Long-term athlete development is a primary focus for the England Rugby Football Union (RFU). The purpose of this study was to explore the anthropometric, physical, and relative age characteristics of ...rugby union academy players based on age group and playing position. Seventy-eight participants were examined for height, body mass, 10 and 20 m sprint, countermovement jump, reactive strength index, aerobic capacity, isometric hip extension, dominant handgrip strength, and birth quartile (BQ) across three age categories (i.e., under-16, under-18, and under-21) and two positions (forwards and backs). ANOVA and Kruskall–Wallis analysis were used to examine differences across each age category and position. TukeyHSD and Dunn’s test with Bonferroni correction was used for further post-hoc analysis. BQ distributions were compared against national norms using chi-square analysis. Results revealed that both older forwards (P=0.005) and backs (P=0.002) had significantly greater body mass, maximal aerobic capacity, and power compared to younger players. However, older forwards had slower 10 m sprint times compared to younger forwards. Moreover, relatively older players were significantly overrepresented across all age groups when compared to relatively younger players. Findings suggest that: (a) players should aim to develop greater parameters of body mass and aerobic capacity; (b) forwards should aim to develop acceleration and strength; (c) backs should aim to develop power and quickness; (d) players need to develop anthropometric and physical qualities and differences are apparent by age and position; and, (e) coaches should consider relative age when recruiting and developing young players.
Key words: Talent identification; Talent development; Expertise; Physical development; Physiological profile; Rugby football
Unrealistic project plans and cost overruns create problems for software professionals and their clients. In spite of much research and numerous attempts to learn from experience, the problem of ...inaccurate, frequently overoptimistic cost estimates hasn't been solved. This article summarizes some knowledge that could improve the estimation accuracy, but we still lack some knowledge that hinders us from being able to produce accurate estimates.
Large organizations often face difficult tradeoffs in balancing the need to share information with the need to safeguard sensitive data. A prominent way to deal with this tradeoff is on-the-fly ...screen masking of sensitive data in applications. A proposed hybrid approach for masking Web application screens combines the advantages of the context available at the presentation layer with the flexibility and low overhead of masking at the network layer. This solution can identify sensitive information in the visual context of the application screen and then automatically generate the masking rules to enforce at run time. This approach supports the creation of highly expressive masking rules, while keeping rule authoring easy and intuitive, resulting in an easy to use, effective system. This article is part of a special issue on Security and Privacy on the Web. The Web extra at https://youtu.be/4u2FLqjaIiI is a short demonstration of a proposed hybrid approach for masking Web application screens that combines the advantages of the context available at the presentation layer with the flexibility and low overhead of masking at the network layer. The second Web extra at https://youtu.be/-Hz3P_H0UnU is a full-length demonstration of a proposed hybrid approach for masking Web application screens that combines the advantages of the context available at the presentation layer with the flexibility and low overhead of masking at the network layer.
Spatial planning is increasingly expected to address climate change adaptation. In a Swedish context, this has meant a predominant focus on risks of flooding, erosion and sea-level rise. Gradually, ...regulatory mechanisms and concrete strategies are evolving to support practical mainstreaming. The aim of this paper was to analyze how frontline planners approach climate change adaptation in an urban context, emphasizing the process of settling and enacting strategic guidelines in spatial planning. The study suggests that municipalities are being preactive, i.e., preparing to act by settling guidelines rather than proactively implementing change when planning for new settlements. Further, the process of accommodating climate risks involves problems. Settling strategic guidelines and determining appropriate levels for what to adapt to are but the start of approaching climate change. Guidelines represent more of an endeavor than settling absolute limits and actually applying the guidelines involves challenges of accessibility and esthetics where the new waterfront limits meets older city structures. Further, guidelines are seen as negotiable since an overarching principle is to maintain flexibility in planning to allow for continued waterfront planning. Pursuing this path is motivated by current demand and previous urban settlement patterns. Also, as future protective measures are needed to secure existing urban areas at risk of flooding and erosion, planners see no use in preventing further waterfront development. Although settling guidelines are important in preparing to act, their practical effectiveness all fall back to how they are actually implemented in daily planning. This leads us to problematize the role of strategic guidelines to secure a climate-proof spatial planning.
Proofreading is both a tedious and difficult task. It is expensive to hire a professional to do the job, and it may be also difficult to find someone competent. Newspapers skip proof readers to save ...money, and most writers try to do the job themselves. The consequences are clearly seen from errors in text written by professionals to incomprehensive e-mails and blogs. This creates misunderstandings, offers false data, and, in the worst cases, may give a very bad impression. This paper presented an automatic proof reading tool that works in any language. The principle is to compare the sentences offered by the user to similar sentences in a large text repository and then offer suggestions for improvement in the cases where the user's choice gets a zero or low frequency and where other alternatives get higher scores. The prototype that is presented here works on rather small text repositories but can still offer valuable suggestions in many cases. In a product version, large repositories are required. In order to be able to process such amounts of data by the brute force technique that is presented here, a large cluster of computers will be needed.
Making Sustainability Work Epstein, Marc J.; Buhovac, Adriana Rejc; Elkington, John ...
2014, 20170908, 2017-09-08, 2014-03-10
eBook
The best practices in corporate sustainability performance are no longer the exclusive domain of companies like Ben & Jerry's or The Body Shop, as they were a decade ago; now, large, multinational ...companies like G.E. and Wal-Mart are leading the way with significant financial and organizational commitments to social and environmental issues. However, good intentions aren't enough. Whether motivated by concern for society and the environment, government regulation, stakeholder pressures, or economic profit, managers and strategists need to continue making significant changes to more effectively manage their social, economic, and environmental impacts—and to remain competitive. The guidance they need to do that is in this book.
As you approach your final year of under . graduate studies and start the process of applying to graduate schools, you "will realize that you need at least three letters of recommen dation to ...complete your application. Admissions committees take these letters very seriously, but there is a reasonable chance that you will not think about them until the application comes up. This article describes the ins and outs of how to get letters that will improve your chances of gaining admission to a great graduate
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