The objective of this study is to examine the sensitivity to and changes in heart rate variability (HRV) in stressful situations before judo competitions and to observe the differences among judo athletes according to their competitive standards in both official and unofficial competitions. 24 (10 male and 14 female) national- and international-standard athletes were evaluated. Each participant answered the Revised Competitive State Anxiety Inventory (CSAI-2R) and their HRV was recorded both during an official and unofficial competition. The MANOVA showed significant main effects of the athlete's standard and the type of competition in CSAI-2R, in HRV time domain, in HRV frequency domain and in HRV nonlinear analysis (p<0.05). International-standard judo athletes have lower somatic anxiety, cognitive anxiety, heart rate and low-high frequency ratio than national-standard athletes (p<0.05). International-standard athletes have a higher confidence, mean RR interval, standard deviation of RR, square root of the mean squared difference of successive RR intervals, number of consecutive RR that differ by more than 5 ms, short-term variability, long-term variability, long-range scaling exponents and short-range scaling exponent than national-standard judo athletes. In conclusion, international-standard athletes show less pre-competitive anxiety than the national-standard athletes and HRV analysis is sensitive to changes in pre-competitive anxiety.

The mechanical and bond characteristics of Fibre Reinforced Polymers (FRP) used as internal reinforcement for Reinforced Concrete (RC) elements result in larger deflections and crack widths compared to the conventional steel RC elements. Consequently, serviceability requirements may govern the design of such members. In the last 20 years, several approaches and codes of practice have been published to predict the theoretical deflection of FRP RC elements.This paper analyses and examines the experimental deflection results of 145 concrete beams reinforced with FRP bars tested by several researchers, and compares their values with the theoretical values of 10 different approaches and design codes. All of the beam specimens were tested under a four point bending configuration and presented different reinforcement ratios and mechanical and bond properties of the FRP bars.The objective of the paper is to investigate the suitability of the different approaches at different states of loading under the serviceability range. A statistical analysis is performed to evaluate the goodness of fit of each approach. The influence of several parameters as the level of load, the reinforcement ratio, or the modular ratio is analyzed and compared. KEY WORDSL. Ye et al. (eds.), Advances in FRP Composites in Civil Engineering

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