Impact sports and bone fractures among adolescents

The objective of the present study was to investigate the effects of different sports on stress fractures among adolescents during a 9-month follow-up period. The sample was composed of 184 adolescents divided into three groups (impact sports [n = 102]; swimming [n = 35]; non-sports [n = 47]). The occurrence of stress fracture was reported by participants and coaches. As potential confounders we considered age, sex, resistance training, body composition variables and age at peak of height velocity. There were 13 adolescents who reported fractures during the 9-month period. Bone mineral density values were higher in adolescents engaged in impact sports (P-value = 0.002). Independently of confounders, the risk of stress fracture was lower in adolescents engaged in impact sports than in non-active adolescents (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.23 [95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.05 to 0.98]), while swimming practice was not associated to lower risk of fracture (HR = 0.49 [95% CI = 0.09 to 2.55]). In conclusion, the findings from this study indicate the importance of sports participation among adolescents in the reduction of stress fracture risk, especially with impact sports. More importantly, these results could be relevant for recognising adolescents in danger of not reaching their potential for peak bone mass and later an increased risk of fractures.     

Is It Time for a Sixth Dimension of Multicultural Education?: Resistance and Praxis in Challenging Times

The impact of the election of a new U.S. president and his far right ideology and agenda has reverberated across the entire world. This new reality calls for all critical equity-seeking educators; multicultural, social justice, culturally responsive, and others to be reflective and engage in deep thinking on ways to respond. Within a framework of advocacy and resistance, drawing on lessons of the past, my own experiences and research, this article offers some practical suggestions that others hopefully can build on. It seeks to connect a critical multicultural education framework to identifiable practices in schools and communities that challenges neoliberal approaches to education; xenophobia, racism, and other forms of structural oppression; argues that the actions and practices of multicultural educators must be explicit and generative in ways that make theory usable.     

Determination of a quantitative parameter to evaluate swimming technique based on the maximal tethered swimming test

The aim of this study was to propose a new force parameter, associated with swimmers’ technique and performance. Twelve swimmers performed five repetitions of 25 m sprint crawl and a tethered swimming test with maximal effort. The parameters calculated were: the mean swimming velocity for crawl sprint, the mean propulsive force of the tethered swimming test as well as an oscillation parameter calculated from force fluctuation. The oscillation parameter evaluates the force variation around the mean force during the tethered test as a measure of swimming technique. Two parameters showed significant correlations with swimming velocity: the mean force during the tethered swimming (r = 0.85) and the product of the mean force square root and the oscillation (r = 0.86). However, the intercept coefficient was significantly different from zero only for the mean force, suggesting that although the correlation coefficient of the parameters was similar, part of the mean velocity magnitude that was not associated with the mean force was associated with the product of the mean force square root and the oscillation. Thus, force fluctuation during tethered swimming can be used as a quantitative index of swimmers’ technique.     

General synthesis of 2D rare-earth oxide single crystals with tailorable facets

Two-dimensional (2D) rare-earth oxides (REOs) are a large family of materials with various intriguing applications and precise facet control is essential for investigating new properties in the 2D limit. However, a bottleneck remains with regard to obtaining their 2D single crystals with specific facets because of the intrinsic non-layered structure and disparate thermodynamic stability of different facets. Herein, for the first time, we achieve the synthesis of a wide variety of high-quality 2D REO single crystals with tailorable facets via designing a hard-soft-acid-base couple for controlling the 2D nucleation of the predetermined facets and adjusting the growth mode and direction of crystals. Also, the facet-related magnetic properties of 2D REO single crystals were revealed. Our approach provides a foundation for further exploring other facet-dependent properties and various applications of 2D REO, as well as inspiration for the precise growth of other non-layered 2D materials.     

Adaptive control of printing devices using fractional-order hold circuits adjusted through neural networks

A connectionist method for autotuning the free parameter of a fractional-order hold (FROH) circuit in order to improve the performance of the digitally controlled systems is proposed. Such a technique employs multilayer perceptrons to approximate the mapping between the sampling period/continuous-time parameters of the estimated plant and the optimal value of the FROH adjustable gain. In this way, adaptive discretization systems to improve the stability properties of the resulting discrete-time zeros are implemented. Simulation results are presented in order to illustrate the properties of the complete system applied to two actual digitally controlled printing devices (HP 7090A and low-cost computer printer).     

Example of good practice of a learning environment with a classroom response system in a mechanical engineering bachelor course

Results of a successful pilot study are presented, in which quizzes are introduced in a second year bachelor course for mechanical engineering students. The pilot study course entailed the basic concepts of mechanical vibrations in complex, realistic structures. The quiz is held weekly using a SharePoint application. The purpose of the quizzes is to repeat important course material, give instantaneous feedback (i.e. formative assessment), stimulate peer instruction and, as a consequence, increase the students’ comprehension of the basic concepts taught in the course so that their deeper understanding of the subject matter improves. Students can earn half a point bonus, on a scale from 0 to 10, on top of their exam mark if they correctly answer 55% of all the quiz questions. The efficacy of the pilot study is determined by investigating the percentage of students that pass the course on their first attempt, i.e. the first time pass rate, and asking students for feedback through questionnaires. The first time pass rate of the students in the pilot study groups has, on average, increased significantly in comparison to groups in which the quizzes are not performed. Students indicated that the feedback from the quizzes helps them to identify gaps in their knowledge. Therefore, the pilot study is considered effective.     

Gaining ‘Raw Insider Knowledge’: The Benefits and Challenges of International Study Tours for Creative Industries Students

International short‐term study tours are a fast‐growing format for outbound education and provide exciting experiential learning opportunities for students in the creative industries disciplines. This success has encouraged researchers to seek a comprehensive view of the various concrete experiences that contribute to student learning during study tours. To that end, this article presents evidence from a qualitative online post‐tour questionnaire administered with students studying various art and design disciplines who participated in short‐term international study tours at a large Australian university in 2015. Using Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory as a framework, data collected explored student perceptions of which concrete experiences on a study tour are most impactful and which may actually hinder learning. Findings revealed: experiencing key industry venues are the most significant aspects of a study tour, rather than networking or personal growth; poor itinerary planning and travel issues are the least liked aspects of a tour, yet are often the most easily addressed with better tour management and planning; and students were positively impacted by unexpected gains in knowledge about their creative industries discipline. This study, therefore, provides unique insights into which concrete experiences may be most impactful as part of the experiential learning cycle within an international study tour for creative industries students.     

A relevance model for a data warehouse contextualized with documents

This paper presents a relevance model to rank the facts of a data warehouse that are described in a set of documents retrieved with an information retrieval (IR) query. The model is based in language modeling and relevance modeling techniques. We estimate the relevance of the facts by the probability of finding their dimensions values and the query keywords in the documents that are relevant to the query. The model is the core of the so-called contextualized warehouse, which is a new kind of decision support system that combines structured data sources and document collections. The paper evaluates the relevance model with the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) TREC test subcollection and a self-constructed fact database.     

School-Based Consultation to Improve Concussion Recognition and Response

Many students who have sustained concussions return to school requiring academic adjustments while their brains heal. However, school personnel often are not trained to accommodate these students. This exploratory project examined the usefulness of school-based training paired with ongoing consultation and continued dissemination of information to improve both concussion recognition and response among school personnel. A case study design was employed in which a school district received training that was followed by ongoing consultation and continued dissemination of concussion resources. This study highlights the importance of involving school psychologists in concussion management programs.