1,160 research outputs found
Mental skills training in sprinting
The Science of Sport: Sprinting examines the scientific principles that underpin the preparation and performance of athletics at all levels, from grassroots to Olympic competition. Drawing on the expertise of some of the world's leading coaches and sport science professionals, the book presents a detailed analysis of the latest evidence and explores the ways in which science has influenced, and subsequently improved, the sport of sprinting.
By providing an overview of the principles of sport science and how these are applied in practice, the book is essential reading for students and academics, coaches and performers, physiotherapists, club doctors and professional support staff
Physical literacy: Importance, assessment and future directions
Physical literacy (PL) has become a major focus of physical education, physical activity and sports promotion worldwide. PL is a multifaceted conceptualisation of the skills required to fully realise potentials through embodied experience. Substantial financial investments in PL education by governments are underpinned by a wide range of anticipated benefits, including expectations of significant future savings to healthcare, improved physical and psychological well-being of the population, increased work-force productivity and raised levels of expertise in sport and exercise participation. However, disappointingly, scientific evidence showing the efficacy of PL interventions to successfully meet such high expectation is limited. We suggest that contradictions in research findings are due largely to limitations in movement assessment batteries and consequent discrepancies between measurements used to assess the immediate outcomes of PL programmes. Notably, there is no robust empirical tool for evidencing skill learning in the physical movement component of PL, education and this presents a serious limitation to the design of, and claims that can be made for, such interventions. Considering the parameters of proficient PL skills and the limitations of current evaluation instruments, possible future directions for developing empirical measures of PL movement skills are presented
Singularities of equidistants and global centre symmetry sets of Lagrangian submanifolds
We define the Global Centre Symmetry set (GCS) of a smooth closed
m-dimensional submanifold M of R^n, , which is an affinely invariant
generalization of the centre of a k-sphere in R^{k+1}. The GCS includes both
the centre symmetry set defined by Janeczko and the Wigner caustic defined by
Berry. We develop a new method for studying generic singularities of the GCS
which is suited to the case when M is lagrangian in R^{2m} with canonical
symplectic form. The definition of the GCS, which slightly generalizes one by
Giblin and Zakalyukin, is based on the notion of affine equidistants, so, we
first study singularities of affine equidistants of Lagrangian submanifolds,
classifying all the stable ones. Then, we classify the affine-Lagrangian stable
singularities of the GCS of Lagrangian submanifolds and show that, already for
smooth closed convex curves in R^2, many singularities of the GCS which are
affine stable are not affine-Lagrangian stable.Comment: 26 pages, 2 figure
Development of the Magnetic Excitations of Charge-Stripe Ordered La(2-x)Sr(x)NiO(4) on Doping Towards Checkerboard Charge Order
The magnetic excitation spectrums of charge stripe ordered La(2-x)Sr(x)NiO(4)
x = 0.45 and x = 0.4 were studied by inelastic neutron scattering. We found the
magnetic excitation spectrum of x = 0.45 from the ordered Ni^2+ S = 1 spins to
match that of checkerboard charge ordered La(1.5)Sr(0.5)NiO(4). The distinctive
asymmetry in the magnetic excitations above 40 meV was observed for both doping
levels, but an additional ferromagnetic mode was observed in x = 0.45 and not
in the x = 0.4. We discuss the origin of crossover in the excitation spectrum
between x = 0.45 and x = 0.4 with respect to discommensurations in the charge
stripe structure.Comment: 4 Figures. To be appear in the J. Kor. Phys. Soc. as a proceedings
paper from the ICM 2012 conferenc
Fluctuation spectroscopy as a probe of granular superconducting diamond films
We present resistance versus temperature data for a series of boron-doped
nanocrystalline diamond films whose grain size is varied by changing the film
thickness. Upon extracting the fluctuation conductivity near to the critical
temperature we observe three distinct scaling regions -- 3D intragrain,
quasi-0D, and 3D intergrain -- in confirmation of the prediction of Lerner,
Varlamov and Vinokur. The location of the dimensional crossovers between these
scaling regions allows us to determine the tunnelling energy and the Thouless
energy for each film. This is a demonstration of the use of \emph{fluctuation
spectroscopy} to determine the properties of a superconducting granular system
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