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The popularity of collegiate sports has enabled many smaller schools to grow enrollment by adding sports teams. While the purpose of this effort is to increase the financial standing of the educational institution, the question has been raised as to the extent of the longevity of success brought about by increasing enrollment through athletics. Does the financial gain of athletics to enrollment outweigh the financial cost of operating an athletic department? The expected growth in finances from student tuition and fees is often compromised by the expenses such as athletic scholarships and competing costs. Smaller colleges and universities are building their athletic departments to increase enrollment. However, this same set of higher education institutions has been closing their operations on an average of 11 per year and predicting larger numbers to close over the next few years. Beyond adding athletes to enrollment, the power of marketing successful athletic programs and a vibrant campus scene add to the benefit of growing enrollment. This exploratory theoretical analysis research investigates the impact of athletics on the financial position of institutions of higher education and may help determine the impact of adding athletics to small schools to grow enrollment and strive for financial stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘What it is like' talk ( ’WIL-talk) — the use of phrases such as ‘what it is like ’ — is ubiquitous in discussions of phenomenal consciousness. It is used to define, make claims about, and to offer arguments concerning consciousness. But what this talk means is unclear, as is how it means what it does: how, by putting these words in this order, we communicate something about consciousness. Without a good account of WIL-talk, we cannot be sure this talk sheds light, rather than casts shadows, on our investigations of consciousness. The popular technical account of WIL-talk (see e.g. Lewis, 1995, and Kim, 1998) holds that WIL-talk involves technical terms — terms which look like everyday words but have a distinct meaning — introduced by philosophers. I argue that this account is incorrect by showing that the alleged technical terms were not introduced by philosophers, and that these terms do not have a technical meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Major League Soccer (MLS) formed in 1996 and organized believing that it would qualify as a single-entity, arguing that teams and players are wholly-owned subsidiaries of MLS. This structure was challenged by the players with the courts rejecting the claims and awarding no damages based on a few factors. Further, MLS was not ruled as a pure single-entity but a "hybrid arrangement." Ten years later, MLS has developed into a larger, more stable, league and has added changes to its structure which may further hurt its single-entity status. This case-study examines the current MLS in relation to potential antitrust violations. The approach of the current study includes a detail literature review of the legal precedent that has shaped the organizational structure of professional leagues in the United States. The findings of the current study suggest that the additions of a few significant elements of the MLS will, indeed, jeopardize its use of the single-entity exemption claim in court. Despite the fact that these changes are crucial to the league growing stronger, they also prove that investors/operators act and make investments with diverse interests for their own club and franchise. Our findings appear to confirm the notions of previous research which argues that MLS appears to be minimizing competition and depriving the marketplace of independent centers of decision making that competition needs and assumes (Jakobsze, 2010). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Which aspects of tissue microstructure affect diffusion weighted MRI signals? Prior models, many of which use Monte-Carlo simulations, have focused on relatively simple models of the cellular microenvironment and have not considered important anatomic details. With the advent of higher-order analysis models for diffusion imaging, such as high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI), more realistic models are necessary. This paper presents and evaluates the reproducibility of simulations of diffusion in complex geometries. Our framework is quantitative, does not require specialized hardware, is easily implemented with little programming experience, and is freely available as open-source software. Models may include compartments with different diffusivities, permeabilities, and T2 time constants using both parametric (e.g. spheres and cylinders) and arbitrary (e.g. mesh-based) geometries. Three-dimensional diffusion displacement probability functions are mapped with high reproducibility, and thus can be readily used to assess reproducibility of diffusion-derived contrasts. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Damage to specific white matter tracts within the spinal cord can often result in the particular neurological syndromes that characterize myelopathies such as traumatic spinal cord injury. Noninvasive visualization of these tracts with imaging techniques that are sensitive to microstructural integrity is an important clinical goal. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI)- and magnetization transfer (MT)-derived quantities have shown promise in assessing tissue health in the central nervous system. In this paper, we demonstrate that DTI of the cervical spinal cord can reliably discriminate sensory (dorsal) and motor (lateral) columns. From data derived from nine healthy volunteers, two raters quantified column-specific parallel ( λ||) and perpendicular ( λ⟂) diffusivity, fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusivity (MD), and MT-weighted signal intensity relative to cerebrospinal fluid (MTCSF) over two time-points separated by more than 1 week. Cross-sectional means and standard deviations of these measures in the lateral and dorsal columns were as follows: λ||: 2.13 ± 0.14 and 2.14 ± 0.11 μm2/ms; λ⟂: 0.67 ± 0.16 and 0.61 ± 0.09 μm2/ms; MD: 1.15 ± 0.15 and 1.12 ± 0.08 μm2/ms; FA: 0.68 ± 0.06 and 0.68 ± 0.05; MTCSF: 0.52 ± 0.05 and 0.50 ± 0.05. We examined the variability and interrater and test-retest reliability for each metric. These column-specific MR measurements are expected to enhance understanding of the intimate structure-function relationship in the cervical spinal cord and may be useful for the assessment of disease progression. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and immunohistochemistry were used to examine axon injury in the rat spinal cord after unilateral L2-L4 dorsal root axotomy at multiple time points (from 16 h to 30 d after surgery). Three days after axotomy, DTI revealed a lesion in the ipsilateral dorsal column extending from the lumbar to the cervical cord. The lesion showed significantly reduced parallel diffusivity and increased perpendicular diffusivity at day 3 compared with the contralateral unlesioned dorsal column. These findings coincided with loss of phosphorylated neurofilaments, accumulation of nonphosphorylated neurofilaments, swollen axons and formation of myelin ovoids, and no clear loss of myelin (stained by Luxol fast blue and 2′-3′-cyclic nucleotide 3′-phosphodiesterase). At day 30, DTI of the lesion continued to show significantly decreased parallel diffusivity. There was a slow but significant increase in perpendicular diffusivity between day 3 and day 30, which correlated with gradual clearance of myelin without further significant changes in neurofilament levels. These results show that parallel diffusivity can detect axon degeneration within3 d after injury. The clearance of myelin at later stagesmay contribute to the late increase in perpendicular diffusivity, whereas the cause of its early increase at day 3 may be related to changes associated with primary axon injury. These data suggest that there is an early imaging signature associated with axon transections that could be used in a variety of neurological disease processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

T1 and T2 were measured for white matter (WM) and gray matter (GM) in the human cervical spinal cord at 3T. T1 values were calculated using an inversion-recovery (IR) and B1-corrected double flip angle gradient echo (GRE) and show significant differences ( p = 0.002) between WM (IR = 876 ± 27 ms, GRE = 838 ± 54 ms) and GM (IR = 973 ± 33 ms, GRE = 994 ± 54 ms). IR showed significant difference between lateral and dorsal column WM (863 ± 23 ms and 899 ± 18 ms, respectively, p = 0.01) but GRE did not ( p = 0.40). There was no significant difference ( p = 0.31) in T2 between WM (73 ± 6 ms) and GM (76 ± 3 ms) or between lateral and dorsal columns (lateral: 73 ± 6 ms, dorsal: 72 ± 7 ms, p = 0.59). WM relaxation times were similar to brain structures with very dense fiber packing (e.g., corpus callosum), while GM values resembled deep GM in brain. Optimized sequence parameters for maximal contrast between WM and GM, and between WM and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) were derived. Since the spinal cord has rostral-caudal symmetry, we expect these findings to be applicable to the whole cord. Magn Reson Med 60:213-219, 2008. © 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]