School Schedules Affect Sleep Timing in Children and Contribute to Partial Sleep Deprivation

Although the environmental light/dark cycle is the main zeitgeber for the human species, the social cues seem to be important in the synchronization of circadian rhythms. In Brazil, the existence of two school schedules—one with only morning classes (MG) and other with only afternoon classes (AG)—allows the investigation of the effect of school activities on light exposure and sleep/wake patterns in children. Forty‐seven children wore wrist actimeters for a week for registration of light and sleep data. MG children presented shorter sleep duration on school days than the children from the AG. The results showed that during school days MG children were exposed to bright light earlier in the morning when compared to AG children. Nevertheless, there were no differences in light exposure after sunset. The results reflect the role of school schedules and artificial light in shaping light exposure, and its association with sleep timing in children.     

p38 MAPK Inhibitor (SB203580) and Metformin Reduces Aortic Protein Carbonyl and Inflammation in Non-obese Type 2 Diabetic Rats

Microvascular and macrovascular diseases are the main causes of morbidity in type 2 diabetes patients through chronic hyperglycaemic condition via oxidative stress and inflammation. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) activate p38 MAPK phosphorylation and inflammation which enhances protein modification by carbonylation. The use of metformin and a p38 MAPK inhibitor is hypothesised to reduce ROS production and inflammation but effects of metformin and p38 MAPK inhibitor (SB203580) on ROS production and inflammation in vascular type 2 diabetes mellitus non-obese (T2DM) have not been investigated. The Goto-Kakizaki rat T2DM model was divided into three groups as T2DM, T2DM treated with 15 mg/kg bw metformin and T2DM treated with 2 mg/kg bw SB203580 for 4 weeks. Rat aortas were isolated and protein carbonyl (PC) contents were measured by spectrophotometric DNPH assay. Aortic IL-1ß level was determined by ELISA. Results showed that aortic PC contents in the T2DM group were significantly higher than in non-diabetic rats. Treatment with metformin or SB203580 significantly reduced PC contents while only metformin significantly reduced IL-1ß levels. Findings indicated that metformin reduced ROS production and inflammation in diabetic vessels and possibly reduce vascular complications in non-obese T2DM.     

A Review of the Brazilian Book Market

Brazil is a huge country with at least 100 million readers with a total population of 200 million. Is this a good number for you? The article describes the developments of the Brazilian book market and publishing industry. Sales in 2009 were an estimated $2.5 billion for more than 228 million copies of books sold. But a country this big, as it is almost 50% of entire South America, confronts several major challenges including a real lack of bookstores. But one of the channels that is growing every year are the door-to-door sales, it has grown from 5% of all sales in 2006 to 17% in 2009. In a country this big, the digital or eBooks may also be a very good strategy to get to more readers, but it is still a small market in Brazil. The interesting news is that publishers are working on it and looking for solutions and ways to act on this new area of digital and online publishing.     

Student satisfaction in higher education: a meta-analytic study

This paper discusses the results of a meta-analysis performed to identify key antecedent and consequent constructs of satisfaction in higher education. We offer an integrated model to achieve a better understanding of satisfaction in the context of higher education. To accomplish this objective, we identified 83 studies that were valid and relevant to the research objective of the current study, generating a total of 469 observations. We identified studies published from 1986 to 2016 and analyzed six antecedent dimensions (perceived value of educational services, resources provided to the student, service quality perception, marketing orientation, identity of the higher education institution, university environment) and one consequent dimension related to satisfaction. The 7 dimensions exhibited a total of 51 relationships. We believe that the originality of the findings clearly contributes to future academic research in higher education.     

Going virtual and going wide: comparing Team-Based Learning in-class versus online and across disciplines

Education and Information Technologies - Team-based learning (TBL) is an active learning pedagogy developed for in-class sessions and based on the collaborative work of small groups of students....     

Executive functions and pragmatics in children with high-functioning autism

Children with deficits in executive functions (EFs) and impairments in pragmatic language have a range of cognitive and language difficulties that affect their literacy and educational achievements. As deficits in EFs and pragmatic impairments are characteristics of autism spectrum disorders, this study examined the associations between EFs and pragmatic skills in children with high-functioning autism (HFA). Fifteen children with HFA (5–9 years; M?=?7.44, SD 1.21), matched to 15 typically developing peers on age, gender, and non-verbal intelligence participated in the study. Children completed a pragmatic language assessment protocol, and a rating scale of EFs was administered to parents. Our results point to two main findings: children with HFA presented pragmatic difficulties and EFs impairments when compared with typically developing peers; and, as shown by a significant indirect effect of group on pragmatics via EFs, the poor pragmatics skills of HFA children were associated with their EFs difficulties. These findings may be of clinical relevance for children with pragmatic impairments, such as autism spectrum disorders. Future studies are crucial to further investigate the relationship between impaired pragmatics and EFs.

     

Assessment of integration method for displacement determination using field accelerometer and geophone data

A conventional French railway track was instrumented with accelerometers and geophones at three depths: sleeper (surface), interlayer (ITL, z=?0.93 m), and transition layer (TL, z=?1.20 m). A linear variable differential transformer (LVDT) was also used to monitor the displacement at the sleeper level. The recorded data allow the integration method (double for accelerometer and simple for geophone) for displacement determination to be assessed. Several questions need to be addressed prior to the selection of an adequate monitoring system: definition of signal filtering processes, influence on results of the different loading wavelengths, repeatability of measurements, train speed and axle load impact and their ranges of validity for each sensor. It was found that the main frequencies that caused more than 95% of the displacement of the monitored materials are in the low frequency range: <25 Hz for trains running up to 200 km/h. For an intercity train, the low frequencies are normally excited by long wavelengths, for instance, those corresponding to the 1/2 coach distance (λ=13.20 m), the bogies distance (λ=6.3 m), and the axle distance (λ=2.8 m). Comparison between the displacements deduced from the records of accelerometer and geophone and obtained from the records of LVDT shows quite consistent results; the mean displacement amplitudes obtained from accelerometers differ by only 20% from the LVDT records. The train speed does not have a strong effect on the obtained differences between sensors. The embedded sensors also gave consistent displacement results for each analysed depth. Moreover, the displacement amplitudes caused by different axle loads (locomotive or passenger coach) are distinguishable for all sensors at all depths. This validates the integration method used for the displacement determination.     

Quantifying the interdisciplinarity of scientific journals and fields

There is an overall perception of increased interdisciplinarity in science, but this is difficult to confirm quantitatively owing to the lack of adequate methods to evaluate subjective phenomena. This is no different from the difficulties in establishing quantitative relationships in human and social sciences. In this paper we quantified the interdisciplinarity of scientific journals and science fields by using an entropy measurement based on the diversity of the subject categories of journals citing a specific journal. The methodology consisted in building citation networks using the Journal Citation Reports^® database, in which the nodes were journals and edges were established based on citations among journals. The overall network for the 11-year period (1999–2009) studied was small-world and followed a power-law with exponential cutoff distribution with regard to the in-strength. Upon visualizing the network topology an overall structure of the various science fields could be inferred, especially their interconnections. We confirmed quantitatively that science fields are becoming increasingly interdisciplinary, with the degree of interdisplinarity (i.e. entropy) correlating strongly with the in-strength of journals and with the impact factor.