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Research on personality in sport is very popular as it allows prediction of the behavior of players in the starting situation. Hence, verifications of players due to their sports level may turn out to be crucial. Due to the dynamic development of American football in Poland, we undertook research to verify the relationship between the sports level and the personality of these players. The Big Five personality study that we carried out involved players aged from 20 to 29—the representatives of American football clubs in Poland (N = 140) from three league games levels: LFA 1 (n = 75), LFA 2 (n = 40), and LFA 9 (n = 25). The NEO-FFI personality questionnaire was used as a research tool. The players from the top-level games were characterized by their openness to experience, the level of which decreases along with the decrease in the players’ sports levels. The differences in openness to experience were revealed, first of all, in divergent thinking and creativity. It was ascertained that openness to experience is a characteristic personality trait for American football players in Poland. Therefore, systematic conduct of personality tests among American football players in Poland, in the process of selecting candidates for the highest levels of football competition, would be recommended. This might significantly affect the development of the sports level of this discipline in Poland. The obtained results of research on personality may, moreover, prove to be useful in selecting players and improving the predictions of important sports behaviors in American football in Poland.

In this article we analysed the influence of plant-based organic admixtures on the germination process of seeds and the early development of Scots pine Pinus sylvestris L. seedlings. The intensity of dumpin-off diseases within the culture was recorded after applying each of the admixtures. Organic material of nettle Urtica dioica L., softwood litter, hardwood litter and peat were applied to the nursery substrate in two ways, either as an admixture in crushed form or in granulated form. None of the introduced admixtures influenced the germination of seeds or the survival rate of pine seedlings positively. The best results were obtained with a substrate without admixtures used as a control, which is the most common nursery substrate. The worst seed germination rate was observed on the substrate enriched with the organic material from nettles. In pots with granulated organic material from hardwood litter, significantly more seedlings showed signs of post-emergence dermatitis. In all other cases, there was no clear difference between the crushed or granulated admixture in either germination or survival of seedlings. We furthermore demonstrated that the process of granulating plant material leads to an approximately 10-fold increase in the bulk density of the granulated substance, which translates directly into volume reduction.

PiekorzZuzanna,KwiatkowskiDamian, LewandowskiAndrzej. Stretching and injuries in men undertaking running training.Journal of Education, Health and Sport. 2021;11(6):11-22. eISSN 2391-8306. DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.12775/JEHS.2021.11.06.001 https://apcz.umk.pl/czasopisma/index.php/JEHS/article/view/JEHS.2021.11.06.001 https://zenodo.org/record/4896055 The journal has had 5 points in Ministry of Science and Higher Education parametric evaluation. § 8. 2) and § 12. 1. 2) 22.02.2019. © The Authors 2021; This article is published with open access at Licensee Open Journal Systems of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,provided the original author (s) and source are credited. This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non commercial license Share alike. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) which permits unrestricted, non commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited. The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests regarding the publication of this paper. Received: 15.05.2021. Revised: 21.05.2021. Accepted: 03.06.2021. Stretching and injuries in men undertaking running training 1Zuzanna Piekorz (ORCID: 0000-0002-2881-1521), 1Damian Kwiatkowski, 1Andrzej Lewandowski (ORCID: 0000-0003-0123-6608) 1Department of Physiotherapy, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ludwik Rydygier Collegium Medicum in Bydgoszcz, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland Corresponding author:Andrzej Lewandowski, Chair Department of Physiotherapy, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ludwik Rydygier Collegium Medicum in Bydgoszcz, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, ul. Świetojańska 20, 85-094 Bydgoszcz, Poland Tel./ fax +48 52 585-54-16, fax: ext. 119, E-mail: andrzej.lewandowski@cm.umk.pl Acknowledgments: The research was carried out as part of its statutory activities of the Department of Basic of Physical Culture, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ludwik Rydygier Collegium Medicum in Bydgoszcz, Nicolaus Copernicus University. Ethics: A permission to conduct this study was obtained from the Bioethics Committee of the Ludwik Rydygier Collegium Medicum of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń (no. KB 787/2014). All men were informed about the purpose of the study, type and duration of the effort, and the possibility to withdraw from the study without giving any reason. Each potential participant granted a voluntary consent for participation in the study. Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest. Abstract word count: 339 Text-only word count: 2570 Number of tables: 3 (tables) Number of figures: 4 (figures) Keywords:running - men - running workout - competition - stretching - injuries Summary Introduction.Physical activity appears in men’s life from the very beginning of their existence, however over last few decades it has become more popular as an amateur sport and recreation. One of the simplest form of physical activity considered as sport is running. Runners very often begin workouts thinking about improving their health but it comes with a risk of getting injured. There are however a lot of factors which can prevent injuries to occur. One of them is doing stretching exercises. The purpose of the study is to validate if stretching exercises can lower the risk of suffering an injury by men beginning a running workouts. In this study it was assumed that doing additional stretching exercises lowers the risk of suffering an injury and is common in people training long-distance running. Materials and Methods.182 men who do running workouts in the city of Bydgoszcz were examined with the use of author’s original questionnaire. It concerned sociodemographic data, running-related issues, stretching and the aspects of sports injuries. Statistics.Ordinal scales were analyzed with nonparametric rank tests, such as the Mann-Withney test, while the nominal scales were tested with nonparametric tests from the Pearson's chi-squared test group. Results.It was found that the largest group of runners are men aged about 32 years, doing running workouts as a part of amateur sport. Of all the subjects, 31% of runners declared the use of additional stretching training. People running with greater frequency and volume, expressed in kilometers, more often decide to undertake stretching exercises. 70% of tested athletes suffered a running-related injury. There was no significant effect of stretching on reducing the risk of injury to runners. Conclusions.Stretching is not very popular among running enthusiasts. Greater running experience and high training loads are factors that make runners decide to use additional stretching exercises more often. The lack of significant differences in the frequency of injuries of competitors using and not undertaking stretching does not allow an unequivocal assessment of its impact on reducing the risk of injury in runners.

Quantum-to-classical transition still eludes a full understanding. Out of its multiple aspects, one has recently gained an increased attention - the appearance of objective world out of the quantum. One particularly idea is that objectivity appears thanks to specific quantum state structures formation during the evolution, known as Spectrum Broadcast Structures (SBS). Despite that quite some research was already performed on this strongest and most fundamental form of objectivity, its practical realization in a concrete physical medium has not been analyzed so far. In this work, we study the possibility to simulate objectivization process via SBS formation using widely studied Nitrogen-Vacancy centers in diamonds. Assuming achievable limits of dynamical polarization technique, we show that for high, but experimentally viable polarizations ($p>0.5$) of nuclear spins and for magnetic fields lower than $\approx \! 20$ Gauss the state of the NV center and its nearest polarized environment approaches reasonably well an SBS state., 14 pages, 7 figures

High-fidelity projective readout of a qubit’s state in a single experimental repetition is a prerequisite for various quantum protocols of sensing and computing. Achieving single-shot readout is challenging for solid-state qubits. For Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) centers in diamond, it has been realized using nuclear memories or resonant excitation at cryogenic temperature. All of these existing approaches have stringent experimental demands. In particular, they require a high efficiency of photon collection, such as immersion optics or all-diamond micro-optics. For some of the most relevant applications, such as shallow implanted NV centers in a cryogenic environment, these tools are unavailable. Here we demonstrate an all-optical spin readout scheme that achieves single-shot fidelity even if photon collection is poor (delivering less than 103 clicks/second). The scheme is based on spin-dependent resonant excitation at cryogenic temperature combined with spin-to-charge conversion, mapping the fragile electron spin states to the stable charge states. We prove this technique to work on shallow implanted NV centers, as they are required for sensing and scalable NV-based quantum registers., The NV center in diamond has been used extensively in sensing; however single shot readout of its spin remains challenging, requiring complex optical setups. Here, Irber et al. demonstrate a more robust scheme that achieves single-shot readout even when using inefficient detection optics.

We consider the spin echo dynamics of a nitrogen-vacancy center qubit based the $S\!= \! 1$ ground state spin manifold, caused by a dynamically polarized nuclear environment. We show that the echo signal acquires then a nontrivially time-dependent phase shift. This effect should be observable for polarization $\approx \! 0.5$ of nuclei within $\sim \! 1$ nm from the qubit, and for the NV center initialized in a superposition of $m\! = \! 0$ and either $m\! =\! 1$ or $m\! =\! -1$ states. This phase shift is much smaller when the NV center is prepared in a superposition of $m\! = \! 1$ and $m\! =\! -1$ states, i.e. when the qubit couples to the spin environment in a way analogous to that of spin-$1/2$. For nuclear environment devoid of spins strongly coupled to the qubit, the phase shift is well described within Gaussian approximation, which provides an explanation for the dependence of the shift magnitude on the choice of states on which the qubit is based, and makes it clear that its presence is related to the linear response of the environment perturbed by an evolving qubit. Consequently, its observation signifies the presence environment-mediated self-interaction of the qubit, and hence, it invalidates the notion that the nuclear environment acts as a source of external noise driving the qubit. We also show how a careful comparison of the echo signal from qubits based on $m\! = \! 0,1$ and $m\! =\! \pm 1$ manifolds, can distinguish between effectively Gaussian and non-Gaussian environment., Presentation thoroughly improved, changed title

We propose a straightforward experimental protocol to test whether qubit-environment entanglement is generated during pure dephasing of a qubit. The protocol is implemented using only measurements and operations on the qubit - it does not involve the measurement of the system-environment state of interest, but the preparation and measurement of the qubit in two simple variations. A difference in the time dependencies of qubit coherence between the two cases testifies to the presence of entanglement in the state of interest. Furthermore, it signifies that the environment-induced noise experienced by the qubit cannot be modeled as a classical stochastic process independent of the qubit state. We demonstrate the operation of this protocol on a realistically modeled nitrogen vacancy center spin qubit in diamond interacting with a nuclear spin environment, and show that the generation of entanglement should be easily observable in this case., 9 pages, 4 figures

In this article we analysed the influence of plant-based organic admixtures on the germination process of seeds and the early development of Scots pine Pinus sylvestris L. seedlings. The intensity of dumpin-off diseases within the culture was recorded after applying each of the admixtures. Organic material of nettle Urtica dioica L., softwood litter, hardwood litter and peat were applied to the nursery substrate in two ways, either as an admixture in crushed form or in granulated form. None of the introduced admixtures influenced the germination of seeds or the survival rate of pine seedlings positively. The best results were obtained with a substrate without admixtures used as a control, which is the most common nursery substrate. The worst seed germination rate was observed on the substrate enriched with the organic material from nettles. In pots with granulated organic material from hardwood litter, significantly more seedlings showed signs of post-emergence dermatitis. In all other cases, there was no clear difference between the crushed or granulated admixture in either germination or survival of seedlings. We furthermore demonstrated that the process of granulating plant material leads to an approximately 10-fold increase in the bulk density of the granulated substance, which translates directly into volume reduction.

We study the evolution of qubit-environment entanglement, quantified using Negativity, for NV-center spin qubits interacting with an environment of $^{13}$C isotope partially polarized nuclear spins in the diamond lattice. We compare it with the evolution of the Fidelity of environmental states conditional on the pointer states of the qubit, which can serve as a tool to distinguish between entangling and non-entangling decoherence in pure-dephasing scenarios. The two quantities show remarkable agreement during the evolution in a wide range of system parameters, leading to the conclusion that the amount of entanglement generated between the qubit and the environment is proportional to the trace that the joint evolution leaves in the environment., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures

We propose a straightforward experimental test for qubit-environment entanglement generation during qubit pure dephasing. The protocol is implemented using measurements and operations on the qubit only - no measurement of the system-environment state is required.

We consider pure dephasing of Bell states of electron spin qubits interacting with a sparse bath of nuclear spins. Using the newly developed two-qubit generalization of cluster correlation expansion method, we calculate the spin echo decay of $|\Psi\rangle$ and $|\Phi\rangle$ states for various interqubit distances. Comparing the results with calculations in which dephasing of each qubit is treated independently, we identify signatures of influence of common part of the bath on the two qubits. At large interqubit distances, this common part consists of many nuclei weakly coupled to both qubits, so that decoherence caused by it can be modeled by considering multiple uncorrelated sources of noise (clusters of nuclei), each of them weakly affecting the qubits. Consequently, the resulting genuinely two-qubit contribution to decoherence can be described as being caused by classical Gaussian noise. On the other hand, for small interqubit distances the common part of the environment contains clusters of spins that are strongly coupled to both qubits, and their contribution to two-qubit dephasing has visibly non-Gaussian character. We show that one van easily obtain information about non-Gaussianity of environmental noise affecting the qubits from the comparison of dephasing of $|\Psi\rangle$ and $|\Phi\rangle$ Bell states. Numerical results are obtained for two nitrogen vacancy centers interacting with a bath of $^{13}$C nuclei of natural concentration, for which we obtain that Gaussian description of correlated part of environmental noise starts to hold for centers separated by about 3 nm., Comment: 18 pages, 14 figures

The double-detonation explosion scenario of Type Ia supernovae has gained increased support from the SN Ia community as a viable progenitor model, making it a promising candidate alongside the well-known single degenerate and double degenerate scenarios. We present delay times of double-detonation SNe, in which a sub-Chandrasekhar mass carbon-oxygen white dwarf accretes non-dynamically from a helium-rich companion. One of the main uncertainties in quantifying SN rates from double-detonations is the (assumed) retention efficiency of He-rich matter. Therefore, we implement a new prescription for the treatment of accretion/accumulation of He-rich matter on white dwarfs. In addition, we test how the results change depending on which criteria are assumed to lead to a detonation in the helium shell. In comparing the results to our standard case (Ruiter et al. 2011), we find that regardless of the adopted He accretion prescription, the SN rates are reduced by only 25% if low-mass He shells (< 0.05 Msun) are sufficient to trigger the detonations. If more massive (0.1 Msun) shells are needed, the rates decrease by 85% and the delay time distribution is significantly changed in the new accretion model - only SNe with prompt (< 500 Myr) delay times are produced. Since theoretical arguments favour low-mass He shells for normal double-detonation SNe, we conclude that the rates from double-detonations are likely to be high, and should not critically depend on the adopted prescription for accretion of He., Accepted to MNRAS Letters. Updated figure from last version