‘Connected to Something’: Soccer and the Transnational Passions,Memories and Communities of Sydney's Italian Migrants

This paper explores the importance soccer can play in the lives, identities and memories of migrants by drawing on 32 oral history interviews conducted with Italians who settled in Sydney in the 1950s and 1960s. Sport can provide an illuminating lens for analysing the experience of migrants, because not only are sports sites of individual, regional, national and transnational identities, they can also facilitate social inclusion or, conversely, become sites of exclusion. Soccer in Australia is often celebrated as a multicultural game. At the same time, the expressions of the complex histories of migration, colonialism, exploitation and racial and ethnic discrimination that have shaped the game have often been silenced. The interviews show that soccer has been a key site of negotiation, agency and at times resistance for first and second generation migrants. We also argue that, while it is the de-ethnicisation of soccer that has understandably dominated media, political and academic debate, the concern of these migrants in recent years has been mostly with the loss of memory and with the removal of an important history made of shared relationships and bonding experiences.     

Congruency as a nonspecific perceptual property contributing to newborns' face preference

Past research has shown that top-heaviness is a perceptual property that plays a crucial role in triggering newborns' preference toward faces. The present study examined the contribution of a second configural property, congruency , to newborns' face preference. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that when embedded in nonfacelike stimuli, congruency induces a preference of the same strength as that induced by facedness. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that the attentional biases toward facedness and congruency produce a cumulative effect on newborns' visual preferences according to an additive model. These findings were extended by those of Experiment 5, showing that the additive model holds true when congruency is added to top-heaviness in nonfacelike stimuli displaying more elements in the upper portion.     

Patterns of Teacher Education in Italy

An outline of the organisation of education in Italy stresses its characteristics as a centralised system supported by consultation with grass‐roots levels. Local coordination should be ensured by the so‐called ‘Organi Collegiali’ (participatory bodies).

The system is aware of the need to promote a real change in the pedagogical‐educational approach to teaching and learning, and recent reforms have implemented structural innovations and have required changes in the teachers’ roles and functions.

The new professional profile of the teacher points out the need for initial and in‐service education and training; given the insufficient provisions available, in 1979 the Ministry of Education, in cooperation with OECD, has initiated a project for introducing PRESET pilot projects in a number of Italian universities.

The MPI/OECD Project has gone through a four‐phase preparation process, including a background report, a national seminar, feasibility studies, planning of pilot projects.

The basic ideas were to improve the scientific/cultural and methodological preparation of teachers: curricula of study must ensure an appropriate balance between scientific knowledge in a subject‐matter or in a discipline area and educational studies. Teaching practice is considered as essential all through the course of study.

Starting November 1983 the University of Bologna will start a PRESET course of study for primary school teachers as a joint activity between the Faculty of Education and the Faculty of Sciences.

Other projects are on study at other universities.     

Stretching and deep and superficial massage do not influence blood lactate levels after heavy-intensity cycle exercise

Abstract

The study aimed to assess the role of deep and superficial massage and passive stretching recovery on blood lactate concentration ([La^?]) kinetics after a fatiguing exercise compared to active and passive recovery. Nine participants (age 23 ± 1 years; stature 1.76 ± 0.02 m; body mass 74 ± 4 kg) performed on five occasions an 8-min fatiguing exercise at 90% of maximum oxygen uptake, followed by five different 10-min interventions in random order: passive and active recovery, deep and superficial massage and stretching. Interventions were followed by 1 hour of recovery. Throughout each session, maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) of the knee extensor muscles, [La^?], cardiorespiratory and metabolic variables were determined. Electromyographic signal (EMG) from the quadriceps muscles was also recorded. At the end of the fatiguing exercise, [La^?], MVC, EMG amplitude, and metabolic and cardiorespiratory parameters were similar among conditions. During intervention administration, [La^?] was lower and metabolic and cardiorespiratory parameters were higher in active recovery compared to the other modalities (P < 0.05). Stretching and deep and superficial massage did not alter [La^?] kinetics compared to passive recovery. These findings indicate that the pressure exerted during massage administration and stretching manoeuvres did not play a significant role on post-exercise blood La^? levels.     

Sex-Related Responses to Eccentric-Only Resistance Training in Knee-Extensors Muscle Strength and Architecture

Purpose: The present study aimed to investigate whether or not eccentric-only training induced different sex-related adaptations in vastus lateralis muscle architecture and knee extensors strength. Methods: Thirteen healthy women and 13 healthy men were recruited. Vastus lateralis pennation angle, fascicle length, and muscle thickness, as well as knee extensors eccentric, isometric, and concentric peak torque and one-repetition maximum (1RM) were measured. Both women and men underwent a unilateral iso-load knee-extension eccentric-only training with 120% of the concentric 1RM, consisting of 4 sets × 10 repetitions twice a week for a total of 8 weeks. Results: Pennation angle increased in women (+ 14%, 95% CI [10, 17], effect size [ES] = 1.54) but not in men (+ 5%, 95% CI [?1, 11], ES = 0.28), while fascicle length increased in both women (+ 7%, 95% CI [4, 10], ES = 1.02) and men (+ 12%, 95% CI [8, 16], ES = 1.82) and muscle thickness increased in women (+ 13%, 95% CI [8, 18], ES = 1.11) and men (+ 11%, 95% CI [7, 15], ES = 0.89). In both women and men, eccentric (18%, 95% CI [11, 25], ES = 0.96, and 16%, 95% CI [9, 22], ES = 0.82, respectively), isometric (17%, 95% CI [11, 23], ES = 0.53, and 17%, 95% CI [10, 24], ES = 0.62), concentric (12%, 95% CI [7, 16], ES = 0.49, and 9%, 95% CI [5, 13], ES = 0.42) peak torque and 1RM (10%, 95% CI [6, 14], ES = 0.53, and 10%, 95% CI [5, 15], ES = 0.50) similarly increased after the intervention. Conclusions: This study showed that the adaptations in strength are not sex-dependent, but the increases in pennation angle only in women suggest that the changes in muscle architecture may depend on sex.     

InfoIQ: Targeting Information and Technology Lifelong Needs

SUMMARY

The evolution of information literacy instruction for graduate students at the UCLA Anderson School of Management is described. The emphasis is on the need for instruction that develops student competencies with an eye toward the long view-a lifetime of learning. Key success factors are leveraging partnerships with key stakeholders, and developing just-in-time interventions at significant events in the student life cycle. An Information Literacy Campaign helped define the needs and competencies, and the subsequent pilot program, InfoIQ, has been successful in integrating information literacy instruction into the core MBA experience.     

Newborns’ Perception of Left–Right Spatial Relations

Five experiments examined 79 newborns’ ability to discriminate and categorize a spatial relation, defined by the left–right spatial position of a blinking object‐target with respect to a vertical landmark‐bar. Three‐day‐old infants discriminated the up versus low position of an object located on the same side of the landmark‐bar (Experiment 1) and recognized a basic left–right spatial invariance of the object‐target and the landmark‐bar in conditions of low (Experiment 2) and high (Experiment 3) perceptual variability of the object’s positions. Additional evidence ruled out the possibility that newborns were unable to discriminate the within‐category left–right spatial positions of the object‐target (Experiment 4) or made a categorical distinction based on spatial distance rather than on categorical spatial relations of left of and right of (Experiment 5).     

Motor unit activation strategy during a sustained isometric contraction of finger flexor muscles in elite climbers

The aim of the study was to evaluate, by an electromyographic (EMG) and mechanomyographic (MMG) combined approach, whether years of specific climbing activity induced neuromuscular changes towards performances related to a functional prevalence of fast resistant or fast fatigable motor units. For this purpose, after the maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) assessment, 11 elite climbers and 10 controls performed an exhaustive handgrip isometric effort at 80% MVC. Force, EMG and MMG signals were recorded from the finger flexor muscles during contraction. Time and frequency domain analysis of EMG and MMG signals was performed. In climbers: (i) MVC was higher (762 ± 34 vs 512 ± 57 N; effect size: 1.64; confidence interval: 0.65–2.63; P < 0.05); (ii) endurance time at 80% MVC was 43% longer (34.2 ± 3.7 vs 22.3 ± 1.5 s; effect size: 1.21; confidence interval: 0.28–2.14; P < 0.05); (iii) force accuracy and stability were greater during contraction (P < 0.05); (iv) EMG and MMG parameters were higher throughout the entire isometric effort (P < 0.05). Collectively, force, EMG and MMG combined analysis revealed that several years of specific climbing activity addressed the motor control system to adopt muscle activation strategies based on the functional prevalence of fast resistant motor units.     

Perceptual completion in newborn human infants

Despite decades of studies of human infants, a still open question concerns the role of visual experience in the development of the ability to perceive complete shapes over partial occlusion. Previous studies show that newborns fail to manifest this ability, either because they lack the visual experience required for perceptual completion or because they fail to detect the pattern of motion. To distinguish these possibilities, newborns' perception of a center-occluded object was tested, using stroboscopic motion. Infants (mean age of 72 hr) perceived the object as a connected unit, providing the first evidence that the newborn is capable of filling in gaps in the visible surface layout when the relevant visual information can be detected by his or her immature visual system.