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Copyright of International Journal of Medicine & Science of Physical Activity & Sport / Revista Internacional de Medicina y Ciencias de la Actividad Física y del Deporte is the property of Revista Internacional de Medicina y Ciencias de la Actividad Fisica y del Deporte 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 International Journal of Medicine & Science of Physical Activity & Sport / Revista Internacional de Medicina y Ciencias de la Actividad Física y del Deporte is the property of Revista Internacional de Medicina y Ciencias de la Actividad Fisica y del Deporte 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 main purpose of this study was to evaluate running kinematic characteristics and foot strike patterns (FSP) during early and late stages of actual and common high-intensity intermittent training (HIIT): 5 × 2000 m with 120-s recovery between runs. Thirteen healthy, elite, highly trained male endurance runners participated in this study. They each had a personal record in the half-marathon of 70 ± 2.24 min, and each had a minimum experience of 4 years of training and competition. Heart rate (HR) and rate of perceived exertion (RPE) were monitored during HIIT. High levels of exhaustion were reached by the athletes during HIIT (HRpeak: 174.30 bpm; RPE: 17.23). There was a significant increase of HRpeak and RPE during HIIT; nevertheless, time for each run remained unchanged. A within-protocol pairedt-test (first vs. last run) revealed no significant changes (P ≥ 0.05) in kinematics variables and FSP variables during HIIT. There were no substantial changes on kinematics and FSP characteristics in endurance runners after fatigue induced by a HIIT. Only the minimum ankle alignment showed a significant change. The author suggests that these results might be due to both the high athletic level of participants and their experience in HIIT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Kronos is the property of Revista Kronos 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.)

Abstract: Abiotic and biologically informed classifications are often used in conservation planning as coarse-filter surrogates for species. The relationship between these surrogates and the distribution of species is commonly assumed, but rarely assessed by planners. We derived four abiotic and eight biologically informed classifications of stream reaches to serve as surrogates for biodiversity patterns in the Wet Tropics bioregion, Queensland, Australia. We used stream reaches as planning units and, as conservation targets for each surrogate, we used two percentages – 10% and 30% – of the total stream reach length occupied by each class. We then derived minimum sets of planning units to meet targets for each surrogate and tested the effectiveness of the surrogates by calculating the average achievement of the same targets for predicted distributions of 28 fish species. Our results showed that neither abiotic nor biologically informed classifications were good at representing freshwater fish species; in fact none of the surrogates led to average representation of species better than randomly selected planning units. There were two main reasons for this poor performance. First, none of the surrogates had high classification strength or informativeness about compositional change in fish species within the study region. Second, frequency distributions of probabilities of occurrence for most fish species were strongly right-skewed, with few stream reaches having high probabilities. Combined, these results meant that selection of stream reaches to achieve surrogate targets was effectively random with respect to probabilities of fish species occurrence, leading to poor representation of fish species. We conclude there is a limited basis for using coarse-filter surrogates to represent freshwater fish diversity in this region, and that there is a clear need for research in this as well as other regions if planners are to understand the limitations associated with coarse-filter surrogates for representing freshwater biodiversity more broadly. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

ABSTRACT [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary 1. Freshwater conservation has received less attention than its terrestrial or marine counterparts. Given the accelerated rate of change and intensive human use that freshwater ecosystems are submitted to, it is urgent to focus more attention on fresh waters. Existing conservation planning tools - such as Marxan - need to be modified to account for the special nature of these systems. Connectivity plays a key role in freshwater ecosystems. Threats are mediated along river corridors, and the condition of the entire catchment influences river biodiversity downstream. This needs to be considered in conservation planning. 2. The probabilities of occurrence of nine native freshwater fish species in a Mediterranean river basin, obtained from Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines- Generalized Linear Model (MARS-GLM) models, were used as features to develop spatial conservation priorities. The priorities accounted for complementarity and spatial design issues. 3. To deal with the connected nature of rivers, we modified Marxan's boundary length penalty, avoiding the selection of isolated planning units and forcing the inclusion of closer upstream areas. We introduced 'virtual boundaries' between non-headwater stream segments and added distance-weighted penalties to the overall connectivity cost (CP) when stream segments upstream of the selected planning units are not selected. 4. This approach to prioritising connectivity is concordant with ecological theory, as it considers the natural and roughly exponential decay of upstream influences with distance. It accounts for the natural capacity of rivers to mitigate impacts when designing reserves. When connectivity was not emphasised, Marxan prioritised natural corridors for longitudinal movements. In contrast, whole sub-basins were prioritised when connectivity was emphasised. Changing the relative emphasis on connectivity substantially changed the spatial prioritisation; our conservation investment could move from one basin to another. 5. Our novel approach to dealing with directional connectivity enables managers of freshwater systems to set ecologically meaningful spatial conservation priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accuracy of bioassessment programmes is highly limited by the precision of the systems used to derive sensitivity–tolerance values for the organisms used as indicators. We provide quantitative support to the objective evaluation of freshwater fish species sensitivity to different sources of disturbance, accounting for co-variation issues not only between perturbations and natural gradients (especially river size), but also between different perturbations. With this aim, we performed two different principal component analyses: (i) on a general environmental matrix to obtain a perturbation gradient independent of river size effects and (ii) on human impairment-related variables to extract independent synthetic perturbation gradients. Then, we checked each species responses to those gradients to assess their sensitivity–tolerance through an available-used chi-squared analysis in the first approach and through a t-test/ancova analysis in the second one. In this way, we obtained sensitivity–tolerance which could be included in future bioassessment tools, enabling effective evaluations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To analyze the corporal composition of veteran athletes of resistance and his relation with the health and quality of life. Methodology: It is a question of a descriptive and transverse study with a sample of 91 males (44.1 ± 6.9 years) and 16 women (41.4 ± 5.5 years) healthy medical instructors of career of resistance. For the analysis of the corporal composition there has been used an eight-electrode impedance meter (Inbody 720). The health and quality of life was analyzed by means of the scale SF-36, Spanish version. There were registered the values of athletic practice as for number of weekly meetings and duration of the session. Results: The IMC, the abdominal fat and the percentage of fat place in healthy values, for below even of the normative values. Significant differences do not exist in any parameter of the corporal composition in relation with the number of weekly meetings of athletic practice. A negative correlation exists between the percentage of fat and the social function of the scale SF-36. The health and quality of life perceived of the veteran athletes presents superior values to the Spanish modais normative. Conclusion: The practice of four weekly meetings of 60 minutes of career of resistance allows to keep healthy parameters of composition corporal in spite of the age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at a study which discusses the complexities of coordinated conservation along the river Nile. Topics discussed include importance of coordinated conservation planning for the Nile's biodiversity remains unknown, collaborative conservation efforts are crucial for reducing conservation costs and framework for improving return on conservation investment for large and complex river systems globally.

On-farm conservation programmes require land managers to pursue both market and non-market objectives. If one can identify objectives that are complementary ( co-benefits ) and competitive ( trade-offs ) so that co-benefits can be pursued and trade-offs avoided, one may be able to lower the costs to land managers of on-farm conservation programmes. We used data from farms in northern Australia to identify potential trade-offs and co-benefits between market and non-market objectives. We used Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to assess the relationship between farm ‘inputs’ (e.g. land, labour, capital) and both market and non-market ‘outputs’ (used interchangeably with ‘outcomes’) (e.g. value of on-farm production, turtle biodiversity). The DEA analysis generated an ‘efficiency score’ for each farm; the best scores were associated with farms that used fewest inputs and had the ‘best’ outcome(s). We then looked for statistically significant relationships between those scores and other variables known to influence outcomes. After controlling for biophysical factors (e.g. rainfall, soil type), we found little evidence of trade-offs between market and non-market outcomes. We found that farms with many weeds had poor market efficiency scores, suggesting that weed-reduction programmes could generate substantive co-benefits for agriculture and biodiversity. Properties managed by people who preferred a small steady income (over a large uncertain income) had higher non-market efficiency scores, suggesting a link between conservation and attitudes to risk. Our results also suggest that encouraging on-farm agricultural diversification, the adoption of environmentally focused land-management plans, and a generally more positive attitude towards conservation could improve environmental outcomes without compromising market outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]