Background: Athletes with expertise in sports show extensive procedural and factual information, enhancing their ability to focus attention, use cues, and anticipate events. This study examined the differentiation of perceptual-cognitive skills by focusing on attentional cues, processing speed, and working memory. Methods: The component skill approach was used to assess differences in sports expertise levels using non-sport-specific cognitive measures of perceptual-cognitive skills. The study involved a total of 127 college athletes with a mean age of 20.23 years (SD = 3.08) and an average of 10.99 years of training. Among these participants, there were 43 female athletes with a mean age of 20.23 years (SD = 3.32) and 84 male athletes with a mean age of 20.22 years (SD = 2.98). We analyzed the cohort of students who did not engage in regular sports training, identifying them as the control group for our study. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was employed to analyze the measures of the SPT and CBT perceptual-cognitive tasks, treating them as separate dependent variables. The categorization of elite levels and participants is outlined below: there are 41 semi-elite athletes, 70 competitive elite athletes, 12 successful elite athletes, and 4 world-class elite athletes. Results: There were no differences in semi-elite and competitive elite athletes’ perceptual-cognitive skills regarding visual-spatial reaction time (Wilks’ λ = 0.956, p > 0.05), but there was a significant difference in the working memory span (Wilks’ λ = 0.804, p < 0.05). Conclusions: The study reports that elite college athletes have higher working memory, which is crucial for sport performance, compared to semi-elite athletes. However, no between-group differences were observed in reaction time.

Bile duct injury (BDI) is the most serious iatrogenic complication during laparoscopic cholecystectomy (LC) and occurs easily in inexperienced surgeons since the position of common bile duct (CBD) and its related ductal junctions are hard to precisely identify in the hepatic anatomy during surgery. BDI can be devastating, leading to chronic morbidity, high mortality, and prolonged hospitalization. In addition, it is the most frequent injury resulting in litigation and the most likely injury associated with a successful medical malpractice claim against surgeons. This study introduces a novel method for conveniently and rapidly indicating the anatomical location of CBD during LC by the direct fiber-optic illumination of 532-nm diode-pumped solid state laser through a microstructured plastic optical fiber to avoid the wrong identification of CBD and the injury from mistakenly cutting the CBD that can lead to permanent and even life threatening consequences. Six porcine were used for preliminary intra-CBD illumination experiments via laparotomy and direct duodenal incision to insert the invented CBD illumination laser catheter with nonharmful but satisfactory visual optical density.