Åbäke

[vizualni prikaz][visual essay

Åbäke

[vizualni prikaz][visual essay

Out-Performing

Screening of single channel video entitled 'Out-Performing' at video festival 'namaTREba 7' in Trebinja, Bosnia and Herzegovin

Floating Garden

Public sculpture commission for the University of Reading. Publicly-sited large-scale sculpture placed on campus. Collaboration with Ben Cain. --- Artist-duo Ben Cain and Tina Gverović have created the sculpture Floating Garden for the University in response to the theme of ‘library’. It is installed on the grass in the library quad, near the URS building. The sculpture’s unique material is an aggregate of limecrete, sand and stones, and incorporates plastic waste generated by the University. Its simple form invites interaction – it can be sat on, stood on, or used in more inventive ways

Sea of People

Installation in collaboration with Tina Gverović

Uses of Leisure

The book is a loose aggregate of Ben Cain’s practice from the past ten years or so, with thirty projects distributed according to a subjective categorization of work / leisure / rest. Throughout his career Ben Cain (b.1975 Leeds, lives and works in London and Zagreb) has worked with sculpture, installation, theatre, sound, performance, and publication. His practice deals with themes of work, labour, and artistic action. He has recurrently explored art’s ambiguous relationship to industry, commodification and immaterial labour, and is interested in how artworks might pose questions about what we think they are doing and, by implication, our role as viewers in their social and cultural production. The publication features an introduction by the artist & author David Price and writing by JJ Charlesworth (senior editor at ArtReview magazine), Bridget Crone (curator, writer and lecturer at Goldsmiths, the University of London), Emma Hoette (storyteller), Rose Lejeune (independent curator and researcher), Cuauhtémoc Medina (head curator at Museo Universitario Arte Contemporaneo) and Patrick Lacey. It is designed by the transdisciplinary graphic design collective Åbäke

The shift from sterling to the dollar 1965-76: evidence from Australia and New Zealand

The management of foreign exchange reserves has recently attracted attention from both policy-makers and historians. Historical research has focussed on the nineteenth century and the interwar period, with less attention to the strategies of smaller countries in the final transition from sterling to the dollar in the post-1945 period. This article examines the evolution of reserve currency policy from the perspective of Australia and New Zealand in the 1960s and early 1970s. As in the 1930s, economic uncertainty and a shift in global economic power prompted changes in reserves strategy. Patterns of trade and debt and falling confidence in British economic policy prompted a move away from sterling, but the timing and extent of this transition were affected by the fragility of the sterling exchange rate, lack of alternative assets, and continued dependence on the London capital market. The choices for Australia and New Zealand were thus constrained, but they were able to leverage their position as holders of sterling to engage in agreements that provided an exchange rate guarantee for their sterling holdings and continued access to the London capital market. This mitigated the effect of the final global transition from sterling to the dollar while protecting their interests

Sex-specific effects of small-sided games in basketball on psychometric and physiological markers during Ramadan intermittent fasting:a pilot study

International audienceBackground We assessed the effects of gender, in association with a four-week small-sided games (SSGs) training program, during Ramadan intermitting fasting (RIF) on changes in psychometric and physiological markers in professional male and female basketball players. Methods Twenty-four professional basketball players from the first Tunisian (Tunisia) division participated in this study. The players were dichotomized by sex (males [G(M) = 12]; females [G(F) = 12]). Both groups completed a 4 weeks SSGs training program with 3 sessions per week. Psychometric (e.g., quality of sleep, fatigue, stress, and delayed onset of muscle soreness [DOMS]) and physiological parameters (e.g., heart rate frequency, blood lactate) were measured during the first week (baseline) and at the end of RIF (post-test). Results Post hoc tests showed a significant increase in stress levels in both groups (G(M) [- 81.11%; p < 0.001, d = 0.33, small]; G(F) [- 36,53%; p = 0.001, d = 0.25, small]). Concerning physiological parameters, ANCOVA revealed significantly lower heart rates in favor of G(M) at post-test (1.70%, d = 0.38, small, p = 0.002). Conclusions Our results showed that SSGs training at the end of the RIF negatively impacted psychometric parameters of male and female basketball players. It can be concluded that there are sex-mediated effects of training during RIF in basketball players, and this should be considered by researchers and practitioners when programing training during RIF

Reliability and Validity of a New Taekwondo-Specific Change-of-Direction Speed Test With Striking Techniques in Elite Taekwondo Athletes:A Pilot Study

International audienceThe purpose of this study was to examine the test-retest reliability, and convergent and discriminative validity of a new taekwondo-specific change-of-direction (COD) speed test with striking techniques (TST) in elite taekwondo athletes. Twenty (10 males and 10 females) elite (athletes who compete at national level) and top-elite (athletes who compete at national and international level) taekwondo athletes with an average training background of 8.9 +/- 1.3 years of systematic taekwondo training participated in this study. During the two-week test-retest period, various generic performance tests measuring COD speed, balance, speed, and jump performance were carried out during the first week and as a retest during the second week. Three TST trials were conducted with each athlete and the best trial was used for further analyses. The relevant performance measure derived from the TST was the time with striking penalty (TST-TSP). TST-TSP performances amounted to 10.57 +/- 1.08 s for males and 11.74 +/- 1.34 s for females. The reliability analysis of the TST performance was conducted after logarithmic transformation, in order to address the problem of heteroscedasticity. In both groups, the TST demonstrated a high relative test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficients and 90% compatibility limits were 0.80 and 0.47 to 0.93, respectively). For absolute reliability, the TST's typical error of measurement (TEM), 90% compatibility limits, and magnitudes were 4.6%, 3.4 to 7.7, for males, and 5.4%, 3.9 to 9.0, for females. The homogeneous sample of taekwondo athletes meant that the TST's TEM exceeded the usual smallest important change (SIC) with 0.2 effect size in the two groups. The new test showed mostly very large correlations with linear sprint speed (r = 0.71 to 0.85) and dynamic balance (r = -0.71 and -0.74), large correlations with COD speed (r = 0.57 to 0.60) and vertical jump performance (r = -0.50 to -0.65), and moderate correlations with horizontal jump performance (r = -0.34 to -0.45) and static balance (r = -0.39 to -0.44). Top-elite athletes showed better TST performances than elite counterparts. Receiver operating characteristic analysis indicated that the TST effectively discriminated between top-elite and elite taekwondo athletes. In conclusion, the TST is a valid, and sensitive test to evaluate the COD speed with taekwondo specific skills, and reliable when considering ICC and TEM. Although the usefulness of the TST is questioned to detect small performance changes in the present population, the TST can detect moderate changes in taekwondo-specific COD speed

How Position of Reading Questions Affects the Reading Comprehension of High and Low Ability Readers

This study investigates the optimum placement of reading questions in textbooks. Is it better to have reading questions embedded in chapters or placed at the end of chapters? One independent variable is reading question placement (embedded vs. end). Another independent variable is reading comprehension ability (higher vs. lower). Participants read a chapter from a statistics book, listened to stories as a distractor task, and then answered three types of questions about the statistics chapter. The dependent variable is the percent correct for each question type. Target questions tested the same content as a previous reading question. Related questions tested similar content. Non-target questions tested unrelated content. We will analyze our data with three 2 x 2 factorial ANOVAs. We expect embedded questions will help lower-ability readers on target and related questions. Further, embedded questions will hurt the performance of higher-ability readers on non-target questions. Higher and lower comprehenders differ in their ability to suppress irrelevant information. Embedded questions facilitate suppression processes by highlighting specific content in the reading. However, for high comprehenders who already suppress irrelevant information effectively, embedded questions may lead to “over suppression,” causing non-target information to be processed less well