Water-Based Aerobic Training Successfully Improves Lipid Profile of Dyslipidemic Women: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the effects of water-based aerobic training on the lipid profile and lipoprotein lipase (LPL) levels in premenopausal women with dyslipidemia. Method: Forty women were randomly assigned to: aquatic training (WA; n = 20) or a control group (CG; n = 20). The WA group underwent 12 weeks of water-based interval aerobic training twice a week at intensities ranging from 9 to 15 on the Borg Scale of Perceived Exertion. Total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG), high- (HDL) and low- (LDL) density lipoprotein, TC/HDL ratio, LPL levels, and peak oxygen consumption (VO₂peak) were evaluated before and after 12 weeks in both groups. Results: The WA group elicited decreases in TC (9%; effect size [ES] = 0.69; 95% CI [0.05, 1.33]), LDL (16%; ES = 0.78; 95% CI [0.13, 1.42]), and the TC/HDL ratio (17%; ES = 1.13; 95% CI [0.46, 1.79]), as well as increases in VO₂peak (10%; ES = 0.64; 95% CI [0.002, 1.27]) and HDL (10%; ES = 0.28; 95% CI [?0.35. 0.90]), without significant changes in TG (ES = 0.16; 95% CI [?0.46, 1.79]) and LPL (ES = 0.36; 95% CI [?0.27, 0.98]) levels. In the CG, no statistically significant changes in any of these variables were found (TC, ES = 0.19, 95% CI [?0.43, 0.82]; LDL, ES = 0.22, 95% CI [?0.40, 0.85]; HDL, ES = 0.05, 95% CI [?0.57, 0.67]; TG, ES = 0.09, 95% CI [?0.53, 0.71]; TC/HDL ratio, ES = 0.20, 95% CI [?0.42, 0.82]; LPL, ES = 0.02, 95% CI [?0.60, 0.64]; VO₂peak, ES = 0.20, 95% CI [?0.42, 0.82]). Conclusion: Water-based interval aerobic training positively affected the lipid profile in premenopausal dyslipidemic women.     

From closed source to open source software: Analysis of the migration process to Open Office

This article seeks to analyse the migration trajectory from commercial off-the-shelf and closed source software to open source software in order to establish the critical success/resistance factors associated with the replacement of the extant Microsoft Office with Open Office software in a private Brazilian company. The bibliographical review of this work addresses adoption/resistance to information systems, which is the theoretical framework adopted to explain the data collected. The single case study method was then applied and data was collected via documentation analysis, interviews, questionnaires, and direct and participant observation. Data analysis was then conducted by means of content analysis and non-parametric statistics. Based on that, three types of user behaviour were identified with respect to the intention to use open source software, namely adopters, partial adopters, and non-adopters. Finally, the reasons for such behaviour were set forth and discussed in order to make the implications of the study clear.     

Enhanced Finite Spectrum Assignment with disturbance compensation for LTI systems with input delay

This paper presents a Finite Spectrum Assignment (FSA) with a generalized feedforward control for Linear Time-Invariant (LTI) systems with input delay and bounded unmeasured disturbances. A novel two-layer feedforward strategy is proposed in order to deal with matched and unmatched disturbances. The proposed control law is based on a filtered disturbance estimator and a generalized feedforward compensation which can be applied to any Artstein based predictor. An optimization design procedure is presented to improve disturbance attenuation properties in the presence of band-limited disturbances. The conditions to achieve disturbance rejection are also shown to deal with deterministic disturbance models. Furthermore, the proposed solution can be used to define either continuous-time or discrete-time control algorithms. Two case studies are presented to illustrate the benefits of the new approach.     

Emotionally Charged: Exploring the Role of Emotion in Online News Information Seeking and Processing

This study examines how news stories framed in terms of discrete emotions (anger, fear, hope) influence online news message processing and information seeking. Results revealed that participants who read the approach emotion stories (anger and especially hope) spent more time on the story page than those who read the avoidant emotion (fear) story. These two emotional frames also differentially affected the information that people selected post-exposure in emotion-consistent ways. Overall, the findings deepen our understanding of the role that the emotional framing of news stories plays in determining how consumers respond to and selectively engage with online news content.     

Digitally Empowered

In January 2013, Peter Bradshaw, a film critic for The Guardian, said that Twitter users had become the favourite “critics” of the film industry. The implicit concern in this article on a subject dear to cultural journalism—“Would be criticism bankrupted when we are all ‘critics’ on the Web?”—became evident in the following years. It is pertinent, then, to explore the media answer not only to this subject but both to sourcing and expertise in general in the culture section. Did they embrace these new news sources (and which) that emerged in the digital environment, such as the reader, blogs or artists tweets? Assuming the first hypothesis, how did they include them in their editorial model, alongside with the “traditional” experts and sources? We conducted a content analysis to the culture section of an international media—The Guardian—between 2014 and 2016 (n?=?992), identifying the role of what we would like to call digitally empowered sources and the presence of new “experts” in cultural criticism. We concluded that these digitally empowered sources play an important role in the overall editorial, business and engagement media's strategy and are deeply engaged with a new digital feature: hypertextuality. New patterns of expertise also reflect an editorial positioning supported in an engagement strategy and in the recognition of the readers’ added value to content.     

Seeing education with one's own eyes and through PISA lenses: considerations of the reception of PISA in European countries

The paper addresses the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) as a public policy instrument, whose worldwide circulation is mediated by processes of reinterpretation, negotiation, and re-contextualization, where national, local, and international agencies intertwine. It is focused on the active reception of PISA in six European spaces (Francophone Belgium, France, Hungary, Portugal, Romania, and Scotland) along its first three cycles. The paper identifies two contrasting developments: the Program's divergent uses and its attractiveness in different social worlds. The paper gives particular attention to what is called the ‘update of reference societies’ in the context of national receptions of PISA. These ‘updates’ are analyzed as part of a composite process that involves domestic reasons, either related to current agendas for education or to deep historical factors, and injunctions related to PISA's rationale and PISA objects.     

Practicum experiences as sources of pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy

This study examines physical education pre-service teachers’ (PTs) self-efficacy and practicum experiences as self-efficacy sources through a mixed-method approach. For the quantitative phase, a self-efficacy questionnaire was applied to 141 PTs. Results showed a stronger self-efficacy in the relationship with students and discipline promotion. Lower self-efficacy was linked to instructional strategies. Concerning the qualitative phase, eight PTs were interviewed. PTs with higher self-efficacy reported professional experiences before practicum as mastery experiences. During the practicum they highlighted as mastery experiences: classes’ characteristics, planning and teaching practice; lesson observation as vicarious experiences; and post-lesson conversations as verbal persuasion. PTs with lower self-efficacy reported classes’ characteristics and teaching practice as failure experiences. Lesson observation was linked to negative vicarious experiences and post-lesson conversations were associated to negative emotions and the absence of verbal persuasion. This study’s results have implications inasmuch as they confirm the role of the practicum in teacher education programmes and the importance of training supervisors in the implementation and management of the training experience, thus contributing to PTs’ self-efficacy development.     

Perspectives on the Origins of Life in Science Textbooks from a Christian Publisher: Implications for Teaching Science

This study analyzes six seventh grade Israeli mathematics textbooks, examining (1) the extent to which students are required to justify and explain their mathematical work, and (2) whether students are asked to justify a mathematical claim that is stated by the textbook or a mathematical claim that they themselves generated when solving a problem. Two different units of analysis were used to analyze two central topics in the seventh grade curriculum as follows: (1) equation solving in algebra and (2) triangle properties in geometry. The findings indicate that all six textbooks had considerably larger percentages of geometric tasks than algebraic tasks, which required students to justify or explain their mathematical work. Moreover, considerable differences were found among the six textbooks regarding the percentages of tasks that required students to justify and explain in both topics, but more so with the algebraic topic. Analysis of whether the textbook tasks required students to justify a mathematical claim that is stated by the textbook or a mathematical claim that the students themselves generated also revealed substantial differences among the textbooks. These findings are discussed, as well as the research methods used, in light of relevant literature.     

Trademarks as an indicator of innovation and industrial change

As innovation becomes an ever more central issue for the development of firms and world economies, so the need for improved assessments of innovative performance grows more urgent. This paper suggests that trademark analysis can contribute in capturing relevant aspects of innovation phenomena and the process of industrial change. We propose trademarks as a complementary indicator in the portfolio of available empirical tools of innovation studies and industrial dynamics. Our empirical exploration is based on a study of community trade marks (CTM), an intellectual property right granted in the European Union, and draws on recent research on trademarking trends in Portugal. Quantitative as well as qualitative data, including survey data from a representative sample of Portuguese manufacturing and services firms, are used to identify the advantages and limitations of this indicator.