Category Archives: Physiology

Physiology

UNSW researchers find new insights on whale migration – News Of The Area

NSW Science researcher Dr Catharina Vendl with the telescopic pole she used to collect whale snot in Hervey Bay. CREDIT: UNSW Sydney

EAST Australian humpback whales complete, on average, an 8000-kilometre round trip between Antarctica and Queensland from May to November each year, fasting for most of their journey.

Lead author and researcher, Dr Catharina Vendl, was part of a team of UNSW researchers who studied the changes to these whales airway bacteria, which showed the physiological challenges they experience during migration, and indicated a possible compromised state of health.

Our findings are the first to provide good evidence of a connection between the whales airway bacterial communities, their physiology and immune function something that has been established in humans, said Dr Vendl.

In general, we assume that this shift in microbiota is a naturally occurring phenomenon caused by the whales annual migration.

Studies have shown that whales accumulate large volumes of environmental pollutants in their stored fat layers/blubber.

When they live off their blubber during migration these pollutants are released into the body and can have a negative effect on the immune system of the whales, she said.

In addition to reducing marine pollution, Dr Vendl said that its important to minimise potentially stressful impact on the whales, which includes following the legal guidelines for boats to keep a safe distance from the whales.

The whales do recover when they return to their feeding grounds in Antarctica, she said.

However, the increase in marine pollutants and other anthropogenic stressors are a more recent phenomenon adding to the whales compromised immune system.

Humpback whales do not only play an essential role in their marine ecosystem but also represent an important economic resource, because whale watching is a booming industry in many Australian cities and around the world.

By Ashley CHRYSLER

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UNSW researchers find new insights on whale migration - News Of The Area

Physiology

India-China standoff: Special clothing, diet for the Indian Army troops this winter along LAC – The Financial Express

Indian Army gets ready for a long winter deployment along the 826-km Line of Actual Control in Ladakh and has plans of sending in additional troops. The Indian Army is already in the process of procuring gloves, sleeping bags, special world class boots as well as layered jackets which would help the troops to deal with the extreme cold. Besides the need additional habitat for more troops being deployed, winter clothing, rations, there is going to be a huge need for fuel and equipment to last through the deadly winters. According to experts while there is expected to be additional expenses involved, maintaining a supply chain too will be a challenge.

Though there are heated facilities with bunker beds for around 10,000 troops who are already there, with additional troops the Army is also working on special diet plan and special arctic tents as the temperatures in the night are expected to touch almost -30 C in winters. The soldiers will be given multiple pair of clothing including shoes which often get wet due to snow.

New sleeping habitat like arctic tents and special high-nutrient diet are to be provided for almost 30,000 troops who have been in the region since May with heavy equipment to respond to any action by the Chinese side.

During the winters patrolling has always been curtailed, however, this time with the tensions mounting between India and China, and the heavy presence of the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) across the LAC, India is not ready to take any chances.

Special Diet

The troops have to be fed special diet as they will be staying in low oxygen areas where there are no trees in Eastern Ladakh. The Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences study has done a calorie intake study and concluded that the requirement could be anything between 4,270 and 4,550 calories per day per person. So the ration going for them would include energy bars, chocolates, more fruits and vegetables.

Expert View

An army marches on its stomach; this idiom has been attributed to Frederick the Great (1712) and Napolean Bonaparte (1760-1821). It is an English version of the French phrase cest la soupe qui fait la soldat or its the soup that makes the soldier.

Sharing his view with Financial Express Online, Lt Col Manoj K Channan (Retd), says, The current standoff along the LAC is a nightmare for the Operations and Logistics staff, as modern armys require much more than a piece of bread and soup. The super high altitude and desert terrain, sparse vegetation entails that all items need to be transported both by road and air. While the winter stocking must have been carried out, the lines of communication for logistics need to be kept open irrespective of the weather.

This is a daunting task for the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) as in addition to carrying out the construction of new roads it now has to ensure that the passes are kept open despite the heavy snowfall and minus thirty degree temperatures. While the man is being looked after the machine equipment management will be tested to its extremes as the extreme cold weather conditions have its impact on perishable parts. Make shift shelters need to be created with heating and protection from the moisture.

There is a need to ensure that the troops deployed are sent on rotational rest and recuperation so that mental fatigue of deployment in a cold frigid region does not affect the moral of the troops.

I am sure that the Military Leadership is well seized of the challenges that are being faced and have pragmatic solutions with years of experience, having done such deployments in areas akin to the present deployment, Lt Col Manoj K Channan concludes.

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India-China standoff: Special clothing, diet for the Indian Army troops this winter along LAC - The Financial Express

Physiology

The open and shut case of a much-loved Kyoto bookstore : The Asahi Shimbun – Asahi Shimbun

KYOTO--A much-beloved bookstore here that recently closed after 70 years in business is still springing surprises on passers-by.

Sangatsu Shobo in the city'sNakagyo Ward now bears a meticulous spray painting on the shutter based on a photo of the store front as it was, giving the impression it is still open. The image appeared on Aug. 24.

The store posted a sign after it closedon June 11 that said, Closed seven days a week, closed all year round.

It opened in 1950, and its unique selection of books in the humanities and social sciences attracted intellectuals such as the acclaimed critic Takaaki Yoshimoto and the waka poet Yuko Kawano.

While books are no longer sold at the store, the owner plans to continue selling inventory over the internet for the remainder of the year.

Soon after in-store sales ended, Tatsuo Shishido, 71, the third-generation owner felt that leaving the shutter closed did not help the ambience of the neighborhood. That was when he was contacted by Shinichi Fukuoka, 60, a biology professor at Tokyos Aoyama Gakuin University.

Having graduated from Kyoto University, Fukuoka was a huge fan of Sangatsu Shobo and he proposed the idea of a painting over the shutter. Shishido loved the idea and the pair agreed to split the expense.

A photo of the bookstore when it was in business proper was enlarged. But the clarity was no good, so it was decided to paint a copy.

The photo showed a reflection of a bicycle on the storefront window, so a real bicycle was placed at the same spot to recreate the photo.

I hope people will be fooled into thinking that a store they thought had closed was still actually open, Shishido said. Some people may say I am not going away gracefully by doing this.

Fukuoka found books at Sangatsu Shobo that would go on to influence his career as a researcher. One such book was Chance and Necessity written by the French biochemist Jacques Monod, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1965.

Fukuoka described Sangatsu Shobo as the ideal bookstore found in the community that clearly reflected the taste and intellectual background of the owner.

I felt the bookstore was saying If you consider yourself an intellectual you have to read this, Fukuoka said. I wanted it to remain in the memory of many people, but above all, I wanted people to enjoy the surprise.

At around noon on Aug. 25, Yoshihiko Wakuda, 48, a company employee who had come all the way from Kobe admitted to being surprised.

I used to come here often in the past because it was such a good bookstore, Wakuda said. I came today to find out what it looked like now. For a moment, I thought it was still open.

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The open and shut case of a much-loved Kyoto bookstore : The Asahi Shimbun - Asahi Shimbun

Physiology

Achieving the College Dream – lareviewofbooks

AUGUST 25, 2020

I TEACH HISTORY at Western Washington University, the kind of school that most four-year college students attend. I have many first-generation students. They are tenacious. But they struggle. They often keep their hardships to themselves, but a recent student admitted to sleeping in his van. Another, who came regularly to my office with her arms piled high with books, has run out of money to pay for food.

These students are not exceptions. The United Statess colleges have created a vast sorting machine. Children of wealthier, better-educated parents get accepted disproportionately to the nations most prestigious institutions, while first-generation students, many nonwhite, attend community colleges or regional four-years until a financial or personal crisis leads them to drop out. They are burdened with debt but get no degree.

This is unconscionable. And that is why Wont Lose This Dream: How an Upstart Urban University Rewrote the Rules of a Broken System is worth reading. Journalist Andrew Gumbel offers a fast-paced narrative celebrating Atlantas Georgia State University (GSU), a school with more Pell grant recipients than the Ivy League, for closing the gap in graduation rates between first-generation and other students. In 2003, GSU graduated a third of its students, but by 2018 that number doubled, even as GSU increased dramatically the number of low-income students admitted. GSU, Gumbel writes, erased all achievement gaps, without lowering its standards or misinterpreting or falsifying the results.

The moral significance of this fact cannot be underestimated. Wont Lose This Dream charts the reforms implemented by GSU president Mark Becker, with the encouragement and support of vice president for student success Timothy Renick, and Allison Calhoun-Brown in the student advising office. It is a top-down inside story of a school that refused to allow some of Americas most hardworking and deserving students to fail. Gumbel calls this the student success revolution.

I.

Despite the authors claims of a revolution, this book actually demonstrates how small changes yield large results. At a time when some reformers dream of disruptive innovation in higher education, Gumbel shows that what is really needed is an emphasis on understanding students. Administrators and professors often assume that first-generation students drop out because they cannot meet academic standards.

This book proves otherwise. At GSU, academic ability is almost never the factor causing a lower-income student to drop out. Poring through student data, GSU leaders discovered that many students about to graduate dropped out with good GPAs. They just ran out of money. They were one crisis away from losing it. The most important lesson to be taken from this book, therefore, is that when students are offered the financial and advising support that they need during a crisis, they will continue their studies. They have proven they can get by on little, but because of their precarity, one push the wrong direction upends years of work. Most students cash needs were small, usually under $1,500. Under Renicks guidance, GSU reached out to these students before they left. Instead of filling out complicated forms, the school would zero out the students accounts, pure and simple.

Their next decision was to reach students in good academic standing but unable to pay tuition, identify their issues, and provide financial support right there and then what came to be called Panther Retention Grants, after GSUs mascot. These small grants vastly improved graduation rates and cost the school almost nothing since, when students remain enrolled, they also continue to receive their grants and scholarships and to pay tuition and fees.

GSUs leaders then turned to students who struggled academically. They realized that the challenge facing these students wasnt lack of potential but difficulty adapting to college. Instead of offering remedial courses for no credit, GSU invited students with lower GPAs and SATs to start in summer to engage in college-level work and take advantage of the quieter time on campus to bond with each other and get a head start on their peers. They received guidance on how the university works, something more privileged students know or can intuit. They received academic support. They were prepped for success; almost 90 percent of the first summer cohort remained enrolled sophomore year and graduated at a higher rate than the university average.

The secret to these changes was that GSU leadership assumed that students were capable of making it. In turn, students knew that the institution believed in them. What we were giving them, Renick said, was the mindset that they can do college work. And it paid off for students and GSU. Speaking of the summer program, Renick stated, The more we retained, the more revenue we were generating.

These important changes combined with smaller ones such as a chatbot to interact with students via text, or a bio-bus to provide students shots when they couldnt locate their immunization records offered students what Gumbel calls a net. But it was more than that. It was a platform. GSU refused to believe that students dropped out because they werent good enough and the data was on their side. They left because they were poor, because they didnt understand how college worked, and because it was too hard to get the help that they needed when they needed it.

But when students academic, financial, and personal needs are taken care of efficiently and openly, first-generation students, like other students, can focus on learning. And they will flourish.

II.

College is about more than degrees. It is about education. Like their more privileged peers, first-generation students often arrive seeking a degree. Unlike Ivy League students, they are not imagining their degree as the ticket to a Wall Street job or federal clerkship. They simply want financial security for themselves and, often, their families.

In my experience at Western, if many students come seeking a degree, many also learn to value their education. I cannot name the number of first-generation students I have known who did not believe that they had minds worth taking seriously until a professor in one of their classes did so. When students are respected, they realize that one does not need to be at Harvard to think profoundly about the world. Indeed, Id wager, one of the joys of teaching at a school like mine is that, unlike elite students, when my students light up, they are free to pursue ideas precisely because they are not worried about every grade.

My experience as a professor shaped how I read this book. Gumbels book inspired me to ask more of myself and of colleges. It also frustrated me because of the authors dismissal of professorial work and the deeper purposes of scholarly life to which my colleagues and I are devoted.

Wont Lose This Dream is an authorized account [] initiated by Becker and Renick. Perhaps thats why the heroes are administrators and staff while almost all the villains are skeptical professors. There is no sense that professors care about anything other than themselves. Gumbel offers little awareness of the hours most professors devote to students. There is little about the commitments that animate our work. Many professors could have gone to Wall Street or worked for McKinsey. We didnt. We chose scholarship because we believe that what we teach and write about matters. And it does.

Gumbels failure to recognize the purposes of academic life weakens the book. Too often, it leads him to misrepresent issues. For example, the author dismisses shared governance as a way for professors to protect their interests. He offers nothing about its history nor why, in its absence, academic freedom is threatened by the centralization of power. In 1940s Georgia, for example, Governor Eugene Talmadge pressured universities to dismiss professors he thought insufficiently anticommunist or who favored racial integration. As Henry Reichman, author of The Future of Academic Freedom, reminds us, academic freedom is essential to fulfilling the mission of colleges and universities. Without it, colleges and universities will not be able to explore new ideas, advance science and the professions, and promote the arts and humanities to the benefit of all.

These issues never arise for Gumbel because, I think, he sees the primary purpose of college as getting out of college. He is less concerned with how colleges are organized, nor even what students learn. Thus, he writes dismissively of the tendency to load the first-year curriculum with courses that had little or no application to any other field of study, burdening students with unusable credits. Unusable in what sense? These are general courses. They offer a broad foundation prior to specialization. They might be the most important courses on campus. After all, they are the only ones all students must take, whether they major in chemistry or marketing. Instead of wasteful, why are they not fundamental?

Gumbel considers them wasteful because he shares with administrators the premise that students need to get into majors as fast as possible. Choosing a major may encourage retention, but there are reasons to resist asking students to choose a path too early. To Gumbel, students who dont know their major when they arrive are doing something wrong. I would argue that they are doing something right. College is for exploration. As a department chair, I know that every major I sign up secures more resources for my department. Nonetheless, when a first-year student comes to my office to declare their major, I ask them to come back in a year. I worry that if I sign them up too soon, theyll treat their other courses as irrelevant since, after all, they are unusable in their major. But that would be a mistake.

III.

The most important chapter in this book, the one on which the plot pivots, is called Moneyball. Like the managers of the Oakland As, the subject of the book Moneyball, GSU administrators and their advising staff decided to track students progress by computer and lay out a map of which courses they should take in what order to graduate on time. The first step was to get the data. The next step was to use it to guide students with predictive analytics.

There are two advantages to GSUs approach. First, the data can be used to generate flags that allow advisors to reach out to students when they stumble but before they fail. Second, data can be used to improve instruction. For example, if a certain course is consistently correlated with future student success, how can professors ensure more students master the material?

But the danger is that the data can be used in ways that threaten the above two goals. For example, in GSUs nursing program, data showed that first-year chemistry was correlated with success in the program, whereas first-year physiology was not. Why ask students to take it? Renick urged professors to remove the requirement. Perhaps that was the right decision. On the other hand, perhaps there are good reasons for wanting students to study physiology. We dont know because Gumbel doesnt think to ask.

And by refusing to consider this question, we see where the Moneyball approach to curricula becomes less appealing. The Moneyball approach is about winning, but not how the game is played or, for that matter, the development and well-being of the players. With the single metric of improving graduation rates, GSU did not use student data to support students and professors, but to predict what students should or shouldnt do.

Instead of directing students to professors who might help them, staff advisors sat down with students, shared the data, and let them know their odds. No doubt, were not all destined to become engineers or literary critics. The reality principle has a function. But the Moneyball approach treats all course credits and all classes as fungible. But credits, like money, mediate between unlike things.

This book therefore must be read alongside Jerry Mullers The Tyranny of Metrics. Whereas Gumbel presumes that anyone who questions data-based decision-making is self-serving and unscientific, Muller reminds us that metric fixation is itself an ideology that leads to unintended negative consequences, not just because all important things cannot be counted, but because most organizations have multiple purposes, and that which is measured and rewarded tends to become the focus of attention, at the expense of other essential goals. Far from being unscientific, scholars have found that [t]rying to force people to conform their work to preestablished numerical goals tends to stifle innovation and creativity and encourages the valuation of short-term goals over long-term purposes.

We know that the U.S. News & World Report rankings skewed universities priorities. One does not need a vivid imagination to assume the same incentive structures could be at work here. Maybe pre-nursing students need introductory physiology and maybe they do not. But if efforts to maximize degrees is not balanced by other values, students might be pressured to choose some majors over others, while faculty will be pressured to alter curricula to raise metrics in ways that will threaten educational quality.

One particular concern is that if data are used to guide first-generation students away from challenging majors, it could increase degree attainment through greater internal stratification. This would exacerbate preexisting inequalities. To Gumbel, my worry is unfounded because at GSU, the number of African American men obtaining science degrees shot up 60 percent in two years. If that holds over time across the arts and sciences, this would be welcome news.

IV.

This books primary villain is a GSU business professor and longtime dean who considered the business school the most prestigious in the university and wanted to keep it that way by maintaining high admission standards and weeding out weaker students. This attitude reflects the worst of contemporary academic culture. That same attitude was present among Beckers predecessors, who sought to improve GSU by recruiting students with higher SAT scores and bringing in research dollars to raise their U.S. News standings. Such attitudes are barriers to the student success revolution, Gumbel rightly argues.

What Gumbel fails to see is that the old guard was making the same mistake as the new guard. Both are driven by a singular focus on a small number of outcomes SAT scores and rankings in one case, degree production in the other. Both ignore the ways in which the metrics they favor can pervert the culture, values, and academic quality of their institutions.

We need a third way. What gets lost in this book is that college is not a place for degrees, but for education. It is a place for contemplation. Colleges should consider intellectual inquiry their highest ideal. Colleges may prepare leaders, but they should not be committed to flawed visions of meritocracy. What matters are not rankings and credentials but teaching, learning, and research. Most professors are devoted to students, but professors are human beings and we, too (I include myself), can get caught up with external measures of success status, prestige, money that threaten our core values. Colleges need a reformation, but one true to the academys purposes. If we believe that everyone who is capable of learning deserves a great education, we together must foster a culture of student success that pervades the entire institution.

I am grateful that GSU took seriously their students potential and challenged economic and racial inequality. GSU has proven that students struggle for reasons having little to do with academic ability or intellectual potential. That fact alone is enough to demand better of our institutions.

Ultimately the product of college education is not degrees but people. I recall the wisdom of a first-generation student in my seminar on contemporary American thought. He worked evenings at a local grocery store, a good union job. His co-workers teased him for wasting time studying history. But he told me that history gave him perspective on a complicated world and inspired him to want to keep learning. My student received a degree, but he valued his education more. Wont Lose This Dream recounts how one institution confronted roadblocks students face. The next step is to ensure we do so in ways that encourage students to receive the kind of education that they deserve.

Johann N. Neem is author of Whats the Point of College? Seeking Purpose in an Age of Reform and Democracys Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America. He teaches history at Western Washington University.

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Achieving the College Dream - lareviewofbooks

Physiology

Why Do Some People Weather Coronavirus Infection Unscathed? – Medscape

Editor's note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape's Coronavirus Resource Center.

One of the reasons Covid-19 has spread so swiftly around the globe is that for the first days after infection, people feel healthy. Instead of staying home in bed, they may be out and about, unknowingly passing the virus along. But in addition to these pre-symptomatic patients, the relentless silent spread of this pandemic is also facilitated by a more mysterious group of people: the so-called asymptomatics.

According to various estimates, between 20 and 45 percent of the people who get Covid-19 and possibly more, according to a recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sail through a coronavirus infection without realizing they ever had it. No fever or chills. No loss of smell or taste. No breathing difficulties. They don't feel a thing.

Asymptomatic cases are not unique to Covid-19. They occur with the regular flu, and probably also featured in the 1918 pandemic, according to epidemiologist Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London. But scientists aren't sure why certain people weather Covid-19 unscathed. "That is a tremendous mystery at this point," says Donald Thea, an infectious disease expert at Boston University's School of Public Health.

The prevailing theory is that their immune systems fight off the virus so efficiently that they never get sick. But some scientists are confident that the immune system's aggressive response, the churning out of antibodies and other molecules to eliminate an infection, is only part of the story.

These experts are learning that the human body may not always wage an all-out war on viruses and other pathogens. It may also be capable of accommodating an infection, sometimes so seamlessly that no symptoms emerge. This phenomenon, known as disease tolerance, is well-known in plants but has only been documented in animals within the last 15 years.

Disease tolerance is the ability of an individual, due to a genetic predisposition or some aspect of behavior or lifestyle, to thrive despite being infected with an amount of pathogen that sickens others. Tolerance takes different forms, depending on the infection. For example, when infected with cholera, which causes watery diarrhea that can quickly kill through dehydration, the body might mobilize mechanisms that maintain fluid and electrolyte balance. During other infections, the body might tweak metabolism or activate gut microbes whatever internal adjustment is needed to prevent or repair tissue damage or to make a germ less vicious.

Researchers who study these processes rely on invasive experiments that cannot be done in people. Nevertheless, they view asymptomatic infections as evidence that disease tolerance occurs in humans. At least 90 percent of those infected with the tuberculosis bacterium don't get sick. The same is true for many of the 1.5 billion of people globally who live with parasitic worms called helminths in their intestines. "Despite the fact that these worms are very large organisms and they basically migrate through your tissues and cause damage, many people are asymptomatic. They don't even know they're infected," says Irah King, a professor of immunology at McGill University. "And so then the question becomes, what does the body do to tolerate these types of invasive infections?"

While scientists have observed the physiological processes that minimize tissue damage during infections in animals for decades, it's only more recently that they've begun to think about them in terms of disease tolerance. For example, King and colleagues have identified specific immune cells in mice that increase the resilience of blood vessels during a helminth infection, leading to less intestinal bleeding, even when the same number of worms are present.

"This has been demonstrated in plants, bacteria, other mammalian species," King says.

"Why would we think that humans would not have developed these types of mechanisms to promote and maintain our health in the face of infection?" he adds.

In a recent Frontiers in Immunologyeditorial, King and his McGill colleague Maziar Divangahi describe their long-term hopes for the field: A deeper understanding of disease tolerance, they write, could lead to "a new golden age of infectious disease research and discovery."

Scientists have traditionally viewed germs as the enemy, an approach that has generated invaluable antibiotics and vaccines. But more recently, researchers have come to understand that the human body is colonized by trillions of microbes that are essential to optimal health, and that the relationship between humans and germs is more nuanced.

Meddlesome viruses and bacteria have been around since life began, so it makes sense that animals evolved ways to manage as well as fight them. Attacking a pathogen can be effective, but it can also backfire. For one thing, infectious agents find ways to evade the immune system. Moreover, the immune response itself, if unchecked, can turn lethal, applying its destructive force to the body's own organs.

"With things like Covid, I think it's going to be very parallel to TB, where you have this Goldilocks situation," says Andrew Olive, an immunologist at Michigan State University, "where you need that perfect amount of inflammation to control the virus and not damage the lungs."

Some of the key disease tolerance mechanisms scientists have identified aim to keep inflammation within that narrow window. For example, immune cells called alveolar macrophages in the lung suppress inflammation once the threat posed by the pathogen diminishes.

A deeper understanding of disease tolerance could lead to "a new golden age of infectious disease research and discovery," write King and Divangahi.

Much is still unknown about why there is such a wide range of responses to Covid-19, from asymptomatic to mildly sick to out of commission for weeks at home to full-on organ failure. "It's very, very early days here," says Andrew Read, an infectious disease expert at Pennsylvania State University who helped identify disease tolerance in animals. Read believes disease tolerance may at least partially explain why some infected people have mild symptoms or none at all. This may be because they're better at scavenging toxic byproducts, he says, "or replenishing their lung tissues at faster rates, those sorts of things."

The mainstream scientific view of asymptomatics is that their immune systems are especially well-tuned. This could explain why children and young adults make up the majority of people without symptoms because the immune system naturally deteriorates with age. It's also possible that the immune systems of asymptomatics have been primed by a previous infection with a milder coronavirus, like those that cause the common cold.

Asymptomatic cases don't get much attention from medical researchers, in part because these people don't go to the doctor and thus are tough to track down. But Janelle Ayres, a physiologist and infectious disease expert at the Salk Institute For Biological Studies who has been a leader in disease tolerance research, studies precisely the mice that don't get sick.

The staple of this research is something called the "lethal dose 50" test, which consists of giving a group of mice enough pathogen to kill half. By comparing the mice that live with those that die, she pinpoints the specific aspects of their physiology that enable them to survive the infection. She has performed this experiment scores of times using a variety of pathogens. The goal is to figure out how to activate health-sustaining responses in all animals.

A hallmark of these experiments and something that surprised her at first is that the half that survive the lethal dose are perky. They are completely unruffled by the same quantity of pathogen that kills their counterparts. "I thought going into this that all would get sick, that half would live and half would die, but that isn't what I found," Ayres says. "I found that half got sick and died, and the other half never got sick and lived."

Ayres sees something similar happening in the Covid-19 pandemic. Like her mice, asymptomatics seem to have similar amounts of the virus in their bodies as the people who fall ill, yet for some reason they stay healthy. Studies show that their lungs often display damage on CT scans, yet they are not struggling for breath (though it remains to be seen whether they will fully escape long-term impacts). Moreover, a small recent study suggests that asymptomatics mount a weaker immune response than the people who get sick suggesting that mechanisms are at work that have nothing to do with fighting infection.

"Why, if they have these abnormalities, are they healthy?" asks Ayres. "Potentially because they have disease tolerance mechanisms engaged. These are the people we need to study."

The goal of disease tolerance research is to decipher the mechanisms that keep infected people healthy and turn them into therapies that benefit everyone. "You want to have a drought-tolerant plant, for obvious reasons, so why wouldn't we want to have a virus-tolerant person?" Read asks.

A 2018 experiment in Ayres' lab offered proof of concept for that goal. The team gave a diarrhea-causing infection to mice in a lethal dose 50 trial, then compared tissue from the mice that died with those that survived, looking for differences. They discovered that the asymptomatic mice had utilized their iron stores to route extra glucose to the hungry bacteria, and that the pacified germs no longer posed a threat. The team subsequently turned this observation into a treatment. In further experiments, they administered iron supplements to the mice and all the animals survived, even when the pathogen dose was upped a thousandfold.

When the pandemic hit, Ayres was already studying mice with pneumonia and the signature malady of Covid-19, acute respiratory distress syndrome, which can be triggered by various infections. Her lab has identified markers that may inform candidate pathways to target for treatment. The next step is to compare people who progressed to severe stages of Covid-19 with asymptomatics to see whether markers emerge that resemble the ones she's found in mice.

"Why, if they have these abnormalities, are they healthy?" asks Ayres. "Potentially because they have disease tolerance mechanisms engaged. These are the people we need to study."

If a medicine is developed, it would work differently from anything that's currently on the market because it would be lung-specific, not disease-specific, and would ease respiratory distress regardless of which pathogen is responsible.

But intriguing as this prospect is, most experts caution that disease tolerance is a new field and tangible benefits are likely many years off. The work involves measuring not only symptoms but the levels of a pathogen in the body, which means killing an animal and searching all of its tissues. "You can't really do controlled biological experiments in humans," Olive says.

In addition, there are countless disease tolerance pathways. "Every time we figure one out, we find we have 10 more things we don't understand," King says. Things will differ with each disease, he adds, "so that becomes a bit overwhelming."

Nevertheless, a growing number of experts agree that disease tolerance research could have profound implications for treating infectious disease in the future. Microbiology and infectious disease research has "all been focused on the pathogen as an invader that has to be eliminated some way," says virologist Jeremy Luban of the University of Massachusetts Medical School. And as Ayres makes clear, he says, "what we really should be thinking about is how do we keep the person from getting sick."

Emily Laber-Warren directs the health and science reporting program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.

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Why Do Some People Weather Coronavirus Infection Unscathed? - Medscape

Physiology

Its never too late to make it to the top, meet the riders who did – Cycling Weekly

We all know the pathway to turning pro: sportsmen and women start their sport young, commit wholly in their mid-teens, and by the time they are in their early-20s, all theyve ever known as an adult is being a professional athlete. But that isnt the only route by which those we admire, our cycling heroes, have become so masterful that theyre paid to do what is, at its core, their passion and hobby. Whether your goal is to become an elite category rider, to win a regional championship on the track, a World Masters Championship, or even land a professional contract and win UCI races, it is almost never too late.

The performance trajectory of a cyclist is: improving up until about 30, then plateauing until about 40, Richard Davison, a professor of exercise physiology at the University of West Scotland, tells Cycling Weekly.

There are certain elements at 40 you could not achieve in your teenage years, but between 20 and 40, the changes are relatively small. It is only from about 50 that there is a significant decline in actual performance.

Alex Spratt, a former rugby union player who had trials for England, started track racing aged 27 and holds a personal best for the 200m individual pursuit of 9.987 seconds the first amateur to record a time below 10 seconds.

Physiologically, I am still increasing my power and speed and will continue to do so until I am 35 or older, says the 30-year-old. More from Spratt later.

The narrative, despite a smattering of isolated cases to the contrary, is that if youre not a professional by your early-20s, you never will be. Perhaps its time to overturn this idea. Is there a major difference in physiological potential between a 15-year-old and 25-year-old? I would say no, Davison says. In other words, starting out in your mid-20s may not place you at a significant disadvantage. In fact, it may even confer certain advantages what if late-starters hold the ace card?

We may not have been in an athletic institution, but we have more life experiences and can draw on that, says Australian pro Brodie Chapman, who started racing professionally in 2018, aged 26. I dont think, Oh s**t, Im at a disadvantage because they have 10 years more experience. I was a backpacker in my early-20s and had to navigate different cities, languages, accommodations, foods, staying with people who I didnt know.

Now 29, Chapman believes that her life experience gained before she got serious about cycling works to her advantage.

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I didnt know anything about training, nutrition or physiology, but I have been to uni, and having a degree makes it easier for me to read and pick out information that will serve me as a cyclist.

The Womens WorldTour rider also thinks her years make her more resilient and mentally stronger.When youre young, it feels all very big, like time is spilling away from you and an injury would kill off all your chances. But I have been through setbacks in work and normal life. I have had these feelings before and I have the tools to deal with them. I know myself and my limits, and I can deal with loss and adversity.

Spratt talks about the mental benefit of low expectations while starting out in cycling. Id do a time and then ask if it was good or bad, because I didnt know. Those who have been in the sport a while are fighting against others and their own times.

This bright-eyed freshness, thinks Spratt, made him less prone to disappointment.

Younger people might be more advanced technically and tactically, but they can over-think things and let things get in their head too much. I have the maturity and age to cope with that. I want to better myself, not necessarily be better than everyone else. Generally, coming in later has been an advantage because of the hard shifts I have had in life and my sporting background.

Some late starters are very, very late getting serious about cyclingin their 30s, 40s, 50s or even after retiring from work. Veterans and masters competitions exist because there is a thirst for competition.

We all at some point bump down the slope of age-related decline, but boy can we mould it and give ourselves the right stimulus to slow that decline, if not improve, adds sports scientist Davison. There is no reason, physiologically, why you can cannot get back up in line with your optimal ageing profile. Your body will adapt to training. Dont be shy of high intensity exercise.

One very late starter is the reigning World Masters points and individual pursuit champion Andrew Bruce. He made his racing debut eight years ago, aged 41. Key for him was mastering technique as quickly as possible.

I got some old Tacx rollers and for three weeks they seemed ridiculous, dangerous and I couldnt ride them, recalls the Scotsman. But I eventually focused on learning how to ride them. You have 36cm to ride within, so you cant wobble, and you learn how to ride where you want to be riding. You can identify someone in the bunch who can ride on the rollers because those who cant, wobble everywhere.

Bruces headline successes have come on the track, and he believes even recreational riding on the boards can have a significant impact on a road racer.

Riding the track teaches you the ability to control your speed, because in a bunch, your brakes are your left and right legs, and you have to control your rhythm on the track and adjust accordingly to what other riders are doing, he says. Compared to road riding, youre much more aware of where your front wheel is in relation to the back end of other riders and how stable you are.

Out on the road, Bruce discovered the importance of effective cornering. You have to corner confidently, adjust your position in the saddle to get your weight set up as you go into a corner. If you cant corner in a crit race, youre spat out of the back.

Lets not be idealistic, there are major challenges for late starters: naivety, tactics, technique, time, family sacrifices and finances. And perhaps most importantly: age. The adage goes that children learn faster, and the science tends to agree. The prefrontal cortex of the brain, where working memory is stored, is less developed in children, allowing them to be more creative and flexible essentially, they have more space to learn. Adults prefrontal cortex is more developed, less well suited to invention, but thats not to say we cant learn provided we have the desire.

Gripped by the simple pleasure of being on a bike, and driven by improvement that eventually led to winning, Damien Clayton committed completely to the sport after a charity bike ride from London to Brighton in 2016, aged 23.

In my first year, I rode 1,200 hours while having a full-time job, says the 27-year-old, who won the 2019 GP des Marbriers in France his maiden UCI race and now rides for Ribble-Weldtite. That volume was crucial, as it fast-tracked my development. People asked why I was doing so much, but it was because I was bloody enjoying it.

Being able to accumulate fitness and build resistance will lead to what is commonly referred to as a cycling engine cardiovascular fitness and many late starters report success in local races simply by possessing greater raw strength than their peers. According to the research, it takes around four months to develop our cycling engine and maximise VO2 max, from then on, its a case of maintaining volume and intensity economy, resilience and endurance continue to improve over many years. Of course, once youve progressed through the categories and are facing tougher competition, the barriers are no longer solely fitness-related.

There is a huge amount of skill and technique required to race effectively and avoid wasting energy, Davison says. This is harder to pick up, but is all very coachable. I tell coaches that you will progress a greater amount in a short time by improving technique rather than physiology.

OK, but what exactly is cycling technique? Its a question that another late starter, former 800m international runner Dani Christmas, found herself asking after she switched to cycling in 2013 aged 25.

Dani Christmas (Daniel Gould)

When youre watching cycling on TV, you think it looks so easy. Theyre riding in a straight line, how hard can it be? But do it yourself and the first time you think holy moly, this is terrifying.

Daunted by bunch riding for two years, Christmas who now rides for Lotto-Soudal already knew she had potential.

I had a good engine, so I won local races without riding in the middle and just sitting at the back or at the front with a quick smash up the outside. When I actually had to force myself to ride properly within the bunch, it hit me just how much skill was required. You have to learn how to control your bike as best as you can, and working on my bike-handling skills progressed me morethan anything.

The consequences of lacking bunch skills barely need spelling out. If youre new to racing and suddenly someone leads on your shoulder, the chances are you will freak out, slam on your brakes and the person behind you wont have time to react, says Christmas. You have to learn to read peoples body language so that you can analyse what they will do, giving you that extra reaction time if they deviate from their line or they signal to you that theyre going to move.

Aware of the critical omission in her repertoire, Christmas began working on her skills, even in 2018 after she started racing for Bizkaia Durango-Euskadi Murias, her first UCI team, aged 30.

Pick a white line on the side of the road and practise riding as slow as possible. The slower you go, the harder it is to stay on the white line, she advises. When riding in a bunch with 38cm handlebars, you have a gap either side of you of around 6cm to the next rider, so you have to be able to keep your bike still and not move around all over the place. Only when I set aside time every week even just 20 minutes to work on these skills did I make a big step forward.

The 32-year-old explains how she also had to work hard on her cornering.

On my rides, I planned routes where I used corners that I could safely take four or five times on a ride, and I worked on that until I was confident, she says. The pro road racer has since taught skill-based workshops for beginners in traffic-free, safe, closed circuit environments, something she regrets not doing during her formative years.

You will learn more in one afternoon than I did in three seasons of racing.

To learn tactical astuteness, it is necessary to race again and again. Chapman, who now rides for FDJ-Nouvelle Aquitaine Futuroscope, and has eight UCI wins to her palmars, has experienced this first-hand.

Stepping up to the biggest races, I had to learn how to distribute energy more wisely. Its not a 100m sprint race, its about who can apply energy in the right moments and throughout the race. You cant do that instantly, you have to learn how to hold a good position and thats the most energy-sapping thing to do. There is no way to be good at that instantly. You do that by racing.

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In learning from your races, your friends and coaches can help you. You cant watch yourself, so if you can get someone to watch you and maybe even film parts of the race, especially if its on a closed circuit, Christmas suggests. That way, you can receive feedback and you can analyse the race: what position was the winner in? When did I burn my matches? Write three things down to improve, and if you keep making the same mistakes, you then set process goals to improve on.

Having an expert to cast their judgement made a big difference to Clayton. One hundred per cent, having a coach has been integral to my results, the Yorkshireman says. Having trained without a coach for the first two years, he was approached by Canyon dhb Soreen rider Rory Townsend after the South East Regional Championships in 2017 a race where he finished third, joining winner Townsend and fellow late-starter Alex Richardson on the podium.

The first thing Rory did was laugh at what I was doing, Clayton says. Once you click with a coach, its the most important thing and, in my mind, the best investment you can make into your results. I dont think I would have achieved any of this without him as a coach. Hes an advisor, a good friend and you cant put a price on what he has been able to do for me within the sport.

Spratt hired a coach almost as soon as he started cycling. I didnt have a clue how to train in the sport, he admits. In rugby, I trained until the day before a match, played and then had a day off. I had no idea about peaking.

The impact of having guidance was observable within his first year. In the 2018 National Championships, I finished fourth in the individual pursuit and I had no idea what I was doing. A few months later, I became the first amateur to ride sub-10 seconds and that was only because I had a coach who understood the sport and knew what I needed to do and why I needed to do it. Without that help I wouldnt have got to where I did Without a coach youre going in blind.

Not everyone has to dream big, but they can achieve their potential. There will be doubts along the way, though. Be kind to yourself, Chapman advises. Instead of being caught up in how challenging it is or how much you have to learn, congratulate yourself on each achievement. Finishing a race is an achievement.

All of the late starters CW speaks to have hardships to share, common problems they each overcame, and they are all unanimous in their conviction that age need not be a barrier to achieving at a very high level. Chapman urges older riders not to get hung up on a sense of being disadvantaged: You may ask: should I be here? And after some success: how did I get here? But everyone has a story of why they are not as good as they could be, or why they are less experienced, and I saw a lot of other women who had entered the sport late. I soon realised my story is not unique. Lets not forget, racing is the great leveller. Once youre on the start line, everyone is equally your rival; age no longer matters.

This feature originally appeared in the print edition of Cycling Weekly, on sale in newsagents and supermarkets, priced 3.25.

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Physiology

A JCC beginning and beyond | Local – Olean Times Herald

JAMESTOWN For many, a community college education often serves as the beginning of a career.

For Karin and Herb Meiselman, Jamestown Community College was just that, but it was also the start of something much greater. Although the institution has changed a lot in 60 years, the Meiselmans' memories from there have not.

We visited JCC at various times through the years when we come through Jamestown and we know its changed a lot physically, but were still fairly attached to our memories of it, Karin said. Its something that, I guess you could say, is a part of our marriage; that we both have the memories of JCC, that it was a nice, small place where you got to know other students and the faculty.

In 1960, Karin was a first-year student majoring in psychology at JCC. Herb was a sophomore, finishing his final semesters at the two-year institution focused on engineering. Though both of them were local Jamestown High School graduates Herb graduating in 1958 and Karin in 1959 they had never met.

That all changed in 1960 when both of them attended a JCC Jayhawks basketball game. There, they first noticed each other when brief small talk ensued between Karins group of friends and Herbs corresponding collective.

He got to talking to me and eventually asked for my phone number, and that was the beginning, Karin says.

Married in 1963, the couple now lives in California near Pasadena. Karin and Herb have two children, Sharon and Ben, and three grandchildren, Issac, Ilana and Theodore.

In 2016, Karin concluded a career in psychology while Herb retired as a scientist and professor at the University of Southern California School of Medicine. A professor for 45 years, Herb taught physiology and biophysics at USC. Prior to transitioning to the role of teacher, he attended Caltech in Pasadena for a post-doctoral fellowship.

Focusing his research on the physiology of red blood cells and their flow through microcirculation, Herb is credited with more than 300 scientific publications. Through National Institute of Health grant funding, he was able to travel overseas for his work, often accompanied by Karin. Herb even visited Antarctica twice, studying blood flow in seals.

I kind of hitched on to a lot of that travel, Karin says of Herbs work-related adventures, adding that the two of them were able to travel separately from work and on their own time, too.

Karins career as a private practice psychologist focused on the long-term effects of child sexual abuse. She authored two books and frequently lectured to professional groups on the topic. Karin was consulted by actress Barbra Streisand about a role in the film "Nuts," in which she portrays a sexual abuse survivor.

Though the two now reflect on a life and a career that was truly seeded in 1960 at JCC, Karin admits not knowing which career path shed pursue at the time. But she also didnt intend on meeting her husband of 57 years either. Though unexpected, she welcomed both opportunities at JCC.

I had no idea what I was going to become, Karin says. I just started taking courses that I liked.

After that night at their favorite watering hole, as Herb describes it, the two hit it off.

Herb, a year ahead of Karin, left for Michigan Technological University (MTU) in 1960 after graduating from JCC. He later earned a Ph.D. from MTU before heading to California.

Meanwhile, Karin began her second year at Jamestown that fall. Though separated, the moments they had at JCC would not soon be forgotten. They wrote to each other constantly in that year apart and the years that followed. Those letters consisted of the two professing love to each other and describing their coursework, as Karin puts it. Postage stamps only cost four cents at the time.

After graduating from JCC, Karin attended Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Herb graduated from MTU and was accepted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They returned to Jamestown to be married and shortly after moved to Boston, where Herb attended MIT.

Karin worked at various proofreading jobs but her ambition for psychology would not go unfulfilled. The Meiselmans moved to Pasadena in 1966. Karin was accepted into a graduate program for clinical psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she earned her Ph.D. Meanwhile, Herb continued his research and expanded his career as a scientist and a professor.

Though continuing on from Jamestown to Los Angeles and around the world, their beginnings at JCC are not lost on them and neither is the impact the college had on their lives.

My experience was small classes, getting to know faculty members, and having a good social life while saving gobs of money, Herb says of his experience. JCC means good personal memories and a good start on my career path. I would definitely recommend it to today's high school grads.

Karin adds that JCC is the place where she learned her work ethic. While maintaining solid grades in high school, she admits she was mentally tested upon entering college. But the impact of those trials was only positive on her life and career.

Were deeply indebted to JCC for giving us the motivation and interest for pursuing our studies and working and getting eventual success, she says.

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Physiology

Fans crowd into an indoor concert in experiment on how to return to normality – CTV News

Ever since the coronavirus pandemic shuttered clubs, bars and concert halls around the world, music fans have been dreaming of the day they can once again visit a busy, sweaty venue to enjoy a gig with friends.

With infection rates rising in many European countries, this dream could be far off for now. But some music fans in Leipzig, Germany, have been given the chance to rock for a day in the name of science -- with the help of some glowing hand sanitizer and electronic trackers.

Researchers in the German city of Leipzig staged a 1,500-person experimental indoor concert on Saturday to better understand how Covid-19 spreads at big, busy events, and how to prevent it.

At the gig, which featured a live performance from musician Tim Bendzko, fans were given respiratory face masks, fluorescent hand gel and electronic "contact trackers" -- small transmitters that determine the contact rates and contact distances of the individual experiment participants.

Using data from the contact trackers, scientists from The University of Halle will monitor the number "critical contacts" had by each participant during specific times and locations, while the residue left by fluorescent hand gel will identify frequently touched surfaces. Researchers hope to use the data to find ways to bring big events, including sports, back safely.

Professor Michael Gekle, the dean of the university's medical faculty and a professor of physiology, told CNN the experiment was being conducted to better prepare authorities on how to conduct events in the upcoming autumn and winter seasons.

"We cannot afford another lockdown," he said. "We have to gather the data now in order to be able to make valid predictions," he said.

"There is no zero risk if you want to have life. We want to give the politicians a tool in order to decide rationally whether to allow such an event or not. That means they have to have the tool to predict how many additional infected people such an event will produce," he said.

Researchers directed volunteers to run three scenarios -- one that simulated a concert pre-coronavirus, a second simulating a concert during the pandemic, with improved hygiene measures in place, and a third, with reduced participants. Scientists will gather the data, apply a mathematical model, and evaluate the hygiene interventions, with conclusions ready by the end of the year.

Researchers believe this is the first time an experiment of this scale has taken place in Europe, but say that different considerations would have to be applied depending on the type of event, the behavior of concert goers and whether patrons were allowed to consume alcohol.

"Of course, a concert with Rammstein would be different," he said.

Gekle told CNN that due to a low prevalence of the virus in the states of Saxony and Lower Saxony, participating in the study was low risk for volunteers, who underwent coronavirus testing 48 hours before participation, and were wearing masks during the show. "It's safer than flying to Majorca," he said.

The number of coronavirus infections in Germany has been climbing again since the end of July. On Saturday, the country saw its highest number of daily infections since April 26, with 2,034 new cases of Covid-19, according to Robert Koch institute, the country's center for disease and control.

The experiment may have been controlled, but for some in the crowd -- despite the lack of alcohol -- it felt like a return to normality.

"This was our first real applause from the audience in months," Bendzko told CNN. "The atmosphere is surprisingly good -- it almost felt like a real concert.

"I wish that it will be possible to play at big concerts again someday soon," he said. "But we all understand that we now have to live with the virus and we have to take a certain risk."

Elli Blesz, 20, from Leipzig told CNN: "The atmosphere was really great, we all enjoyed the music -- it was nice to listen to live music after six months."

And Kira Stuetz, a 26-year-old student who attended the concert with her husband, said: "It was a little crazy." Recalling one of the pre-coronavirus simulations, where audience members sat together, she said that "at first it almost felt wrong all people came so close together. We thought this 'is a dream' because it's not allowed to be sitting together so close! But then it was really cool. I could not believe it that we were at a real concert again!"

Organizers around the world have been dipping their toes into the water to see when and how live events can be brought back in a world still suffering from the coronavirus pandemic -- in the UK, event organizers trialled concerts at an outdoor, purpose-made socially distant concert venue, where patrons sat in small groups on distant, raised platforms.

Some venues are experimenting with virtual events, drive-through concerts, mandated personal protective equipment, or temperature checks on arrival.

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Physiology

New SUU course will explore philosophy, physiology of pro wrestling – The Spectrum

Before Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson became the biggest movie star in the world, he got his start in professional wrestling.(Photo: WWE)

Pro wrestling fans at SUU can now studywhat The Rock iscookin'.

Southern Utah University will soon be offering a six-credit general education course focused on the philosophy and physiology of professional wrestling, the school recently announced.

"Talkin' 'Bout Hard Times: The Philosophy and Physiology of Sports Entertainment" will be available starting in the spring semester of 2021. The course was developed and will be taught byKris Phillips, associate professor of philosophy, and Lindsey Roper, assistant professor of biology.

Throughout the course, students will examine professional wrestling through a philosophical and biological lens, according to the announcement. Topics will range from class struggle to complicated injuries, and the class will include field experiences, guests lectures and a final project that will involve creating a wrestling avatar.

The course came about due to a grant from the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, which picked up Phillips' and Roper's course proposal.

Phillips said in the announcement that there's "surprising opportunity" in professional wrestling to explore social, biological and other topics in-depth.

With careful scrutiny, we can learn from the least likely of sources," he said.

Roper said in the announcement that general education courses aren't something to just get through; rather, they should push students outside of their comfort zones and help them see that all fields are connected.

"On the surface, biology, philosophyand professional wrestling have absolutely nothing in common, but when we take a deeper look there is a massive amount of shared interest and subject matter," she said.

Kaitlyn Bancroft reports on faith, health, education, crime and under-served communities for The Spectrum & Daily News, a USA TODAY Network newsroom in St. George, Utah. You can reach her at KBancroft@thespectrum.com, or follow her on Twitter @katbancroft.

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New SUU course will explore philosophy, physiology of pro wrestling - The Spectrum

Physiology

General health orientation based psychological motivations for masters athletes, a consideration of clustering utilizing t-distributed Stochastic…

Authors: Joe Walsh, Ian Timothy Heazlewood, Mark DeBeliso, Mike Climstein

Corresponding Author:Dr. Mike Climstein (FASMF, FACSM, FAAESS)Clinical Exercise PhysiologySouthern Cross UniversitySchool of Health and Human SciencesGold Coast, Queensland, AustraliaMichael.Climstein@scu.edu.au

Dr. Joe Walsh is with Sport Science Institute http://www.sportscienceinstitute.com

Ian Timothy Heazlewood is Associate Professor and Theme Leader Exercise and Sport Science in The School of Psychological and Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Engineering, Health, Science and the Environment, Charles Darwin University, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia.

Mark DeBeliso is Professor, Department of Physical Education and Human Performance, Southern Utah University, Cedar City, USA

Dr. Mike Climstein (FASMF, FACSM, FAAESS) is with Clinical Exercise Physiology, Southern Cross University, School of Health and Human Sciences, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia; Physical Activity, Lifestyle, Ageing and Wellbeing Faculty Research Group, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia, 2006.

ABSTRACT

An exploration of clustering of general health orientation psychological motivations for participation in sport was conducted using t-distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE). The aim of this research was to assess the suitability of applying t-SNE to creating two-dimensional scatter plots to visualise the relationship between different general health orientation motivators. The data source used for this investigation was survey data gathered on World Masters Games competitors using the Motivations of Marathoners Scales (MOMS). Application of t-SNE plots could assist in visually mapping general health orientation psychological constructs and gaining greater understanding of the underlying patterns in the MOMS tool. Some clustering patterns were observed, with some items in the MOMS connected in a logical manner that complied with those originally proposed by the developers of the MOMS. On tuning the t-SNE model hyperparameters, it became apparent that the t-SNE graphs were able to provide an appropriate representation of clustering with learning rates outside the ranges often recommended (at the time of writing). As t-SNE is a relatively modern approach to visualizing high dimensional data, this was a finding worth reporting. Two-dimensional scatter plots produced using t-SNE may assist in creating hypotheses about the relationships present between psychological constructs in such high-dimensional data.

Key words: t-SNE, Sport Psychology, Motivations Of Marathoners Scales (MOMS), scikit-learn library, LimeSurvey

INTRODUCTION

The World Masters Games

This manuscript focuses on exploration of clustering of scores from psychometric data gathered on masters athletes. Masters athletes are defined as those systematically training for and competing in organized sporting events designed specifically for older adults (44). Competing at sport in older ages has been shown to be beneficial for a number of health indices which includes general cardiovascular health (5), blood pressure (8), improved lipids (14), reduced frailty/sarcopenia(20) and muscular strength and function (41) The biggest masters sporting event (by participant number) is the World Masters Games (WMG). Participation at the WMG is open to sports people of all abilities, limited by age. The minimum age criterion ranges between 25 and 35 years depending upon the sport. The data used in this manuscript was data gathered at the Sydney WMG, which attracted 28,089 competitors who represented 95 countries competing in 28 sports (57, 60, 63). Research on the masters athletes competing at the Sydney WMG has included investigation of smoking prevalence (53), body mass index (26, 50, 51, 52, 54, 56, 58, 63, 64), injury incidence (13, 28, 48, 49, 55) and health (9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19) of competitors. Masters athletes did not show increased incidence of injury in comparison to other active populations (49, 55), a finding which alleviates one potential concern with promoting participation in masters sport.

The Motivations of Marathoners Scales

The Motivations of Marathoners Scales (MOMS) (37) is a psychometric instrument based upon a series of 56 questions and scored on a seven-point Likert scale (35). To complete the MOMS, participants rated the 56 questions from 1-7 in terms of how important it is as a reason for their participation in sport. A score of 1 would indicate that the item is not a reason for participation, whereas a score of 7 indicates that the item is a very important reason for participation and scores in-between these extremes represented relative degrees of each reason. The following are sample questions which sought responses to word stems such as; to control my weight, to compete with others, to earn respect of peers, to improve my sporting performance, to earn respect of people in general, to socialize with other participants, to improve my health, to compete with myself, to become less anxious, to improve my self-esteem and to become less depressed. A full list of the 56 questions in the MOMS scale and summary statistics for the MOMS scale data gathered at the Sydney WMG has been previously published (40, 60).

The MOMS is a valid and reliable, quantitative instrument for gauging the importance of a range of psychological factors in determining motivations for sports participation. Participant motivation evaluates those factors that enhance or inhibit motivation to participate and are represented by factors such as health orientation, weight concern/weight loss and personal goal achievement (39, 40, 65). The questions in the scale are split into general categories and these are further subset into Scales (40). For example, for questions in the category Physical Health Motives, to improve my health, to prolong my life, to become more physically fit, to reduce my chance of having a heart attack, to stay in physical condition and to prevent illness comprise the General Health Orientation subset of Physical Health Motive questions. The other subset of Physical Health Motivation questions, Weight Concern is composed of to look leaner, to help control my weight, to reduce my weight and to stay physically attractive(40).

The MOMS scale has been adopted to investigate athletes competing in other sports (other than marathon), including at both multi-sport events (24, 32) and individual sports tournaments such as rugby (30), or triathlon (6) (with some adaption). Data collected using the MOMS scale has also been used as a convenience sample for demonstrating applications of data mining techniques that can be used in exercise science and exercise psychology (34, 35, 61, 62).

The age ranges in the research used to develop the MOMS survey instrument had significant overlap with age ranges of participants at the WMG. The questions identified in the MOMS have been demonstrated (7, 21, 42, 45) as important motivational constructs and have been used by sport psychology researchers for more than 25 years. A number of studies have been conducted on the MOMS in the context of masters athletes (1, 2, 3, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 33, 47, 64). Heazlewood and colleagues (29) re-evaluated the first and second order factor structure of the MOMS instrument with masters athletes, the factor structure identified in the original MOMS instrument was not reproduced with the WMG male and female cohorts.

t-distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding

There are a number of established techniques for visualizing high dimensional data. A relatively modern technique that has a number of advantages over many earlier approaches is t-distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE) (38). With t-SNE, high dimensional data can be converted into a two dimensional scatter plot via a matrix of pair-wise similarities.

Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (SNE) converts Euclidean distances between data points into conditional probabilities that represent similarities (36). In t-SNE the SNE cost function is replaced with a symmetrized version with simpler gradients (38) and t-SNE uses a Cauchy Distribution (one dimensional Students-t distribution (as opposed to a Gaussian distribution)) to compute the similarity between two points in the lower-dimensional space (38). This distribution allows for more dispersion in the lower-dimensional space. Similar to SNE, the t-SNE algorithm develops a probability distribution between factor pairs in the higher-dimensional space with higher probabilities assigned to pairs with higher similarity. A similar probability distribution is then developed in a lower-dimensional map and the Kullback-Leibler divergence (37) between the two distributions is then minimized with respect to the points in the maps using gradient descent. The aim is developing a lower dimensional mapping (in our case two dimensions) where this mapping retains the similarities that were present in the higher dimensional data. The cost function for t-SNE is not convex, thus initializing scripts with different random seed values will result in differing outcomes.

AIM

Effective visualization of data plays a crucial role in knowledge discovery (16). The MOMS scale contains complex, multi-dimensional relations between 56 different questions, split into a factor structure that has not been replicated in previous research on WMG athletes (29). The aim of this research was to assess the suitability of applying t-SNE to creating two-dimensional scatter plots to visualise the relationship between different psychological motivators. If suitable plots could be constructed these could assist in visually mapping psychological constructs and gaining greater understanding of the underlying patterns in the MOMS scale. Two-dimensional scatter plots produced using t-SNE may assist in creating hypotheses about the relationships present between psychological constructs in such high-dimensional data.

METHODOLOGY

Data was collected on athletes participating in the Sydney WMG, after approval for the project was granted by a university Research Ethics Committee in accordance with the ethical standards of the Helsinki Declaration of 1975 (revised in 2008) and the Sydney World Masters Games Organising Committee. An online survey was created using Limesurvey, an open-source, web-based application to deliver the survey. The survey consisted of several sections. A total of 3,928 masters athletes completed all 56 questions in the MOMS. This manuscript analyses psychological participation factors contained within the survey. Further details about the survey methodology and an overview of findings from the survey has been previously published (59).

The psychological participation factors included in the survey were 56 questions based on the MOMS (60). These were analysed using the t-SNE package included in the scikit-learn python machine learning library (43). Analysis was conducted using Python 3.6.5 using operating system x86_64-apple-darwin15.6.0 (64-bit). After provisional exploratory analysis of different hyper parameters, it was deemed appropriate to keep the majority of t-SNE hyper parameters fixed at their default settings (the standard settings within the scikit-learn library, with default values and a description of each hyper parameter reported in Table 1) and tune the learning rate hyper parameter. The learning rate was tuned from values of 0.0001 to 1000, which was outside the recommended range in the scikit-learn (43) package recommendations (10-1000) (46). The fixed values for the other main hyper parameters for t-SNE implemented via scikit-learn (46) are listed in Table 1 below.

Table 1. Descriptions and default values for the t-SNE hyper parameters in the scikit-learn package (46)

RESULTS

Figure 1: Learning Rate 100

Figure 2: Learning Rate 10

Figure 3: Learning Rate 0.125

DISCUSSION

The Figures 1-3 are a visual representation of the clustering of the 56 psychological motivations documented in the literature (31, 40, 42, 60). As the dimensional reduction utilized in t-SNE is non-linear the axes in the graphs in Figures 1-3 represent distances in the two-dimensional space, however relating these to equivalent distances in the initial 56 dimensions is a non-linear transformation. Thus, the figures should be used as a visualization tool; however, the interpretability in the units of the initial 56 dimensional data is not apparent or suitable from the figures. In terms of visualization of relationship between the 56 variables, there were clearly patterns of clustering which give insight into relationships within the data. This discussion section focuses upon the general health orientation questions. These questions were utilised as an example of the replication (or disparity) of clustering relationships in the original development of the MOMS instrument (40) when questions are inspected graphically utilising t-SNE.

Inspection of clustering of questions on the t-SNE scatter plots revealed many patterns that were representative of underlying relationships between the different questions. Many of the clustering relationships as proposed in the original scale (40) were evident in this data explored using t-SNE. For example in Figure 1 using a learning rate of 100, for the General Health Orientation items, the questions to stay in physical condition, to become more physically fit, to improve my health are closely clustered closely together in quadrant IV (the lower right) of Figure 1. The questions to reduce my chance of having a heart attack and to prevent illness were also very close in positioning to these other three questions on Figure 1 with no questions from other categories between them.

It was observed that the question to prolong my life, was also to the bottom right of the diagram, but offset far to the right with a significant displacement away from any of the other questions. As the Euclidean distance between points was representative of similarities between the different questions in the MOMS for these masters athletes, this would imply that there was some meaningful difference between the responses to this question and the other 56 questions.

There was some apparent clustering for the other subset of questions within the Physical Health Motives category, namely Weight Concern, comprised of to look leaner, to help control my weight, to reduce my weight and to stay physically attractive. These questions were also closely clustered together with no other questions from other categories in the intervening space. This would imply that the clustering observed for the WMG athletes for these particular questions was compatible with that established in the development of MOMS (40).

Figure 2, produced by reducing the learning rate hyper parameter to 10, displayed a different t-SNE scatter plot, with some alteration in the clustering of questions. In many cases, this figure displayed pairs of similar questions (both in terms of logical underlying meaning in the language usage and in terms of t-SNE dimensionality). Similar to Figure 1, the General Health Orientation questions to stay in physical condition, to become more physically fit, to improve my health were clustered closely together, though for this particular t-SNE scatter-plot, the clustering was in the upper centre part of the figure (Figure 2). This is due to different learning rates and initialisation with a given random seed. The Cartesian coordinates of different questions was not the focus of this manuscript as t-SNE was utilized instead to explore the data in terms of Euclidean distance between the questions (as detailed in the introduction section). Whilst the other three questions within General Health Orientation, namely to reduce my chance of having a heart attack, to prolong my life and to prevent illness are very close in positioning to each other, however situated on the right of Figure 2. They are considerably separated from the first three questions. This would imply two separate subsets of three questions within General Health Orientation. The Weight Concern scale questions in Figure 2 to look leaner, to help control my weight and to reduce my weight are clustered together, not too far from one of the apparent subsets of General Health Orientation questions also on the right hand side of the diagram, with to help control my weight and to reduce my weight more tightly clustered than to look leaner, which is offset slight to the left from the pair. This grouping is logical in terms of the rational interpretation of the language used in the questions, specifically the two more closely grouped questions contain language specific to weight control/reduction, whilst the other question was related to physical appearance.

In Figure 3, the General Health Orientation questions were split into two subgroups with to prolong my life, to reduce my chance of having a heart attack and to prevent illness clustered in the upper centre of Figure 3. The questions to stay in physical condition, to become more physically fit and to improve my health were separated from the other cluster and were located towards the lower left of the graph. There were more than ten questions located between these two clusters across the two t-SNE dimensions. This result implied two different clusterings and was contrary to the grouping of both clusters together under the same category of General Health Orientation.

All of the t-SNE plots in Figures 1-3 have different subgroupings of psychological motivations including those explicitly discussed for motivations within category of General Health Orientation. Although there were differences, the general categorization of questions in the MOMS did also have some shared and clearly visible commonalities with the groupings apparent in t-SNE graphs created across a range of learning rates. Despite differences according to random initialisation parameters and learning rates, the figures demonstrate that t-SNE can be utilised to produce two-dimensional graphs to visualize the relationship between the different psychological motivation questions comprising the MOMS tool. Visual inspection confirms viable patterns of clustering which give insight into relationships within the data, with these patterns being logical in context of the underlying meaning in the language usage and specific groupings of questions. Further review could be conducted on the differences demonstrated between the MOMS general categorization of questions and the t-SNE graphs. An example would be distinct and separate clusters of questions forming two separate clusters for General Health Orientation questions. Based solely on this cursory visual analysis via these scatter plots, it would be advisable to split the General Health Orientation questions into separate groups and similar patterns may be present for other groupings. This splitting is however not advised without further supporting evidence and it should be noted though that devising such alternative groupings is not the aim of this research, which was to assess the suitability of applying t-SNE to creating two dimensional scatter plots to visualise the relationship between different psychological motivators with specific reference to General Health orientation questions. Such graphs were successfully created. These two dimensional scatter plots produced using t-SNE may assist in creating hypotheses about the relationships present between psychological constructs in such high-dimensional data both for the WMG athletes using the MOMS, for others using the MOMS and for applications outside of MOMS using other tools.

It was interesting to note that the hyper parameter tuning was conducted beyond the recommended ranges provided in the scikit-learn package documentation for t-SNE learning rates (10-1000). This extended range was selected based on investigators extensive experience in hyper parameter tuning. The appropriate learning rates for hyper parameter tuning were found to be well below the standard range (e.g. learning rates below 0.1, such as 0.125 in Figure 3). It should be noted that all other values were set as the scikit-learn package defaults (with values used listed in the method section). As t-SNE is a relatively modern technique, findings that could be beneficial in recommendations for implementation such as this should be noted.

CONCLUSION

It was demonstrated that t-SNE could be utilised to produce two-dimensional graphs to visualize the relationship between the different psychological motivation questions comprising the MOMS tool. Visual inspection confirmed the presence of patterns of clustering which gave viable insight into clustering relationships within the data. Patterns were apparent that were logical in terms of the underlying meaning in the language usage and specific groupings of questions

The general categorization of questions in the MOMS had commonalities with the groupings apparent in t-SNE graphs created across a range of learning rates. There were also some differences demonstrated in the t-SNE graphs. An example would be distinct and separate clusters of questions forming two separate clusters for General Health Orientation questions. Based solely on this cursory visual analysis via these scatter plots, it would be advised to split the General Health Orientation questions into separate groups and similar patterns may be present for other groupings. This is however not advised and it should be noted though that devising such alternative groupings is not the aim of this research, which was to assess the suitability of applying t-SNE to creating two dimensional scatter plots to visualise the relationship between different psychological motivators. Such graphs were successfully created. The two-dimensional scatter plots produced using t-SNE may assist in creating hypotheses about the relationships present between psychological constructs in such high-dimensional data.

A secondary finding was apparent based on the learning rates used in hyper parameter tuning. On tuning the t-SNE model hyper parameters, it became apparent that the t-SNE graphs were able to provide an appropriate representation of clustering with learning rates outside the ranges often recommended. As t-SNE is a relatively modern approach to visualizing high dimensional data, this was a notable finding.

APPLICATIONS IN SPORT

The MOMS is a valid and reliable, quantitative instrument for gauging the importance of a range of psychological factors in determining motivations for sports participation. Participant motivation evaluates those factors that enhance or inhibit motivation to participate and are represented by factors such as health orientation, weight concern/weight loss and personal goal achievement. The MOMS has been used by sport psychology researchers for more than 25 years. The MOMS scale has been adopted to investigate athletes competing in marathons, multi-sport events and individual sports tournaments such as rugby or triathlon. Data collected using the MOMS scale has also been used as a convenience sample for demonstrating applications of data mining techniques that can be used in exercise science and exercise psychology. A number of studies have been conducted on the MOMS in the context of masters athletes (1, 2, 3, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 33, 47, 64). Heazlewood and colleagues identified the first and second order factor structure of the MOMS instrument in the context of masters athletes (29). It was demonstrated the factor structure identified in the original MOMS instrument was not reproduced within the WMG male and female cohorts (29). The data used in this manuscript was data gathered at the Sydney WMG, the biggest masters sporting event (by participant number), which attracted 28,089 competitors who represented 95 countries competing in 28 sports

Effective visualization of data plays a crucial role in knowledge discovery. The MOMS scale contains complex, multi-dimensional relations between 56 different questions, split into a factor structure that has not been replicated in previous research on masters athletes (29). The aim of this research was to assess the suitability of applying t-SNE to creating two-dimensional scatter plots to more simply visualise the relationship between different psychological motivators specifically those related to general health orientation. Suitable plots were constructed as per the aim of this experiment and these can assist in visually mapping general health orientation psychological constructs and gaining greater understanding of the underlying patterns in the MOMS scale for masters athletes and potentially in the other sports and events where motivation for participation has been examined using the MOMS, such as marathon, triathlon, rugby and other multi-sport events. The two-dimensional scatter plots produced in this paper using t-SNE may assist in creating hypotheses about the relationships present between general health orientation constructs in such high-dimensional data as the 56 questions in the MOMS instrument. This paper demonstrate that t-SNE can be utilised to produce two-dimensional graphs to visualize the relationship between the general health orientation questions comprising the MOMS tool. Some clustering patterns were observed in those motivations classified under general health orientation, with some items in the MOMS connected in a logical manner that complied with those originally proposed by the developers of the MOMS.

Masters athletes are defined as those systematically training for and competing in organized sporting events designed specifically for older adults. Competing at sport in older ages has been shown to be beneficial for a number of health indices which includes general cardiovascular health, blood pressure, improved lipids, reduced frailty/sarcopenia and muscular strength and function. Participation at the WMG is open to sports people of all abilities, limited by age. The minimum age criterion ranges between 25 and 35 years depending upon the sport. Given increased risk of injury from participation in sport at older ages has been shown in prior research to not be present for WMG competitors (49,55), it would make sense to encourage participation in masters sport (conditional on appropriate medical screening) to improve health outcomes. Visualisation of the relationship between many different general health orientation motivations in masters athletes can be accomplished using t-SNE. The clustering patterns observed in the general health orientation motivations, can be visualised in simple two dimensional plots to better understand the relationship between the different general health orientation questions comprising the MOMS tool. As a general finding related to improving understanding of the MOMS, this method may assist in progressing understanding of relationships between different general health orientation psychological constructs in high dimensional data. With better understanding of the relationship between the multi-dimensional factors involved in the motivation behind participation for masters athletes, sports marketing and strategies behind promoting participation in sports and physical exercise across the lifespan can be optimised and tailored to enhance masters sport participation and improve general health outcomes.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors appreciate the time taken by the 3,298 WMG masters athletes in completing the 56 questions in the MOMS survey tool. The authors also appreciate the assistance of Evan Wills in data collection using LimeSurvey and the Sydney World Masters Games Organising Committee in approving the project.

REFERENCES

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General health orientation based psychological motivations for masters athletes, a consideration of clustering utilizing t-distributed Stochastic...