Physical fitness of primary school children in relation to overweight prevalence and physical activity habits

A cross-sectional study was carried out to analyse, through a limited number of fitness tests, the main conditioning and coordinative abilities in children aged 8-9 years, and their relationship with gender, anthropometric variables and physical activity habits. The height and weight of 256 boys and 241 girls were measured and information about physical activity habits was collected using a self-administered questionnaire. Physical performance was assessed by means of a few standardised tests: 'sit & reach', medicine-ball forward throw, standing long jump, 20 m running speed, and forward roll test. In both boys and girls, body weight and body mass index (BMI) were positively correlated with the medicine-ball throw performances and negatively correlated for the standing long jump and speed tests, while no association was found with tests measuring back flexibility and total body coordination. Daily physical activity and participation in sport were not significantly correlated with body weight and BMI, but were positively associated with children's motor performance. The standardised fitness tests selected in the current study have been found to be suitable to identify fitness levels of primary school children. Thanks to their limited number and ease of measurement, they can be used in any school context to classify children and for monitoring the effects of targeted interventions promoting physical activity.     

CLAIRE: A combinatorial visual analytics system for information retrieval evaluation

Information Retrieval (IR) develops complex systems, constituted of several components, which aim at returning and optimally ranking the most relevant documents in response to user queries. In this context, experimental evaluation plays a central role, since it allows for measuring IR systems effectiveness, increasing the understanding of their functioning, and better directing the efforts for improving them. Current evaluation methodologies are limited by two major factors: (i) IR systems are evaluated as “black boxes”, since it is not possible to decompose the contributions of the different components, e.g., stop lists, stemmers, and IR models; (ii) given that it is not possible to predict the effectiveness of an IR system, both academia and industry need to explore huge numbers of systems, originated by large combinatorial compositions of their components, to understand how they perform and how these components interact together.We propose a Combinatorial visuaL Analytics system for Information Retrieval Evaluation (CLAIRE) which allows for exploring and making sense of the performances of a large amount of IR systems, in order to quickly and intuitively grasp which system configurations are preferred, what are the contributions of the different components and how these components interact together.The CLAIRE system is then validated against use cases based on several test collections using a wide set of systems, generated by a combinatorial composition of several off-the-shelf components, representing the most common denominator almost always present in English IR systems. In particular, we validate the findings enabled by CLAIRE with respect to consolidated deep statistical analyses and we show that the CLAIRE system allows the generation of new insights, which were not detectable with traditional approaches.     

Distributed model reference adaptive containment control of heterogeneous multi-agent systems with unknown uncertainties and directed topologies

In this paper, the containment control problem of heterogeneous uncertain high-order linear Multi-Agent Systems (MASs) is addressed and solved via a novel fully-Distributed Model Reference Adaptive Control (DMRAC) approach, where each follower computes its adaptive control action on the basis of local measurements, information shared with neighbors (within the communication range) and the matching errors w.r.t. its own reference model, without requiring any previous knowledge of the global directed communication topology structure. The approach inherits the robustness of the direct model reference adaptive control (MRAC) scheme and allows all agents converging towards the convex hull spanned by leaders while fulfilling at the same time local additional performance requirements at single-agent level, such as prescribed settling time, overshoot, etc. The asymptotic stability of the whole closed-loop network is analytically derived by exploiting the Lyapunov theory and the Barbalat lemma, hence proving that each follower converges to the convex hull spanned by the leaders, as well as the boundedness of the adaptive gains. Extensive numerical analysis for heterogeneous MAS composed of stable, unstable and oscillating agent dynamics are presented to validate the theoretical framework and to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed approach.     

Academic Libraries and Mobile Devices: User and Reader Preferences

The authors surveyed 250 students, faculty, alumni, administrators, and staff about how they use mobile devices, if at all, to access a university library. Fifty percent of respondents reported that they used their mobile devices to access the library—primarily the catalog and the research databases; however, usability hindered accessing other desired services. These results have implications for library administrators with respect to making decisions about App choices, the advertisement of services, and the transition to e-collections.     

Work-family conflict and facilitation among teachers in Israel and Switzerland

In this paper, we examine the attitudes toward integrating work and family in a sample of 247 teachers in Switzerland and Israel. More particularly, we focus on the national context’s role in mediating the relations between professional and private spheres. The data were collected by a questionnaire implemented and administered in the two countries. The analysis reveals differences between Israeli and Swiss teachers regarding the importance of attribution to life roles and their attitudes toward conflict and facilitation. Findings suggest new insights into the consideration of cultural elements in shaping the teachers’ attitudes toward the integration of family and work.

     

Intercultural practices and inclusive education in Europe: can migration be a resource for individual and societal development?

European Journal of Psychology of Education - This is an introductory paper to the special section “Multilingual learning and social inclusion of children: The development of educational...     

Children’s interethnic relationships in multiethnic primary school: results of an inclusive language learning intervention on children with native and immigrant background in Italy

European Journal of Psychology of Education - The increasing multicultural character of European society and the growing presence of children from immigrant families in European schools represent a...     

Introduction to the Special Issue “Beyond Industrial Robotics: Social Robots Entering Public and Domestic Spheres”

Industrial and domestic robotics provide fascinating and relevant perspective insights into current and possible trajectories for the development of contemporary societies. While industrial robotics has found its place since the 1960s, domestic robotics wherein humans interact with social robots is still an unsettled area. After reviewing data on the diffusion of social robots and on their use, the historical tradition from which social robots come is discussed. This discussion is followed by an analysis of the penetration of social robots in everyday life and the importance of interdisciplinary research is highlighted.     

Black limestone used in Lombard architecture

Black limestone samples from the quarries of Varenna (Lecco, I), Cene (Bergamo, I) and Riva di Solto (Bergamo, I) and widely used in Lombard architecture have been studied in terms of mineralogical, petrographic and chemical properties in order to provide a detailed characterisation and allow an unambiguous determination of their provenance. The inorganic and organic fractions have been separated from each other, and investigated using X-ray powder diffraction, atomic absorption, Hg-porosimetry, high performance liquid chromatography, gas chromatography, nuclear magnetic resonance and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The occurrence of specific mineral phases, some binary chemical patterns (Fe/Mn, Zn/Sr, Zn/Co and Na/Cd) and the carbon chain relative molecular masses has proven to be useful markers to characterise unequivocally the materials studied.