Cortical and trabecular bone analysis of professional dancers using 3D-DXA: a case–control study

Given the lack of relevant data, the aim of this study was to examine femur cortical and trabecular bone in female and male professional ballet dancers. 40 professional ballet dancers and 40 sex- and age-matched non-exercising controls volunteered. Femoral bone density was scanned by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) scan. A 3D-DXA software was used to analyse trabecular and cortical bone. Anthropometry, maturation (Tanner staging), menstrual parameters (age at menarche and primary amenorrhea), energy availability and nutritional analysis (3-day record) were also assessed.Compared to non-exercising participants, dancers exhibited significantly higher volumetric density for integral, cortical and trabecular bone, and thicker cortex at the femur. Ballet dancers demonstrated lower body weight compared to controls (p < 0.01). Female dancers had their menarche later than controls, and the prevalence of primary amenorrhea were significantly higher in dancers than controls (p < 0.01). Dancer’s energy availability was below the normal range (<30 kcal/kgFFM/day). Despite the presence of certain osteoporosis risk factors such as low energy availability, primary amenorrhoea and lower body weight, professional ballet dancers revealed higher bone density for both cortical and trabecular bone compartments compared to controls.     

Motor tests for primary school aged children: A systematic review

Motor testing in education has gained in relevance in light of recent developments in educational systems (Köller & Baumert, 2012). The purpose of this systematic review was to identify studies using motor tests in primary school children aged 4 to 12 years and to synthetize information about the quality and application of the test instruments used. A systematic review of 910 records identified by a search of nine databases yielded 144 papers reporting motor testing in primary school age children, including 25 articles reporting on the quality of 20 test instruments. In the selected articles, tests grounded on the constructs of “motor abilities” and/or “motor skills” are the most frequent and are mostly used for monitoring purposes or for impact research. Tests based on the construct “motor competencies” have become popular only recently, being relevant for educational motor testing due to their curricular validity. The test instruments have been investigated towards their validity and reliability to different extents. However, for several test instruments factorial validity has not been established and more validation studies are needed to improve their psychometric quality especially if used in educational contexts.     

天才筛选与运动导向：德国二年级儿童运动表现能力对青少年足球运动员早期成功的影响

足球是世界第一运动,在德国拥有广泛的群众基础,那么如何有效地对足球运动员进行科学合理的筛选就成为了一项重要的课题。本文由德国拜罗伊特大学体育系运动训练科学小组完成,目的是为了揭示足球人才在一般运动测试中所表现的中期预后有效性以及从实验结果计算出的足球特定表现分数。在此之前已经对包括体操、滑雪和网球在内的几项人才筛选计划实施了运动诊断分析。然而,与大多数其他运动相比,足球运动对这种早期测试的预测价值尚不清楚。测试对象由参与德国富尔达地区运动表现能力测试（FMC）的U9二年级儿童组成（N=2 965）。FMC是一个对测试者基础运动表现能力的筛查,由两个人体测量学特征参数和德国运动能力表现测试（GMT6-18）的8个测试项目组成,并增加了一个投掷球测试。测试数据来自2011-2014年在德国富尔达地区参与测试的所有儿童,并记录了至2016-2017赛季结束时（2017年9月30日）选择足球（N=316）的儿童的足球比赛表现水平。然后依据比赛表现水平的高低将球员分别分配到4个不同的表现级别中,并使用ANOVA,比值比和判别分析法确定运动测试的预后有效性,并将测试结果与测试儿童在U12~U15年龄段所表现出的足球运动表现水平进行分析,最终得出9项基础运动测试的预后相关性。     

Interest, motivation and learning: An educational-psychological perspective

Within the last few years, researchers have shown a renewed interest in “interest”. Especially in the field of educational psychology many studies have been conducted to analyze how learning and achievement are influenced by motivational and cognitive factors, which are connected with individual and/or situational interests. In this paper, results from empirical research will be presented besides theoretical considerations concerning the interest-construct. Interest has typically been studied as an independent variable. Dependent variables have been either some aspects of learning outcome (knowledge structure, academic achievement) or hypothetical mediators, which probably can be used to explain the interest effects (e.g., learning strategies, attention, emotional experiences). There is also a growing number of studies which try to explore the conditions of interest development within educational settings. Future lines of research will be discussed in light of the demands of educational theory and practice.     

Social Media Followership as a Predictor of News Website Traffic

ABSTRACT

News organizations increasingly focus their efforts to boost traffic on their websites to grow their share of online advertising. We investigated the relationship between news websites’ traffic ranking and their social media tools of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google Plus. For a year we monitored the followers of all Greek regional newspapers in relation to the traffic on their websites. We continued monitoring for a second year to validate the robustness of the findings and we hereby present results for 86 weeks. Statistical analysis leads to the conclusion that the number of social media subscribers can predict the competitive position of a newspaper in the market based on its website traffic. The effect lasts for a limited period of time, one to three weeks, depending on the specific medium. Importantly, results indicate the potential of developing a prediction model of the website’s traffic, based on the social media metrics of the organization, as a useful tool to increase traffic and revenues from online advertising.     

Effects of alternative treatments—An EDA team project in high schools

Scientific statistical working in a team is a special challenge for students in high schools, especially with a civic statistical problem. Ideally, they are following the PPDAC cycle: they formulate a problem together, plan an investigation, collect the data, use software to analyze the data, and formulate results in a seminar paper. This article is written jointly by a student and a computer science teacher involved in the project, offering insights from both perspectives.     

‘Proper masculinities’ and the fear of feminisation in modern Cyprus: university students talk about homosexuality and gendered subjectivities

The present article attempts to pay attention to the ways in which a group of young Cypriot students engage in the construction of conventional notions of masculinities through the negation and the fear of homosexual desire. Drawing on interviews with 12 male and female university students, I argue that many young men go through complicated processes of anxiety and fear in order to achieve a masculine heterosexual career and to prove that they are ‘real men’. In that way the male participants I interviewed expressed the idea that in the cultural space of Cyprus masculine subject positions are the most powerful ones. The participants commented on the unthinkable sexual choice of loving someone from the same sex and concluded that choosing to stay in Cyprus and live a gay life would be very painful if not unthinkable. The article concludes that gender anxiety in Cyprus is expressed through the abjection of homosexuality.     

The Musical Ear Test,a new reliable test for measuring musical competence

This paper reports results from three experiments using the Musical Ear Test (MET), a new test designed for measuring musical abilities in both musicians and non-musicians in an objective way with a relatively short duration (< 20 min.). In the first experiment we show how the MET is capable of clearly distinguishing between a group of professional musicians and a group of non-musicians. In the second experiment we demonstrate that results from the MET are strongly correlated with measures of musical expertise obtained using an imitation test. In the third experiment we show that the MET also clearly distinguishes groups of non-musicians, amateurs and professional musicians. The test is found to have a large internal consistency (Cronbach alpha: 0.87). We further show a correlation with amount of practice within the group of professionals as well as a correlation with a forward digit span test.     

Reasoning and self-awareness from adolescence to middle age: Organization and development as a function of education

This study involved four age groups: 13–15-, 23–25-, 33–35-, and 43–45-yr-olds. All adult groups involved persons with university education and persons with low education. Participants (1) solved tasks addressed to spatial, propositional, and social reasoning, (2) evaluated their own performance and the difficulty of the tasks, and (3) answered an inventory probing their self-concept for these reasoning domains and for self-awareness and self-regulation. Structural modeling revealed that performance, self-evaluation, and self-representation are systematically interrelated. Performance in spatial and propositional reasoning stabilized in early adulthood, whereas in social reasoning and self-evaluation, performance improved throughout the age span studied. Educated persons performed better and rated themselves accordingly across all domains. The implications of these findings for the general theory of intelligence and cognitive development after adolescence are discussed. The functional shift model is proposed to account for changes in the relative power of different abilities with increasing age.