Classroom observation: desirable conditions established by teachers

Teacher observation is regarded as an essential procedure in the teacher training process. However, the vast majority of observation experiences have a top-down approach, as they are usually established by experts such as university teaching staff or school inspectors working for the administration. With a bottom-up approach in mind, this paper examines the attitudes of a wide range of teachers towards observation by focusing the analysis on three classes of attitudinal components: the cognitive, the affective, and the conative components. 185 infant, junior, secondary, university, and private language school teachers completed a questionnaire concerning the role of observation in the language classroom. The main result is a decalogue of prerequisites, a how-to handbook for successful classroom observation, compiled by teachers themselves.     

A distributed systems laboratory that helps students accomplish their assignments through self-regulation of behavior

Educational technology research and development - Recent research has shown a great interest in supporting self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies in online learning. However, there is hardly any...     

Attitudes to innovation in peripheral economic regions

The objective of this study is to shed light on the identification of the internal and external factors that affect the attitudes towards innovation of companies located in regions situated on the periphery of economic centres. The main research questions are as follows: (1) What are the internal factors that predispose companies to seek access to innovation? (2) To what extent do external factors such as location and technological opportunities condition or stimulate favourable attitudes towards innovation? To test the hypotheses put forward to answer these questions, we formulate and estimate econometric specifications, taking a sample of more than 2000 companies situated in Andalusia (one of the less-favoured regions in Spain). Our results show that the cost of innovation and the level of indebtedness of a company have a statistically significant and negative effect on attitudes to innovation, whereas the technical qualifications of the employees, the propensity to export, and the company size (measured by the number of employees) have a significant and positive effect on a company's attitude towards innovation. Furthermore, technological opportunities and location exert positive effects on attitudes towards innovation.     

Effects of mat characteristics on plantar pressure patterns and perceived mat properties during landing in gymnastics

Shock absorption and stability during landings is provided by both, gymnast ability and mat properties. The aims of this study were to determine the influence of different mat constructions on their energy absorption and stability capabilities, and to analyse how these properties affect gymnast's plantar pressures as well as subjective mat perception during landing. Six mats were tested using a standard mechanical drop test. In addition, plantar pressures and subjective perception during landing were obtained from 15 expert gymnasts. The different mats influenced plantar pressures and gymnasts' subjective perception during landing of gymnasts. Significant correlations between plantar pressures at the medial metatarsal and lateral metatarsal zones of the gymnasts' feet with the different shock absorption characteristics of the mats were found. However, subjective perception tests were not able to discriminate mat functionality between the six mats as no significant correlations between the mechanical mat properties with the subjective perception of these properties were found. This study demonstrated that plantar pressures are a useful tool for discriminating different landing mats. Using similar approaches, ideally including kinematics as well, could help us in our understanding about the influences of different mats upon gymnast-mat interaction.     

Islamic glasses from Al-Andalus. Characterisation of materials from a Murcian workshop (12th century AD, Spain)

Rescue archaeological excavations at an urban glass workshop of the 12th century AD in the city of Murcia (Spain) have provided one of the few evidences of glass production in the ancient Islamic territory of Al-Andalus. This paper reports the results derived from a chemical–physical characterisation study carried out on a representative sample set of glass fragments and industrial debris from that workshop. The main objectives of the research were to contribute to the knowledge of the type of glasses produced and provide some insights into the technology developed to obtain different colours in glasses. The resulting data indicated that both high-magnesia plant ash (HMG) soda-lime-silicate and soda-lime lead-silicate glasses were produced. They also indicated a deep knowledge of glass colouring techniques, which suggests that a careful control over the glass melting processes was achieved. Among others, the occurrence of bulk-coloured silver yellow and copper ruby red transparent glasses prove the skills reached by Murcian glassmakers. These results shed new light on the Islamic glass technology of a geographical area in which, up to now, little compositional and technological data from glass workshops were available.     

Football and justice devices: hybrid ethical narratives,sanctions and legitimacy of interests

The concept of justice has gradually colonized sports’ narratives in general and professional football ones in particular. Discourses on justice often give rise to ambiguous, unclear narrations with a great deal of noise and opportunism. The aim of this article is to apply the concept of justice devices to clarify the range of measures used and link these to the diverse agents that attempt to gain legitimacy and power through them. In an initial characterisation, we highlight conventional and post-conventional models of ethics of justice. Subsequently, we compare these models to the systems of justice employed by football’s governing institutions, FIFA and UEFA. Finally, we analyse a paradigmatic event of judicial interpretation by various actors using the case of ‘Luiz Adriano’. In this article, we reveal some of the specific uses, settings and strategic aims of justice devices employed by the main actors involved in international football.     

Effects of dynamic resistance training on fascicle length and isometric strength

The aims of this study were to assess changes in muscle architecture, isometric and dynamic strength of the leg extensor muscles, resulting from dynamic resistance training, and the relationships between strength and muscle architecture variables. The participants (n = 30) were randomly assigned to one of two groups. The training group (n = 16; age 21.8 +/- 2.3 years, body mass 74.8 +/- 9.2 kg, height 1.75 +/- 0.08 m) performed dynamic resistance training for 13 weeks. The control group (n = 14; age 19.9 +/- 1.5 years, body mass 74.0 +/- 8.5 kg, height 1.76 +/- 0.05 m) did not perform any resistance training. Maximal dynamic and isometric strength were tested in both groups, before and after the training period. The members of the training group used the free-weight squat lift (90 degrees ) as their training exercise. The concentric phase of the squat was performed explosively. Skeletal muscle architecture of the vastus lateralis was visualized using ultrasonography. At the end of the study, significant increases in vastus lateralis muscle thickness (+6.9%, P < 0.001), fascicle length (+10.3%, P < 0.05), one-repetition maximum (+8.2%, P < 0.05), rate of force development (+23.8%, P < 0.05) and average force produced in the first 500 ms (+11.7%, P < 0.05) were seen only in the training group. Adaptations to the muscle architecture in the training group limited the loss of fibre force, and improved the capacity for developing higher velocities of contraction. The architectural changes in the training group were similar to those seen in studies where high-speed training was performed. In conclusion, dynamic resistance training with light loads leads to increases in muscle thickness and fascicle length, which might be related to a more efficient transmission of fibre force to the tendon.     

Robust observer design by sign-stability for the monitoring of population systems

Monitoring problem in population ecology can be formalized as observer design for the population system in question: Supposing that we observe only certain species considered indicators, we want to recover or estimate the whole state process of the population system, where the state vector is usually composed from the biomasses of the single populations. In the present paper, for stably coexisting population systems, a new approach to the design of the corresponding observer system is proposed which, from the knowledge of the observed indicator(s), estimates the state process with exponential convergence. In the usual observer design, an auxiliary matrix, the so-called gain matrix must be found that guarantees the mentioned exponential convergence. The novelty is in that due to the required sign-stability (or qualitative stability) of the interaction pattern, the designed observer system (i.e. the gain matrix) is robust against quantitative changes in the inter- and intra-specific interactions. (Here the interaction pattern is described by a matrix having the signs as entries, indicating the quality of the interactions within and between the considered species.) In other words, under sign-stability conditions, in the observer design the same gain matrix can be used even if, due to environmental changes, the intensities of certain interactions suffer a quantitative change in the meanwhile. The requirement of sign-stability of the interaction pattern can be considered rather natural, since in a stably coexisting population system, it means for example that a predator–prey relation does not change into a prey–predator interaction, and interactions neither appear nor disappear within the system. Our approach to robust observer design is illustrated on model population systems, such as trophic chains of type resource-producer-primary consumer-secondary consumer and Lotka–Volterra system with vertical structure. For the latter system a Lyapunov function is also constructed that guarantees the global asymptotic stability of the positive equilibrium of the considered model.     

Microfluidic model of monocyte extravasation reveals the role of hemodynamics and subendothelial matrix mechanics in regulating endothelial integrity

Extravasation of circulating cells is an essential process that governs tissue inflammation and the body''s response to pathogenic infection. To initiate anti-inflammatory and phagocytic functions within tissues, immune cells must cross the vascular endothelial barrier from the vessel lumen to the subluminal extracellular matrix. In this work, we present a microfluidic approach that enables the recreation of a three-dimensional, perfused endothelial vessel formed by human endothelial cells embedded within a collagen-rich matrix. Monocytes are introduced into the vessel perfusate, and we investigate the role of luminal flow and collagen concentration on extravasation. In vessels conditioned with the flow, increased monocyte adhesion to the vascular wall was observed, though fewer monocytes extravasated to the collagen hydrogel. Our results suggest that the lower rates of extravasation are due to the increased vessel integrity and reduced permeability of the endothelial monolayer. We further demonstrate that vascular permeability is a function of collagen hydrogel mass concentration, with increased collagen concentrations leading to elevated vascular permeability and increased extravasation. Collectively, our results demonstrate that extravasation of monocytes is highly regulated by the structural integrity of the endothelial monolayer. The microfluidic approach developed here allows for the dissection of the relative contributions of these cues to further understand the key governing processes that regulate circulating cell extravasation and inflammation.