Relationship between Physical Fitness and Susceptibility to Cardiovascular Disease

Abstract

This study was conducted (a) to determine through factor analysis techniques the basic factors underlying selected blood variables, metabolic variables, and previously determined physical and athletic fitness variables at four fixed stages of metabolic stress and (b) to determine with the t-test and through discriminant function techniques those blood variables which can discriminate between high and low levels of physical fitness. The objective of the analyses was the interpretation of the revealed information in light of previously found knowledge on the relationship of physical activity and susceptibility to heart disease. Four factors were extracted and interpreted: the effect of weight on motor fitness, the detrimental effect of aging on physical fitness, metabolic readiness, and fitness and NEFA mobility. The t-test showed statistical significance for the difference between the physically fit and unfit group means in resting serum cholesterol, submaximal exercise serum cholesterol, maximal exercise blood pH, and recovery period blood pH. The discriminant function of the combined resting and submaximal exercise serum cholesterol has a statistically determined discriminating power for the physically fit and unfit groups.     

Educational innovation and the knowledge society: development and issues of the clusters of excellence initiative in Malaysia

As nations worldwide strive to compete in a globally interconnected knowledge society the importance of innovative forms of education is being increasingly recognized. In doing so, many education systems look to comparative and international experience for guidance and inspiration. Malaysia aims to become a regional hub for high quality education and economic creativity by 2020, and educational reform is seen as a central component in this strategy. This article examines the key factors, at home and abroad, that have influenced changes in the Malaysian education policy context. It then documents the origins, nature and development of one contemporary educational innovation – the Malaysian Clusters of Excellence Policy. Conclusions reflect upon the place and potential of this key initiative in supporting broader development goals designed to transform the nation into a leading knowledge society within the Southeast Asia region.     

A Qatari perspective on women in the engineering pipeline: an exploratory study

Under-representation of women in engineering has received a great deal of attention, but remained limited largely to a Western context. Thus, this article aims to unveil the barriers to progress, tracking the performance and the emerging trend of success at the undergraduate level of women in engineering in a different cultural dimension. Secondary research, particularly statistical data of female undergraduate engineering students at Qatar University (QU), is used in this study. Findings show that the booming economic development and access to modern education are the key drivers that change the position of women in Qatari society. A shift away from a masculine-dominated society to a more balance masculine/feminine society was identified as the impetus for better enrolment and achievement of female engineering students in Qatar. Similar to the trend in the USA, recruitment and not retention was the reason behind the under-representation of female undergraduate engineering students at QU.     

Social media,legacy media and gatekeeping: the protest paradigm in news of Ferguson and Charlottesville

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the site of intersection between legacy and social media, whereby it asks how local legacy media (St Louis Post-Dispatch and Richmond Times-Dispatch) invoked social media (Facebook and Twitter) discourse within their coverage of the Ferguson (2014) and Charlottesville (2017) events. It thus explores how gatekeeping is manifested and, consequently, how the protest paradigm emerged in a news landscape of proliferating social media. Thematic textual analysis indicates that coverage of Charlottesville and Ferguson clearly relied on indulging the social media sphere in important ways. Common themes of social media as multipurpose platforms, as interfacing with law and order, and as reconciling material and digital modes culminating in social activism were revealed. The study shows that the protest paradigm that has long characterized legacy media’s coverage of social protest is not as “pure” as it may once have been, since a social media component is helping define the contours and content of legacy media’s landscape.     

A confidence interval test for the detection of structural breaks

This paper develops a simple confidence interval test around the first difference of time series data to identify a structural break over time. Simulations show the robustness of the test. We also apply the test to the popular debate on the adoption of inflation targeting in New Zealand. Using the NZ inflation data, our test fails to find a structural break around the adoption date of the inflation targeting policy. The test rather supports an early reaction to the expected policy change. As the effectiveness of inflation targeting is a controversial issue, the insight provided by our test sheds some light on the debate. Our test has a wide range of possible applications in empirical literature.     

Cluster searching strategies for collaborative recommendation systems

In-memory nearest neighbor computation is a typical collaborative filtering approach for high recommendation accuracy. However, this approach is not scalable given the huge number of customers and items in typical commercial applications. Cluster-based collaborative filtering techniques can be a remedy for the efficiency problem, but they usually provide relatively lower accuracy figures, since they may become over-generalized and produce less-personalized recommendations. Our research explores an individualistic strategy which initially clusters the users and then exploits the members within clusters, but not just the cluster representatives, during the recommendation generation stage. We provide an efficient implementation of this strategy by adapting a specifically tailored cluster-skipping inverted index structure. Experimental results reveal that the individualistic strategy with the cluster-skipping index is a good compromise that yields high accuracy and reasonable scalability figures.     

构建电子环境中的可信任文件管理框架

本研究的目的在于构建一个电子环境中的可信任文件管理框架.通过文献研究和最佳实践,对可信任电子文件管理的有关标准进行整理,并将这些标准进行专家测试,建立了构建电子文件可信任管理所需的因素,即监管、文件保管系统、档案、技术、人员技能和素质.这个框架为良好的文件管理实践奠定了基础.