Perceived neighborhood environmental characteristics and different types of physical activity among Brazilian adolescents

Little is known about the association between environmental characteristics and types of physical activity in adolescents in a Latin American context. The aim of this study was to examine the association between perceived neighborhood environmental characteristics and different types of physical activity in 2,874 adolescents from Joao Pessoa, Paraiba State, Northeastern Brazil. The types of activity measured by questionnaire (≥10 min/day) included sports, physical exercises, active commuting and recreational activities. Neighborhood characteristics were measured by a 15-item scale. Multilevel analyses showed that adolescents who reported “having places they liked to go to” (OR = 1.41; 95%CI: 1.10–1.79) and “places with opportunities to practice” (OR = 1.29; 95%CI: 1.01–1.65) were more likely to play sports. “Seeing interesting things while walking” (OR = 1.24; 95%CI: 1.01–1.53) and “Seeing other adolescents engaged in physical activity” (OR = 1.47; 95%CI: 1,05–2,06) were associated with exercises. “Seeing other adolescents engaged in physical activity” (OR = 1.47; 95%CI: 1.18–1.82), “the neighborhood is not violent” (OR = 1.29; 95%CI: 1.04–1.60) and “having places they like to go to” (OR = 1.59; 95%CI: 1.13–2.25) were positively associated and “places with opportunities to practice” (OR = 0.79; 95%CI: 0.63–0.98) inversely related to active commuting. “Seeing other adolescents engaged in physical activities” (OR = 1.31; 95%CI: 1.05–1.63) and “seeing interesting things while walking” (OR = 1.26; 95%CI: 1.02–1.56) were associated with recreational activities. Neighborhood environmental characteristics associated with the physical activity vary with the type of practices adopted by adolescents.     

Baseline Intraocular Pressure Is Associated With Subjective Sensitivity to Physical Exertion in Young Males

Purpose: The purposes of this study were to (a) investigate the effect of physical effort (cycling for 60 min at 60 ± 5% of individually computed reserve heart-rate capacity), combined with 2 different levels of cognitive demand (2-back, oddball), on intraocular pressure (IOP) and subjective judgments of perceived exertion (ratings of perceived exertion [RPE]), affect (Affective Valence subscale of the Self-Assessment Manikin [SAM]), and mental workload (National Aeronautics and Space Administration Task Load Index [NASA-TLX]); and (b) ascertain whether baseline IOP, measured before exercise, is associated with individual differences in subjective assessments of effort and affective response during exercise. Method: Seventeen participants (M_age = 23.28 ± 2.37 years) performed 2 physical/cognitive dual tasks, matched in physical demand but with different mental requirements (2-back, oddball). We assessed IOP before exercise, after 2 min of active recovery, and after 15 min of passive recovery, and we also collected RPE and SAM measures during the sessions (28 measurement points). We used NASA-TLX and cognitive performance as checks of the mental manipulation. Results: (a) Intraocular pressure increased after concomitant physical/mental effort, with the effect reaching statistical significance after the 2-back task (p = .002, d = 0.35) but not after the oddball condition (p = .092, d = 0.29). (b) Baseline IOP was associated with subjective sensitivity to effort and showed statistical significance for the oddball condition (p = .03, ?_p² = .622) but not for the 2-back task (F < 1). Conclusions: Results suggest a relationship between IOP and physical/cognitive effort, which could have implications for the management of glaucoma. Additionally, a rapid measure of IOP could be used as a marker of individual effort sensitivity in applied settings.     

The physical profile of adult male basketball players: Differences between competitive levels and playing positions

This study examined the physical differences in adult male basketball players of different competitive level and playing position using a large cohort. In the middle of the regular season, 129 players from four different Divisions completed a Yo-YoIR1 and, after 3-to-8 days, they performed a 6-min continuous running test (Mognoni’s test), a counter-movement jump (CMJ) test and a 5-min High-intensity Intermittent running test (HIT). Magnitude-based inferences revealed that differences in HIT were very likely moderate between Division I and II and likely small between Division II and III. The differences in absolute peak power and force produced during CMJs between Division I and II and between Division II and III were possibly small. Differences in Yo-YoIR1 and Mognoni’s test were very likely-to-almost certain moderate/large between Division III and VI. We observed possibly-to-likely small differences in HIT and Mognoni’s test between guards and forwards and almost certainly moderate differences in absolute peak power and force during CMJs between guards and centres. The ability to sustain high-intensity intermittent efforts (i.e. HIT) and strength/power characteristics can differentiate between competitive level, while strength/power characteristics discriminate guards from forwards/centres. These findings inform practitioners on the development of identification programs and training activities in basketball.     

Correlation Between Organizational Culture and Compensation Strategies Using Charles Handy's Typology

Alignment between management strategies, policies, and practices with organizational cultures holds great potential to meet the challenges of retaining professionals and maintaining their commitment. In this article, authors consider that when it is aligned with company strategy, compensation acts as an incentive for developing common visions within organizational culture.     

The combined use of IRT and LDV for the investigation of historical thin vaults

Correct interventions on cultural heritage should have as their starting point an accurate diagnosis of its health, in order to design a compatible care. NDTs seem to offer a promising way in this sense. This paper deals with the combined use of IRT and LDV for the investigation of historical thin vaults made by timber arches, reeds, and plaster and it demonstrates that they can effectively support a deeper knowledge of these vaults as it concerns the presence of detached areas among the different mortar layers of the plaster and of detached areas among the mat of reeds and the nailed connection with the wooden bearing elements. This is a very important goal because these ND methodologies can be employed only on the lower surface of these vaults and sufficiently far from it, and they do not have any mechanical interaction with the historical, eventually frescoed or stuccoed, plaster, thus saving money and time.     

数字时代的教学脑

随着人类迈入数字化时代,数字化的工作平台在"心智、脑与教育"科学领域也逐渐得到普及。教育是人类的希望,未来的教育得依靠这些学科之间的不断融合。在全球化时代,教师正面临着新的教学方法上的挑战。虽然我们已经对学习脑做了大量的研究,但是与之相对应的教学脑的知识却相当匮乏。目前,我们正在教育领域努力扩大这个持续而广泛普及的数字化教育平台,让孩子们在学习的同时,也可以进行教学与实验。     

From England with love… ARK,heterarchies and global ‘philanthropic governance’

The recent emergence of new venture philanthropists, social entrepreneurs and neoliberal policy advocates and the new ways in which they configure and perform their political agendas have brought important changes in the way in which education policy is enacted. This study takes some of the ideas sketched in previous work further and develops what was termed there as ‘philanthropic governance’. The first section analyses the transition to a new political framework characterised by new forms of coordination or ‘heterarchies’. These transformations represent new forms of governmentality and power regimes and are deeply rooted within the political economy and political philosophy of neoliberalism. The second section of the study focuses on a set of new policy actors, the ‘new’ philanthropists and explores the organisational model of a group of these philanthropic individuals and enterprises, their discourses, connections, ideological influences and agendas on the ground. Finally, the study reflects on the new ways through which philanthropic activity has gained an increasingly important political dimension, becoming a central explanatory variable to understand the recent changes and directions of national and international political agendas in different parts of the world.     

Indexing and Self-indexing sequences of IEEE 754 double precision numbers

Succinct data structures were designed to store and/or index data with a relatively small alphabet size, a rather skewed distribution and/or, a considerable amount of repetitiveness. Although many of them were developed to handle text, they have been used with other data types, like biological collections or source code. However, there are no applications of succinct data structures in the case of floating point data, the obvious reason is that this data type does not usually fulfill the aforementioned requirements.     

Polytopic invariant and contractive sets for closed-loop discrete fuzzy systems

In this work a procedure for obtaining polytopic λ-contractive sets for Takagi–Sugeno fuzzy systems is presented, adapting well-known algorithms from literature on discrete-time linear difference inclusions (LDI) to multi-dimensional summations. As a complexity parameter increases, these sets tend to the maximal invariant set of the system when no information on the shape of the membership functions is available. λ-contractive sets are naturally associated to level sets of polyhedral Lyapunov functions proving a decay-rate of λ. The paper proves that the proposed algorithm obtains better results than a class of Lyapunov methods for the same complexity degree: if such a Lyapunov function exists, the proposed algorithm converges in a finite number of steps and proves a larger λ-contractive set.