Longitudinal changes of functional capacities among adolescent female basketball players

Background: The interpretation of young athletes’ performance during pubertal years is important to support coaches’ decisions, as performance may be erroneously interpreted due to the misalignment between chronological age (CA), biological age (BA) and sport age (SA). Aim: Using a Bayesian multilevel approach, the variation in longitudinal changes in performance was examined considering the influence of CA, BA (age at menarche), SA, body size, and exposure to training among female basketball players. Method: The study had a mixed-longitudinal design. Thirty eight female basketball players (aged 13.38 ± 1.25 years at baseline) were measured three times per season. CA, BA and SA were obtained. Anthropometric and functional measures: countermovement jump, Line drill (LD), Yo-Yo (Yo-Yo IR1). Based on the sum of the z-scores, an index of overall performance was estimated. The effects of training on longitudinal changes in performance were modeled. Results: A decrease in the rate of improvements was apparent at about 14 years of age. When aligned for BA, the slowing of the rate of improvements is apparent about 2 years after menarche for LD. For countermovement jump longitudinal changes, when performance was aligned for BA improvements became linear. For Yo-Yo IR1 and performance index, both indicators showed a linear trend of improvement when aligned for CA and BA, separately. Older players showed higher rates of improvement for Yo-Yo IR1 and performance index from pre-season to end-season. When considering performance changes aligned for BA it was apparent an improvement of performance as players became biologically mature. Conclusions and Implications: The alignment of CA with BA and SA provides important information for coaches. Human growth follows a genetically determined pattern, despite variation in both tempo and timing. When the effects of maturation reach their end, all the girls went through the same process. Hence, there is no need to artificially manipulate youth competitions in order to accelerate gains that sooner or later reach their peak and tend to flat their improvement curve

VALORIZANDO AS PRAIAS DO LAGO VERDE DOS MUIRAQUITÃS DE ALTER DO CHÃO (SANTARÉM, PA) ATRAVÉS DO CONHECIMENTO DE SUA FLORA: PRODUZINDO UM GUIA COM A COMUNIDADE

O turismo ecológico, voltado para a apreciação de suas belas praias, constitui uma das principais atividades econômicas da vila de Alter do Chão em Santarém, Pará. O projeto de extensão 'Praias Amazônicas Boraris: Juventude indígena pela valorização da vegetação de praia do Lago Verde dos Muiraquitãs de Alter do Chão, Pará', está sendo desenvolvido há dois anos, e vem sendo realizado com o envolvimento de docentes e discentes da UFOPA e a comunidade indígena Borari, da vila de Alter do Chão no mapeamento, identificação e levantamento etnobotânico das espécies de plantas das praias do lago verde. Este levantamento é uma forma de valorizar a vegetação em si e conscientizar a população e os visitantes da importância de sua conservação para a manutenção do ecossistema em questão. Este trabalho contempla a continuidade do projeto e as etapas finais para a realização de seus objetivos: a realização de oficinas com os comunitários e organização de um guia de identificação de plantas que sirva a eles e à população em geral. Até o presente momento, foram realizadas três visitas à vila de Alter do Chão para coletar dados etnobotânicos para compor o banco de dados das espécies, que servirão de base para a elaboração do guia botânico das praias do lago verde. Fora realizada duas oficinas com os catraieiros, no intuito de capacitar lideranças comunitárias em conceitos básicos de identificação botânica, para auxiliar na formação de propagadores do conhecimento em Alter do Chão, como fomento ao ecoturismo sustentável, além de discutir com os comunitários a forma como o trabalho vem sendo realizado, assim como diálogos em relação à elaboração do guia botânico das praias do lago verde. Para consulta de informações relacionadas às espécies, foi utilizado como referência o banco de dados levantado gerado a partir das coletas e identificação das espécies do projeto. Os dados etnobotânicos foram obtidos através de entrevistas semiestruturadas. Para elaboração das pranchas que farão parte do guia botânico das praias do lago verde, fora utilizado o Programa Adobe Photoshop 2015, o qual, em cada folha destaca-se o nome da espécie, imagens de referência e informações sobre usos etnobotânicos levantados.  Palavras-chave: comunidades tradicionais, indígenas, ecoturismo sustentável

BRAND EQUITY E O USO DE TECNOLOGIAS DA INFORMAÇÃO E DA COMUNICAÇÃO APLICADAS AO ENSINO SUPERIOR: A INFLUÊNCIA DA UTILIZAÇÃO FRENTE À PERCEPÇÃO DE MARCA DA COMUNIDADE ACADÊMICA DE SC.

As mensurações de marca e do uso de tecnologias no processo de ensino-aprendizagem tem ganhado cada vez mais espaço, tanto para as contribuições teóricas quanto para a prática das IES. Nesse mesmo sentido, as decisões de escolha dos consumidores em optar por uma ou outra instituição de ensino superior também registra alto índice de pesquisas científicas. Esse estudo teve como objetivo medir a percepção da comunidade acadêmica catarinense quanto às influências das TIC’s e valor de marca das IES. Para responder os objetivos dessa pesquisa, foram aplicados questionários impressos e auto preenchíveis com estudantes e indivíduos já formados em 20 diferentes cidades do estado, no mês de abril de 2019. No total, participaram 438 pessoas que indicaram alta importância dada aos recursos tecnológicos no processo ensino-aprendizado, alta relevância aos aspectos de marca das IES e correlação moderada entre os construtos utilizados por essa pesquisa

Production of Hydrogen and their Use in Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells

This work will show an overview of the hydrogen production from ethanol by steam reforming method, using distinct catalysts, resulting in low carbon monoxide content in H2 produced; a thermodynamic analysis of reforming employing entropy maximization, the ideal condition for ethanol, and other steam reforming reactions, the state of the art of steam reforming catalysts for H2 production with low CO content. Moreover, in the second part, there will be an overview of the use of hydrogen in a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), the fuel cell operational conditions, a thermodynamic analysis of PEMFC, the catalysts used in the electrodes of the fuel cell, consequences of the CO presence in the hydrogen fuel feed in PEMFC, and the operation conditions for maximum output power density

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Geography and ecology shape the phylogenetic composition of Amazonian tree communities

Aim: Amazonia hosts more tree species from numerous evolutionary lineages, both young and ancient, than any other biogeographic region. Previous studies have shown that tree lineages colonized multiple edaphic environments and dispersed widely across Amazonia, leading to a hypothesis, which we test, that lineages should not be strongly associated with either geographic regions or edaphic forest types. Location: Amazonia. Taxon: Angiosperms (Magnoliids; Monocots; Eudicots). Methods: Data for the abundance of 5082 tree species in 1989 plots were combined with a mega-phylogeny. We applied evolutionary ordination to assess how phylogenetic composition varies across Amazonia. We used variation partitioning and Moran\u27s eigenvector maps (MEM) to test and quantify the separate and joint contributions of spatial and environmental variables to explain the phylogenetic composition of plots. We tested the indicator value of lineages for geographic regions and edaphic forest types and mapped associations onto the phylogeny. Results: In the terra firme and várzea forest types, the phylogenetic composition varies by geographic region, but the igapó and white-sand forest types retain a unique evolutionary signature regardless of region. Overall, we find that soil chemistry, climate and topography explain 24% of the variation in phylogenetic composition, with 79% of that variation being spatially structured (R$^{2}$ = 19% overall for combined spatial/environmental effects). The phylogenetic composition also shows substantial spatial patterns not related to the environmental variables we quantified (R$^{2}$ = 28%). A greater number of lineages were significant indicators of geographic regions than forest types. Main Conclusion: Numerous tree lineages, including some ancient ones (>66 Ma), show strong associations with geographic regions and edaphic forest types of Amazonia. This shows that specialization in specific edaphic environments has played a long-standing role in the evolutionary assembly of Amazonian forests. Furthermore, many lineages, even those that have dispersed across Amazonia, dominate within a specific region, likely because of phylogenetically conserved niches for environmental conditions that are prevalent within regions