Vitamin D status and its determinants in German elite athletes.

Purpose: This study investigated elite German athletes to (1) assess their serum 25(OH)D levels and the prevalence of insufficiency, (2) identify key factors influencing serum 25(OH)D levels, and (3) analyze the association between serum 25(OH)D levels and handgrip strength.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, a total of 474 athletes (231 female), aged 13-39 years (mean 19.3 years), from ten Olympic disciplines were included.

A valid novel ground reaction force distribution algorithm to determine midfoot kinetics of gait with a single force plate.

Background: Understanding midfoot joint kinetics is valuable for improved treatment of foot pathologies. Segmental foot kinetics cannot currently be obtained in a standard gait lab without the use of multiple force plates or a pedobarographic plate overlaid with a force plate due to the single ground reaction force (GRF) vector.

Research Question: Can an algorithm be created to distribute the GRF into multiple segmental vectors that will allow for calculation of accurate midfoot and ankle moments?

Methods: 20 pediatric subjects (10 typically developing, 10 with foot pathology) underwent multi-segment foot gait analysis using the Milwaukee Foot Model.

Mechanistic Insights into Nonadiabatic Interband Transitions on a Semiconductor Surface Induced by Hydrogen Atom Collisions.

To understand the recently observed enigmatic nonadiabatic energy transfer for hyperthermal H atom scattering from a semiconductor surface, Ge(111)(2 × 8), we present a mixed quantum-classical nonadiabatic molecular dynamics model based on the time-dependent evolution of Kohn-Sham orbitals and a classical path approximation. Our results suggest that facile nonadiabatic electronic transitions from the valence band to the conduction band occur selectively at the rest atom site, where surface states are doubly occupied, but not at the adatom site, where empty surface states are localized. This drastic site specificity can be attributed to the changes of the local band structure upon energetic H collisions at different surface sites, leading to transient near degeneracies and significant couplings between occupied and unoccupied orbitals at the rest atom but not at the adatom.

Advocating individual-based profiles of elite athletes to capture the multifactorial nature of elite sports performance.

Elite athletes are high-performance outliers within their specific sports. Even though science seeks to understand the nature of expertise and elite performance, much knowledge remains compartmentalized within subdisciplines. Despite this multidimensionality being acknowledged, an interdisciplinary approach to understanding elite athletes is still rare.