Foot loading characteristics during three fencing-specific movements

Plantar pressure characteristics during fencing movements may provide more specific information about the influence of foot loading on overload injury patterns. Twenty-nine experienced fencers participated in the study. Three fencing-specific movements (lunge, advance, retreat) and normal running were performed with three different shoe models: Ballestra (Nike, USA), Adistar Fencing Lo (Adidas, Germany), and the fencers' own shoes. The Pedar system (Novel, Munich, Germany) was used to collect plantar pressures at 50 Hz. Peak pressures, force-time integrals and contact times for five foot regions were compared between four athletic tasks in the lunge leg and supporting leg. Plantar pressure analysis revealed characteristic pressure distribution patterns for the fencing movements. For the lunge leg, during the lunge and advance movements the heel is predominantly loaded; during retreat, it is the hallux. For the supporting leg, during the lunge and advance movements the forefoot is predominantly loaded; during retreat, it is the hallux. Fencing-specific movements load the plantar surface in a distinct way compared with running. An effective cushioning in the heel and hallux region would help to minimize foot loading during fencing-specific movements.     

2. German-Language Studies

Susan Sontag's On Photography (New York: Farrar, Straus &; Giroux, 1977—$7.95)

Melissa Milar and William Brohaugh, eds. 1978 Photographer's Market (Cincinatti, Ohio: Writer's Digest, 1977—$9.95)

John S. Carroll's Photographic Lab Handbook (Garden City, N.Y.: Amphoto, 1977—$10.95, paper)

Dieter Frobisch and Hartmut Lamprecht's Graphic Photo Design: Lab Techniques in Color and Black and White (Garden City, N.Y.: Amphoto, 1977—$14.95)

Dennis Longwell's Steichen: The Master Prints, 1895-1914: The Symbolist Period (New York: Museum of Modern Art/Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1978—$35.00)

Neal Slavin's When Two or More are Gathered Together (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1976—$12.95, paper)

Arnold Newnan's Faces USA (Garden City, N.Y.: Amphoto, 1978—$5.95, paper)

Prophotos 1 (Garden City, N.Y.: Amphoto, 1978—$4.95, paper)

Light Vision: Australia's International Photography Magazine (75 Wilson St., South Yarra, Vic. 3141, Australia—19 Australian dollars by surface mail to the U.S. with other and air rates available)

Hal Fischer's Gay Semiotics (NFS Press, P.O. Box 31040, San Francisco 94131—$6.95, paper)

Kent E. Wade, Alternative Photographic Processes (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Morgan &; Morgan, 1978—$11.95, paper)

The Nikon Manual, Incorporating the Nikkormat and Nikonos (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Morgan &; Morgan, 1977—$24.95)     

Resilience to bullying victimization: The role of individual,family and peer characteristics

Little research attention has been paid to bullied students who function better than expected and are therefore defined as “resilient”. The present longitudinal study aimed to identify individual, family and peer factors that predict fewer than expected levels of depression and delinquency following experiences of bullying victimization. The sample consisted 3,136 adolescents. Self-report data were used to measure bullying victimization at age 13 and 14 and depression and delinquency at age 14. We examined the effects of gender, self-esteem, social alienation, parental conflict, sibling victimization and number of close friends on levels of emotional and behavioral resilience following bullying victimization. The resilience measures were derived by regressing depression and delinquency scores at age 14 on levels of bullying victimization at age 13 and 14, respectively. The adolescents who reported low depression despite frequently experiencing bullying tended to be male, had higher self-esteem, were feeling less socially alienated, were experiencing low levels of conflict with parents and were not victimized by siblings. On the other hand, the adolescents who reported low delinquency despite frequently experiencing bullying tended to be female, had higher self-esteem, were experiencing low levels of conflict with parents, were not victimized by siblings and had less close friends. Relationships with parents and siblings continue to play some role in promoting emotional and behavioral adjustment among victims of bullying and, therefore, interventions are more likely to be successful if they target both the psychosocial skills of adolescents and their relationships with their family.     

Pathsways to school achievement in very preterm and full term children

Individual differences in academic success were investigated in a geographically defined whole-population sample of very preterm children with a gestational age of less than 32 weeks or a birth weight of less than 1500 gm. The sample consisted of 264 very preterm children (75.6% of German-speaking survivors) and 264 controls matched for gender, socioeconomic status, marital status and age of mother, who were studied from birth. The present analyses focused on the impact of cognitive skills assessed at ages 6 and 8 on academic success at the age 13. IQ scores, prereading skills, reading, spelling, and math performance assessed during the last kindergarten year and again at the end of Grade 2 were used as predictors of academic success in early adolescence. Differences between very pretern children and controls in cognitive abilities already observed in earlier assessments remained stable over time, with controls on average performing more than half a standard deviation above the level of preterm children. Preterm children also performed poorer on the literacy measures and indicators of math performance. Multivariate and causal modeling revealed different prediction patterns for the two groups. Whereas IQ was particularly important for the prediction of academic success in the pre-term sample, general IQ was less relevant for the prediction of academic success in the control group. When subgroups of at-risk children were formed according to birth weight categories, we found that school problems were most pronounced for children with extremely low birth weight (1000 gm and less).     

Functioning and participation of young adults with ASD in higher education according to the ICF framework

Because of a better understanding of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in all stages of life and the improvement of support of students with ASD in primary and secondary education, an increasing number of students with ASD are accessing higher education. Previous research suggests that these students have fewer opportunities in higher education due to a number of functioning and participation problems. However, literature regarding students with ASD in higher education is rather scarce. This article presents an overview of recent studies in a literature review describing the functioning and participation problems of young adults with ASD. This literature review is complemented by focus groups with student mentors and interviews with students with ASD to connect the insights from the literature review to the context of higher education and to check whether all functioning and participation problems are covered by the existing literature. The review showed that little is known about the functioning and participation problems of students with ASD in higher education. However, knowledge about the full spectrum of problems can be the first step towards a better match between the individual problems and the offered reasonable accommodations to increase the participation chances and success rate of these students in higher education.     

Students' explanatory schemas and the quality of college instruction: Some evidence for buffer and compensation effects

Although researchers have begun to examine how perceptions of academic performance affect college students' achievement striving, little is known about these linkages in different instruction settings. Students' explanatory schemas, for example, may act as buffers against the deleterious effects of poor-quality instruction. As well, effective instruction may serve to compensate for other schemas that predispose students to failure. Three causal schema groups were created by informing students that their performance on a prelecture test was due to either ability, effort, or test difficulty. Students then observed a videotaped lecture presented by a low- or a high-expressive instructor, after which they wrote a test and completed a questionnaire. When instruction was ineffective, the effort and ability schemas produced better performance in low-perceived-success students, whereas no differences occurred between schema groups in high-perceived-success students. When instruction was effective, the three schemas led to similar achievement patterns in both low- and high-perceived-success students. These results were discussed in terms of buffer and compensation effects.     

How organisations evaluate their knowledge management projects: a meta-study of the period 1992–2002

The key objective of this research was to develop an understanding of what organisations are measuring within the context of knowledge management (KM) evaluation. A comprehensive meta-analysis of international articles dealing with the evaluation of KM, Intellectual Capital and other closely related domains between the years 1992 and 2002 was undertaken. A total of 1539 articles reflected the search topic. A manual review of all abstracts resulted in a narrowed selection of 223 articles, sourced from 126 different journals. Data for 1992–1995 were rejected due to insufficient occurrences of empirical measurement. Content analysis with the use of the NUD^*IST^® software of the data resulted in 12 evaluation factors being identified. Four factors made up 72% of the study's findings: human capital, financial, process and customer. However, by charting the number of measures within each factor against each year from 1996 to 2002, some identifiable trends were highlighted. Financial, human capital, internal infrastructure and composite measures, such as the Balanced Scorecard, have grown in varying degrees in frequency of use, while customer, process, intellectual property, innovation and quality-related measures have gradually lost ground.