Psychometric properties of the Portuguese version of the Éxamen Geronto-Psychomoteur (P-EGP)

ABSTRACT

Aging involves concomitant and interrelated changes in sensory, motor, and cognitive function. There is a decrease in psychomotor skills—such as balance, spatial orientation, mobility, and motor coordination—visible in increased difficulties performing daily instrumental activities (e.g., self care and domestic activities). The absence of valid psychomotor instruments for the elderly population to be used by psychomotor therapists can be identified as one of the reasons why there is a scarce research in this area. Currently, in Portugal, psychomotor therapists do not have any specific, validated scale within the psychomotor domain built and/or adapted to guide psychomotor interventions with the elderly population. Therefore, the aim of this study was the translation, adaptation, and validation of the Portuguese version of the Éxamen Geronto-Psychomoteur (P-EGP) in a population of 497 elders, aged between 60 and 99 years, with and without dementia. Results of the study are presented and discussed in terms of the reliability and validity of P-EGP. The results demonstrate that P-EGP appears to be a valid and reliable assessment of psychomotor skills for the elderly population in Portugal. Practical implications and future directions of research are also discussed.     

Medical Simulation in the Community College Health Science Curriculum: A Matrix for Future Implementation

As the nation's healthcare education system struggles to keep pace with the demand for its services, educators are seeking creative and innovative solutions to meet the needs of a growing number of students. The integration of medical simulation technology into the community college health science curriculum is a creative solution that can meet the needs of healthcare educators and the students they serve, as well as of the healthcare community. This article provides a comprehensive overview of medical simulation, beginning with a review of literature regarding its history and efficacy, continuing with the current state of medical simulation usage, and concluding with implications for practice by offering a matrix for simulation integration and implementation. While Iowa's community colleges are the focus of the current state of usage, the implications for practice are useful to all comprehensive community colleges offering health science education programs.     

Documenting and Assessing the Role of Community Colleges in Developing Human Capital

The 21st century community college is an institution that espouses the values of open-access and high quality education. The literature is filled with research that documents the extent to which these institutions contribute to society and to human capital development. The purpose of this article is three-fold: First, to apply a human capital framework to the community college context; second, to describe efforts by several states to document and assess their community colleges' contributions to human capital development; and third, to raise research and policy issues related to improving assessment of that role. The article concludes by addressing future research and policy implications.     

Mimicking Web search engines for expert search

Many enterprise employees may publish content outside their corporate intranet, making the Web a valuable source for identifying company experts. In this article, we thoroughly investigate the usefulness of Web search engines (WSEs) for expert search. In particular, we claim that the ranking of documentary expertise evidence provided by a WSE should also give an indication of the importance of such evidence. To investigate this, we mimic the rankings of seven different WSEs by trying to reproduce their underlying ranking mechanisms in order to search for candidate experts in the TREC CERC collection. Experimental results show that our approach is effective for expert search, and can significantly improve an intranet-based expert search engine. Moreover, when the mimicking of WSEs is further improved by training, expert search performance is also generally enhanced. Finally, we show that WSEs can be mimicked as effectively using only titles and snippets instead of the full content of WSEs’ results, while drastically reducing network costs.     

Beauty,effort and talent: a brief history of Brazilian women’s soccer in press discourse

This essay offers a brief historical background to the evolution of women’s soccer in Brazil. It focuses on the main obstacles women faced to pursue the game, which was forbidden to women in Brazil in 1941. By analysing how the newspapers treat women’s teams, the essay will try to highlight significant changes in the stereotypes that long guided perceptions of people about women soccer players.     

Determining the minimum number of passive stretches necessary to alter musculotendinous stiffness

Abstract

In this study, we examined the minimum number of constant-torque passive stretches necessary to reduce musculotendinous stiffness. Thirteen healthy individuals (mean age 22 years, s = 3; stature 1.67 m, s = 0.1; mass 66 kg, s = 13 kg) volunteered to participate in the investigation and underwent four 30-s constant-torque passive stretches of the plantar flexor muscles. Musculotendinous stiffness was examined from the angle–torque curves generated prior to the passive stretches, at the beginning of each 30-s stretch, and immediately following the four 30-s passive stretches. The results indicated that musculotendinous stiffness of the plantar flexors was reduced following two 30-s constant-torque passive stretches (P < 0.05) compared with the pre- musculotendinous stiffness assessment. Musculotendinous stiffness remained depressed following the third and fourth stretches, but did not decrease further. These findings suggest that two 30-s bouts of constant-torque passive stretching may be necessary to cause a significant decrease in musculotendinous stiffness of the plantar flexor muscles.     

Is bioelectrical impedance spectroscopy accurate in estimating changes in fat-free mass in judo athletes?

Abstract

Bioelectrical impedance spectroscopy (BIS) provides an affordable and practical assessment of fat-free mass (FFM). However, little information is available on the assessment of changes in fat-free mass in top-level athletes using BIS. The aim of this study was to examine the accuracy of BIS in tracking changes in fat-free mass of elite male judo athletes from a period of weight stability to just before competition, using the four-compartment model (4C model) as reference method. In total, 27 elite male judo athletes (age 22.2 ± 2.8 years) were evaluated. Measures of body volume assessed by air displacement plethysmography, bone mineral content by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, and total-body water assessed with deuterium dilution were used in a 4C model. Fat-free mass was also assessed by BIS (FFM_BIS). Changes in FFM_BIS were not significantly different from measured by the reference method (P = 0.000). Furthermore, the r ² was 0.62 and the standard error of the estimate was 1.03 kg. The limits of agreement ranged from ?3.36 to 2.59 kg with no bias observed. These findings demonstrate the viability of BIS as a valid tool for tracking fat-free mass in elite male judo athletes. However, based on the wide limits of agreement observed, BIS is less valid at an individual level for tracking fat-free mass in these athletes.     

Him Too? Cristiano Ronaldo and the News Coverage of a Rape Case Allegation

ABSTRACT

This paper uses critical thematic analysis to explore the news media coverage of a rape allegation case against the football player Cristiano Ronaldo. After providing the context of the case, we examine the literature on how rape cases are represented by the news media. We then proceed to a critical thematic analysis of a purposive sample of Portuguese national newspapers, first identifying ten sub-themes in a total of 140 news stories and opinion columns and then considering the patterns of three critical themes that tended to dismiss the allegations, highlight the seriousness of the allegations and neutralize sexual victimization. Each of these considers prevailing ideologies, news values and journalistic practices.     

EDLE: an integrated tool to foster entrepreneurial skills development in engineering education

Academic papers on entrepreneurship in engineers’ education have been growing in the last decades. However, studies on entrepreneurship in engineering have not sought to analyze how entrepreneurship education, in connection to active learning, design thinking, and Bloom’s Taxonomy, inserted in an integrated way, as a tool, might help the process of engineering students’ entrepreneurial skills development. Thus, this study has the goal to propose an integrated tool, linked to the principles of entrepreneurship education, active learning, design thinking, and Bloom’s Taxonomy, to foster engineering students’ entrepreneurial skills development. The tool, called Entrepreneurial Dynamic Learning, is operationalized and validated in a 2-year case study in a Brazilian public university. The study also produces practical implications, and five are highlighted: (1) at the level of governments and policy makers; (2) engineering scientific associations; (3) universities, coordinators, and professors of engineering undergraduate programs; (4) engineering education researchers; and (5) the Brazilian National Confederation of Industry.