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Fungal conservation is gaining momentum globally, but many challenges remain. To advance further, more data are needed on fungal diversity across space and time. Fundamental information regarding population sizes, trends, and geographic ranges is also critical to accurately assess the extinction risk of individual species. However, obtaining these data is particularly difficult for fungi due to their immense diversity, complex and problematic taxonomy, and cryptic nature. This paper explores how citizen science (CS) projects can be leveraged to advance fungal conservation efforts. We present several examples of past and ongoing CS‐based projects to record and monitor fungal diversity. These include projects that are part of broad collecting schemes, those that provide participants with targeted sampling methods, and those whereby participants collect environmental samples from which fungi can be obtained. We also examine challenges and solutions for how such projects can capture fungal diversity, estimate species absences, broaden participation, improve data curation, and translate resulting data into actionable conservation measures. Finally, we close the paper with a call for professional mycologists to engage with amateurs and local communities, presenting a framework to determine whether a given project would likely benefit from participation by citizen scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to gather an overview of different research fields that study collection building amongst heritage amateurs (e.g. amateur archaeologists, family and local historians, etc.). Design/methodology/approach: First, the paper will define the term heritage amateur and then identify possible fields in which these groups and their collection building have been studied. A snowball procedure was used to collect material for the study. Findings: While there is an overlap between some of the subjects and fields examined, there is a potential for more collaboration resulting in a deeper understanding of collection building amongst heritage amateurs. Research limitations/implications: The term heritage amateur is not widely used, and the identification and collection of material for the review rely on the definition and understanding of this term and the groups included under it. Practical implications: This review of existing literature will benefit researchers and practitioners in the fields of education, information science, museums, libraries and archival studies, as well as the multidisciplinary area of heritage studies. Social implications: There is a growing institutional and political interest in making digital heritage collections available to the general public, and this paper argues that an important part of this is understanding how heritage amateurs already do this. Originality/value: This paper will connect narrow interest areas such as participatory heritage or serious leisure and show how their angles on heritage amateurs differ and compare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On November 1, 1959, a flying hockey puck broke the nose of goalie Jacques Plante. Thereafter, he insisted on wearing a face mask, a decision that signaled a broader introduction of safety equipment into North American ice hockey. This paper examines how head and facial protection became a standard requirement for playing hockey in North America at amateur and professional levels of the sport. During the mid-twentieth century, national governing bodies confronted growing safety concerns amid rising participation in organized hockey. Yet in the absence of league-wide mandates, players generally did not sustain helmet use. From the 1950s through the 1970s, masks for goalies and helmets and facial protection for skaters were mandated to protect against injuries. In the context of contemporary concussion concerns, the history of debates over hockey head and face protection illustrates the array of social, cultural, and organizational factors behind measures to protect athletes' health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Angewandte Chemie is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The ubiquity and yet distinctiveness of domestic sites for scientific research have attracted an unprecedented focus in recent years, especially in studies concerned with the gendering of science and the rise of citizen science movements of the late twentieth century. It is fair to say this "new" subfield has now entered a stage of maturity, even as it continues to grow and adopt new theoretical perspectives. Following an historiographical shift we might call the "domestic turn" in histories of science, "domesticities" emerges as a critical, analytical lens through which to view scientific developments in a range of historical contexts globally. The emphasis in the literature has moved from one on the "house of experiment" to one on the "laboratory of domesticity", attending particularly to the permeability, plasticity, portability, and plurality of instances of entanglement between domesticities and science. In view of the emergence of new empirical cases and theoretical perspectives, this paper revisits the status of domesticities within histories of science to consider the current status of the historiography and to suggest even further directions for new research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Fungal conservation is gaining momentum globally, but many challenges remain. To advance further, more data are needed on fungal diversity across space and time. Fundamental information regarding population sizes, trends, and geographic ranges is also critical to accurately assess the extinction risk of individual species. However, obtaining these data is particularly difficult for fungi due to their immense diversity, complex and problematic taxonomy, and cryptic nature. This paper explores how citizen science (CS) projects can be leveraged to advance fungal conservation efforts. We present several examples of past and ongoing CS‐based projects to record and monitor fungal diversity. These include projects that are part of broad collecting schemes, those that provide participants with targeted sampling methods, and those whereby participants collect environmental samples from which fungi can be obtained. We also examine challenges and solutions for how such projects can capture fungal diversity, estimate species absences, broaden participation, improve data curation, and translate resulting data into actionable conservation measures. Finally, we close the paper with a call for professional mycologists to engage with amateurs and local communities, presenting a framework to determine whether a given project would likely benefit from participation by citizen scientists.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the changes in the finances, expenditure, and membership levels of the English county cricket clubs in the years 1919 to 1962, and to then evaluate the degree to which these changes helped to alter the relationship between the professional and amateur cricketers in the first-class game. The study finds that the decline of the amateur in cricket was partly brought about by the rise in revenues that enabled the clubs to employ more higher quality professionals, and effectively squeeze out the amateurs. It also means that one of the main contributions of the amateur cricketers was to help the lower revenue sides to survive in first-class cricket. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Review for the Sociology of Sport is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Intersecciones en Antropología is the property of Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper argues for the importance and richness of gaze communication during orchestra and choir conduction, and presents three studies on this issue. First, an interview with five choir and orchestra conductors reveals that they are not so deeply aware of the potentialities of gaze to convey indications in music performance. A conductor who was utterly conscious of the importance of gaze communication, however, is Leonard Bernstein, who conducted a performance of Haydn's Symphony No. 88 using his face and gaze only. Therefore, a fragment of this performance is analyzed in an observational study, where a qualitative analysis singles out the items of gaze exploited by Bernstein and their corresponding meanings. Finally, a perception study is presented in which three of these items are submitted to expert, non-expert, and amateur participants. The results show that while the signal for "start" is fairly recognized, the other two, "pay attention" and "crescendo and accelerando" are more difficult to interpret. Furthermore, significant differences in gaze item recognition emerge among participants: experts not only recognize them more, but they also take advantage of viewing the items with audio-visual vs. videoonly presentation, while non-experts do not take advantage of audio in their recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientists have long engaged in collaborations with field collectors, but how are such collaborations established and maintained? This article examines structures of collaborative data collection between professional scientists and various field recorders around the Cornell Library of Natural Sounds. The Library collects animal sound recordings for use in education, preservation, and entertainment, but primarily in the scientific field of bio-acoustics. Since 1945, the Library has enlisted academic researchers, commercial recorders and broadcasters (such as the British Broadcasting Corporation), and amateur sound hunters in its expansion. I argue that the Cornell Library of Natural Sounds managed to craft and sustain a crucial network of contributors through creative and strategic brokering with its collection of recordings/data. Drawing on notions from exchange theory, I show that sound recordings were valued not just as scientific data, but also as copyrighted commodities that could be bought, sold, traded, and converted in a range of economic, social, and symbolic capitals within collaborators’ respective social fields. Thus, aligning collaborators’ interests, these exchange relations enabled the Cornell Library of Natural Sounds to negotiate amateur recorders’ reliability, willingness to share work, and commitment to scientific standards, as well as the bonds that solidified their collaboration with the Cornell Library of Natural Sounds. Attending to the micro-economics of data exchange, this article thus brings into perspective the multi-dimensional processes through which data-flows are managed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Canada, amateur athletes who receive government funding in support of their training are required to sign an agreement with the respective sport organization in order to qualify for the assistance. This illustrates how legal practices are increasingly being used in sport. It is important for participants in sport to understand what the legal elements of such practices are in order to identify those situations in which they have been applied properly, in- accurately, or inappropriately. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the content of the agreements signed by Canadian athletes and the procedures by which they are implemented. The result of this analysis is a list of issues that athletes and administrators may wish to address or improve in order to provide a more fair agreement between the parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of personal style on the administrative behavior of executive directors of sports governing bodies. Seventy-two executive directors from the National Sport and Recreation Centre in Ottawa and the Ontario Sport Administrative Centre in Toronto completed surveys designed to describe personal style (Personal Style Inventory) and administrative behavior (Leadership Behavior Description Questionnaire). Statistical analysis revealed significant differences in behavior based on personal style. The best model of prediction included the behavioral variables of representation, reconciliation, structure, tolerance of freedom, consideration, and predictive accuracy. The results of this study support the hypothesis put forward by Kilmann and Herden (1976) that a person's behavior in a decision- making role may be a reflection of personal style. These findings suggest that it may be important to understand the contribution of personal style to the decision-making process. Further, this may be a helpful exercise in understanding administrators in many organizations and, particularly as it pertains to this study, in volunteer sport organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the way that social media have given a renewed impetus to TV criticism. Websites like Entertainment Weekly or TVline.com not only offer TV criticism by TV critics but also offer ample opportunity for fans to debate their favorite TV shows, part of what Graeme Turner has called “the demotic turn” in contemporary media. Whereas academic scrutiny of this demotic turn has tended to focus on the issue of democratization and the valorization of subjugated knowledges, relatively little attention has been given to how this has created a “commonification” of TV criticism. An analysis of audience reactions to The Walking Dead shows a protoprofessionalization of TV criticism, with audience members offering increasingly sophisticated analyses of TV shows, informed by standards set by the culture industry. The paper ends with a discussion on what type of cultural knowledge these new televisual commons produce and circulate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an illustration of a decolonial and gendered approach that can shape 'new global labour histories' by re-reading histories of Communist women's interwar activism produced in statesocialist Romania with attention to the power context in which they were created and the clues about the work of social reproduction during the interwar that these histories provide. After discussing the main concepts and rationale in the first section, in the second section the author shows that women's history and women historians were marginalized in Romania after 1958 despite promising post-war beginnings. She shows that this evolution was made possible by the symbiosis between nationalist historians and autochthonist politicians in search of a break with Stalinist policies. She then hones in, in the third part of the paper, on the content of the Revue des Etudés Sud-Est Européenes (RESEE) and two women's history volumes, as publications issuing from the conditions described in the second part. With regard to the standalone volumes, the author shows that in this body of work, the interwar period is described as one of women's increased activism within the social-democratic or Communist movements. On the other hand, the period is also described as one of worsening living conditions for proletarians. The intersection of these two narratives creates in this rather limited historiographical body the surprising effect of granting high visibility to reproductive labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians have long debated the origins of modern science in early modern Europe. Recently, however, scholars pointed to our need to understand how the 'new philosophy' became a sustained movement, which did not dissipate over the course of a few generations, as had previous scientific renaissances in other civilizations. This article suggests that the mediations of the printed book allowed a broader public to engage with the astronomical ideas at the core of scientific transformations. This article examines the interactions that the world of the book generated between authors at the 'core' of early modern science and 'amateurs' who were interested in recent cosmological discussion around the notion of the 'system of the world'. It argues that this concept served simultaneously to discuss mathematico-physical problems, to make claims for authorship and to provide cultural orientation, which made it amenable to appropriation and dialogue across a range of genres. The new social interactions around the 'system of the world' allowed a heavily mathematical science to become a viable and sustainable cultural phenomenon, a veritable building-block of a new scientific culture at the heart of European modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing scholarship on the role of the amateur, and amateur societies, in the production and circulation of weather and climate knowledge in the past. Yet relatively little attention has been paid to the actual and potential contribution of contemporary amateur meteorologists in this respect. In this paper we first examine the importance of the amateur historically in the production of local weather knowledge and also in the emergence of professional meteorology. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with members of one contemporary UK based amateur meteorological organisation-the Climatological Observers Link (COL)-we then investigate the nature and extent of contemporary amateur meteorologists' contributions to a wide range of different 'publics' today, which include both popular and professional communities. Finally, we interrogate our interview data to identify whether COL members themselves recognise a wider role for their expertise at a time of increasing popular and scientific interest in weather and climate and in an era when the inclusion of non-certified experts in policy decision making processes is being advocated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Natural History Society of New Brunswick based in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, which operated from 1862 until 1932. The organization was responsible for geological research and public education. The society's lead geologist was George Matthew who published more than 200 scientific papers. The society published the "Bulletin of the Natural History Society of New Brunswick" from 1862 until 1917 which published over 800 lectures and speeches. The society was created in part to provide a scientific library for amateur scientists and was important because the Great Fire of 1877 destroyed many local personal libraries, but the society's library collection remained untouched. The society's library was the basis for the collection of the New Brunswick Museum.

Abstract  Karaoke singing is a popular form of entertainment in several parts of the world. Since this genre of performance attracts amateurs, the singing often has artifacts related to scale, tempo, and synchrony. We have developed an approach to correct these artifacts using cross-modal multimedia streams information. We first perform adaptive sampling on the user’s rendition and then use the original singer’s rendition as well as the video caption highlighting information in order to correct the pitch, tempo and the loudness. A method of analogies has been employed to perform this correction. The basic idea is to manipulate the user’s rendition in a manner to make it as similar as possible to the original singing. A pre-processing step of noise removal due to feedback and huffing also helps improve the quality of the user’s audio. The results are described in the paper which shows the effectiveness of this multimedia approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contribution of amateur scientists to the International Geophysical Year (IGY) was substantial, especially in the arena of spotting artificial satellites. This article examines how Fred L. Whipple and his colleagues recruited satellite spotters for Moonwatch, a program for amateur scientists initiated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) in 1956. At the same time, however, the administrators with responsibility for the IGY program closely monitored and managed--sometimes even contested--amateur participation. IGY programs like Moonwatch provided valuable scientific information and gave amateurs opportunities to contribute actively to the research of professional scientists. Moonwatch, which operated until 1975, eventually became the public face of a vast satellite-tracking network that expanded the SAO's global reach and helped further Whipple's professional goals. Understanding amateurs' interactions with the professional science community enables us better to understand the IGY as a phenomenon that enlisted broad participation and transcended traditional boundaries between professional and amateur scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the creation of the BBC in 1922, wireless sets ceased to be obscure devices for military and commercial communication, and became household goods to entertain the British middle classes. Wireless amateurs, electrical engineers, inventors, and specialized physicists engaged in a cultural exchange among themselves and with the general public to explain and understand the mechanisms and possibilities of the new technology. This created a new arena for discussions on the existence of the ether at a time when highly esoteric physics (mainly relativity, but also quantum physics) had triggered a debate about its very existence. In this paper I explore the ways in which the ether saw its popularity renewed by its link to the modern wireless technologies. I argue that far from being part of an old, outdated physics, radio broadcasting was instrumental for the ether to remain popular, and even an element of modernity, among many wireless amateurs, engineers, and the general public in the 1920s and early 1930s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the advent of the World Wide Web, online media archives have changed their audience from a restricted number of professionals and amateurs to the general public. This shift is not without consequences: if, on the one side, it represents an important opportunity for archives to engage in a dialogue with a larger audience, on the other side, it advocates novel forms of access that go beyond the highly specialized models underlying traditional access tools. In this paper, we propose to use 3-D graphics for designing novel tools of exploratory search in cultural heritage archives. Our approach has been deployed as an online virtual environment where the user can navigate the meaning relations over the items in the archive. Targeted at cultural heritage, the application, called Labyrinth 3D, relies on the use of cultural archetypes to inform the conceptualization of the archive and the creation of the virtual environment, with the goal of engaging the user in the exploration of the archive through the creation of personal paths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Indias is the property of Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Professionals and wannabe professionals are everywhere in urban studies today, everywhere in the exclusive running and ruining of cities, everywhere in the control of urban economies, everywhere in austerity drives, everywhere in think tanks and institutions who study cities, everywhere mass media have a say about cities, everywhere the grant money flows, the payroll beckons and the spotlight shines. The biggest problem this professionalism poses for any urban dissenter—for people I shall call amateurs—is representation. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation, into a representation done for and by professionals. And professionals brook no dissent. Professionals are realists; everybody else lives in cloud-cuckoo-land. This paper stakes out its terrain in cloud-cuckoo-land and explores the nemesis of professionalised urbanism: amateur urbanism, an urban knowledge and practice not on anybody's payroll, a passionate labour of love. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than five hundred folio pages of François Valentyn's multivolume description of the trading empire of the Dutch East India Company, Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën (Old and New East Indies, 1724-1726, five thousand pages in toto), are devoted to the natural history of Amboina. This essay contends that Valentyn's nature description is not the work of a field naturalist, but rather of a scholar ordering and repackaging existing information, which was already available in a different textual format and in drawings. While the focus of this essay is on Valentyn's compilation strategy, which targeted a non-expert readership of 'liefhebbers', the role of indigenous knowledge in his nature description is also discussed, arguing that it was generally subordinated to a European perspective in Valentyn's book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In choosing a scientific journal in which to report their work, researchers often seek one that will elicit comments from other workers in their field and in the area of their research topic. One method is to take publications in refereed journals and heft them. This is scandalous; the work should be read carefully and judged on the merits. One believe that science journalism is a profession and if amateurs, no matter how many science doctorates they hold-wish to practice it; they should study it like anything else. They also believe that their function is to publish all the research work by competently trained researchers, which meets or can be made to meet scientific, philosophical and literary standards. All are board members chosen for their ability to help authors; and all are social scientists or professional philosophers who are tops in their fields. If any referee thinks a paper should not be published, he or she sets out the reasons. If the editor-in-chief or the assistant editor is not persuaded, he or she discusses the paper further.

Why do we collect insects? Usually, to increase our knowledge of what they are, where they live, and what they do. The history of insect collecting in Queensland is presented, from Banks and Solander in 1770 to iNaturalist in 2023. We discuss specimens collected by amateur and professional entomologists, dealers, and museums, and the use of novel collecting methods by specialists targeting only a few taxa. The Entomological Society of Queensland supports insect collecting by facilitating collecting permits for members, ensuring data concerning insect collection and distribution in protected areas of Queensland is gathered to aid park management. With the development of digital technology, information and quality images became readily available, enabling specialists worldwide to 'collect and identify' Queensland insects. Do we still need to collect? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Historia is the property of Historical Association of South Africa and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the early decades of the 20th century, women's access to the historical discipline followed fundamentally two paths. For the first time, some (a small minority) entered the profession as academic historians; others worked outside or on the margins of academia, pursuing their research interests as independent scholars. What did being an independent scholar mean for these women? Was it always a form of externally imposed marginalization? My paper argues that this is not the case. First of all, being an independent scholar did not necessarily mean marginality. Some of these women scholars exerted a deep influence on 20th century historiography, and their work is still influential today. Quite apart from posthumous fame, moreover, it should be noted that the lack of academic affiliation did not necessarily preclude for some of these women the possibility of recognition and influence during their lives. Secondly, we should be careful not to assume that being an independent scholar was invariably an externally imposed marginalization. Some of these women scholars can be defined as 'obligatory amateurs,' because they were frustrated in their attempt to pursue an academic career. But others, in contrast, deliberately chose independent scholarship over an academic job, and can thus be defined 'amateurs by choice.' What was the motivation behind this choice? I argue that an important factor was the resilience of the amateur tradition in historical writing. The amateur tradition offered a strong counterbalance to women's marginality in academia and a source of positive values and models for their participation in the intellectual life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence and organisation of amateur networks of observation in Britain in the period between 1920 and 1940 are addressed in this paper. It examines the geographical, organisational and epistemological associations between networks of ornithological observation (traced through the British Trust for Ornithology), which emerged from the 1920s. and amateur ethnography (traced through Mass-Observation) which emerged in the late 1930s. I approach these 'observational cultures' as spaces which brought together new concepts of the local, of everyday nature and society, as well as the possibilities of changing the everyday. The paper suggests that popular observation during the period partly constituted a refraining of ways of knowing Britain differentiated through the everyday production of natural and social knowledge and the construction of the active citizen and new communities of practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

mateurs are found in arts, sports, or entertainment, where they are linked with professional counterparts and inspired by celebrities. Despite the growing number of CSCW studies in amateur and professional domains, little is known about how technologies facilitate collaboration between these groups. Drawing from a 1.5-year field study in the domain of bodybuilding, this paper describes the collaboration between and within amateurs, professionals, and celebrities on social network sites. Social network sites help individuals to improve their performance in competitions, extend their support network, and gain recognition for their achievements. The findings show that amateurs benefit the most from online collaboration, whereas collaboration shifts from social network sites to offline settings as individuals develop further in their professional careers. This shift from online to offline settings constitutes a novel finding, which extends previous work on social network sites that has looked at groups of amateurs and professionals in isolation. As a contribution to practice, we highlight design factors that address this shift to offline settings and foster collaboration between and within groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether named participatory sciences, citizen sciences, or "pro-am" sciences, actions linking in a new way science and society are booming in our Western world. A seminar held in Saint-Etienne and organized by Modys has been dedicated since 2007 to tackling this new alignment between science and society. It was aptly named "cognitive passions". This paper aims to synthesize some of the discussions that took place in the seminar and proposes the self-explanatory model of "inversion" to show the processes in action when amateur and professional worlds communicate. The paper draws on phenomenological sociology, particularly adapted to studies of ordinary action and therefore of lay knowledge, and science studies, notwithstanding the epistemological divide that characterizes science. Assuming the radical shift which appears when lay practices are intertwined with scientific knowledge, the paper also states that such hybridizations happen, and that the sociological tools to help understand them by downsizing them into a succession of small differences does not account for the persistent power asymmetry between science and amateurs. The goal here is clearly to account for successful conditions of such hybridizations, while resisting what some science studies' scholars call "the realist bow toward bigness". This bow is indeed present in the refusal to consider the taming of amateur/professional relationships except in terms of incremental processes that cancel any acknowledgement of persisting power asymmetry. The model of inversion is one of the possible answers to this quandary. Ordinary as well as confined situations are the theatre of the inversions of the respective positions of knowledge and ignorance and therefore of a modification of epistemic power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on some findings from a research study conducted by the authors for the Commission for Social Care Inspection. It examines the reasons for the involvement of lay assessors and perceptions of the effectiveness of lay assessors in specific regulatory functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. Sports activity has become extremely popular among amateurs. Electrocardiography is a useful tool in screening for cardiac pathologies in athletes; however, there is little data on electrocardiographic abnormalities in the group of amateur athletes. Objectives. The aim of this study was to analyze the abnormalities in resting and exercise electrocardiograms (ECGs) in a group of amateur athletes, and try to determine whether the criteria applied for the general population or for athletes' ECGs should be implemented in this group. Material and methods. In 40 amateur male marathon runners, 3 consecutive 12-lead ECGs were performed: 2-3 weeks before (stage 1), just after the run (stage 2) and 2-3 weeks after the marathon (stage 3). Resting (stage 1) and exercise (stage 2) ECGs were analyzed following the refined criteria for the assessment of athlete's ECG (changes classified as training-related, borderline or training-unrelated). Results. In resting ECGs, at least 1 abnormality was found in 92.5% of the subjects and the most common was sinus bradycardia (62.5%). In post-exercise ECGs, at least 1 abnormality was present in 77.5% of the subjects and the most common was right atrium enlargement (RAE) (42.5%). Training-related ECG variants were more frequent at rest (82.5% vs 42.5%; p = 0.0008), while borderline variants - after the run (22.5% vs 57.5%; p = 0.0004). Training-unrelated abnormalities were found in 15% and 10% of the subjects, respectively (p-value - nonsignificant), and the most common was T-wave inversion. Conclusions. Even if the refined criteria rather than the criteria used for normal sedentary population were applied, the vast majority of amateur runners showed at least 1 abnormality in resting ECGs, which were mainly training-related variants. However, at rest, in 15% of the subjects, pathologic training-unrelated abnormalities were found. The most frequent post-exercise abnormality was right atrial enlargement. General electrocardiographic screening in amateur athletes should be taken into consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Polish Journal of Sports Medicine / Medycyna Sportowa is the property of Agencja Wydawnicza Medsportpress Sp. z o. o. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study aims to evaluate the relationship between the athlete identities and their commitment to sports in terms of whether amateur and professional licensed footballers who are playing football in local and amateur football clubs differ according to various demographic characteristics. Footballers of the 1st Amateur, 2nd Amateur, and Regional Amateur Leagues registered in the Elazığ Amateur Sports Clubs Federation participated in the research. "Athlete Identity Scale" was developed by Brewer and Cornelius (2001) and adapted to Turkish by Öztürk and Koca (2013) and "Athlete Commitment Scale" was developed by Kayhan, Bardakçı, and Caz (2020) developed by Guillen and MartinezAlvarado (2014) were used as data collection tools in the study. As a result of the research, while there was a significant difference in the athlete identity according to the license level variable of the football players, there was no significant difference in the level of commitment to sports. While there was a significant difference according to the league level, infrastructure training, age variable, and education status variable of the footballers, there was no significant difference according to the athlete year variable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are studying image-based fish identification. Most traditional approaches use a fish image wherein extraction is easy given that the fish region contrasts with a white or uniform background. This research introduces an approach to give several feature points by manual operation. In our proposed approach, we are able to accept fish image with complicated background, including rocky area. Further, to investigate efficient features for fish recognition in image, we define various features, including geometric features, bag of visual words (BoVW) models, and texture features. We collected images comprising 129 fish species under various photographic conditions and applied our proposed method to these images. From our results, we confirmed that a combination of geometric features and BoVW models obtained the highest recognition accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses on measuring astronomical distances with Linear Programming and also makes one understand the Vanderbei-Belikov method of Pupil mapping which makes it feasible for amateurs to cheaply, quickly, and accurately compute the distance to celestial bodies. The article also mentions about solving regression with linear programming and improving accuracy by accounting for declination.

Sports, professional and amateur, can have a major impact on our environment, including: land use, power consumption, construction of event facilities and venues, consumption of water and other natural resources. Professional sports teams and leagues have recognized the importance of reducing the negative impact their activities and facilities have on the environment, and began implementing sustainable programs and actions a decade ago. This paper investigates green initiatives of major league sports teams and examines the information regarding sustainable actions posted on their individual team website. Results identify categories of sustainable initiatives and compare the data across different sports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In common with many military officers at the turn of the 18th century, Joseph Sevin kept a journal that chronicled army life on and off the battlefield. His memoirs, covering the years 1697 to 1713, are of particular interest because they reveal his pleasure in making music with his fellow officers and the women whom he met socially. While boasting of only modest attainments, the Chevalier de Quincy adored his basse de viole and took it everywhere he went in the course of the War of the Spanish Succession, from Paris to the châteaux of Quincy, Versailles and Fontainebleau, to Provence, Flanders and Italy. His descriptions bring to life the musical occasions in which he took part or simply attended. They also mention fellow officers who we know played and enjoyed the viol. Among the many bonds between members of the noblesse militaire , music can at last be counted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] This paper analyzes strategic information transmission between a perfectly informed expert and a partially informed decision maker. [•] The decision maker can privately tell whether the state is “high” or “low”. [•] The expert strategically responds by providing less informative advice. [•] As a result, for some types of decision maker, being informed makes them worse off. [•] Examples show, however, that the ex-ante opportunity to access information is beneficial when the expert has moderate bias. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]