Left preference for sport tasks does not necessarily indicate left-handedness

In the elite domain of interactive sports, athletes who demonstrate a left preference (e.g., holding a weapon with the left hand in fencing or boxing in a ‘southpaw’ stance) seem overrepresented. Such excess indicates a performance advantage and was also interpreted as evidence in favour of frequency-dependent selection mechanisms to explain the maintenance of left-handedness in humans. To test for an overrepresentation, the incidence of athletes’ lateral preferences is typically compared with an expected ratio of left- to right-handedness in the normal population. However, the normal population reference values did not always relate to the sport-specific tasks of interest, which may limit the validity of reports of an excess of ‘left-oriented’ athletes. Here we sought to determine lateral preferences for various sport-specific tasks (e.g., baseball batting, boxing) in the normal population and to examine the relationship between these preferences and handedness. To this end, we asked 903 participants to indicate their lateral preferences for sport-specific and common tasks using a paper-based questionnaire. Lateral preferences varied considerably across the different sport tasks and we found high variation in the relationship between those preferences and handedness. In contrast to unimanual tasks (e.g., fencing or throwing), for bimanually controlled actions such as baseball batting, shooting in ice hockey or boxing the incidence of left preferences was considerably higher than expected from the proportion of left-handedness in the normal population and the relationship with handedness was relatively low. We conclude that (i) task-specific reference values are mandatory for reliably testing for an excess of athletes with a left preference, (ii) the term ‘handedness’ should be more cautiously used within the context of sport-related laterality research and (iii) observation of lateral preferences in sports may be of limited suitability for the verification of evolutionary theories of handedness.

Disseny i implementació d'un sistema web de geolocalització i promoció d'events

Degut a la falta d'informació, de temps, no saber a on buscar. . . moltes vegades no ens assabentem, o ho fem massa tard, d'events als que ens hauria agradat assistir, com podrien ser concerts,conferències, activitats esportives, etc. L'objectiu d'aquest projecte serà aprofitar les capacitats de les xarxes socials per crear un lloc web que permeti enviar i geolocalitzar events que podran ser revisats i promoguts pels usuaris, de forma que es pugui suplir aquesta mancança. La solució implementada haurà de proporcionar les següents funcionalitats: enviament d'events (permetrà afegir les dades principals d'un event i geolocalitzar-lo en el mapa); organització de la informació (es disposarà de categories i metacategories per agrupar els events, a més d'un sistema d'etiquetes que facilitarà les cerques en el contingut del web); exploració dels events existents (mitjançant el mapa es podrà veure les dades de qualsevol event); sistema de votació (atorgarà la capacitat per poder decidir quina informació és més rellevant); agenda personal (servirà per registrar events i d'aquesta manera poder rebre notificacions que informin de canvis o simplement que serveixin com a recordatori); comunicació entre usuaris (es realitzarà a través de comentaris al peu dels events i/o d'un xat intern); sindicació web (distribuirà el contingut utilitzant l'estàndard RSS; disponibilitat d'una API simple (permetrà l'accés a certa informació des d'aplicacions externes)

Youth sport dropout from the achievement goal theory. 'El abandono del deporte en j??venes desde la Teor??a de las metas de logro'

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n. Resumen tambi??n en ingl??s

A survey on voltage sag events in power systems

This paper aims to survey the techniques and methods described in literature to analyse and characterise voltage sags and the corresponding objectives of these works. The study has been performed from a data mining point of view

Transmisiones deportivas como género mediático y periodístico: Análisis pragmático de las transmisiones colombianas de la Copa Mundial – Sudáfrica 2010

En este trabajo académico se presentan los resultados de un estudio cualitativo-pragmático de una muestra de las transmisiones la Copa del Mundo de fútbol de 2010 realizadas por la televisión abierta colombiana. Se argumenta que las transmisiones deportivas (dentro de las cuales las transmisiones de fútbol son las más extendidas) deben ser entendidas como un género mediático y periodístico específico y, por tanto, deben ser analizadas desde criterios diferentes a otros productos tradicionales de la comunicación masiva.

Mining Events from Multimedia streams, Jon Hare

peaker(s): Jon Hare Organiser: Time: 25/06/2014 11:00-11:50 Location: B32/3077 Abstract The aggregation of items from social media streams, such as Flickr photos and Twitter tweets, into meaningful groups can help users contextualise and effectively consume the torrents of information on the social web. This task is challenging due to the scale of the streams and the inherently multimodal nature of the information being contextualised. In this talk I'll describe some of our recent work on trend and event detection in multimedia data streams. We focus on scalable streaming algorithms that can be applied to multimedia data streams from the web and the social web. The talk will cover two particular aspects of our work: mining Twitter for trending images by detecting near duplicates; and detecting social events in multimedia data with streaming clustering algorithms. I'll will describe in detail our techniques, and explore open questions and areas of potential future work, in both these tasks.

Autobiographical Memory for Stressful Events, Traumatic Memory and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Systematic Review

Stressors and traumatic events may contribute to the development of many psychopathologies, PTSD among them. People with this disorder can present significant cognitive impairments and losses in memory, particularly autobiographical memory (AM).This paper aims to present a systematic review of literature considering changes on autobiographical memory in people exposed to potentially traumatic stressors. Therefore, we performed a computerized search in databases PsycINFO, PubMed, Web of Science and Pilots in March 2012.A total of 29 articles were selected and grouped into three categories: studies comparing Trauma X PTSD, studies comparing PTSD X Trauma X Control and comparison studies according to post-traumatic symptoms. Results demonstrate that people with PTSD presents alterations in a larger number of AM components compared to the cases in which PTSD did not developed. In the same way, subjects never exposed to trauma did not demonstrate significant alterations on  AM when compared to the other groups. The results of this study allowed concluding that changes of some components of the AM are primarily associated with PTSD, but it was not possible to clarify whether such changes are related to the timely development of the disorder, or if they are also observed in traumatic memories even in the absence of disorder.

The Evolution of Rugby: from a Violent Sport into a Regulated one

After it’s birth in England in 1823 rugby has changed it’s appearance from a violent sport to a quite controlled and regulated one. The most important rule changes that have contributed to a reduction of the injuries are described

Factores de riesgo del comportamiento y readiness de aficionados inscritos a carreras atléticas de fondo de 18-64 años en Bogotá D.C., 2014”

La participación en carreras atléticas de calle ha aumentado; esto requiere detectar riesgos previos al esfuerzo físico. Objetivo. Identificar factores de riesgo del comportamiento y readiness de inscritos a una carrera. Método. Estudio transversal en aficionados de 18-64 años. Encuesta digital con módulos de IPAQ, PARQ+ y STEP. Muestreo aleatorio sistemático con n=510, para una inactividad física esperada de 35% (±5%). Se evaluó nivel de actividad física, consumo de alcohol (peligroso), de fruta, verdura, tabaco y sal, y readiness. Resultados. El cumplimiento de actividad física fue 97,4%; 2,4% consume nivel óptimo de fruta o verdura (diferencias por edad, sexo y estrato), 3,7% fuma y 44,1% consumo peligroso de alcohol. El 19,8% reportó PARQ+ positivo y 5,7% requiere supervisión. Hay diferencias por trabajo y estudio. Discusión. Los aficionados cumplen el nivel de actividad física; pero no de otros factores. Una estrategia de seguridad en el atletismo de calle es evaluar los factores de riesgo relacionados con el estilo de vida así como el readiness.