An empirical study on teaching urban young children music and English by contrastive elements of music and songs

The purpose of the study is to teach urban young children music concepts and English by composing creative music and songs with contrast elements. The subjects were seven urban young children aged from three to four in a Taiwan kindergarten. The duration was twenty-four weeks, with two sessions per week. The teaching contents included Hello Song, Musical Movement, Music Appreciation and Goodbye Song. The study applied the thematic music elements to the teaching content. The main methodology was a qualitative study and quantitative data used to receive objective support. Assessment included a pre-test at the beginning, a post-test and participation observation at the end of the study. The head of the kindergarten, the classroom teacher and a parent completed activity feedback forms to obtain social validity. The results show that through the use of creative music pieces of contrast and song activities, urban young children＇s understanding of music concepts was progressive and English ability was improved. The study findings are： （1） Using contrastive music pieces is a good method for teaching very young urban children to understand music concepts; （2） Creating simple target objective songs with contrast elements is a good way for urban young children to learn simple English; （3） Music with contrastive elements could motivate urban young children to do movement spontaneously and learn the spoken language simultaneously; and （4） Contrastive music could be used for pre-classical music learning.     

High reliability of performance of well-trained rowers on a rowing ergometer.

High retest reliability is desirable in tests used to monitor athletic performance, but the reliability of many popular tests has not been established. The aim of this study was to determine the reliability of performance of a 2000-m time-trial lasting approximately 7 min performed on a Concept II rowing ergometer. Eight well-trained rowers (peak oxygen uptake 61+/-5 ml x kg(-1) x min(-1); mean +/- standard deviation) performed the time-trials on three occasions at 3-day intervals. Mean power (313+/-38 W in trial 1) improved by 2.3% (95% confidence interval 0.1 to 4.5%) in trial 2 and by a further 0.9% (-1.4 to 3.3%) in trial 3. The variability of performance for individual rowers expressed as a coefficient of variation for mean power was 2.0% (1.3 to 3.1%), and the retest correlation was 0.96 (0.87 to 0.99). Variability and changes in performance expressed as time to complete the test were approximately one-third those of mean power, apparently because simulated velocity is proportional to the cube root of power on this ergometer. Such high reliability makes this combination of ergometer, athlete and test protocol very suitable for monitoring rowing performance and for investigating factors that affect performance in short, high-intensity endurance events.     

Improving energy expenditure estimates from wearable devices: A machine learning approach

ABSTRACT

A means of quantifying continuous, free-living energy expenditure (EE) would advance the study of bioenergetics. The aim of this study was to apply a non-linear, machine learning algorithm (random forest) to predict minute level EE for a range of activities using acceleration, physiological signals (e.g., heart rate, body temperature, galvanic skin response), and participant characteristics (e.g., sex, age, height, weight, body composition) collected from wearable devices (Fitbit charge 2, Polar H7, SenseWear Armband Mini and Actigraph GT3-x) as potential inputs. By utilising a leave-one-out cross-validation approach in 59 subjects, we investigated the predictive accuracy in sedentary, ambulatory, household, and cycling activities compared to indirect calorimetry (Vyntus CPX). Over all activities, correlations of at least r = 0.85 were achieved by the models. Root mean squared error ranged from 1 to 1.37 METs and all overall models were statistically equivalent to the criterion measure. Significantly lower error was observed for Actigraph and Sensewear models, when compared to the manufacturer provided estimates of the Sensewear Armband (p < 0.05). A high degree of accuracy in EE estimation was achieved by applying non-linear models to wearable devices which may offer a means to capture the energy cost of free-living activities.     

Cybertroopers and tea parties: government use of the Internet in Malaysia

The advent of the Internet has enabled a disruption of the Malaysian government's long-standing control of media content. However, there are also opportunities for the government to extend into the Internet what Cherian George has called ‘narrow tailoring’ policies, designed to ensure ‘hegemonic consensus.’ Demonstrating the interconnections of intraparty factional rivalry, blogging and newspaper management, as well as the extension of government influence into online content, this paper discusses three cases: the transformation of a bloggers association; the organisation of ‘cybertroopers’ by the dominant governing party; and, the use of a blog, Facebook, and Twitter by the prime minister (PM), Najib Razak. Each of the cases highlights particular ‘blog affordances’, a concept used to parse the potentials and limitations of blogs and other social media with regards to state hegemonic control through media ownership. In addition, an adapted concept of ‘extended parasocial relations’ is proposed in relation to Najib's blog and social media presence. Overall, these cases demonstrate the continuity and complementarity of on- and offline activities, which form a relatively stabilised assemblage of political activity.     

Infant responsivity to curvature.

The reactions of 112 10-month-old male infants to the property of curvature were examined using a habituation paradigm with lever pressing as an instrumental response. 4 levels of curvature (straightt line, minimal curve, moderate curve, large curve) each served as a standard (habituation) stimulus and as a transformation stimulus in 9 separate experimental conditions. Results revealed a greater initial dishabituation of reinforced instrumental responding in those conditions crossing the curved/straight boundary; furthermore, this initial dishabituation was sustained throughout the transformation phase of the experiment in those conditions which involved changes from straight to curved, but not curved to straight. Results are interpreted as implying a special attention-recruiting value for curvature in 10-month old infants.     

The Hopkins gasolene-engine dynamometer and speedometer

It is not ordinarily a simple operation to determine the power continuously delivered by an internal combustion engine. The apparatus here described is designed to reduce the operation to the simplicity of reading the horsepower from a dial and esentially consists of a current meter whose readings are proportional to the product of the speed of rotation and the temperature of the gases within the cylinder.