The point of view of firms in Minas Gerais about the contribution of universities and research institutes to R&D activities

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the interactions between firms, universities and research institutes based in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The theoretical standpoint is the innovation system of developing countries. Multivariate cluster analysis is used, more specifically, the Grade of Membership method, to group firms with similar characteristics and evaluate their pattern of interaction with universities and research institutes. The main results show that the highest rates of interaction are found among firms that manufacture chemical products, cellulose, paper and paper products, followed by those engaged in the extraction of metallic and non-metallic minerals.     

EDLE: an integrated tool to foster entrepreneurial skills development in engineering education

Academic papers on entrepreneurship in engineers’ education have been growing in the last decades. However, studies on entrepreneurship in engineering have not sought to analyze how entrepreneurship education, in connection to active learning, design thinking, and Bloom’s Taxonomy, inserted in an integrated way, as a tool, might help the process of engineering students’ entrepreneurial skills development. Thus, this study has the goal to propose an integrated tool, linked to the principles of entrepreneurship education, active learning, design thinking, and Bloom’s Taxonomy, to foster engineering students’ entrepreneurial skills development. The tool, called Entrepreneurial Dynamic Learning, is operationalized and validated in a 2-year case study in a Brazilian public university. The study also produces practical implications, and five are highlighted: (1) at the level of governments and policy makers; (2) engineering scientific associations; (3) universities, coordinators, and professors of engineering undergraduate programs; (4) engineering education researchers; and (5) the Brazilian National Confederation of Industry.     

Key determinants of time to 5 m in different ventral swimming start techniques

The aim of this study was to determine the biomechanical parameters that explain ventral start performance in swimming. For this purpose, 13 elite swimmers performed different variants of the ventral start technique. Two-dimensional video analyses of the aerial and underwater phases were used to assess 16 kinematic parameters from the starting signal to 5?m, and an instrumented starting block was used to assess kinetic data. A Lasso regression was used to reduce the number of parameters, providing the main determinants to starting performance, revealing different combinations of key determinants, depending on the variant (r²?≥?0.90), with flight distance being the most relevant to all variants (r?≤??0.80; p?r?=??0.79; p?r?≤?0.61; p?r²?=?0.66) or block time and flight distance (r²?=?0.83). These data provide relevant contributions to the further understanding of the biomechanics of swimming starts as well as insights for performance analysis and targeted interventions to improve athlete performance.     

Antecedents and consequents of professional choice self-efficacy: A study with Brazilian students

This study aimed to test a theoretical model of self-efficacy applied to the context of professional choice, verifying the sources of self-efficacy as predictors of self-efficacy beliefs and self-efficacy beliefs as antecedents of vocational exploratory behavior. A total of 388 high school students from public and private schools in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, participated. The professional choice self-efficacy sources scale (EFAEP), the professional choice self-efficacy scale (EAE-EP) and the vocational exploration scale (EEV)—high school version—were applied. The self-efficacy beliefs were predicted by sources of self-efficacy. Other results are discussed based on the literature.     

Towards an automated method to assess data portals in the deep web

The rising number of data portals has been increasing demand for new techniques to assess data openness in an automated manner. Some methods have emerged that presuppose well-organized data catalogs, the availability of API interfaces and natively exposed metadata. However, many data portals, particularly those of local governments, appear to be misimplemented and developed with the classic website model in mind, which provides access to data only through user interaction with web forms. Data in such portals resides in the hidden part of the web, as it is dynamically produced only in response to direct requests. This paper proposes an automated method for assessing government-related data in the deep web on the basis of compliance with open data principles and requirements. To validate our method, we apply it in an experiment using the government websites of the 27 Brazilian capitals. The method is fully carried out for 22 of the capitals' websites, resulting in the analysis of 5.6 million government web pages. The results indicate that the keyword search approach utilized in the method, along with the checking of web pages for multifield web forms, is effective for identifying deep web data sources, as 1.5% of web pages with potential government data that are analyzed are found to contain data stored in the deep web. This work contributes to the development of a novel method that allows for the continuous checking and identification of government data from surface web data portals. In addition, this method can be scaled and repeated to assure the widest possible content coverage.     

LABRADOR: Efficiently publishing relational databases on the web by using keyword-based query interfaces

A vast amount of valuable information, produced and consumed by people and institutions, is currently stored in relational databases. For many purposes, there is an ever increasing demand for having these databases published on the Web, so that users can query the data available in them. An important requirement for this to happen is that query interfaces must be as simple and intuitive as possible. In this paper we present LABRADOR, a system for efficiently publishing relational databases on the Web by using a simple text box query interface. The system operates by taking an unstructured keyword-based query posed by a user and automatically deriving an equivalent SQL query that fits the user’s information needs, as expressed by the original query. The SQL query is then sent to a DBMS and its results are processed by LABRADOR to create a relevance-based ranking of the answers. Experiments we present show that LABRADOR can automatically find the most suitable SQL query in more than 75% of the cases, and that the overhead introduced by the system in the overall query processing time is almost insignificant. Furthermore, the system operates in a non-intrusive way, since it requires no modifications to the target database schema.     

Teacher perceived difficulty in implementing differentiated instructional strategies in primary school

This study analyses teacher perceived difficulty in implementing differentiated instructional strategies in regular classes. The participants were 273 Portuguese primary school teachers with teaching experience ranging from 1 to 33 years. A 39-item questionnaire was used to evaluate teacher perceived difficulty in relation to different instructional strategies. Teacher responses were factor analysed and five different domains were identified: (1) activities and materials; (2) assessment; (3) management; (4) planning and preparation; and (5) classroom environment. Results showed that with the exception of the classroom environment domain, all the instruction practices in the remaining domains were considered to be difficult. In particular, the most difficult practices were under the domain of activities and materials and were associated with the adaptation of curricular elements (content, process, and product) based on student characteristics (readiness, interest, and learning profiles). The results also revealed a strong association between the activities and materials domain and the assessment domain. Some implications of these findings for initial teacher training and teacher professional development programmes are discussed.     

Perspectives on the Origins of Life in Science Textbooks from a Christian Publisher: Implications for Teaching Science

This study analyzes six seventh grade Israeli mathematics textbooks, examining (1) the extent to which students are required to justify and explain their mathematical work, and (2) whether students are asked to justify a mathematical claim that is stated by the textbook or a mathematical claim that they themselves generated when solving a problem. Two different units of analysis were used to analyze two central topics in the seventh grade curriculum as follows: (1) equation solving in algebra and (2) triangle properties in geometry. The findings indicate that all six textbooks had considerably larger percentages of geometric tasks than algebraic tasks, which required students to justify or explain their mathematical work. Moreover, considerable differences were found among the six textbooks regarding the percentages of tasks that required students to justify and explain in both topics, but more so with the algebraic topic. Analysis of whether the textbook tasks required students to justify a mathematical claim that is stated by the textbook or a mathematical claim that the students themselves generated also revealed substantial differences among the textbooks. These findings are discussed, as well as the research methods used, in light of relevant literature.     

Effect of hand paddles and parachute on butterfly coordination

This study investigated the effects of hand paddles, parachute and hand paddles plus parachute on the inter-limb coordination of butterfly swimming. Thirteen male swimmers were evaluated in four random maximal intensity conditions: without equipment, with hand paddles, with parachute and with hand paddles + parachute. Arm and leg stroke phases were identified by 2D video analysis to calculate the total time gap (T1: time between hands’ entry in the water and high break-even point of the first undulation; T2: time between the beginning of the hand’s backward movement and low break-even point of the first undulation; T3: time between the hand’s arrival in a vertical plane to the shoulders and high break-even point of the second undulation; T4: time between the hand’s release from the water and low break-even point of the second undulation). The swimming velocity was reduced and T1, T2 and T3 increased in parachute and hand paddles + parachute. No changes were observed in T4. Total time gap decreased in parachute and hand paddles + parachute. It is concluded that hand paddles do not influence the arm-to-leg coordination in butterfly, while parachute and hand paddles + parachute do change it, providing a greater propulsive continuity.