Physical demands of elite basketball during an official U18 international tournament

ABSTRACT

The aims of this study were (a) to compare players’ physical demands between different playing positions in elite U18 basketball games and (b) to identify different clusters of performance. Data were collected from 94 male subjects (age: 17.4 ± 0.7 years), competing in a Euroleague Basketball Tournament. Guards covered a greater relative distance than centres and forwards (small to moderate effect). Forwards and guards had more peak accelerations, high accelerations and high decelerations than centres (moderate to large effects). A cluster analysis allowed to classify all cases into three different groups (Lower, Medium and Higher activity demands), containing 37.4%, 52.8% and 9.8% of the cases, respectively. The high accelerations, high decelerations, peak accelerations and total distance covered were the variables that most contributed to classify the players into the new groups. The percentage of cases distributed in the clusters according to playing position, game type (worst vs worst, mixed opposition, best vs best) and team were different. Centres have lower physical demands specially related with the number of accelerations and decelerations at high intensity and the peak acceleration when compared with guards. Each team has a different activity profile, that does not seem to influence the tournament outcome.     

Reorienting the Mobile: Australasian Imaginaries

In this paper, I approach the question of mobiles in Asian countries by considering the case of Australia. I do so by way of a preliminary inquiry that seeks to explore the intersection between the emergence of mobiles in Australia with transformations in that country's sense of its relationship with Asia. First I discuss the history of the mobile phone in Australia, noting some important uses and representations that formed part of its social shaping. Second, I explore mobiles and the paradoxes of multiculturalism, and also how digital technologies became central to political culture and identity debates in Australia in the early to-mid 1990s. Third, I look at some important moments in the social shaping of text messaging, in which questions of cultural difference were decisive. Finally, I offer concluding remarks about future research on mobiles in Australia and how they are tied into Asian identities.     

Gender Scripts and the Internet: The Design and Use of Amsterdam's Digital City,by Els Rommes. Enschede,The Netherlands: Twente University Press, 2002. 304 pp. 24.00. ISBN 9-0365-1774-5

This article seeks to address how religion fits into the larger domain of Internet studies and why studies of religion within computer-mediated communication (CMC) need to be given more attention. An argument is made for the need to take religion online more seriously, not just because it is an interesting phenomenon or a popular use of the Internet, but also because religion continues to be an important part of contemporary life for many people. A summary of the growth and development of religion online is presented along with an overview of how religion has been approached and studied on the Internet. This review shows what CMC studies of religion might offer in approaching research questions related to authority, identity construction, and community online. It calls for recognition of the contribution, and possibilities that underrepresented areas within interdisciplinary research, like religion, might offer Internet studies as a whole.     

Early childhood special education pictorial literacy activities for young children with disabilities

Summary Alternative literacy activities can be adapted to complement the speech and language programs that have been developed to assist learners with disabilities. Pictorially based alternative literacy programs may involve rebus symbols, augmentative and alternative communication devices, or picture reading. Because these programs do not assume extensive language development, they can be appropriate for children with severe learning problems as a foundation or replacement for typical early reading activities.     

Primary School Teacher Training in the European Community: an overview of recent developments

The colleges of education for primary school teachers in The Netherlands have gone through several mergers in the space of just a few years. Many colleges of education became part of a polytechnic. The authors studied how the specific characteristics of the education of primary school teachers can show to full advantage in a large institute of higher vocational education. In the Dutch situation as well as that of the other countries of the European Community (England and the Federal Republic of Germany in particular) the phenomena ‘integration’ and ‘differentiation’ have been studied. The authors concluded that mergers of primary school teacher training colleges can be a serious threat to the educational identity of teacher training as a whole. Holding to as well as giving up the educational identity does not guarantee that the specific characteristics will be kept.     

Balancing chemical equations: The role of developmental level and mental capacity

Why are some students able to learn to use the trial and error method to balance chemical equations while others are not? To test the hypothesis that formal reasoning is required to balance even simple one-step equations, while formal reasoning and a sufficiently large mental capacity are required to balance more complex many-step equations, a sample of science students was tested to determine level of intellectual development, mental capacity, and degree of field dependence/field independence. Students were then given classroom instruction in using trial and error to balance equations. As predicted, a posttest revealed significant correlations between developmental level and equation balancing ability for both simple and complex equations. Also, as predicted, mental capacity correlated significantly with complex equations but not with simple equations. Field dependence/field independence played no significant role in performance. Educational implications are drawn.     

Learning Styles Among Mature‐Age Students: Some Comments on the Approaches to Studying Inventory (ASI‐S)

The short form of Entwistle's (1981) Approaches to Studying Inventory (ASI‐S) was administered to 503 mature‐aged students, most of whom identified themselves as disadvantaged and were returning to study after many years absence. Analysis of the 503 responses showed that internal consistency estimates for the seven subscales of the ASI‐S were generally low, but that confirmatory factor analysis could recover two major dimensions corresponding to deep and surface orientations to learning. To examine the predictive validity of the ASI‐S with this population, results for a mathematics unit which they were studying were regressed on factor scores. Results of the structural analysis indicated that the deep orientation was unrelated to academic progression in mathematics but that high scores on the surface orientation were associated with poor academic performance ( = 0.092). These findings indicate that broad learning orientations are fundamental and can be identified in a group of students returning to study after a long absence. The study also emphasises the importance of examining the particular study context when evaluating the effect of learning orientations. The effect of deep and surface orientations may be positive or negative depending on the subject area and the learning context.     

Scholarisation, apprenticeship and social differentiation. Analysis of the non-industrial craft sector in Morocco

The article approaches the question of the schooling processes in the particular environment of the Moroccan craftsmen of Fez. It shows that the weak schooling of the children is bound to the representations and to the ways of transmission of craft industry knowledge. Schooling is, indeed, the object of tensions between a school system of western inspiration and the Muslim system of transmitting patrimonial knowledge. The article shows then that schooling is integrated into craftsmen's ‘relationships with knowledge’ and ‘reasons of knowing’: because of historic development factors of the school system in Morocco, and of sociological factors of domination in the craftsmen's environment, schooling is not indeed legitimate for most craftsmen. It is not even always “possible”: in fact, social reproduction in craftsmen's environment is indeed, and because of the previous factors, based on holding positions bound to the mastery of the traditional knowledge and of the production market, rather than to the possession of school capital. On the other hand, schooling has gained strong legitimacy at a general society level, so that the craftsmen, and especially their children, are more and more the victims of social declassification.