Preparing athletes and teams for the Olympic Games: experiences and lessons learned from the world's best sport psychologists

As part of an increased effort to understand the most effective ways to psychologically prepare athletes and teams for Olympic competition, a number of sport psychology consultants have offered best-practice insights into working in this context. These individual reports have typically comprised anecdotal reflections of working with particular sports or countries; therefore, a more holistic approach is needed so that developing practitioners can have access to - and utilise - a comprehensive evidence-base. The purpose of this paper is to provide a panel-type article, which offers lessons and advice for the next generation of aspiring practitioners on preparing athletes and teams for the Olympic Games from some of the world’s most recognised and experienced sport psychologists. The sample comprised 15 sport psychology practitioners who, collectively, have accumulated over 200 years of first-hand experience preparing athletes and/or teams from a range of nations for six summer and five winter Olympic Games. Interviews with the participants revealed 28 main themes and 5 categories: Olympic stressors, success and failure lessons, top tips for neophyte practitioners, differences within one’s own consulting work, and multidisciplinary consulting. It is hoped that the findings of this study can help the next generation of sport psychologists better face the realities of Olympic consultancy and plan their own professional development so that, ultimately, their aspirations to be the world’s best can become a reality

Photodissociation of Ozone in the Hartley Band: Potential Energy Surfaces, Nonadiabatic Couplings, and Singlet/Triplet Branching Ratio

The lowest five 1A\u27states of ozone, involved in the photodissociation with UV light, are analyzed on the basis of multireference configuration interaction electronic structure calculations with emphasis on the various avoided crossings in different regions of coordinate space. Global diabatic potential energy surfaces are constructed for the lowest four states termed X, A, B, and R. In addition, the off-diagonal potentials that couple the initially excited state B with states R and A are constructed to reflect results from additional electronic structure calculations, including the calculation of nonadiabatic coupling matrix elements. The A/X and A/R couplings are also considered, although in a less ambitious manner. The photodissociation dynamics are studied by means of trajectory surface hopping (TSH) calculations with the branching ratio between the singlet, O(1D)+O2(1Δg), and triplet, O(3P)+O2(3Σ-g), channels being the main focus. The semiclassical branching ratio agrees well with quantum mechanical results except for wavelengths close to the threshold of the singlet channel. The calculated O(1D) quantum yield is approximately 0.90-0.95 across the main part of the Hartley band, in good agreement with experimental data. TSH calculations including all four states show that transitions B→A are relatively unimportant and subsequent transitions A→X/R to the triplet channel are negligible

Predicting color and short-circuit current of colored BIPV modules

Photovoltaic modules for façade integration should have a widely modifiable appearance to adjust to the architect’s requirements. However, architects today usually have only a limited number of already manufactured samples to choose from. Changing the color will also change the photovoltaic yield. Therefore, it would be helpful to have a procedure that allows us to determine the appearance and expected yield in advance of module fabrication. We present such a method for creating a digital prototype of a colored building integrated photovoltaic module. Using reflectance and external quantum efficiency measurements of eight colored modules, we simulate the appearance and respective energy yield for arbitrary module colors. We validate our predictions for 29 different colored modules. We use textiles that have been colored by printing and laminate them onto the modules to change the appearance of the modules. However, our digital prototyping model is also applicable to other coloring techniques. We achieve an average color difference of ΔE00 = 1.34 between predicted and measured colors, which is barely perceptible to the human eye. The predicted short-circuit current density of the digital prototype deviates on average less than 1% from the measured on

Two-Color Coherent Photodissociation of Nitrogen Oxide in Intense Laser Fields

A simple one-dimensional semi-classical model with a Morse potential is used to investigate the possibility of two-color infrared multi-photon dissociation of vibrationally excited nitrogen oxide. The amplitude ratio effects and adiabatic effects are investigated. Some initial states are found to have thresholds smaller than expected from single-mode considerations and multiple thresholds exist for initial states up to 32. PACS: 42.50.HzComment: 3 pages, old papers, add source files to replace original postscrip

Inter Vivos Transfers of Ownership in Family Firms

This paper examines the determinants of inter vivos (lifetime) transfers of ownership in German family firms between 2000 and 2013. Survey evidence indicates that owners of firms with strong current business conditions transfer ownership at higher rates than others. When a firm’s self-described business condition improves from “normal” to “good,” the relative likelihood of an inter vivos transfer increases by 46 percent. Inter vivos transfer rates also rose following a 2009 reform that reduced transfer taxes. These patterns suggest that transfer taxes significantly influence rates and timing of inter vivos ownership transfers

State-to-State Differential and Relative Integral Cross Sections for Rotationally Inelastic Scattering of H2O by Hydrogen

State-to-state differential cross sections (DCSs) for rotationally inelastic scattering of H2O by H2 have been measured at 71.2 meV (574 cm-1) and 44.8 meV (361 cm-1) collision energy using crossed molecular beams combined with velocity map imaging. A molecular beam containing variable compositions of the (J = 0, 1, 2) rotational states of hydrogen collides with a molecular beam of argon seeded with water vapor that is cooled by supersonic expansion to its lowest para or ortho rotational levels (JKaKc= 000 and 101, respectively). Angular speed distributions of fully specified rotationally excited final states are obtained using velocity map imaging. Relative integral cross sections are obtained by integrating the DCSs taken with the same experimental conditions. Experimental state-specific DCSs are compared with predictions from fully quantum scattering calculations on the most complete H2O-H2 potential energy surface. Comparison of relative total cross sections and state-specific DCSs show excellent agreement with theory in almost all detailsComment: 46 page

Damage estimation of subterranean building constructions due to groundwater inundation – the GIS-based model approach GRUWAD

The analysis and management of flood risk commonly focuses on surface water floods, because these types are often associated with high economic losses due to damage to buildings and settlements. The rising groundwater as a secondary effect of these floods induces additional damage, particularly in the basements of buildings. Mostly, these losses remain underestimated, because they are difficult to assess, especially for the entire building stock of flood-prone urban areas. For this purpose an appropriate methodology has been developed and lead to a groundwater damage simulation model named GRUWAD. The overall methodology combines various engineering and geoinformatic methods to calculate major damage processes by high groundwater levels. It considers a classification of buildings by building types, synthetic depth-damage functions for groundwater inundation as well as the results of a groundwater-flow model. The modular structure of this procedure can be adapted in the level of detail. Hence, the model allows damage calculations from the local to the regional scale. Among others it can be used to prepare risk maps, for ex-ante analysis of future risks, and to simulate the effects of mitigation measures. Therefore, the model is a multifarious tool for determining urban resilience with respect to high groundwater levels

Ultraviolet Photodissociation of OCS: Product Energy and Angular Distributions

The ultraviolet photodissociation of carbonyl sulfide (OCS) was studied using three-dimensional potential energy surfaces and both quantum mechanical dynamics calculations and classical trajectory calculations including surface hopping. The transition dipole moment functions used in an earlier study [J. A. Schmidt, M. S. Johnson, G. C. McBane, and R. Schinke, J. Chem. Phys. 137, 054313 (2012)] were improved with more extensive treatment of excited electronic states. The new functions indicate a much larger contribution from the 1 1A state (1Σ- in linear OCS) than was found in the previous work. The new transition dipole functions yield absorption spectra that agree with experimental data just as well as the earlier ones. The previously reported potential energy surfaces were also empirically modified in the region far from linearity. The resulting product state distributions Pv, j, angular anisotrophy parameters β(j), and carbon monoxide rotational alignment parameters A0(2)(j) agree reasonably well with the experimental results, while those computed from the earlier transition dipole and potential energy functions do not. The higher-j peak in the bimodal rotational distribution is shown to arise from nonadiabatic transitions from state 2 1A\u27 to the OCS ground state late in the dissociation