Relationships of hip abductor strength,neuromuscular control,and hip width to femoral length ratio with peak hip adduction angle in healthy female runners

ABSTRACT

A large peak hip adduction angle during running is a risk factor for several overuse injuries in women. The purpose of this study was to determine if female runners with a large peak hip adduction angle have differences in eccentric hip abductor muscle strength, hip neuromuscular control, and/or hip width to femoral length ratio (HW:FL) compared to those with a small angle. Hip adduction during running, hip strength, hip control, and HW:FL were measured in sixty healthy female runners (1.66 ± 0.06 m; 63.2 ± 8.3 kg; 27 ± 6 years). Data from twenty runners with the largest and twenty with the smallest peak hip adduction angles were analysed. Between-group differences in hip strength, control, and HW:FL were determined using independent t-tests (p < 0.05). Variables that were significantly different between groups were entered into a regression model. Runners in both groups had similar hip strength (p = 0.90) and control (p = 0.65). HW:FL was greater in the large peak angle group (p = 0.04), but only explained a small amount of peak hip adduction angle variance for all sixty runners (R² = 0.05). Alarge peak hip adduction angle in some healthy female runners may simply be instinctive as there were no deficiencies in the strength or neuromuscular control constructs assessed.     

How do beginners learn to read irregular words as sight words?

Learning irregular words involves mental marking of irregular letters in the spelling, a process not fully understood. In a within‐subjects experiment, we manipulated the type of scaffolding given to beginning readers to evoke mental marking. We pretested to sort 103 kindergarten and first‐grade participants into sequential decoders, who decode letter by letter, and hierarchical decoders, who recognise vowel patterns. In the control phase, children read irregular words in sentence contexts with minimal scaffolding. In the experimental phase, participants read additional irregular words in sentence contexts by ‘operating on the word’ to mark irregular letters. Results indicated that the experimental condition induced better untimed word reading, but it did not improve spelling or reading in a flash presentation. Hierarchical decoders were significantly more successful than sequential decoders in untimed word reading, spelling and reading in the flash presentation. These results suggest that learning hierarchical decoding predisposes readers to learn irregular words.     

Satisfying information needs with multi-document summaries

Generating summaries that meet the information needs of a user relies on (1) several forms of question decomposition; (2) different summarization approaches; and (3) textual inference for combining the summarization strategies. This novel framework for summarization has the advantage of producing highly responsive summaries, as indicated by the evaluation results.     

Lines of Force: Faraday's and Students' Views

In this work we analyzed how electric and magnetic lines of force were conceived byFaraday and how they are understood by a group of Argentine university studentsafter receiving instruction. Our results show that many students possess ideas similarto those of Faraday in that lines of force are conceived as real physical entities responsible for the transmission of the electric action. These results are in accordance with the interpretation of physical entities as ``matter-based' suggested by Chi et al. (1994). It is suggested that emphasis on the geometrical character of these lines seems imperative in basic electromagnetism classes in order to avoid this kind of confusion.     

Understanding Individual Differences in University Undergraduates: A Learner Needs Segmentation Approach

The purpose of this study was to use the marketing concept of segmentation in a post-secondary context in order to gain a better understanding of undergraduate students. Most post-secondary institutions segment their learners in traditional ways based on demographic characteristics such as age, year of program, gender, special needs, and grade point average. The establishment of identifiable learner-based segments is a unique, and arguably a critical, first step which can be of benefit to institutions as they develop recruitment strategies and academic programs that best serve the needs of their unique mix of undergraduate learners.Partners in Planning and focuses upon strategic development and transformation in the public and not-for-profit sectors, marketing, and product introduction     

Science processes

During the past twenty years, research, curriculum development, and instruction in science education have been influenced by Gagne's conception of science processes. This article reports an investigation of the epistomologic foundations of this conception. The results indicate that a commitment to inductive empiricism pervades the presently held view of science processes. A major tenet of this commitment is that conceptual knowledge results from the application of science processes in understanding natural phenomena and solving problems. Criticism of the commitment in light of recent developments in the philosophy of science reveals that there is limited philosophical support for this view. The implication is that if science educators continue to use the presently held view of science processes, the conception needs to be reformulated. Otherwise, there is a clear danger that students will be presented an inaccurate and inadequate view of science processes. The alternative is to view the exact nature of science processes as being dependent upon the conceptual knowledge that is used to understand a particular phenomena or problem.     

A Framework for Teaching Epistemic Insight in Schools

This paper gives the rationale and a draft outline for a framework for education to teach epistemic insight into schools in England. The motivation to research and propose a strategy to teach and assess epistemic insight followed research that investigated how students and teachers in primary and secondary schools respond to big questions about the nature of reality and human personhood. The research revealed that there are pressures in schools that dampen students’ expressed curiosity in these types of questions and limit their developing epistemic insight into how science, religion and the wider humanities relate. These findings prompted the construction of a framework for education for students aged 5–16 designed to encourage students’ expressed interest in big questions and develop their understanding of the ways that science interacts with other ways of knowing. The centrepiece of the framework is a sequence of learning objectives for epistemic insight, organised into three categories. The categories are, firstly, the nature of science in real world contexts and multidisciplinary arenas; secondly, ways of knowing and how they interact; and thirdly, the relationships between science and religion. Our current version of the Framework is constructed to respond to the way that teaching is organised in England. The key principles and many of the activities could be adopted and tailored to work in many other countries.