Ranking of field association terms using Co-word analysis

Information retrieval involves finding some desired information in a store of information or a database. In this paper, Co-word analysis will be used to achieve a ranking of a selected sample of FA terms. Based on this ranking a better arranging of search results can be achieved. Experimental results achieved using 41 MB of data (7660 documents) in the field of sports. The corpus was collected from CNN newspaper, sports field. This corpus was chosen to be distributed over 11 sub-fields of the field sports from the experimental results, the average precision increased by 18.3% after applying the proposed arranging scheme depending on the absolute frequency to count the terms weights, and the average precision increased by 17.2% after applying the proposed arranging scheme depending on a formula based on “TF∗IDF” to count the terms weights.     

Collaborative information seeking: A field study of a multidisciplinary patient care team

Multidisciplinary teams are an essential aspect of modern organizational work. These teams often work in information-rich environments but little is known about their collaborative information seeking (CIS) behavior. We have been studying the CIS behavior of teams in the context of medical care. We conducted an ethnographic field study of a multidisciplinary patient care team in an emergency department to identify (a) team information needs and (b) situations that trigger collaborative information seeking activities. We identified seven categories of information needs as expressed by questions asked by team members. The majority of questions focused on medical information, but there were a larger than expected percentage of questions focusing on organizational information. We also identified three triggers for CIS activities. These triggers are: (1) lack of expertise, (2) lack of immediately accessible information, and (3) complex information needs. The questions and triggers highlight the importance of face-to-face communication during CIS activities and how CIS activities could lead to interruptive workplaces. We also discuss organizational and technical implications for supporting CIS behavior of teams.     

SSTS: A syntactic tool for pattern search on time series

Nowadays, data scientists are capable of manipulating and extracting complex information from time series data, given the current diversity of tools at their disposal. However, the plethora of tools that target data exploration and pattern search may require an extensive amount of time to develop methods that correspond to the data scientist's reasoning, in order to solve their queries. The development of new methods, tightly related with the reasoning and visual analysis of time series data, is of great relevance to improving complexity and productivity of pattern and query search tasks. In this work, we propose a novel tool, capable of exploring time series data for pattern and query search tasks in a set of 3 symbolic steps: Pre-Processing, Symbolic Connotation and Search. The framework is called SSTS (Symbolic Search in Time Series) and uses regular expression queries to search the desired patterns in a symbolic representation of the signal. By adopting a set of symbolic methods, this approach has the purpose of increasing the expressiveness in solving standard pattern and query tasks, enabling the creation of queries more closely related to the reasoning and visual analysis of the signal. We demonstrate the tool's effectiveness by presenting 9 examples with several types of queries on time series. The SSTS queries were compared with standard code developed in Python, in terms of cognitive effort, vocabulary required, code length, volume, interpretation and difficulty metrics based on the Halstead complexity measures. The results demonstrate that this methodology is a valid approach and delivers a new abstraction layer on data analysis of time series.     

Young people’s knowledge and understanding of health,fitness and physical activity: issues,divides and dilemmas

Critical discourse analysis was used to explore and discuss data on young people’s knowledge and understanding of health, fitness and physical activity, selected from a wider study which focused on the role of secondary schools in effectively promoting physical activity. A mixed methods approach was utilised, involving an online survey to teachers in all state secondary schools in the UK (n?=?603 responding schools) and case studies centred on eight randomly selected state secondary schools from nine Government regions across England. Within each case study school, teacher interviews and pupil focus groups were conducted involving 17 teachers and 132 children aged 12–15 years, respectively. The healthism discourse was evident in the way young people talked about health, fitness and physical activity and two key themes emerged, these being: (i) issues with young people’s knowledge and understanding of health, fitness and physical activity in the form of reductive, limited and limiting conceptions; conceptual confusion; a preoccupation with appearance, weight, fat, shape and size; limited progression in learning; and complexities in understandings; and (ii) divides between young people’s health knowledge and health behaviour, and dilemmas underpinning these divides. Improved understanding of issues with young people’s knowledge and understanding of health, fitness and physical activity and of divides and dilemmas regarding associated behaviours should assist in developing critical pedagogies which challenge the dominance and stability of the healthism discourse and more effectively promote healthy, active lifestyles amongst young people.     

Exploring the perspectives of physically active and inactive adolescents: how does physical education influence their lifestyles?

Based on a socio-ecological framework for physical education (PE), this study explored and analysed the perspectives of physically active and inactive adolescent boys and girls with different socioeconomic status (SES), regarding the meanings that PE had on their physical activity (PA) lifestyles throughout childhood and adolescence. An interpretative and qualitative design was adopted and operationalised through an individual two-hours in-depth interview. Thematic analysis identified five main themes that distinguish active from inactive adolescents: ‘Early experiences of PE at primary school’; ‘PE experiences in middle and secondary school’; ‘Friendly, professional and pedagogue. That’s what I want from my PE teacher’; ‘Friends in PE and PA’; ‘Active lifestyles? Are schools and PE ready for making a difference?…’. Regardless of the lifestyle, girls revealed more PE negative experiences, related to uninteresting and competitive activities, groups’ constitution and logistic factors. SES played a major role on their PA and PE experiences, with low SES adolescents having limited opportunities inclusively within the primary school PE context. This study provides evidence for the importance of promoting positive PE and PA experiences in early years. Based on adolescents’ voices, several recommendations are discussed that can be considered for improving PE professionals’ effectiveness in promoting active lifestyles.     

Sodium bicarbonate ingestion increases glycolytic contribution and improves performance during simulated taekwondo combat

Purpose: To investigate the effect of sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO₃) on performance and estimated energy system contribution during simulated taekwondo combat. Methods: Nine taekwondo athletes completed two experimental sessions separated by at least 48?h. Athletes consumed 300?mg/kg body mass of NaHCO₃ or placebo (CaCO₃) 90?min before the combat simulation (three rounds of 2 min separated by 1 min passive recovery), in a double-blind, randomized, repeated-measures crossover design. All simulated combat was filmed to quantify the time spent fighting in each round. Lactate concentration [La^?] and rating of perceived exertion (RPE) were measured before and after each round, whereas heart rate (HR) and the estimated contribution of the oxidative (W_OXI), ATP (adenosine triphosphate)-phosphocreatine (PCr) (W_PCR), and glycolytic (W_{[ La^? ]}) systems were calculated during the combat simulation. Results: [La^?] increased significantly after NaHCO₃ ingestion, when compared with the placebo condition (+14%, P?=?0.04, d?=?3.70). NaHCO₃ ingestion resulted in greater estimated glycolytic energy contribution in the first round when compared with the placebo condition (+31%, P?=?0.01, d?=?3.48). Total attack time was significantly greater after NaHCO₃ when compared with placebo (+13%, P?=?0.05, d?=?1.15). W_OXI, W_PCR, VO₂, HR and RPE were not different between conditions (P?>?0.05). Conclusion: NaHCO₃ ingestion was able to increase the contribution of glycolytic metabolism and, therefore, improve performance during simulated taekwondo combat.     

Science activities for young children

Science for young children, and older ones as well, should be a blend of development of science content, science processes, and positive attitudes toward science. When educators stress development and learning in these three interrelated and complementary areas, children learn how to explore science as they develop skill in using science processes such as observing, communicating, predicting, and inferring.Jean Shaw is Associate Professor of Elementary Education at the University of Mississippi. Sally Blake teaches at Kentucky Wesleyan College. The late Mary Jo Cliatt taught at the University of Mississippi.