Nordic walking practice might improve plantar pressure distribution

Nordic walking (NW), characterized by the use of two walking poles, is becoming increasingly popular (Morgulec-Adamowicz, Marszalek, & Jagustyn, 2011). We studied walking pressure patterns of 20 experienced and 30 beginner Nordic walkers. Plantar pressures from nine foot zones were measured during trials performed at two walking speeds (preferred and 20% faster), and under two walking conditions (NW vs. normal walking). In comparison to normal walking, NW experience led to a significant (p < .05) pressure reduction of about 50% on the central metatarsals. No significant increases were detected in other foot regions. The differences between experienced and beginners during normal walking including a 40% pressure reduction on the metatarsal area, suggests that regular NW practice might also have a beneficial effect on plantar pressure when walking without poles.     

Leadership,an essential requirement for effecting change in media companies: An analysis of the Spanish market

Abstract

As afield of study, company leadership can be examined from many angles. In this paper our aim is to study leadership in the way it effects change. The qualitative value of the information compiled is considerable since it helps to understand the grounds on which the success of the directors who effected change of the Spanish media market was based. The interviews afford us a closer look at the minds of the leading players in action.

The cases analysed show that, in media companies, radical transformations do not come about without the existence of one or several leaders, capable of mobilising the organisation where they work.

Through the literature review, the companies'internal documentation and interviews with the directors we have been able to demonstrate that our hypotheses on leadership are not only reasonable but also help to explain, to a great extent, the profound transformations which the Spanish media market has undergone in the last 25 years.     

Revisiting Quality Television: Audience Perceptions

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes what the audience understands by the concept of quality as applied to television channels. This research also examines the influence of the perceived quality of the different programs broadcasted by a channel on the perceived quality of the whole channel. The empirical part is based on the answers provided by a sample of 405 respondents in Spain. The factors found to be associated with the idea of quality television by the audience are somewhat different depending on the method used to assess it, which points to the existence of social desirability bias when asking directly about it. Notwithstanding these differences, entertainment is the characteristic that the audience most consistently associates with the concept of quality in television channels. The results also show that news programs, movies and magazines, and talk shows are the genres with a greatest influence on the assessment of the quality of a television channel by the audience.     

Habla espontánea en resolución de problemas

Resumen

Estudiamos el valor funcional de los contenidos del habla espontánea en la resolución de problemas y su cambio evolutivo. Ciento veintisiete preescolares (de 3;0 a 5;11 años de edad) deben encajar dos puzzles iguales, algunas de cuyas piezas fueron intercambiadas. Para evaluar los posibles efectos diferenciales del contexto social de la actividad en las emisiones, creamos dos condiciones experimentales: con y sin interacción conversacional previa con el investigador. Toda el habla espontánea fue registrada y su contenido analizado a partir de cinco categorías (habla irrelevante, acompañamiento verbal, habla orientada al problema, preguntas y solicitudes de ayuda). Los resultados indican que el habla orientada al problema aumenta con la edad y, paralelamente, disminuye el habla irrelevante. En la condición conversacional aparece más habla orientada al problema y menos habla irrelevante que en la condición no conversacional. El habla orientada al problema y las preguntas son los contenidos más relacionados con el éxito en la tarea.     

Some Light on the Jumping Event in the Ancient Olympic Games: Suggestions Provided by the Purchena Games of 1569

In 1569 in the Spanish village of Purchena, a games was held in which a contingent of Turkish soldiers took part – many of them natives from the area that in antiquity was called Greece. These Turks celebrated several events in these games typical of the land of their birth. One of these events was the triple jump.

In this article we study the possibility that the jump celebrated by those Turks of the sixteenth century was the same jump that was practised in that part of the eastern Mediterranean during the time of the ancient Olympic games.

Eclairages sur les rencontres de sauts dans les Jeux Olympiques Antiques: suggestions fournies par les Jeux Purchena de 1569

En 1569 dans le village espagnol de Purchena, des jeux ont été tenus dans lesquels un contingent de soldats turcs a participé, dont beaucoup provenant d'une région que l'on appelait dans l'Antiquité la Grèce. Ces Turcs ont célébré plusieurs épreuves dans ces jeux typiques de leur terre d'origine. L'un était le triple-saut.

Dans cet article nous étudions la possibilité que le saut célébré par ces Turcs du 16ème siècle fut le même que celui qui a été pratiqué dans cette partie de la Méditerranée orientale pendant le temps des jeux Olympiques antiques.

Algunos datos sobre el salto de longitud en los Juegos Olímpicos de la Antigüedad: pistas proporcionadas por los Juegos de Purchena de 1569

En 1569 tuvieron lugar unos juegos deportivos en la ciudad española de Purchena. En ellos tomó parte un contingente de soldados turcos, muchos de ellos originarios de la región denominada Grecia en la Antigüedad. En los mencionados juegos estos turcos celebraron varias competiciones típicas de su tierra. Una de estas competiciones fue el triple salto.

En este artículo estudiamos la posibilidad de que la competición de salto celebrada por aquellos turcos del siglo XVI fuera la misma que se practicaba en esa parte del mediterráneo oriental en los tiempos de los Juegos Olímpicos de la antigüedad.

Neues zum Sprung bei den antiken Olympischen Spielen: Anregungen von den Spielen von Purchena im Jahr 1569

1569 wurden im spanischen Dorf Purchena Spiele veranstaltet, an denen ein Aufgebot von türkischen Soldaten teilnahm, von denen viele ursprünglich aus der Gegend kamen, die in der Antike Griechenland genannt wurde. Diese Türken veranstalteten verschiedene Wettbewerbe bei diesen Spielen, die für ihr Geburtsland typisch waren. Einer dieser Wettbewerbe war der Dreisprung.

In diesem Artikel wird die Möglichkeit erörtert, ob der von den Türken veranstaltete Sprungwettbewerb des 16. Jahrhunderts der gleiche war wie der, der in diesem Teil des östlichen Mittelmeerraums zur Zeit der antiken Olympischen Spiele stattfand.

     

Teleconferencing tools in enterprises—constraints and opportunities

This paper presents an experimental approach for devising training measures to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) avail themselves of the new opportunities offered by teleconferencing tools.
The approach includes 1) an analysis of training needs, carried out by means of interviews, so as to propose methodologies and tools that will encourage SMEs to create the conditions under which they can make the most of the opportunities that tele-cooperation offers for raising productivity; and 2) a controlled experiment that seeks to analyse the conditions under which the experimental use of teleconferencing systems may become a valuable vehicle for helping SMEs to construct active awareness about the potential of these tools.     

Play and social skills in maltreated and non-maltreated preschoolers during peer interactions

OBJECTIVE: The goal of the study was to investigate whether maltreated children differ from nonmaltreated children with regard to their social skills and play behaviors. METHOD: The social skills and free-play behaviors of 30 3- to 5-year-old maltreated and nonmaltreated children were compared. Fifteen children with a range of maltreatment experiences drawn from a hospital-based therapeutic nursery treatment program and 15 demographically similar children drawn from a home-based Head Start program participated in the study. All children were of low socioeconomic status. Children's free-play peer interactions were videotaped during the first 3 months of attendance in either program and analyzed along social and cognitive dimensions. Teachers and therapists rated children's social skills in peer interactions. RESULTS: Maltreated children were found to have significantly poorer skill in initiating interactions with peers and maintaining self-control, as well as a greater number of problem behaviors. Significant differences were not found between groups with regard to social participation or cognitive level of play. Significant correlations of moderate strength were found between social participation in play and social skills for the sample as a whole: total social skills score was positively related to interactive play, and negatively related to solitary play. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that the experience of maltreatment has a negative impact on children's developing interpersonal skills above and beyond the influence of factors associated with low socioeconomic status and other environmental stressors.     

A merging strategy proposal: The 2-step retrieval status value method

A usual strategy to implement CLIR (Cross-Language Information Retrieval) systems is the so-called query translation approach. The user query is translated for each language present in the multilingual collection in order to compute an independent monolingual information retrieval process per language. Thus, this approach divides documents according to language. In this way, we obtain as many different collections as languages. After searching in these corpora and obtaining a result list per language, we must merge them in order to provide a single list of retrieved articles. In this paper, we propose an approach to obtain a single list of relevant documents for CLIR systems driven by query translation. This approach, which we call 2-step RSV (RSV: Retrieval Status Value), is based on the re-indexing of the retrieval documents according to the query vocabulary, and it performs noticeably better than traditional methods. The proposed method requires query vocabulary alignment: given a word for a given query, we must know the translation or translations to the other languages. Because this is not always possible, we have researched on a mixed model. This mixed model is applied in order to deal with queries with partial word-level alignment. The results prove that even in this scenario, 2-step RSV performs better than traditional merging methods.