Child and partner abuse: self-reported prevalence and attitudes in the north of Portugal

OBJECTIVES: To determine the self-reported prevalence of child and partner physical and emotional abuse in the north of Portugal and to investigate attitudes about these forms of family violence. METHODS: Data were collected by questionnaire from a representative sample of parents in two-parent families with children under the age of 18 years. A total of 2,391 parents participated (1,057 males), aged 20-67 years. Four questionnaires were used, one behavioral and one attitudinal, for each of the forms of abuse: child and partner. RESULTS: At least one act of emotional or physical abuse towards a child during the previous year was reported by 25.9% of participants (12.3% reported physically abusive and 22.4% emotionally abusive acts). Abuse of a partner was reported by 26.2% of participants; at least one act of physical abuse during the previous year was reported by 12% and of emotional abuse by 23.7%. The attitudinal data, however, showed general disapproval of the use of violence, both for disciplining children and within marital relationships. The degree of self-reported support for physical punishment was higher in participants who reported using abusive behavior. Females more commonly reported acts of child abuse, and males reported acts of partner abuse. Both forms of self-reported abuse showed an association with low educational and socio-economic status. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study in Portugal to analyze family violence through self-report using a representative sample. The findings indicate that child and partner abuse constitute a significant problem in the region of northern Portugal. The discrepancy between the self-reported behavioral and attitudinal data may reflect conflicts in Portuguese society, which is undergoing substantial cultural changes.     

Dynamics of visual feedback in a laboratory simulation of a penalty kick

Sport scientists have devoted relatively little attention to soccer penalty kicks, despite their decisive role in important competitions such as the World Cup. Two possible kicker strategies have been described: ignoring the goalkeeper action (open loop) or trying to react to the goalkeeper action (closed loop). We used a paradigm simulating a penalty kick in the laboratory to investigate the dynamics of the closed-loop strategy in these controlled conditions. The probability of correctly responding to the simulated goalkeeper motion as a function of time available followed a logistic curve. Kickers on average reached perfect performance only if the goalkeeper committed him or herself to one side about 400 ms before ball contact and showed chance performance if the goalkeeper motion occurred less than 150 ms before ball contact. Interestingly, coincidence judgement--another aspect of the laboratory responses--appeared to be affected for a much longer time (> 500 ms) than was needed to correctly determine laterality. The present study is meant as groundwork for experiments in more ecological conditions applicable to kickers and goalkeepers.     

Effect of hand paddles and parachute on backstroke coordination and stroke parameters

Hand paddles and parachutes have been used in order to overload swimmers, and consequently increase the propulsive force generation in swimming. However, their use may affect not only kinematical parameters (average speed, stroke length and stroke rate), but also time gaps between propulsive phases, assessed through the index of coordination (IdC). The objective of this study was to assess the effects of hand paddles and parachute use, isolated or combined, on kinematical parameters and coordination. Eleven swimmers (backstroke 50-m time: 29.16 ± 1.43 s) performed four 15-m trials in a randomised order at maximal intensity: (1) without implements (FREE), (2) with hand paddles (HPD), (3) with parachute (PCH) and (4) with hand paddles plus parachute (HPD+PCH). All trials were video-recorded (60 Hz) in order to assess average speed, stroke rate, stroke length, five stroke phases and index of coordination. When average swimming speed was compared to FREE, it was lower in PCH and HPD+PCH, and higher in HPD. Stroke rate decreased in all overloaded trials compared to FREE. The use of hand paddles and parachute increased and decreased stroke length, respectively. In addition, propulsive phase duration was increased when hand paddles were used, and time gaps shifted towards zero (no time gap), especially when hand paddles were combined with parachute. It is conceivable that the combined use of hand paddles and parachute, once allowing overloading both propulsive and resistive forces, provides a specific stimulus to improve muscle strength and propulsive continuity.     

Impact sports and bone fractures among adolescents

The objective of the present study was to investigate the effects of different sports on stress fractures among adolescents during a 9-month follow-up period. The sample was composed of 184 adolescents divided into three groups (impact sports [n = 102]; swimming [n = 35]; non-sports [n = 47]). The occurrence of stress fracture was reported by participants and coaches. As potential confounders we considered age, sex, resistance training, body composition variables and age at peak of height velocity. There were 13 adolescents who reported fractures during the 9-month period. Bone mineral density values were higher in adolescents engaged in impact sports (P-value = 0.002). Independently of confounders, the risk of stress fracture was lower in adolescents engaged in impact sports than in non-active adolescents (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.23 [95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.05 to 0.98]), while swimming practice was not associated to lower risk of fracture (HR = 0.49 [95% CI = 0.09 to 2.55]). In conclusion, the findings from this study indicate the importance of sports participation among adolescents in the reduction of stress fracture risk, especially with impact sports. More importantly, these results could be relevant for recognising adolescents in danger of not reaching their potential for peak bone mass and later an increased risk of fractures.     

Educação Integral e Pedagogia Social: Reflexões Aproximativas Com Base No Contexto Brasileiro

As relações entre as políticas educacionais no Brasil e as discussões da Pedagogia Social se evidenciam a partir da análise crítica da implementação da Educação Integral em escolas brasileiras. Neste trabalho, a abordagem da análise documental permitiu acessar os conteúdos das políticas para relacioná-lo aos fundamentos da Pedagogia Social. Uma das conclusões é que a escola e as políticas que a ela se dirigem consideram cada vez mais aspectos sociais, gerando novas demandas formativas e a outra é referente ao debate nacional atual sobre a formação dos Educadores Sociais para atuarem em diferentes espaços educativos, incluindo o escolar.     

Career adaptability and associations with personality traits and pathological traits utilizing network analysis

This study investigated relationships between career adaptability and personality and pathological traits using the network analysis approach. We administered CAAS, BFI-2-S, and IDCP-2 to 630 working adults. We observed positive associations between personality and career adaptability and negative associations between pathological traits and career adaptability. This paper contributes to the understanding of the associations between career adaptability and Big Five personality traits and pathological traits. We found stronger associations between career adaptability and personality traits as compared to pathological traits. Our findings suggest that Neuroticism and Conscientiousness contribute more to adaptation to professional development tasks than do pathological traits.

     

The role of word recognition,oral reading fluency and listening comprehension in the simple view of reading: a study in an intermediate depth orthography

Empirical research has provided evidence for the simple view of reading across a variety of orthographies, but the role of oral reading fluency in the model is unclear. Moreover, the relative weight of listening comprehension, oral reading fluency and word recognition in reading comprehension seems to vary across orthographies and schooling years. This study aims to examine the direct effects of these three variables on reading comprehension and to test for the existence of indirect effects of word recognition and listening comprehension on reading comprehension via oral reading fluency in European Portuguese, an orthography of intermediate depth. A sample of 264 students was assessed at the end of grades 2 and 4. Structural equation modeling analyses indicated that listening comprehension, word recognition and oral reading fluency predicted reading comprehension in both grade 2 and grade 4. Moreover, the three variables measured in grade 2 predicted later reading comprehension in grade 4. Listening comprehension was always the strongest predictor. Oral reading fluency mediated the relationship between word recognition and reading comprehension, but it was not a mediator variable in the relationship between listening comprehension and reading comprehension. These findings indicate that, similarly to what has been found for other orthographies, the simple view of reading is a valid framework to account for reading comprehension variability in European Portuguese and that interventions to increase reading comprehension levels should focus on word recognition, fluency, and, especially, listening comprehension.     

Who takes the cake in community and economic development? ‘Going along' with metaphor to problematize the collective impact of a place-based promise programme

ABSTRACT

Linguists understand metaphors to be shortcuts to an individual’s tacit knowledge about the world. As ethnographers and planners building a university-school partnership and seeking to understand residents’ perceptions of their urban neighbourhood, attention to use of metaphor allowed us insight into an insider’s mental model of who is in the community. In this article, we describe how, in our interview-based ethnographic needs assessment, one of our project participant’s metaphors helped us discern the lived nature of social stratification as racialised economic inequality. This insight not only informs our partnership work but subverts some important assumptions about programme impact. Our experience suggests metaphor analysis contributes an important tool for ethnographic interpretation.     

Creatine Kinase Activity Weakly Correlates to Volume Completed Following Upper Body Resistance Exercise

In the current study, we examined the relationship between serum creatine kinase (CK) activity following upper body resistance exercise with a 1- or 3-min rest between sets. Twenty men performed two sessions, each consisting of four sets with a 10-repetition maximum load. The results demonstrated significantly greater volume for the 3-min condition (M = 4,156 kg, SD = 867, for 3 min; vs. M = 3,503 kg, SD = 759, for 1 min; p < .001), with no significant differences in delta CK activity between conditions (p = .574). Nevertheless, there was a weak correlation between the delta CK activity and total volume of exercise completed (r = .55 with a 1-min rest, and r =.45 with a 3-min rest). Therefore, the volume following upper body resistance exercise correlates weakly with serum CK levels, irrespective of rest interval length between sets.     

Robust asymptotic stability of interval fractional-order nonlinear systems with time-delay

This paper studies the global asymptotic stability of a class of interval fractional-order (FO) nonlinear systems with time-delay. First, a new lemma for the Caputo fractional derivative is presented. It extends the FO Lyapunov direct method allowing the stability analysis and synthesis of FO nonlinear systems with time-delay. Second, by employing FO Razumikhin theorem, a new delay-independent stability criterion, in the form of linear matrix inequality is established for ensuring that a system is globally asymptotically stable. It is shown that the new criterion is simple, easy to use and valid for the FO or integer-order interval neural networks with time-delay. Finally, the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed scheme are tested with a numerical example.