Government involvement in high performance sport: An Australian national sporting organisation perspective

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) and Summer Olympic National Sporting Organisations (NSOs) to determine the effect the relationship has on Olympic performance outcomes. Five Olympic NSOs were examined: Athletics Australia, Cycling Australia, Rowing Australia, Swimming Australia and Yachting Australia. All five NSOs represent sports in which Australia has consistently achieved strong results at previous Olympic Games. These NSOs receive significant funding from the ASC and, as such, are expected to achieve success at the Olympic Games. The ASC–NSO relationship was examined through an agency theory framework whereby the ‘contracts’ between the ASC (principal) and the NSOs (agents) were investigated through a survey, interviews and document analysis to identify potential management issues that may affect Olympic performance outcomes, such as agent or principal opportunism. The findings identified a lack of a collaborative high performance sport system in Australia, with the findings emphasising concerns over the ASC’s management of NSO programmes. While the ASC staff identified their organisation as the leader of high performance sport in Australia, the study’s NSO participants did not believe that the ASC had the capacity, capability and knowledge to fulfil this role.No Full Tex

The Resolution of the Labor Scarcity Paradox

This paper reconciles the apparently contradictory evidence about American and British technology in the first half of the nineteenth century. Past studies have focused on the writings of a number of distinguished British engineers, who toured the United States during the 1850s and commented extensively on the highly mechanized state of the manufacturing sector. Other studies, however, have marshalled evidence that the interest rate was higher, and the aggregate manufacturing capital stock was lower, in the United States relative to Britain. We resolve this paradox by noting that British engineers were most impressed by only a few industries which relied on skilled workers. Using the 1849 Census of Manufactures, we estimate separate production functions for the skilled sector and for the remaining, less skilled manufacturing sector. We find strong relative complementarity between capital and natural resources in the skilled sector, and relative substitutability between skilled labor and capital. Using these parameters in a computable general equilibrium model of the U.S. and British economies indicates greater capital intensity (or labor scarcity) in the skilled manufacturing sector, but overall capital scarcity and higher interest rates, in the U.S. relative to Britain.

Home Value Protection: Final Report

The following report provides an overview of a Home Value Protection (HVP) product to evaluate the practicality of making such a program more widely available and provide background for anyone considering such a plan. The paper is based largely on the Home Value Protection product established in Syracuse New York in 2002, and a number of the authors of this paper participated in the establishment of the Syracuse Home Value Protection program.The paper contains four sections:1: Investor OutreachThis section provides background information about the Syracuse program, the current and potential participants and what roles they might play, a review of a few of the ways such a program could be implemented, and links to various media coverage.2: Index ResearchThe Syracuse program measured changes in house values by a real estate index for the area (rather than individual house sale price), and this section evaluates a number of different index methods using four markets historical data to see how well the different indexes would have performed with a HVP product (had it been available).3: Capital Requirements & PricingThis section provides a model for estimating the pricing requirements and capital required for a program across multiple markets. While not exhaustive, this approach will provide a useful reference and starting point for anyone evaluating investment in such a program.4: Regulatory EnvironmentThis section provides information on some of the regulatory entities across the markets used in the analysis. Due to the variations in the way a HVP product could be implemented, regulations could apply in a variety of ways and this section can only offer a starting point for potential investors or participants

Ensemble-characterisation of satellite rainfall uncertainty and its impacts on the hydrological modelling of a sparsely gauged basin in Western Africa

Many areas of the planet lack the infrastructure required to make accurate and timely estimations of rainfall. This problem is especially acute in sub-Saharan Africa, where a paucity of rain recording radar and sufficiently dense raingauge networks combine with highly variable rainfall, a reliance on agriculture that is predominantly rain fed and systems that are prone to flooding and drought. Satellite Rainfall Estimates (SRFE) are useful as they can provide additional spatial and temporal information to drive various downstream environmental models and early warning systems (EWS). However, when operating at higher spatial and temporal resolutions SRFE contain large uncertainties which propagate through the downstream models. This thesis uses the TAMSAT1 SRFE algorithm developed by Teo (2006) to estimate the rainfall over a large, data sparse and heterogenous catchment in the Senegal Basin. The uncertainty within the TAMSAT1 SRFE is represented using a set of ensemble estimates, each unique but equiprobable based on the full conditional distribution of the recorded rainfall, produced using the TAMSIM algorithm, also developed by Teo (2006). The ensemble rainfall estimates were then used in turn to drive a Pitman Rainfall-Runoff model of the catchment hydrology. The use of ensemble rainfall estimates was shown to be incompatible with the pre-calibrated parameter values for the hydrological model. A novel approach, the EnsAll method, was developed to calibrate the hydrological model which incorporated each individual ensemble member. The EnsAll calibrated model showed the greatest skill when driven by the ensemble rainfall estimates and little bias. A comparison of the hydrographs produced from TAMSIM ensemble rainfall estimates and that from an ensemble of perturbed TAMSAT1 estimates showed that the full spatio-temporally distributed method used by TAMSIM is superior to a simpler perturbation method for characterizing SRFE uncertainty. Overall, the SRFE used were shown to outperform the rainfall estimates produced from the sparse raingauge network as a hydrological model driver. However, they did demonstrate a lack of ability to represent the large interseasonal variations in rainfall resulting in large systematic biases. These biases were observed propagating directly to the modelled hydrological ouput

Chimneys and Fireplaces

Discusses chimney and fireplace design with an emphasis on safety and reducing hazards

A Man with Sudden Onset Leg Pain and Weakness

Case Presentation: An 89-year-old male who had been holding dabigatran in the setting of transcarotid artery revascularization presented to the emergency department with sudden onset leg pain and weakness. Computed tomography angiography revealed acute aortic occlusion and thrombosis of the bilateral common iliac arteries. He underwent aortoiliac and femoral embolectomies and stenting of the bilateral common iliac arteries and returned to his baseline functional status.   Discussion: Acute aortic occlusion is a rare but often devastating vascular emergency characterized by obstruction of the aorta by an embolus or thrombosis. Diagnosis can be challenging as it may be mistaken for spinal pathology, which can lead to delays in diagnosis. Despite advances in diagnostic modalities and interventions, acute aortic occlusion often results in high rates of major morbidity and mortality.   &nbsp

New problems, new challenges: embracing innovative approaches to sport research

Sport research should systematically advance knowledge about the discipline and thus be relevant to both academics and practitioners. Research methods play an important role in advancing knowledge, and continuous efforts to develop and apply new research methods are essential for sport research to capture the complexities of the contemporary sporting landscape (Smith & Stewart, 2010). Important but complex research issues have emerged as sport continues to globalize and further embed itself in the social, cultural and economic fabric of society. In many cases, addressing these research problems challenges research designs and methods in which sport researchers have been trained. However it is clear that when investigating the diverse, complex and changing contemporary field of sport we need to recognize there is no longer a methodology that meets the needs of all sport related research (Hoeber & Shaw, 2017)

One lithium level >1.0 mmol/L causes an acute decline in eGFR: findings from a retrospective analysis of a monitoring database

Objectives Lithium is a mainstay of bipolar disorder treatment, however, there are still differences in opinion on the effects of lithium use on renal function. The aim of this analysis was to determine if there is an association between short-term exposure to various elevated lithium levels and estimated-glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) at ≤3 months, 6 months (±3 months) and 1 year (±3 months) follow-up. Setting Norfolk-wide (UK) lithium register and database. Participants 699 patients from the Norfolk database. Primary outcome measures eGFR change from baseline at ≤3 months, 6 months (±3 months) and 1 year (±3 months) after exposure to a lithium level within these ranges: 0.81–1.0 mmol/L (group 2), 1.01–1.2 mmol/L (group 3) and 1.21–2.0 mmol/L (group 4). The reference group was patients whose lithium levels never exceeded 0.8 mmol/L. Results Compared to the reference group, groups 3 and 4 showed a significant decrease in eGFR in the first 3 months after exposure (p=0.047 and p=0.040). At 6 months (±3 months) postexposure group 4 still showed a decline in eGFR, however, this result was not significant (p=0.298). Conclusions These results show for the first time that a single incident of a lithium level >1.0 mmol/L is associated with a significant decrease in eGFR in the following 3 months when compared to patients whose lithium levels never exceeded 0.8 mmol/L. It is still not known whether the kidneys can recover this lost function and the impact that more than a single exposure to a level within these ranges can have on renal function. These results suggest that lithium level monitoring should be undertaken at least every 3 months, in line with current UK guidelines and not be reduced further until the impact of more than one exposure to these lithium levels has been fully established

Sport management and COVID-19:trends and legacies

One of the enduring questions gripping scholars is the nature of sport’s ubiquity. What makes sport so compelling for so many despite the many tensions surrounding its expression? To make the conundrum more complicated, we have witnessed a seemingly inexhaustible growth in sport’s reach and scope, including as a source of recreational pastime, organised participation, fanatical devotion, and media spectacle. At the same time, sport’s immense entertainment, recreation, and media fringes have exploded, spanning from competitive eating to esports. Sport undoubtedly occupies a non-trivial place in the economic, social, and cultural fabric of almost every part of the globe (Smith et al., Citation2021), as billions discovered when the COVID blackout struck