO2 is not guaranteed

A hydrodynamic model of the west coast of Scotland with coupled sea lice dispersion

In order to assess the risk that wild salmon and sea trout will be harmed by parasitic sea lice emanating salmon farms a three-dimensional hydrodynamic and biological model of the West Coast of Scotland has been developed. The model uses TELEMAC-3D-WAQTEL and the computational domain extends from the Mull of Kintyre in the South to Cape Wrath in the North and includes all main islands of the West Coast. The model was successfully validated against observed hydrographic data (water levels and currents) and was found to provide a reasonable description of salinity and temperature levels. In an integrated biological model, virtual particles were constructed within the framework of the open-source particle-tracking code OpenDrift. These were released at each farm site and allowed to disperse into the marine environment. Each particle is a “super-individual”, representing a number of sea lice larvae. The biological effects of sea lice production, maturity and mortality rates, salinity avoidance, temperature preference and phototactic vertical swimming behaviour (diel migration) were included. Results show that infective lice copepodids accumulate along tidal and salinity fronts, at the mouths of sea lochs and along shorelines, in different places according to the neap/spring tidal cycle and provide an indication of infestation risk to migrating wild fish

Resolution-enhanced quantum imaging by centroid estimation of biphotons

The spatial resolution of an optical system is limited by diffraction. Various schemes have been proposed to achieve resolution enhancement by employing either a scanning source/detector configuration or a two-photon response of the object. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a full-field resolution-enhancing scheme, based on the centroid estimation of spatially quantum-correlated biphotons. Our standard-quantum-limited scheme is able to image a general non-fluorescing object, using low-energy and low-intensity infrared illumination (i.e., with <0.001 photon per pixel per frame at 710 nm), achieving 41% of the theoretically available resolution enhancement. Images of real-world objects are shown for visual comparison, in which the classically bound resolution is surpassed using our technically straightforward quantum-imaging scheme