BACKGROUND Studies involving chronic creatine supplementation in elite soccer players are scarce. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the effects of creatine monohydrate supplementation on lower-limb muscle power in Brazilian elite soccer players (n = 14 males) during pre-season training. FINDINGS This was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled parallel-group study. Brazil...

Learning accurate probabilistic models from data is crucial in many practical tasks in data mining. In this paper we present a new non-parametric calibration method called ensemble of linear trend estimation (ELiTE). ELiTE utilizes the recently proposed ℓ1 trend ltering signal approximation method [22] to find the mapping from uncalibrated classification scores to the calibrated probability est...

OBJECTIVE The FTO A/T polymorphism (rs9939609) is a strong candidate to influence obesity-related traits. Elite athletes from many different sporting disciplines are characterized by low body fat. Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess whether athletic status is associated with the FTO A/T polymorphism. SUBJECTS AND METHODS A large cohort of European Caucasians from Poland, Russia and...

Old elites can block changes, but not all do. Why is it that stronger elites may allow more changes than weaker elites? Why do economies with larger stocks of natural resources not grow faster than economies poorer in natural resources? We argue that old elites hold some power to extract rents from the economy. Whereas old sectors (i.e. agriculture or extraction of natural resources) are not af...

Audiences are usually seen as groups of people who collectively or individually read, watch or hear works of arts. This mode of relationship is referred to as reception as opposed to creation, which is supposed to be the productive stage of the artistic communication process. Art becomes the product of an independent elite, which does not respond to an audience's demands but opposes the dominan...

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between ball-throwing velocity during a 3-step running throw and dynamic strength, power, and bar velocity during a concentric-only bench-press exercise in team-handball players. METHODS Fourteen elite senior male team-handball players volunteered to participate. Each volunteer had power and bar velocity measured during a conce...

We construct a model of simultaneous change and persistence in institutions. The model consists of landowning elites and workers, and the key economic decision concerns the form of economic institutions regulating the transaction of labor (e.g., competitive markets versus labor repression). The main idea is that equilibrium economic institutions are a result of the exercise of de jure and de fa...