One hundred and fifty years of sprint and distance running – Past trends and future prospects

Sprint and distance running have experienced remarkable performance improvements over the past century. Attempts to forecast running performances share an almost similarly long history but have relied so far on relatively short data series. Here, we compile a comprehensive set of season-best performances for eight Olympically contested running events. With this data set, we conduct (1) an exponential time series analysis and (2) a power-law experience curve analysis to quantify the rate of past performance improvements and to forecast future performances until the year 2100. We find that the sprint and distance running performances of women and men improve exponentially with time and converge at yearly rates of 4% ± 3% and 2% ± 2%, respectively, towards their asymptotic limits. Running performances can also be modelled with the experience curve approach, yielding learning rates of 3% ± 1% and 6% ± 2% for the women's and men's events, respectively. Long-term trends suggest that: (1) women will continue to run 10–20% slower than men, (2) 9.50 s over 100 m dash may only be broken at the end of this century and (3) several middle- and long-distance records may be broken within the next two to three decades. The prospects of witnessing a sub-2 hour marathon before 2100 remain inconclusive. Our results should be interpreted cautiously as forecasting human behaviour is intrinsically uncertain. The future season-best sprint and distance running performances will continue to scatter around the trends identified here and may yield unexpected improvements of standing world records.     

Forms and practices of accountability in education

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability -     

Direct memberships in foreign copyright collecting societies as an entrepreneurial opportunity for music publishers – needs,challenges, opportunities and solutions

Journal of Cultural Economics - In the competitive, increasingly international music business, publishers are developing new ways to increase effectiveness and efficiency of the monetization of the...     

Context modulation of learned attention deployment

In three experiments, we investigated the contextual control of attention in human discrimination learning. In each experiment, participants initially received discrimination training in which the cues from Dimension A were relevant in Context 1 but irrelevant in Context 2, whereas the cues from Dimension B were irrelevant in Context 1 but relevant in Context 2. In Experiment 1, the same cues from each dimension were used in Contexts 1 and 2, whereas in Experiments 2 and 3, the cues from each dimension were changed across contexts. In each experiment, participants were subsequently shifted to a transfer discrimination involving novel cues from either dimension, to assess the contextual control of attention. In Experiment 1, measures of eye gaze during the transfer discrimination revealed that Dimension A received more attention than Dimension B in Context 1, whereas the reverse occurred in Context 2. Corresponding results indicating the contextual control of attention were found in Experiments 2 and 3, in which we used the speed of learning (associability) as an indirect marker of learned attentional changes. Implications of our results for current theories of learning and attention are discussed.     

Creatine kinase,myosin heavy chains and magnetic resonance imaging after eccentric exercise

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between myosin heavy chain (MHC) release as a specific marker of slow-twitch muscle fibre breakdown and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of skeletal muscle injury after eccentric exercise. The effects of a single series of 70 high-intensity eccentric contractions of the quadriceps femoris muscle group (single leg) on plasma concentrations of creatine kinase and MHC fragments were assessed in 10 young male sport education trainees before and 1 and 4 days after exercise. To visualize muscle injury, MRI of the loaded thigh was performed before and 4 days after the eccentric exercise. All participants recorded an increase ( P ? 0.05) in creatine kinase after exercise. In five participants, T2 signal intensity was unchanged post-exercise compared with pre-exercise and MHC plasma concentration was normal; however, they showed an increase ( P ? 0.05) in creatine kinase after exercise. For the remaining five participants, there was an increase in T2 signal intensity of the loaded vastus intermedius and vastus lateralis. These changes in MRI were accompanied by an increase in MHC plasma concentration ( P ? 0.01) as well as an increase in creatine kinase ( P ? 0.01). We suggest that changes in MRI T2 signal intensity after muscle damage induced by eccentric exercise are closely related to damage to structurally bound contractile filaments of some muscle fibres. Additionally, MHC plasma release indicates that this damage affects not only fast-twitch fibres but also some slow-twitch fibres.     

Competence Profile School Management (CPSM) – an inventory for the self-assessment of school leadership

The professional demands on school leaders have changed drastically and have become highly complex in the last few years. The professionalization of school leaders is high on the agenda. Human resource management includes different aspects of professionalization. One major domain is the preparation, induction and continuous professional development of individual leaders and leadership teams. Another is personnel marketing and selection, which includes the question of attracting capable future leaders and of appointing the right candidates. However in Europe there is a need for standardised tools which provide systematic feedback to professionals interested in assessing their strengths and individual development needs. Suitable instruments are still scarce. The Competence Profile School Management CPSM (German: KompetenzProfil SchulManagement; KPSM) is the first online-based self-assessment in the German language which has been designed to fit the school context and is based on psychometric principles. It offers participants the possibility to reflect their strengths and weaknesses in different requirement areas of school leadership; and to compare their individual results with peers from the school context, thus gaining valuable information on their individual profiles when planning their professional development and careers. After sketching the theoretical and empirical background, this article presents information about the aims and purpose of CPSM, the tool’s development, its test scales and test formats, the results of the pilot study and those of the evaluation study. Then, the further development of the tool in terms of modifications and add-ons are outlined, before, finally, the tool’s contribution to practice and research is discussed.     

Freelancers and the absorption of external knowledge: practical implications and theoretical contributions

The term absorptive capacity (AC) describes the process of utilising external knowledge. Although firms are becoming increasingly reliant on highly skilled freelancers as a source of external knowledge, the literature on AC has not incorporated this collaboration for freelancers. In this paper, we address this research deficit in two ways: First, we argue that the ability to collaborate effectively and efficiently with freelancers plays a crucial role in the process of absorbing external knowledge. Second, we argue that the example of freelancers challenges researchers to rethink the conceptualisation of organisational boundaries within the concept of AC. Our paper is based upon previous theoretical insights and exploratory empirical data from a research project on German IT freelancers. For the practice of knowledge management, our paper elaborates upon how organisations can enhance their AC by investing in practices and routines that contribute to successful collaboration with freelancers.