Identification of Perception Differences in Personality Factors and Autonomy by Sporting Age Category in Competitive Bodybuilders.

Knowing the personality and autonomy factors of bodybuilders is a necessity in order to improve sports training, which would lead to the development of mental skills specific to competitive bodybuilding. The purpose of the study was to identify perception differences in personality and autonomy factors for three age categories of competitive bodybuilders in order to optimize the sports training process. The secondary purpose of the study was to identify perception differences in the characteristics of personality and autonomy in relation to the increase in the sporting age category of the competitive bodybuilders. The research sample included 30 competitive bodybuilders aged between 18 and 53 years, of which 21 were male and 9 were female, who were divided into three groups according to the sporting age category: G1-junior (18-23 years old), 10 athletes (33.3%); G2-senior (24-35 years old for female and 24-40 years old for male), 12 athletes (40%); G3-masters (over 35 years old for female and 40 years old for male), 8 athletes (26.7%). In the precompetitive stage, three standardized questionnaires were applied to the study participants, namely, two personality questionnaires (CP5F and ZKPQ) and a personal autonomy questionnaire (PAQ), which provided us with useful information for understanding the psychological profile of bodybuilding athletes. The results of the study were statistically significant, with Cronbach's Alpha coefficient indicating high internal consistency of the three questionnaires for all three sporting age groups, with higher values than the selected reference threshold of 0.700. According to the results of our study, the following personality and autonomy factors recorded higher and higher scores in direct relation with the increase in sporting age: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, autonomy, impulsive sensation seeking, value autonomy, behavioral autonomy, and cognitive autonomy. The personality and autonomy factors of which the scores did not increase directly proportionally to the sporting age category were sociability, activity, aggression-hostility, neuroticism-anxiety, and emotional autonomy. Competitive bodybuilders perceive the factors of personality and autonomy differently in relation to particularities of age and sports experience, and knowledge of these changes can contribute to the improvement of the sports training process.

An O(n log n)-time algorithm for the restriction scaffold assignment problem.

The restriction scaffold assignment problem takes as input two finite point sets S and T (with S containing more points than T ) and establishes a correspondence between points in S and points in T , such that each point in S maps to exactly one point in T and each point in T maps to at least one point in S. An algorithm is presented that finds a minimum-cost solution for this problem in O(n log n) time, provided that the points in S and T are restricted to lie on a line and the cost function delta is the L(1) metric. This algorithm runs in linear time, if S and T are presorted. This improves the previously best-known O(n (2))-time algorithm for this problem.