title: Effects of a higher acute protein intake post muscle-damaging exercise on muscle recovery in older female endurance runners

authors: Neureuter, Zoe

subjects: muscle damage

abstract: Masters endurance athletes who train and compete in organised competitive endurance events, appear to take longer to recover after muscle-damaging exercise than younger athletes. A reduced sensitivity to increase skeletal muscle protein synthesis (MPS) in response to the anabolic stimuli of protein and exercise may be contributing to the slower repair and remodelling of muscle fibres. This decreased stimulus for MPS negatively affects recovery in this older cohort of athletes, although evidence supports the notion that the ingestion of a higher dose of protein than the current recommendation of 20 grams, post muscle-damaging exercise, demonstrates improvements in muscle function of male masters triathletes. However, the efficacy for a higher protein intake in female masters endurance athletes has not been established. 
Chapter 2 investigates the effects of ingesting a higher acute dose of protein (40 g) compared to the current recommended dose (20 g) on muscle recovery following exercise-induced muscle damage in older female (≥48 y) endurance runners. The study assessed muscle recovery by measuring isometric maximal voluntary contraction of the knee extensors, peak countermovement jump height, perceived muscle soreness, and flexibility prior to, and at 3 and 24 hours following a downhill running protocol, used to elicit muscle damage. The study recruited six well trained female endurance runners, 48 years of age and older (mean ± SD: age; 52 ± 5.6 y, body mass; 61.4 ± 6.2 kg) to take part in three downhill running trials,  each separated by one week. Participants consumed one of three energy matched (1190 kJ) recovery beverages immediately following the run. Beverage composition was either a 70 g carbohydrate placebo or one of two protein supplements; 20 g of protein and 50 g of carbohydrate, or 40 g of protein and 30 g of carbohydrate. The 40 g of protein had a likely small beneficial effect compared to the placebo (ES = 0.24 ± 0.5) and 20 g of protein (ES = 0.25 ± 0.29) for improving maximum voluntary contraction from baseline to 24 hours. The 40 g of protein had a likely small beneficial effect for improving countermovement jump height compared to 20 g of protein from baseline to 3 hours (ES = 2.9 ± 4.9), and to 24 hours compared to the placebo (ES = 0.32 ± 0.39) and 20 g of protein (ES = 0.27 ± 0.19). The 40 g of protein had an unclear effect on muscle soreness and flexibility. The findings of this current study suggest that the acute ingestion of 40 grams of whey protein isolate following muscle-damaging exercise, had a small beneficial effect on improving muscle function within 24 hours, in masters female runners.

text: Effects of a higher acute protein intake post muscle-damaging exercise on muscle recovery in older female endurance runners Masters endurance athletes who train and compete in organised competitive endurance events, appear to take longer to recover after muscle-damaging exercise than younger athletes. A reduced sensitivity to increase skeletal muscle protein synthesis (MPS) in response to the anabolic stimuli of protein and exercise may be contributing to the slower repair and remodelling of muscle fibres. This decreased stimulus for MPS negatively affects recovery in this older cohort of athletes, although evidence supports the notion that the ingestion of a higher dose of protein than the current recommendation of 20 grams, post muscle-damaging exercise, demonstrates improvements in muscle function of male masters triathletes. However, the efficacy for a higher protein intake in female masters endurance athletes has not been established. 
Chapter 2 investigates the effects of ingesting a higher acute dose of protein (40 g) compared to the current recommended dose (20 g) on muscle recovery following exercise-induced muscle damage in older female (≥48 y) endurance runners. The study assessed muscle recovery by measuring isometric maximal voluntary contraction of the knee extensors, peak countermovement jump height, perceived muscle soreness, and flexibility prior to, and at 3 and 24 hours following a downhill running protocol, used to elicit muscle damage. The study recruited six well trained female endurance runners, 48 years of age and older (mean ± SD: age; 52 ± 5.6 y, body mass; 61.4 ± 6.2 kg) to take part in three downhill running trials,  each separated by one week. Participants consumed one of three energy matched (1190 kJ) recovery beverages immediately following the run. Beverage composition was either a 70 g carbohydrate placebo or one of two protein supplements; 20 g of protein and 50 g of carbohydrate, or 40 g of protein and 30 g of carbohydrate. The 40 g of protein had a likely small beneficial effect compared to the placebo (ES = 0.24 ± 0.5) and 20 g of protein (ES = 0.25 ± 0.29) for improving maximum voluntary contraction from baseline to 24 hours. The 40 g of protein had a likely small beneficial effect for improving countermovement jump height compared to 20 g of protein from baseline to 3 hours (ES = 2.9 ± 4.9), and to 24 hours compared to the placebo (ES = 0.32 ± 0.39) and 20 g of protein (ES = 0.27 ± 0.19). The 40 g of protein had an unclear effect on muscle soreness and flexibility. The findings of this current study suggest that the acute ingestion of 40 grams of whey protein isolate following muscle-damaging exercise, had a small beneficial effect on improving muscle function within 24 hours, in masters female runners.

year: 2019

title: The amendment to section 59 of the Crimes Act 1961: A case study in legislative change

authors: Austin, Geraldine Rachel

subjects: anti-smacking

abstract: In June of 2007 the New Zealand Government passed the Crimes (Substituted section 59) Amendment Act 2007, legally abolishing the right of parents to physically discipline their children and making New Zealand one of 29 States to have (so far) achieved full prohibition of corporal punishment. However the hypothesis of this thesis is that this process of abolishing corporal punishment can be characterised as a lost opportunity - the opportunity to engage in productive debate about the way in which our country’s children are viewed and raised and to address some of the underlying practices and attitudes which contribute towards our appalling rates of child abuse. Instead it degenerated into one of the most contentious debates in recent political history. Rational debate deteriorated into abuse, misunderstandings and deliberate thwarting of reasoned discussion. As a result in 2010 we are in a position where the boundaries surrounding permissible and impermissible discipline are arguably less clear than they were before. This thesis analyses the process of legislative change with a view to showing how, why and where things went wrong. It argues that this process was stymied by two crucial factors; firstly the influence of right wing lobby groups who garnered support for their religiously motivated viewpoints by capitalising on the public’s misplaced fears and underlying attitudes towards children ; and secondly the failure of the Government to adequately advocate for, and educate the public on, the law which it passed. Ultimately these two factors were heavily influenced by the fact that our collective and individual opinions on physical discipline have arisen as a result of the historically dominant construction of children as inherently evil – a construction which we inherited from Britain and which is intrinsically aligned with the practice of corporal punishment. The thesis then demonstrates that the negative repercussions of the debate process could be partially ameliorated through education and that lessons learned in this process can be utilised in the future

text: The amendment to section 59 of the Crimes Act 1961: A case study in legislative change In June of 2007 the New Zealand Government passed the Crimes (Substituted section 59) Amendment Act 2007, legally abolishing the right of parents to physically discipline their children and making New Zealand one of 29 States to have (so far) achieved full prohibition of corporal punishment. However the hypothesis of this thesis is that this process of abolishing corporal punishment can be characterised as a lost opportunity - the opportunity to engage in productive debate about the way in which our country’s children are viewed and raised and to address some of the underlying practices and attitudes which contribute towards our appalling rates of child abuse. Instead it degenerated into one of the most contentious debates in recent political history. Rational debate deteriorated into abuse, misunderstandings and deliberate thwarting of reasoned discussion. As a result in 2010 we are in a position where the boundaries surrounding permissible and impermissible discipline are arguably less clear than they were before. This thesis analyses the process of legislative change with a view to showing how, why and where things went wrong. It argues that this process was stymied by two crucial factors; firstly the influence of right wing lobby groups who garnered support for their religiously motivated viewpoints by capitalising on the public’s misplaced fears and underlying attitudes towards children ; and secondly the failure of the Government to adequately advocate for, and educate the public on, the law which it passed. Ultimately these two factors were heavily influenced by the fact that our collective and individual opinions on physical discipline have arisen as a result of the historically dominant construction of children as inherently evil – a construction which we inherited from Britain and which is intrinsically aligned with the practice of corporal punishment. The thesis then demonstrates that the negative repercussions of the debate process could be partially ameliorated through education and that lessons learned in this process can be utilised in the future

year: 2010

title: A hybrid architecture for labelling bilingual Māori-English tweets

authors: Trye, David

subjects: borrowing

abstract: Most large-scale language detection tools perform poorly at identifying Māori text. Moreover, rule-based and machine learning-based techniques devised specifically for the Māori-English language pair struggle with interlingual homographs. We develop a hybrid architecture that couples Māori-language orthography with machine learning models in order to annotate mixed Māori-English text. This architecture is used to label a new bilingual Twitter corpus at both the token (word) and tweet (sentence) levels. We use the collected tweets to show that the hybrid approach outperforms existing systems with respect to language detection of interlingual homographs and overall accuracy. We also evaluate its performance on out-of-domain data. Two interactive visualisations are provided for exploring the Twitter corpus and comparing errors across the new and existing techniques. The architecture code and visualisations are available online, and the corpus is available on request.

text: A hybrid architecture for labelling bilingual Māori-English tweets Most large-scale language detection tools perform poorly at identifying Māori text. Moreover, rule-based and machine learning-based techniques devised specifically for the Māori-English language pair struggle with interlingual homographs. We develop a hybrid architecture that couples Māori-language orthography with machine learning models in order to annotate mixed Māori-English text. This architecture is used to label a new bilingual Twitter corpus at both the token (word) and tweet (sentence) levels. We use the collected tweets to show that the hybrid approach outperforms existing systems with respect to language detection of interlingual homographs and overall accuracy. We also evaluate its performance on out-of-domain data. Two interactive visualisations are provided for exploring the Twitter corpus and comparing errors across the new and existing techniques. The architecture code and visualisations are available online, and the corpus is available on request.

year: 2022