Agreement in activity energy expenditure assessed by accelerometer and self-report in adolescents: Variation by sex,age, and weight status

Abstract

The agreement between self-reported and objective estimates of activity energy expenditure was evaluated in adolescents by age, sex, and weight status. Altogether, 403 participants (217 females, 186 males) aged 13–16 years completed a 3-day physical activity diary and wore a GT1M accelerometer on the same days. Partial correlations (controlling for body mass) were used to determine associations between estimated activity energy expenditure (kcal · min^?1) from the diary and accelerometry. Differences in the magnitude of the correlations were examined using Fisher's r to z transformations. Bland–Altman procedures were used to determine concordance between the self-reported and objective estimates. Partial correlations between assessments of activity energy expenditure (kcal · min^?1) did not differ significantly by age (13–14 years: r = 0.41; 15–16 years: r = 0.42) or weight status (normal weight: r = 0.42; overweight: r = 0.39). The magnitude of the association was significantly affected by sex (Δr = 0.11; P < 0.05). The agreement was significantly higher in males than in females. The relationship between activity energy expenditure assessed by the objective method and the 3-day diary was moderate (controlling for weight, correlations ranged between 0.33 and 0.44). However, the 3-day diary revealed less agreement in specific group analyses; it markedly underestimated activity energy expenditure in overweight/obese and older adolescents. The assessment of activity energy expenditure is complex and may require a combination of methods.     

Effect of Kinesio Taping and balance exercises on postural control in amateur soccer players: A randomised control trial

ABSTRACT

The objective of this study was to determine the effect of Kinesio Taping (KT), alone or together with balance exercises (BE), on parameters related to postural control, such as dynamic balance, static balance and flexibility. Forty-four male amateur soccer players (mean age 24.45 (4.79) years) were randomly allocated to 3 groups: KT+BE that received KT and BE (n = 16); KT_p+BE, in which the KT was used as a placebo (n = 15) and KT alone (n = 13). The intervention period lasted 4 weeks. Star Excursion Balance Test (SEBT), Unipedal Stance Test (UST) and the Toe Touch Test (TTT) were assessed at baseline (pre), two weeks after beginning the treatment (mid) and after the intervention (post). We observed a significant improvement on the SEBT (mid and post-treatment) and the UST (post-treatment), but not on the TTT in either KT+BE or KT_p+BE groups post treatment. No differences were found either in KT group at any time point or between groups in any variable studied. In conclusion, KT functional correction technique does not improve static and dynamic balance when applied alone, whereas BE alone or combined with KT significantly improves these variables. None of these techniques has any effect on flexibility.

Abbreviation: KT: Kinesiotaping; BE: Balance exercises; KTp: Placebo Kinesiotaping; UST: Unipedal Stance Test; SEBT: Star Excursion Balance Test; TTT: Toe Touch Test     

Relative age effect: Characteristics of youth soccer players by birth quarter and subsequent playing status

Purpose: To compare characteristics of club level male soccer players 11 and 13 years of age, and to evaluate playing status in soccer two and 10 years after baseline by birth quarter (BQ).

Methods: Youth players 11 (n = 62, born 1992, observed December 2003) and 13 (n = 50, born 1990, observed April 2004) years were grouped by BQ. Baseline data included stature, weight, maturity status, functional capacities, soccer skills, goal orientation, and coach evaluation of potential. Playing status in soccer in 2006 and 2014 was also available. Baseline characteristics and subsequent playing status were compared by BQ.

Results: Baseline characteristics did not differ by BQ except for age and percentage of predicted adult height. Though not significant, coaches tended to rate players in BQ1as higher in potential. For those competing in soccer as adults, BQ2 (4), BQ3 (5) and BQ4 (2) were represented among players11 years, and BQ1 (3), BQ2 (2), BQ3 (1) and BQ4 (4) among players 13 years.

Conclusion: Although limited to small numbers, differences among players by BQ were inconsistent. The results indicate a need to extend potential explanations of the RAE to include behavioral variables, coaches, training environment, and perhaps the culture of the sport.     

Teaching energy in high school by making use of history and philosophy of science

How to improve students' understanding of energy transformation and conservation remains one of the main challenges of energy teaching. To address this challenge, we developed a new teaching strategy suited to high school based on history and philosophy of science (HPS). It involves five key ingredients: study and reproduction of Joule's paddle-wheel experiment, introduction of Rankine's definition, study of a historical text of Joule, use of an “ID card of energy,” and early introduction and multiple application of the principle of energy conservation. This strategy was built and implemented in the frame of a collaborative and iterative work involving researchers and teachers. We examined the effects of this HPS-based teaching strategy on students' understanding of energy. We used a quantitative method based on pre- and post-tests (N = 95/87) completed by a qualitative analysis using both video recordings of classroom activities and videos produced by students during one of the teaching sequences. The outcomes show that the teaching strategy had an overall positive impact on students' learning of energy: in particular, Joule's paddle-wheel experiment seems to favor their understanding of the notion of energy transformation, while the early introduction and multiple application of the conservation principle appears as a relevant option to facilitate its mastering. This study illustrates how HPS might actually be introduced in classrooms and brings to light its usefulness for building new science teaching strategies.     

A Taxonomy of Newspapers based on Multi-Platform and Paid Content Strategies: Evidences from Spain

This article examines Spanish newspapers’ means of digital distribution and their adoption of paid content strategies. To that end, the article employs a quantitative, explorative approach with data collected from 88 Spanish newspapers in November 2012. Using a hierarchical cluster analysis four types of newspapers can be differentiated by their utilization of specific means of digital distribution of content. The four distinct clusters differ in their organizational background and their average net circulation. The results of the article highlight the increasing role of digital kiosks for digital distribution in Spain and indicate a high influence of publishing groups on paid content strategies.     

An Audio-Visual Approach to the Spanish Transition

Tele-revista was a biweekly Swiss television broadcast for Spanish immigrants living in Switzerland. It dealt with labour and migration-related issues in Switzerland, information about Spanish cultural manifestations, political rights and interviews with committed immigrants and key figures of Spanish politics in transit on Swiss soil. First aired in 1973, in the final years of General Franco's authoritarian regime, the TV magazine, initially broadcast on the three Swiss TV channels, is an unique source of the Spanish transition to democracy, seen through the eyes of Swiss TV-makers with the collaboration of some Spanish journalists. Tele-revista was aimed for a better integration of Spaniards within Swiss society, who were considered worse integrated than the Italians. The paper pursues to present a general portrayal of the broadcast with a special attention to the years of the Spanish transition to democracy by means of focussing on the information about social, cultural and political issues.     

A Prospect-Guided global query expansion strategy using word embeddings

The effectiveness of query expansion methods depends essentially on identifying good candidates, or prospects, semantically related to query terms. Word embeddings have been used recently in an attempt to address this problem. Nevertheless query disambiguation is still necessary as the semantic relatedness of each word in the corpus is modeled, but choosing the right terms for expansion from the standpoint of the un-modeled query semantics remains an open issue. In this paper we propose a novel query expansion method using word embeddings that models the global query semantics from the standpoint of prospect vocabulary terms. The proposed method allows to explore query-vocabulary semantic closeness in such a way that new terms, semantically related to more relevant topics, are elicited and added in function of the query as a whole. The method includes candidates pooling strategies that address disambiguation issues without using exogenous resources. We tested our method with three topic sets over CLEF corpora and compared it across different Information Retrieval models and against another expansion technique using word embeddings as well. Our experiments indicate that our method achieves significant results that outperform the baselines, improving both recall and precision metrics without relevance feedback.     

The Role of Motor Competences in Predicting Working Memory Maintenance and Preparatory Processing

The purpose of the study was the examination of the longitudinal association between motor competences and changes in preparatory processing during a task requiring working memory maintenance. At baseline, 52 Caucasian children aged 10–12 years completed the MOBAK-5 test battery and a Sternberg task, whereas the cue-P300 and the initial contingent negative variation (iCNV) were recorded via electroencephalography. After 9 months, the Sternberg task was administered again to assess changes in these neurophysiological indices and behavioral performance. Path analyses revealed that motor competences predicted the change in cue-P300 and iCNV from baseline to follow-up. The present findings indicate that the cognitive control strategy during a task demanding working memory maintenance changes as a function of children's baseline motor competences.