Running economy and effort after cycling: Effect of methodological choices

ABSTRACT

Prior exercise can negatively affect movement economy of a subsequent task. However, the impact of cycling exercise on the energy cost of subsequent running is difficult to ascertain, possibly because of the use of different methods of calculating economy. We examined the influence of a simulated cycling bout on running physiological cost (running economy, heart rate and ventilation rates) and perceptual responses (ratings of perceived exertion and effort) by comparing two running bouts, performed before and after cycling using different running economy calculation methods. Seventeen competitive male triathletes ran at race pace before and after a simulated Olympic-distance cycling bout. Running economy was calculated as V?O₂ (mL?kg^?1?min^?1), oxygen cost (EO₂, mL?kg^?1?m^?1) and aerobic energy cost (E_aer, J?kg^?1?m^?1). All measures of running economy and perceptual responses indicated significant alterations imposed by prior cycling. Despite a good level of agreement with minimal bias between calculation methods, differences (p < 0.05) were observed between E_aer and both V?O₂ and EO₂. The results confirmed that prior cycling increased physiological cost and perceptual responses in a subsequent running bout. It is recommended that E_aer be calculated as a more valid measure of running economy alongside perceptual responses to assist in the identification of individual responses in running economy following cycling.     

Ratings of usability of didactic models: a comparative case study in Croatia and Germany

The study refers to the unfavourable reputation and status of general didactics as well as its decreasing importance in teacher education. This is a result of poor performance achieved in international tests by students. They score low on knowledge and arguments, and empirical studies indicate that didactic models are useless. In view of the above problem, the aim of this article is to examine the validity of the argument that didactic models are useless. It is necessary to examine if general didactics are being in an unfavourable position along with its possible successors in the international context. In order to achieve that, we conducted an empirical study into the usability of didactic models for lesson planning in Croatia and compared it with the results obtained in previous research in Germany. The term usability means the advantages of theory in practice. On the basis of the results of the empirical study, we concluded that didactic models are not generally unusable. Additionally, they are different according to their usability. These results open a path for further research on this topic in the international context.     

Technology intensity and agglomeration economies

This article investigates the relationship between industry technology intensity and the impacts of agglomeration economies on industrial growth. Many recent studies suggest the actual economic impacts of different forms of agglomeration economies depend on industrial characteristics such as technology intensity, but systematic empirical evidence is still lacking. To fill this gap, we analyze employment data covering all 3-digit NAICS industries of U.S. counties. The results confirm that technology-intensive industries are more likely to benefit from Jacobs spillovers as measured by related variety, while sectors with low technology intensities can better benefit from MAR spillovers as measured by regional specialization.     

Escape from the Skinner Box: The case for contemporary intelligent learning environments

Intelligent Tutoring systems (ITSs) and Intelligent Learning Environments (ILEs) have been developed and evaluated over the last 40 years. Recent meta-analyses show that they perform well enough to act as effective classroom assistants under the guidance of a human teacher. Despite this success, they have been criticised as embodying a retrograde behaviourist technology. They have also been caught up in broader controversies about the role of Artificial Intelligence in society and about the entry of big data companies into the education market and the harvesting of learner data. This paper concentrates on rebutting the criticisms of the pedagogy of ITSs and ILEs. It offers examples of how a much wider range of pedagogies are available than their critics claim. These wider pedagogies operate at both the screen level of individual systems, as well as at the classroom level within which the systems are orchestrated by the teacher. It argues that there are many ways that such systems can be integrated by the teacher into the overall experience of a class. Taken together, the screen-level and orchestration-level dramatically enlarge the range of pedagogies beyond what was possible with the “Skinner Box.”     

Learning with videos vs. learning with print: The role of interactive features

Two complementary studies, one in the laboratory and one in the field, compared the usage patterns and the effectiveness of interactive videos and illustrated textbooks when German secondary school students learned complex content. For this purpose, two videos affording different degrees of interactivity and a content-equivalent illustrated textbook were used. Both studies showed that in contrast to previous studies working with non-interactive videos, the effectiveness of interactive videos was at least comparable to that of print, probably due to the possibilities provided for self-regulated information processing. It was shown that the interactive features of the videos were used spontaneously. However, features enabling micro-level activities, such as stopping the video or browsing, seemed to be more beneficial for learning than features enabling macro-level activities, such as referring to a table of contents or an index. This finding is explained by students’ misconceptions about the use of features enabling macro-level activities.     

Self-directed learning characteristics: making learning personal,empowering and successful

Due to the speedy emergent investigation in self-directed learning (SDL) over the past 40 years, SDL is an education technique used progressively within tertiary institutions. SDL can be well-defined in terms of the amount of accountability the student accepts for his or her own learning. The self-directed students regarding learning take control and apply self-determination to learn what they view as imperative for themselves. The amount of control the students are keen to take over their own learning will depend on their assertiveness, aptitudes and personality characteristics. The article thus explores what individual features and characteristics can define the student who is involved in SDL; What capabilities and characteristics need to be grasped by the students who are involved in SDL? Therefore, the objective of the article was to identify characteristics of the self-directed learner in the context of teacher education. Based on our conclusion, it is clear that teacher-students should challenge themselves within this process of SDL development to participate in SDL opportunities. The characteristics of SDL teacher-students must be strengthened to promote their self-directedness with regard to learning and it is also the lecturer’s task to create a class atmosphere of SDl to inculcate and develop SDL characteristics in students.     

Automatic,semantics-based indexing of natural language texts for information retrieval systems

The fundamental idea of the work reported here is to extract index phrases from texts with the help of a single word concept dictionary and a thesaurus containing relations among concepts. The work is based on the fact, that, within every phrase, the single words the phrase is composed of are related in a certain well denned manner, the type of relations holding between concepts depending only on the concepts themselves. Therefore relations can be stored in a semantic network. The algorithm described extracts single word concepts from texts and combines them to phrases using the semantic relations between these concepts, which are stored in the network. The results obtained show that phrase extraction from texts by this semantic method is possible and offers many advantages over other (purely syntactic or statistic) methods concerning preciseness and completeness of the meaning representation of the text. But the results show, too, that some syntactic and morphologic “filtering” should be included for effectivity reasons.     

Believing in Neuromyths Makes Neither a Bad Nor Good Student‐Teacher: The Relationship between Neuromyths and Academic Achievement in Teacher Education

Neuromyths have been discussed to detrimentally affect educational practice, but the evidence for this assumption is still very scarce. We investigated whether 255 student‐teacher' beliefs in neuromyths are related to their academic achievement (overall grade point averages and first‐year practical courses). Believing or rejecting neuromyths that make no direct assumptions about learners' educability was not related to academic achievement. Believing in neuromyths that explicitly deny the educability of learners was only marginally related to academic achievement. We conclude that self‐reported beliefs in neuromyths do not differentiate between high‐ and low‐achieving initial teacher education students.     

Effect of different types of cricket batting pads on the running and turning speed in cricket batting

The aim of this study was to compare a batsman's running and turning speed during three runs while wearing either traditional batting pads or one of two models of newly designed cricket batting pads. Fifteen cricketers participated. The running and turning speeds were measured on three different days with players using the three pairs of batting pads for each trial in random order. The weights of the pads were 1.85 kg, 1.70 kg and 1.30 kg for P1, P2 and P3 respectively. Each player had to run three runs (3 x 17.68m), with the times recorded at the completion of each run, as well as the time to cover the distance from 5 m before and after the turn at the end of the first run. The fastest time from two trials for each pair of pads was retained for analysis. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) with repeated measures was used to determine the differences between the mean times of the three trials. The results showed no significant differences between the types of batting pads and the time to complete the run-three-runs test (P1 = 10.67 +/- 0.48 s; P2 = 10.67 +/- 0.43; P3 = 10.69 +/- 0.44 s), the turning time (P1 = 2.34 +/- 0.18 s; P2 = 2.32 +/- 0.18 s; P3 = 2.35 +/- 0.19 s) and to complete the third run (P1 = 3.49 +/- 0.44 s; P2 = 3.53 +/- 0.34 s; P3 = 3.51 +/- 0.36 s). Of the 45 trials of three runs used for analysis, P1 recorded the fastest time on 16 trials (36%), P2 on 19 trials (42%) and P3 on 10 trials (22%). The results showed no significant differences in the running or turning speeds, although there may be some practical relevance to using the newly designed cricket batting pads.