Repeated exercise stress impairs volitional but not magnetically evoked electromechanical delay of the knee flexors

The effects of serial episodes of fatigue and recovery on volitional and magnetically evoked neuromuscular performance of the knee flexors were assessed in 20 female soccer players during: (i) an intervention comprising 4 × 35 s maximal static exercise, and (ii) a control condition. Volitional peak force was impaired progressively (-16% vs. baseline: 235.3 ± 54.7 to 198.1 ± 38.5 N) by the fatiguing exercise and recovered to within -97% of baseline values following 6 min of rest. Evoked peak twitch force was diminished subsequent to the fourth episode of exercise (23.3%: 21.4 ± 13.8 vs. 16.4 ± 14.6 N) and remained impaired at this level throughout the recovery. Impairment of volitional electromechanical delay performance following the first episode of exercise (25.5%: 55.3 ± 11.9 vs. 69.5 ± 24.5 ms) contrasted with concurrent improvement (10.0%: 24.5 ± 4.7 vs. 22.1 ± 5.0 ms) in evoked electromechanical delay (P < 0.05), and this increased disparity between evoked and volitional electromechanical delay remained during subsequent periods of intervention and recovery. The fatiguing exercise provoked substantial impairments to volitional strength and volitional electromechanical delay that showed differential patterns of recovery. However, improved evoked electromechanical delay performance might identify a dormant capability for optimal muscle responses during acute stressful exercise and an improved capacity to maintain dynamic joint stability during critical episodes of loading.     

Qualitative differences in the exploration of upright and upside-down faces in four-month-old infants: an eye-movement study

Four-month-old infants were habituated with an upright or an upside-down face. Eye-movement recordings showed that the upright and upside-down faces were not explored the same way. Infants spent more time exploring internal features, mainly in the region of the nose and mouth, when the face was upright. They also alternated as frequently between the face's internal features (eyes vs. nose/mouth) as between external and internal features. When the face was upside down, the infants spent half of their time exploring external features, and preferentially alternated between external features and internal features. The main effect of inversion was a decrease of the looking time to the nose/mouth region and of the number of shifts between the eye region and the nose/mouth region.     

Towards a Definition of Community Education

Community work in the UK has developed in a haphazard way and would appear to have two major roots which have influenced its development and application. In one direction community work has grown out of education and in the other direction out of social work, and it would seem that much of community work in this country can be viewed and evaluated as having objectives which are either educationally or socially remedial. In recent years, the term ‘community work’ has come to be related much more clearly to socially remedial work rather than to educationally remedial work. The term ‘community education’ has tended to be applied much more to the changing and developing role of the secondary school within the community and the establishment of the concept of the community school or community college.