Banned, Black, And Barnstorming: How Traveling Black Teams In The Great Depression Changed Kansas

In the 1870s and early 1880s, almost seventy African American men played for white owned ball clubs. By 1890, White owners reached an unwritten agreement to prevent African Americans from playing with white baseball players. Not until April 15, 1947, when Jackie Robinson took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers did a black baseball player play professionally with white players. It took the general manager of the Dodgers, Branch Ricky, almost a decade to get Robinson in a big league uniform. This meant for nearly sixty years, African Americans had to play separately. Before the creation of the Negro National League (NNL) in 1920, a few black businessmen attempted to create a baseball league for the country’s black population. In 1910, Beauregard Mosley sought to create the National Negro Baseball League (NNBL) with franchises in cities like Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City. The league would divide profits by giving the winner fifty percent, the loser thirty percent, and the owners twenty percent of the ticket sales. The league would employ its own umpires, with African Americans making up fifty percent. However, the NNBL never played a game. For the NNL, almost none of the owners found anyone willing to back a professional black league. The NNL had sparse attendance was sparse in many of the cities and advertising was difficult to obtain for black teams. Since many of the stadiums sat in dangerous parts of town, fewer people came out to watch games. The Kansas City Monarchs became the exception for league teams. They tended to draw more than any other NNL team, and often outsold white baseball games in the region. Several times clubs appeared and disappeared within a year. In Cleveland, between 1922 and 1933, they had seven different clubs in the NNL. Since owners often underpaid players, teams lost players every year. Players went to the team offered them the most money. This movement of players meant teams could fold because they could not field a proper club. This era was the golden age of barnstorming teams. Since the Depression left many in the cities without disposable incomes, black teams took to the road. Only the state of Kansas allowed games between blacks and whites in the 1920s and 1930s. These tours included teams such as the Kansas City Monarchs and the Kansas City Colored Clowns, to teams referred to as only the “colored boys.” Baseball teams traveled all across the state to play. Kansas even allowed interracial games and eventually an interracial team well before the rest of the country. Many Kansas demonstrated more progressive attitudes with regards to race relations, though segregation and racial animosity still played a daily role in black players’ lives

Prediction of Lower Extremity Movement by Cyclograms

Human gait is nowadays undergoing extensive analysis. Predictions of leg movements can be used for orthosis and prosthesis programming, and also for rehabilitation. Our work focuses on predicting human gait with the use of angle-angle diagrams, also called cyclograms. In conjunction with artificial intelligence, cyclograms offer a wide area of medical applications. We have identified cyclogram characteristics such as the slope and the area of the cyclogram for a neural network learning algorithm. Neural networks learned by cyclograms offer wide applications in prosthesis control systems

Supporting Professional Growth Through Mentoring and Coaching

This article focuses on approaches for mentoring and coaching employees within Extension. Through presentation of research and discussion of current applications, the authors explore mutual benefits and differences between coaching and mentoring. Several examples are shared of processes that have been implemented within the Ohio State University Extension to support these concepts

BIOFEEDBACK AS A NEUROBIOMECHANICAL ASPECT OF POSTURAL FUNCTION

The aim of the work is to elucidate if there is a significant difference between the ability to maintain balance with or without the biofeedback while standing and identify specific segments that takes place of motion solutions of postural problems. We measured postural parameters using 6 tri-axial accelerometers placed in 6 places: 2× lower leg, 2× thigh, processus spinosus vertebrae L5 and C7. Probands absolved 3 postural tasks and 3 dynamic tasks. Postural: quiet standing with feet apart with eyes open, quiet standing with feet together with eye closed, quiet standing with feet apart with eyes open and with visual biofeedback. We used system Homebalance - interactive system for providing of balance training with visual biofeedback. Results show no significant difference between C7 and L5 for task without VBF (visual biofeedback) and with VBF, but SD VPG (sum of scatter of the acceleration) for thigh and ankle show significant difference between each task on every level. We detected that in open eyes majority of probands used ankle-strategy for maintaining balance. In eyes closed they preferred knee and hip strategy. The biggest accelerations were detected in C7 in eyes closed. Due to visual biofeedback patients are more motivated and they improve their skills faster than without visual biofeedback exercise. Strategy of maintaining balance during tasks with open eyes and eyes closed is different

Investing in the Future: Addressing Work/Life Issues of Employees

The Extension organization has a long tradition of professional service to clientele, often at a cost of sacrifice to family and self. The results of a national study indicated that work/life issues are of great concern. Employees identified the most critical work/life challenges as: 1) a heavy work load, 2) evening and weekend time commitments, and 3) lack of control or job autonomy. The recommendations, based on this study, urged Extension administrators throughout the organization to reduce the workload and time requirements of county-based professionals and contended that policies needed to be consistent within the national Extension system

PREDICTORS OF BOULDER CLIMBING PERFORMANCE IN YOUTH BOULDER CLIMBERS

The purpose of this study was to determine if a simple measurement using hand dynamometer could be used as predictors of boulder climbing performance in youth climbers. The study cohort consisted of 12 competitive climbers (8 males, 4 females) who competed at European Bouldering Youth Championships (B) in Slany, Czech Republic in the year 2017. The hand grip force was measured at fingertips-thumbtip grip at three wrist positions and during free holding. The effect of hand dominance in grip strength was not observed except for free holding. It could be concluded that the elite young climbers has balanced grip strength between the left and the right hand. The performance in competitions was assed by total number of number of achieved tops. The best predictor of number of top holds achieved in qualification round was the strength at free grip as it describes also upper body fitness level

A Systems Approach: Maximizing Individual Career Potential and Organizational Success

Continuing professional development for employees is critical to meet the demands and expectations of the evolving workplace. In the search for career fulfillment, individuals may no longer plan to spend their entire work lives in one organization. Maximizing an individual\u27s career potential to enhance the success of the organization calls for a systems approach in career development. Systems approaches are implemented in a manner that enables the individual to enter and exit the model at the most appropriate point. This article provides an overview of the professional development model in a systems context used by Ohio State University Extension and its application in changing organizations

COMPARATIVE MEASUREMENTS OF HEAD ANGULAR MOVEMENTS USING A CAMERA SYSTEM AND A GYROSCOPE SYSTEM

Assessments of body-segment angular movements are very important in the rehabilitation process. Head angular movements are measured and analyzed for use in studies of stability and posture. However, there is no methodology for assessing angular movements of the head, and it has not been verified whether data measured by fundamentally different MoCap systems will lead to the same results. In this study, we used a camera system and a 3DOF orientation tracker placed on the subject’s head, and measured inclination (roll) and flexion (pitch) during quiet stance. The total length and the mean velocity of the traces of the pitch versus roll plots were used to measure and analyze head orientation. Using these methods, we are able to model the distribution of the measured 2D data, and to evaluate stability and posture. The results show that the total lengths and the mean velocities related to the 3DOF orientation tracker do not differ significantly from the total lengths and the mean velocities of traces related to the IR medical camera. We also found that the systems are not interchangeable, and that the same type of system must be used each time. The designed methods can be used for studies not only of head movements but also of movements of other segments of the human body, and can be used to compare other types of MoCap systems, depending on the requirements for a specific rehabilitation examination

ASSESSMENT OF POSTURAL INSTABILITY IN PATIENTS WITH A NEUROLOGICAL DISORDER USING A TRI-AXIAL ACCELEROMETER

Current techniques for quantifying human postural stability during quiet standing have several limitations. The main problem is that only two movement variables are evaluated, though a better description of complex three-dimensional (3-D) movements can be provided with the use of three variables. A single tri-axial accelerometer placed on the trunk was used to measure 3-D data.We are able to evaluate 3-D movements using a method based on the volume of confidence ellipsoid (VE) of the set of points obtained by plotting three accelerations against each other. Our method was used to identify and evaluate pathological balance control. In this study, measurements were made of patients with progressive cerebellar ataxia, and also control measurements of healthy subjects, and a statistical analysis was performed. The results show that the VEs of the neurological disorder patients are significantly larger than the VEs of the healthy subjects. It can be seen that the quantitative method based on VE is very sensitive for identifying changes in stability, and that it is able to distinguish between neurological disorder patients and healthy subjects