The impact of different types of physical activity on total and regional bone mineral density in young Brazilian athletes

Bone turnover is affected by exercise throughout the lifespan, especially during childhood and adolescence. The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of different sports on total and regional bone mineral density in male Brazilian adolescent athletes. Forty-six adolescents aged 10-18 years participated in the study: 12 swimmers, 10 tennis players, 10 soccer players, and 14 sedentary individuals. The athletes had engaged in physical activities for more than 10 h per week in the previous 6 months. Bone mineral density of the lumbar spine (L1-L4), left proximal femur region, and whole body was evaluated by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. Results showed higher mean values in the proximal femur region of tennis and soccer players (1.02 ± 0.18; 0.96 ± 0.16, respectively) than swimmers and controls (0.91 ± 0.14 and 0.87 ± 0.06, respectively) (P < 0.05). In relation to the impact of sporting activities based on bone age determination, we observed significant differences in bone mineral density at all evaluated sites at the end of puberty (16-18 years) compared with 10-12 years, with increases of 78% in the lumbar spine, 47% in the proximal femur, and 38% in the whole body.     

面向中华古籍阅读推广与文化传播的VR系统模型构建与实现

[目的/意义] 旨在借助VR媒介技术,克服或弱化普通读者在古籍阅读中存在的古籍获取不便和古汉语理解、专业知识、特定文化背景知识、阅读动力不足的问题,促进古籍阅读推广与文化传播。[方法/过程] 利用文献调研方法分析梳理认知科学和教育技术领域相关理论,提出VR古籍系统设计原则与模型,基于单个案例分析,设计、开发、测试系统原型,最后利用实验方法以问卷方式收集评估数据,验证设计原则、模型的有用性。[结果/结论] 研究成果包括VR古籍系统设计原则、VR古籍系统理论模型、首例VR古籍系统应用原型、VR古籍系统使用理论,可为后续从事VR古籍系统研究与设计的科研人员和设计人员借鉴使用。     

The relationship between work conditions and perceptions of organizational justice among library employees

Library employees hold perceptions about the fairness of the outcomes, processes, and interpersonal treatment in their workplaces. When employees feel the workplace is fair they are more likely to feel commitment to the organization, perform in-role and extra-role tasks, and experience job satisfaction. When employees perceive injustice in the workplace, research points to negative outcomes such as withholding work or even sabotage. To understand the antecedents of organizational justice, researchers carried out a national survey of librarians to compare the predictive power of perceived organizational support, job autonomy, job feedback, and job stress. Results indicate that increasing librarians' perceptions of organizational support and their autonomy, and providing meaningful and timely job feedback can increase overall perceptions of justice. Managers can enhance a climate of justice in their workplaces by developing strategies that target organization support, autonomy, and feedback to reduce a sense of injustice between and among employees.     

An evolving Learning Management System for new educational environments using 2.0 tools

The tools used in learning processes are in a continuous state of flux. One of the most significant changes is the application of Information and Communications technologies (ICTs) to educational contexts. This provides new possible ways to carry out learning activities, new learning services, the possibility to use new kinds of contents and activities, etc. However, ICTs have not provided as many advantages as they were supposed to, so changes are necessary. In this context, a new set of tools, Web 2.0, offers a new way to understand the Web, in which the user is the centre. Further, users can cooperate in order to define contents. This concept is also applied in technology-mediated learning but there are important problems when one tries to integrate such tools and concepts with existing systems. This paper explores the integration of these tools in traditional learning environments, the various possibilities and their advantages and drawbacks. After that, an interoperability scenario is described and two experiences are presented to show how 2.0 tools can be integrated in learning activities, and its effect in educational process.     

The Effects of a Preengineering Project-based Learning Curriculum on Self-efficacy Among Community College Students

Using statewide survey study data collected from more than 5,000 community college students, this study examined the impact of a preengineering curriculum on students' self-efficacy level after they entered rural community colleges. Project Lead The Way (PLTW), is a project-based learning curriculum for middle and high school students that strives to create a path to college and career success in STEM-related fields. In this article, the authors focused on comparing the probability of rating high self-efficacy among 86 community college students who participated in PLTW with students with no PLTW experience. The findings indicated that PLTW students have significantly lower probability of rating high self-efficacy compared to their non-PLTW counterparts. It might be that PLTW students rated their self-efficacy by comparing with a group of their close peers, who might be a group of academically high-ability students. This study provides implications for the unique, perhaps unintentional, peer effects of the project-based learning curriculum on the self-rating of students' self-efficacy. The findings highlighted the secondary-postsecondary nexus on STEM education, especially the importance of secondary programs that could positively influence the STEM educational pathways for community college students.     

Developing an audiovisual notebook as a self‐learning tool in histology: Perceptions of teachers and students

Videos can be used as didactic tools for self‐learning under several circumstances, including those cases in which students are responsible for the development of this resource as an audiovisual notebook. We compared students' and teachers' perceptions regarding the main features that an audiovisual notebook should include. Four questionnaires with items about information, images, text and music, and filmmaking were used to investigate students' (n = 115) and teachers' perceptions (n = 28) regarding the development of a video focused on a histological technique. The results show that both students and teachers significantly prioritize informative components, images and filmmaking more than text and music. The scores were significantly higher for teachers than for students for all four components analyzed. The highest scores were given to items related to practical and medically oriented elements, and the lowest values were given to theoretical and complementary elements. For most items, there were no differences between genders. A strong positive correlation was found between the scores given to each item by teachers and students. These results show that both students' and teachers' perceptions tend to coincide for most items, and suggest that audiovisual notebooks developed by students would emphasize the same items as those perceived by teachers to be the most relevant. Further, these findings suggest that the use of video as an audiovisual learning notebook would not only preserve the curricular objectives but would also offer the advantages of self‐learning processes. Anat Sci Educ 7: 209–218. © 2013 American Association of Anatomists.     

Promoting Inquiry-Based Teaching in Laboratory Courses: Are We Meeting the Grade?

Over the past decade, repeated calls have been made to incorporate more active teaching and learning in undergraduate biology courses. The emphasis on inquiry-based teaching is especially important in laboratory courses, as these are the courses in which students are applying the process of science. To determine the current state of research on inquiry-based teaching in undergraduate biology laboratory courses, we reviewed the recent published literature on inquiry-based exercises. The majority of studies in our data set were in the subdisciplines of biochemistry, cell biology, developmental biology, genetics, and molecular biology. In addition, most exercises were guided inquiry, rather than open ended or research based. Almost 75% of the studies included assessment data, with two-thirds of these studies including multiple types of assessment data. However, few exercises were assessed in multiple courses or at multiple institutions. Furthermore, assessments were rarely based on published instruments. Although the results of the studies in our data set show a positive effect of inquiry-based teaching in biology laboratory courses on student learning gains, research that uses the same instrument across a range of courses and institutions is needed to determine whether these results can be generalized.     

Literacy for All: a Consideration of the Many Opportunities for Language Acquisition

There are lots of opportunities in a classroom day for the development of literacy. Reading aloud to children is one of the most important of these. Carole Silva here reminds us of the potential of this activity and gives several practical suggestions for working with children.     

Distinction through visual art

Visual art is one of the fields where, according to Bourdieu, culture is used to reproduce the class structure. Like other items in the cultural repertoire, paintings, as major examples of visual art, imply social divisions in how they are engaged with by artists, critics and audiences. Within the Bourdieusian framework, cultural engagements with paintings are interpreted as indicators of social position, since appreciation depends on a trained capacity in the family and the educational system, which is often inaccessible to less powerful sections of the population. This would imply that the sorts of paintings favoured by working-class people differ from those preferred by the middle or upper classes. More recent studies have contested the view that a gulf exists between the art tastes of different classes in ways that reproduce the class structure. The argument of the omnivore thesis that distinctions between more popular and legitimate tastes have become blurred has predominantly been based on empirical references in the field of music. This article explores this thesis on the basis of data about visual arts in the Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion project. While some differences continue to be connected to social divisions of income, education and occupational groups, important similarities are found across the board, and certain significant differences appear to relate to factors other than social class, such as ethnicity, age and gender. It is also significant that some people appear disconnected from and disinterested in paintings.