Biomechanical comparison of the double-push technique and the conventional skate skiing technique in cross-country sprint skiing

The aims of the study were to: (1) adapt the "double-push" technique from inline skating to cross-country skiing; (2) compare this new skiing technique with the conventional skate skiing cross-country technique; and (3) test the hypothesis that the double-push technique improves skiing speed in a short sprint. 13 elite skiers performed maximum-speed sprints over 100 m using the double-push skate skiing technique and using the conventional "V2" skate skiing technique. Pole and plantar forces, knee angle, cycle characteristics, and electromyography of nine lower body muscles were analysed. We found that the double-push technique could be successfully transferred to cross-country skiing, and that this new technique is faster than the conventional skate skiing technique. The double-push technique was 2.9 +/- 2.2% faster (P < 0.001), which corresponds to a time advantage of 0.41 +/- 0.31 s over 100 m. The double-push technique had a longer cycle length and a lower cycle rate, and it was characterized by higher muscle activity, higher knee extension amplitudes and velocities, and higher peak foot forces, especially in the first phase of the push-off. Also, the foot was more loaded laterally in the double-push technique than in the conventional skate skiing technique.     

The indispensable institution

The proposal to dismantle the entire educational establishment in favor of an informal, unstructured, student-motivated educational activity is described as a utopian fantasy. The chief emphasis is on the impracticality of the proposal, its disregard of the institutional basis of all social functions, and the unrealistic expectations of voluntary educational effort on a scale that matches the social determination that all citizens be literate. The material advancement of Western countries is attributed to general education of the population, with industrialization as a parallel achievement, each requiring the other to fulfill the social purpose. Schools are servants of the social will, not agencies of revolution. They reflect the dominant philosophy and respond to demands and aspirations of the society in which they exist. The weaknesses of education arise from moribund concepts of scholarship, and will be corrected by the integration of knowledge and its transmission in terms of the needs and responses of persons, both as individuals and as members of a society.

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Résumé On soutient que la proposition de remplacer l'établissement éducationnel entier par une activité éducationnelle qui est informelle, non structurée, et motivée par les étudiants est une fantaisie utopique. L'auteur souligne l'impraticabilité du projet, son insouciance à l'égard de la base institutionelle de toute fonction sociale, et l'expectative non réaliste d'un effort éducatif volontaire qui correspondra à la détermination sociale que tout individu sache lire et ecrire. L'avancement matériel des pays occidentaux est attribué à l'éducation générale de la population, l'industrialisation étant un accomplissement parallèle; chacun nécessite l'autre pour accomplir le dessein social. Les écoles sont les serviteurs de la volonté sociale, et non des agences de révolution. Elles reflètent la philosophie courante et répondent aux demandes et aux aspirations de la société dans laquelle elles existent. Les faiblesses de l'éducation proviennent des concepts moribonds de la science, et seront corrigées par l'intégration de la science, et sa transmission à l'égard des besoins et des réponses des personnes, tant qu'individus et tant que membres d'une société.

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All opinions and attitudes expressed in this article are personal.     

Simple Bayesian Model for Bitmap Compression

Bitmaps are a useful, but storage voracious, component of many information retrieval systems. Earlier efforts to compress bitmaps were based on models of bit generation, particularly Markov models. While these permitted considerable reduction in storage, the short memory of Markov models may limit their compression efficiency. In this paper we accept the state orientation of Markov models, but introduce a Bayesian approach to assess the state; the analysis is based on data accumulating in a growing window. The paper describes the details of the probabilistic assumptions governing the Bayesian analysis, as well as the protocol for controlling the window that receives the data. We find slight improvement over the best performing strictly Markov models.     

Building knowledge,building community: reflecting on the value of a national research programme in adult literacy

In 2003 the National Literacy Secretariat (NLS) of Canada, at that time a branch of the Department of Human Resources and Development Canada, decided to review its research function. This article discusses some of the questions the review raised for the field. Many of these issues are to do with the management of knowledge – what research gets funded, to be performed by whom, and with what kind of approach – whereas others are concerned with the meaning of the research function itself, and what it can contribute to a field of practice such as adult literacy.     

Adolescent males in New Zealand school choirs: the contradictory business of being in the gender vanguard

School choirs have been stigmatised for adolescent males in New Zealand, resulting in constraints in involvement, bullying, and threat to gender identity. In other national contexts, boys who sing in choirs have experienced a negative stereotype associated with accusations of inferior masculinity, yet little research has probed whether such forces are at play for their New Zealand counterparts. The current study was conducted with a sample of adolescent male school choir members in New Zealand (a country where essentialist gender attitudes have existed). Adolescent male choristers’ perceptions of the gender stereotype, its moderation by cultural context, and how the stigmatised choral domain was negotiated, were explored within a framework of critical masculinities. Such a stereotype and wider implications for gendered structures found in society at large were confirmed. Personal and school-based factors enabling the male choristers’ endurance in a domain that rendered their construction of masculinity subordinate, are discussed.     

Positioning higher education for the knowledge based economy

This article questions the assumption that increasing competition among higher education institutions is the best method of achieving a strong higher education sector in developing countries. It notes that there has been increasing emphasis on the importance of higher education institutions for sustainable development, particularly because of their importance to the global knowledge economy. For the same reason, the appropriate management of the relationship between the state and higher education institutions is vital to a strong and dynamic future for these institutions. This paper proposes a menu of options for higher education governance, grouped around ‘state-centric’ and ‘neo-liberal’ models of development. The ‘state-centric’ model proposed is based on a variety of examples of high performing Asian economies, in particular, while the ‘neo-liberal’ model is based on emerging trends in higher education management in countries such as Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. The paper suggests that despite pressure across the globe to encourage a market among universities, this may not always be the most efficient use of resources, or the best way to integrate universities in a country’s drive for economic growth.     

State Policy and the Affordability of Public Higher Education: The Influence of State Grants on Persistence in Indiana

The coordination of state finance strategies has been widely advocated as a means of maintaining affordability in public colleges and universities. This article examines the influence of state grants on equalizing opportunity for persistence among full-time resident students in Indiana's public system of higher education. The findings indicate that the state has maintained a commitment to a balanced approach to higher education finance, with increases in state grants that corresponded with tuition increases in the middle 1990s. This investment has been sufficient to equalize opportunity to persist.