Willingness toward organ and body donation among anatomy professors and students in Mexico

Most anatomists agree that cadaver dissection serves as a superior teaching tool in human anatomy education. However, attitudes toward body donation vary widely between different individuals. A questionnaire was developed to determine the attitudes toward body and organ donation among those who learn the most from cadavers: medical students, medical student teaching assistants, medical students involved in research, and anatomy professors. A cross‐sectional, prospective study was designed in which the questionnaire was distributed among first‐year human anatomy students before undertaking cadaver dissection at the beginning of the semester, and then again after a commemoration service at the end of the course. The questionnaire items included demographic data, as well as questions designed to characterize participants' attitudes regarding body/organ donation from strangers, family members, and whether participants would consider such practices with their own bodies. Out of a total of 517 students enrolled in the Human Anatomy course in the Medical School at the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Mexico during January to June 2016, 95% responded to the first (491) and second (490) surveys. Participants' opinions on their own organ donation was similar before and after exposure to cadaver dissection, with between 87% and 81% in favor of such practices, and only 3% against it, in both surveys. Participants' willingness to donate their own bodies, as well as those of family members, increased, while reluctance regarding such practices decreased by half (P < 0.0001 and P < 0.05). Professors had the highest rates of positive opinions regarding their own body donation (74.9%), with 18.8% undecided. Low opposition toward organ and body donation remains prevalent among both anatomists and physicians in training in Mexico. Anat Sci Educ 10: 589–597. © 2017 American Association of Anatomists.     

A hybrid system of pedagogical pattern recommendations based on singular value decomposition and variable data attributes

To carry out effective teaching/learning processes, lecturers in a variety of educational institutions frequently need support. They therefore resort to advice from more experienced lecturers, to formal training processes such as specializations, master or doctoral degrees, or to self-training. High costs in time and money are invariably involved in the processes of formal training, while self-training and advice each bring their own specific risks (e.g. of following new trends that are not fully evaluated or the risk of applying techniques that are inappropriate in specific contexts).This paper presents a system that allows lecturers to define their best teaching strategies for use in the context of a specific class. The context is defined by: the specific characteristics of the subject being treated, the specific objectives that are expected to be achieved in the classroom session, the profile of the students on the course, the dominant characteristics of the teacher, and the classroom environment for each session, among others. The system presented is the Recommendation System of Pedagogical Patterns (RSPP). To construct the RSPP, an ontology representing the pedagogical patterns and their interaction with the fundamentals of the educational process was defined. A web information system was also defined to record information on courses, students, lecturers, etc.; an option based on a unified hybrid model (for content and collaborative filtering) of recommendations for pedagogical patterns was further added to the system. RSPP features a minable view, a tabular structure that summarizes and organizes the information registered in the rest of the system as well as facilitating the task of recommendation. The data recorded in the minable view is taken to a latent space, where noise is reduced and the essence of the information contained in the structure is distilled. This process makes use of Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), commonly used by information retrieval and recommendation systems. Satisfactory results both in the accuracy of the recommendations and in the use of the general application open the door for further research and expand the role of recommender systems in educational teacher support processes.     

Skinfold thicknesses associated with distance running performance in highly trained runners

It has been postulated that additional adiposity has a negative effect on performance in heterogeneous groups of runners. Previous studies have not tested this hypothesis in homogeneous groups of elite runners. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the sum of skinfold thicknesses and specific single skinfold sites were related to competitive running performance in homogeneous groups of male and female elite athletes. In total, 184 top-class runners (130 males and 54 females) volunteered to participate in the study. Skinfolds were measured at the following sites: biceps, triceps, subscapular, pectoral, iliac crest, abdominal, front thigh and medial calf. Runners were classified into groups in accordance with their best performance times. Correlation analysis and partial correlation coefficients that controlled for age and weight were applied to each single skinfold, the sum of six skinfolds (excluding biceps) and the extremity (sum of triceps, front thigh, medial calf) to trunk (sum of subscapular, iliac crest, abdominal) ratio and performance. Performance was rated by the scoring procedures of the International Amateur Athletics Federation. In male runners, the pectoral, iliac crest, abdominal, biceps, triceps, subscapular skinfolds and the sum of six skinfolds were not associated with performance score for any of the distances. High correlations were found between the front thigh (r = 0.78, P = 0.000) and medial calf (r = 0.55, P = 0.018) skinfolds and 1500 m run time, and between the front thigh (r = 0.59, P = 0.014) and medial calf (r = 0.57, P = 0.017) skinfolds and 10,000 m run time. In female runners, the front thigh and medial calf skinfolds were highly correlated with 400 m run time (r = 0.71, P = 0.022 and r = 0.81, P = 0.005, respectively). The results of this study indicate that skinfold thicknesses in the lower limb are positively associated with running time over several distances, and may be a useful predictor of athletic performance.     

The Analytic Representation of Band-Pass Signals

The analytic representation of band-pass signals, which is extremely useful in information transmission and radar, is usually obtained by first introducing the Hilbert transform of a signal. We consider this procedure artificial, and propose here to follow the opposite path, which leads, in a natural way, to a motivated definition of the Hilbert transform. The key to this procedure is to show how, as a simple application of the Fourier integral, every band-pass signal can be expressed as the real part of a low frequency signal which modulates an exponential. Such a representation, called the analytic signal, is then used to define the Hilbert transform in a natural manner. Finally, we show that the term analytic signal is motivated by the fact that this signal is the restriction to the real axis of a function defined and analytic (holomorphic) in the upper half of the complex plane.     

Bone quality in young adults with intellectual disability involved in adapted competitive football

The objective of this study was to analyse bone quality parameters of football players with intellectual disability (ID) participating in adapted competitive football. Sixty-seven male football players with ID were studied: 22 with Down syndrome (DS) and 45 without DS. The average age was 26 years (range: 16 ? 50 years). A group of 25 age-matched sedentary individuals with ID (11 DS and 14 non-DS) and another group of 20 healthy participants of the same age group not involved in competitive football were comparatively analysed. There were no differences in the bone quality parameters when the healthy sedentary individuals were compared with both the sedentary and the football players with ID. However, the speed of sound (SOS), T-score, and estimated bone mineral density (BMD) were of higher values in the football players with ID than in the sedentary ID group (p?p?T-scores (p?p?T-scores less than ?1.5. Two of the 14 sedentary non-DS participants (14.3%) had T-scores indicating osteoporosis. In summary, the ID population actively involved in football showed higher values of bone mass parameters than their sedentary ID and healthy peers. The participants with non-DS ID showed a higher prevalence of osteoporosis than the football players with DS. Participation in sports seems to prevent bone loss in individuals with ID.     

Components of attack response inhibition in fencing: Components of attack response inhibition in fencing

Applying the Go/No-Go paradigm to fencing, we investigated the relationship between the moment at which the No-Go signal appeared after a movement had been initiated and the time required by fencers to suppress the motor execution of a step-lunge. Secondarily, we determined a time threshold from which movement inhibition results in an error. The No-Go stimulus was represented by a real attack movement. 18 elite fencers and a fencing master were included in the study. Four force plates measured the horizontal components of the fencer's and master's reaction forces, which were used to calculate the time components of the attack and the response inhibition process. Also, the velocity and displacement of the master's and fencer's respective centres of mass were estimated using inverse dynamics. In all cases, cognitive inhibition processes were completed after the onset of movement. Movement time was calculated using four time components (muscle activation, muscle deactivation, transition and braking time). The results obtained revealed that cognitive processes were not significantly affected by the timing of the appearance of the No-Go signal. In contrast, movement time and its time components tended to decrease when the time delay between the No-Go stimulus and the onset of the fencer's movement increased. In conclusion, any attempt to withhold an attack movement when it has already started leads to an error that increases the risk of being hit by the opponent, especially when attack is inhibited within 150?ms after the movement has started.     

Determinants of School Performance Among Quechua Children in the Peruvian Andes

In the rural Andes of Peru, primary school inefficiency ranks higher than in the rest of the country, with a nearly 50 per cent rate of first grade repetition. In 1993 the investigators administered a battery of four psycho-educational tests to 360 schoolchildren in the fourth and fifth grades at ten primary schools in the Andean region of Huaraz. They also recorded the children''s individual characteristics, i.e. family background, nutritional status, and educational attainment, and rated the schools according to educational features such as classroom size, time devoted to learning, and student-teacher ratio. A year later, in 1994, children were re-examined in the schools using the same test battery. All subjects were small for their age, had poor diets, spoke mostly Quechua at home (Spanish in school), lived in a rural environment, and walked considerable distances to school. Regression analyses of the 1993 data indicated that the performance of Quechua children on verbal tests was heavily influenced by family background, while their mathematical competence was related to school experience. On the other hand, improvement in test scores from one year to the next appeared to be strongly related to test performance in 1993 and less clearly to the other recorded variables. Finally, the schools'' promotion rates were clearly associated with test scores from the previous year but less clearly with grade repetition rates.     

Didactic Problems in the Concept of Electric Potential Difference and an Analysis of its Philogenesis

This paper makes an analysis of the different didactic problems to come from the fact that electric charge is inseparable from the mass, the impossibility of its direct observation (only its effects) and the meaning associated with the basic concepts of electricity, like electric potential or electric potential difference.In order to know the origin of the different meaning found in textbooks of the concept of electric potential difference, we have made an analysis of the relevant historical milestones. In this review, it is seen that the content assigned to it is taken from the mathematical formalism of field theory, which causes problems in its structure and its logico-formal communication as well as teaching problems.