Injury rates in professional soccer players during Ramadan

Many of the socio-cultural lifestyle and dietary changes that take place during Ramadan may affect the risk of injury in athletes, but little evidence is available. The aim of the present study was to examine the effects over two consecutive years of the holy month of Ramadan on injury rates in 42 professional players of a Tunisian top-level professional soccer team. Players were retrospectively organized into fasting and non-fasting groups and monitored for 3 months: 4 weeks before Ramadan, during the month of Ramadan (4 weeks), and 4 weeks after Ramadan each year. During Ramadan, training started at 22.00 h. The circumstances (training/match) and mechanism of injury (traumatic/overuse) were recorded. No significant differences between the three periods were observed for weekly mean training load, training strain, training duration, and Hooper's Index (quality of sleep, and quantities of stress, delayed-onset muscle soreness, and fatigue). Compared with non-fasting players, fasters had a lower (P < 0.05) Hooper's Index and stress during and after Ramadan. No significant difference in injury rates was observed between fasting and non-fasting players. Nevertheless, the rates of non-contact (6.8 vs. 0.6 and 1.1) and training overuse (5.6 vs. 0.6 and 0.5) injuries were significantly higher in fasting players during the month of Ramadan than before or after Ramadan. In conclusion, Ramadan, along with the corresponding changes in nutritional habits, sleeping schedule, and socio-cultural and religious events, significantly increased overuse and non-contact injuries in fasting players despite the fact that the training load, strain, and duration were maintained.     

Growth behavior of publications and patents: A comparative study on selected Asian economies

This study attempts to model the growth behavior of the number of publications and patents of South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Malaysia. Three competing growth functions, namely, simple logistic growth function, bi-logistic growth function and logistic function within a dynamic carrying capacity were considered. The findings provide insight to the diffusion process of science and technology, often measured by the number of publications and patents, respectively. The function that provides the best fit to the observed data was opted for explaining the diffusion process. The function with the best fit is the bi-logistic growth function for the number of publications as well as the number of patents of South Korea and Taiwan, the logistic growth function within a dynamic carrying capacity (LGDCC) for the number of publications and the bi-logistic growth function for the number of patents of Japan, and the LGDCC for the number of publications and simple growth function for the number of patents of Malaysia. The results suggest a dynamic self-propagating growth for the science and technology, and thereby a transition from science and technology-push to market-pull growth for South Korea and Taiwan. While a similar transition was observed for the technology of Japan, the growth in science had entered a maturity stage. On the other hand, the growth potential in science is dynamic for Malaysia, but its technological advancement is relatively lower and static compared to the other economies.     

Critical Literacy Practices Within Problem-Based Learning Projects in Science

Interchange - Digital technologies are part of many children’s everyday lives. They use them for entertainment, information seeking and connecting with friends on social media. These shifts...     

Using feedback to promote student participation in online learning programs: evidence from a quasi-experimental study

Educational technology research and development - How should learner analytics and different media be used to optimize feedback to increase students’ motivation and sense of learning...     

Pedagogy of the Spirit: Comparing Evangelical and Latter-day Saint Youth Self-Reported In-Class Spiritual Experiences

This study statistically analyzes data from 756 evangelical and Latter-day Saint youth regarding their perceived in-class spiritual experiences of twenty items related to Christian theology. The data indicates similar spiritual outcomes between the two groups, with no statistically significant differences between eleven of the twenty spiritual experience items. However, evangelical participants most highly reported affective spiritual outcomes and least commonly reported action-oriented spiritual outcomes, while Latter-day Saint youth most highly reported action-oriented spiritual outcomes and least commonly reported cognitive spiritual outcomes. Action-oriented spiritual outcomes constitute the greatest difference between the two groups. We explore how the differences between evangelical and Latter-day Saint pedagogy and theology might account for these differences.     

Effectiveness of an Intensive Learning Skills Course for University Students on Restricted Enrolment

Prior to the commencement of the 1994 academic year, University of Auckland students who had failed one‐half or more of their papers in the previous year were invited to attend a four‐day intensive learning skills course conducted by the Student Learning Centre of the University. The course covered various topics such as effective time management and study organisation, preparing for and taking tests and exams, memory and concentration, and writing skills. A total of 74 students attended the course. After final examinations, the results of these students were analysed. As a group these students significantly improved on their previous year's pass rates. Furthermore, their pass rates were significantly better than those of a randomly selected group of students who were in a similar situation with regard to their previous year's academic performance, but who did not attend the course.     

Moving from a Personal to a Social Constructivist View of Learning: Implications for Support in the Student Teaching Experience 1

Recently, the school and co‐operating teachers have an increasingly important role, by offering stronger support during the teaching practice. Being congruent with similar developments in teacher education programmes in other countries, this development in Hong Kong is strengthened by research studies examining the process of learning to teach. By arguing that the process of learning to teach can be examined from a personal constructivist view of learning, this paper examines the experience from the student‐teachers’ perspective. The finding reports on the problems perceived by the student‐teachers during the student teaching practice and the support provided by the co‐operating teachers. The problems encountered and the support obtained were compared and contrasted to reveal the possible roles of the co‐operating teachers. The process of learning to teach is extended from a personal view to include support from the social milieu. This paper proposes to consider the process from a social constructivist view of learning. Drawing on the findings, it concludes with implications on how the school and the teacher education institute can collaborate and support the student‐teachers from a social constructivist view of learning.