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BackgroundThe LIFE-Adult-Study is a population-based cohort study, which has recently completed the baseline examination of 10,000 randomly selected participants from Leipzig, a major city with 550,000 inhabitants in the east of Germany. It is the first study of this kind and size in an urban population in the eastern part of Germany. The study is conducted by the Leipzig Research Centre for Civilization Diseases (LIFE). Our objective is to investigate prevalences, early onset markers, genetic predispositions, and the role of lifestyle factors of major civilization diseases, with primary focus on metabolic and vascular diseases, heart function, cognitive impairment, brain function, depression, sleep disorders and vigilance dysregulation, retinal and optic nerve degeneration, and allergies.Methods/designThe study covers a main age range from 40-79 years with particular deep phenotyping in elderly participants above the age of 60. The baseline examination was conducted from August 2011 to November 2014. All participants underwent an extensive core assessment programme (5-6 h) including structured interviews, questionnaires, physical examinations, and biospecimen collection. Participants over 60 underwent two additional assessment programmes (3-4 h each) on two separate visits including deeper cognitive testing, brain magnetic resonance imaging, diagnostic interviews for depression, and electroencephalography.DiscussionThe participation rate was 33 %. The assessment programme was accepted well and completely passed by almost all participants. Biomarker analyses have already been performed in all participants. Genotype, transcriptome and metabolome analyses have been conducted in subgroups. The first follow-up examination will commence in 2016.

Background and purpose Sport psychologists have, since the 1970-1980s, focused their attention on the concept of transitions faced by athletes. While originally described in terms of anecdotal evidence of the process of retirement from high-level competitive and professional sports, the concept of transitions has, during the past decade, become a well delineated topic of study among the sport psychology community. This introductory article provides an overview of the major developments within this thematic field of research, as well as a description of the pallet of interventions used with athletes in transition. In conclusion, avenues for further research and future developments in working with athletes are proposed. Methods Use was made of the references on the topic of career transitions faced by athletes in highlevel competitive and professional sports -a number which has steadily grown during the past decade -including journal publications, thematic books, conference symposia and workshop abstracts, position statements and publications by a special interest group on career transitions in sports. Results and conclusions Analysis reveals that the concept of transition is currently viewed in a holistic, life-span perspective which spans the athletic and post-athletic career and which includes transitions occurring in the athletic career as well as those occurring in other domains of athletes' lives. This "beginning-to-end" approach is illustrated with a developmental model on transitions faced by athletes at athletic, individual, psychosocial, and academic/vocational level. At the level of interventions, analysis suggests that the focus in interventions with athletes in transition has shifted from the use of traditional therapeutic approaches to cope with the possible traumatic experience of the termination of the athletic career, to that of career transitions and athlete life skill programs aimed at providing support and education to athletes making athletic and non-athletic transitions. Finally, suggestions for future conceptual developments include the need to extent the available knowledge on, among others, the characteristics of specific transitions (e.g., non-normative transitions, in-career transitions), on the influence of sport-, gender-or cultural-specific factors in the quality of the transitional process, as well as on the user-friendliness and applicability of sports career transition interventions and programs across the range of athletes.

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