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Introduction This study aimed to investigate elite athletes’ mental well-being, and to ascertain whether the personal factor resilience and the social factor social support can play a role in promoting mental well-being and life satisfaction. In addition, this is one of the first studies to investigate well-being among elite athletes who are from a region belonging to an unrecognised National Olympic Committee and are not eligible to join the Olympic Games. Material and methods Eighty-four full-time elite athletes (37 males, 47 females) with mean age of 22.36 years old participated in this quantitative research study. Formal letters describing the purpose and organiser of the study were sent to the sport entities in Macao asking their permission for the researchers to contact the elite athletes to participate in this study. After gaining the permission, the elite athletes belonging to these entities were approached individually, to inform them of the purpose of the study and receive their consent. Results Regression revealed that emotional support and adaptability of resilience were strong positive predictors of mental well-being. Additionally, mental well-being was found to be a strong positive predictor of life satisfaction. The results reflected that in elite athletes possessing high adaptability and receiving more emotional support could help to maintain their mental well-being. Conclusions Implications (based on the findings) are discussed in order to provide insights for policy makers or coaches how to promote elite athletes’ mental well-being.

When the City of the Name of God of Macao marked 400 years of Portuguese administration in 1956, the Catholic community’s participation was marked by a wide range of activities that included liturgical celebrations, public processions and other devotions that involved large numbers of the lay faithful, members of confraternities, in addition to the clergy and religious of the enclave. Twenty-one years later the Diocese of Macao celebrated its own quatercentenary with celebrations of a decidedly more sober character and at the retrocession of Macao to Chinese control in December 1999, other than a few liturgical events and hierarchical presence at civic ceremonies, the Church was all but invisible. As the Diocese of Macao plans for its 450th anniversary, some of the former richness has begun to return. This paper outlines the long ebb tide and now-nascent flow of the tide of Catholic public piety in Macao over this period by reference to the Catholic religious processions of the City and seeks to offer tentative explanations grounded in the theological, ecclesial, political and cultural winds that have blown across the Pearl River Delta since the end of the Second World War.

Social workers’ work engagement and burnout were tested in relation to (a) personal variable, i.e., emotional intelligence; (b) organizational variables, i.e., work satisfaction and affective commitment. Regressions revealed emotional intelligence - controlling self – negatively predicted depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment and positively predicted three facets of work engagement. Emotional intelligence - understanding others – was a negative predictor of reduced personal accomplishment. In addition, work satisfaction negatively predicted three components of burnout and positively predicted emotional work engagement. Affective commitment was a positive predictor of three facets of work engagement and negatively predicted reduced personal accomplishment. Implications for management are discussed.

In recent years, the integration of Machine Learning (ML) techniques in the field of healthcare and public health has emerged as a powerful tool for improving decision-making processes [...]

This paper aims to report a case study of exploring the effect of ?assessment for learning? on improving student learning and facilitating teachers? professional development in the examination-oriented context of Hong Kong. By adopting Variation Theory of the Lesson Study approach, data were collected through pre- and post-tests, interviews with students and teacher participants and observation field-notes in order to help diagnose students? learning difficulties and provide evidence for teachers to refine their teaching strategies to enhance students? learning effectiveness. The students? improvement in learning performance informed the teacher participants of the usefulness of ?assessment for learning? in the classroom.

últimos assumidos remanescentes provavelmente de um território cultural antes bem mais vasto vivem atualmente nos municípios de Baía da Traição, Marcação e Rio Tinto, no litoral setentrional da Paraíba - nem sobre s seus espaços, culturas e gentes. É preciso dobrar a primeira metade do século XX para se encontrar nos títulos gerais de histórias da Paraíba alguma atenção pelos Potiguara e a sua movimentação histórica no processo longo e contraditório de formação da capitania e da instalação portuguesa na região, enfrentando primeiro a concorrência comercial e militar francesa, depois no século XVII a ocupação holandesa e sempre, até quase meados de seiscentos, a oposição muitas vezes feroz e brutal de vários grupos e milícias potiguaras. A arqueologia confirma um processo recente de formação histórica dos espaços atualmente reivindicados como originais e tradicionais pelos Potiguara. Os estudos linguísticos disponíveis sobre os Potiguara também não destacam a memória rigorosa de um espaço cultural arcano e pré-colonial. Os espaços Potiguara de hoje com este sistema de organização agrícola quase binário são tudo menos naturais. Trata-se, antes, de um espaço em recorrentes transformações históricas, demográficas, económicas e sociais que desafia qualquer ideia de um espaço ‘natural’, ‘original’ ou ‘essencial’ dos Potiguara. Seja como for, estas polarizações estruturais são historicamente aquelas que presidiram à exata produção dos espaços que atualmente os Potiguara apresentam como seus, originais, antigos e tradicionais seguindo, afinal, um modelo colonial de ocupação de espaços e especialização das gentes do Brasil.

eoi/doi Deposit-Electronic Object Identifierhttp://eoi.citefactor.org/10.11248/ehum.v6i2.1385RESUMO: A aldeia dos índios Potiguara não é somente um aglomerado de casas e pessoas. Trata-se de um espaço social muito mais complexo, somando ao habitat modelos de parentesco, cruzando práticas culturais e economicas, juntando aos humanos bichos e plantas, rotinas de trabalhos e “libertações” de lazeres. A aldeia Potiguara embora se apresente como singular, ela comunicava e continua a comunicar hoje com redes mais amplas de aldeias rurais e indígenas, gerando transformações culturais e sociais profundas. Embora as alterações marquem as mudanças nos habitos da aldeia Potiguara acredita-se que as práticas culturais que se estendem das festas ao turismo das suas aldeias são tão tradicionais como singulares.PALAVRAS-CHAVES: Aldeia indígena – Espaço social – Práticas culturais – TransformaçõesABSTRACT:The village of Potiguara Indians is not only a cluster of houses and people. This is a social space much more complex, adding to habitat kinship models, crossing cultural and economic practices, joining human animals and plants, work routines and "releases" of leisure.The Potiguara village despite presenting as singular, she communicated and continues to communicate today with wider networks of rural and indigenous villages, generating deep cultural and social transformations. Although the changes mark the changes in the habits of the village Potiguara is believed that cultural practices that extend parties to tourism from their villages are so traditional and unique.KEYWORDS: Indian Village - social area - Cultural practices - TransformationsRecebido: 31/08/2014    Aceito: 01/10/2014

The knowledge of spatial distribution of grasshoppers can be very relevant for agricultural planning purposes. On the other hand, the comparison of spatial interpolators for efficiency and reliability reasons is also a key factor to understand interpolation maps outcomes (versus reality). At last, but not least, the use of open Web geographical tools to disseminate true spatial inferential methods to address spatial issues is still quite limited (if none) in high schools and universities, particularly in Geography subjects. If the latter can be addressed with myGeoffice©, the first issue will use the Utah, USA, dataset (58 samples) to layout the spatial distribution of grasshoppers and understand the counties that are more pro to this kind of agriculture infestation. Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW), Moving Average (MA), Multi-quadratic, Inverse Multi-quadratic and Nearest Neighbor (NN) will produce interpolated surfaces of grasshopper’s properties. Efficiency of spatial interpolators was assessed in this writing based on the prediction error’s statistics derived from the difference between the estimation and the real samples on a cross-validation procedure. Remarkably, results show that NN was the most accurate one when compared with the remaining deterministic approaches at sample’s locations.

It is plausible to assume that the component waves in ECG signals constitute a unique human characteristic because morphology and amplitudes of recorded beats are governed by multiple individual factors. According to the best of our knowledge, the issue of automatically classifying different ’identities’ of QRS morphology has not been explored within the literature. This work proposes five alternative mathematical models for representing different QRS morphologies providing the extraction of a set of features related to QRS shape. The technique incorporates mechanisms of combining the mathematical functions Gaussian, Mexican-Hat and Rayleigh probability density function and also a mechanism for clipping the waveform of those functions. The searching for the optimal parameters which minimize the normalized RMS error between each mathematical model and a given QRS search window enables to find an optimal model. Such modeling behaves as a robust alternative for delineating heartbeats, classifying beat morphologies, detecting subtle and anomalous changes, compression of QRS complex windows among others. The validation process evaluates the ability of each model to represent different QRS morphology classes within 159 full ECG signal records from QT database and 584 QRS search windows from MIT-BIH Arrhythmia database. From the experimental results, we rank the winning rates for which each mathematical model best models and also discriminates the most predominant QRS morphologies Rs, rS, RS, qR, qRs, R, rR’s and QS. Furthermore, the average time errors computed for QRS onset and offset locations when using the corresponding winner mathematical models for delineation purposes were, respectively, 12.87±8.5 ms and 1.47±10.06 ms.

Abstract Much controversy has occurred in the past few decades regarding the nature of the sources, the petrogenetic processes, and the tectonic regime(s) of the Jurassic magmatism within the Southeast China magmatic belt. This study aims to contribute to the discussion with mineral chemistry, and whole-rock element and Sr-Nd-Hf-Pb isotopic geochemical data from granitic rocks and microgranular mafic enclaves from Macao, where two discrete groups of I-type biotite granites have been identified (referred to as Macao Group I [MGI] and Macao Group II [MGII]). It is proposed that the granitic magmas were generated by partial melting of infracrustal medium- to high-K, basaltic Paleoproterozoic to Mesoproterozoic protoliths (Nd depleted mantle model age [TDM2] = 1.7–1.6 Ga and Hf TDM2 = 1.8–1.6 Ga), triggered by underplating of hot mantle-derived magmas in an extensional setting related to the foundering of a previously flat slab (paleo–Pacific plate) beneath the SE China continent. The main differences between the two groups of Macao granites are attributed to assimilation and fractional crystallization processes, during which upper-crustal Paleozoic metasediments were variably assimilated by MGI magmas. This is evidenced by an increase in initial 87Sr/86Sr ratios with degree of evolution, presence of metasedimentary enclaves, and high percentage of zircon xenocrysts with Paleozoic ages. In addition, other processes like late-stage fluid/melt interaction and magma mixing also left some imprints on granite compositions (rare earth element tetrad effect plus non–charge-and-radius-controlled behavior of trace elements and decoupling between different isotope systems, respectively). The distribution of isotopically distinct granites in SE China reflects the nature of the two Cathaysia crustal blocks juxtaposed along the Zhenghe-Dapu fault.

Reproduction of the sea cucumber Apostichopus japonicus is critical for aquaculture production. Gonadal development is the basis of reproduction, and lipids, which are among the main nutrients required for gonadal development, directly affect reproduction. We investigated whether gonadal and intestinal lipid metabolism differed between male and female A. japonicus. Transcriptome analysis of the intestines of sexually mature male and female wild-caught individuals revealed differences in gene expression, with 27 and 39 genes being up-regulated in females and males, respectively. In particular, the expression of the fatty acid synthase gene was higher in males than in females. Metabolome analysis of the gonads identified 141 metabolites that were up-regulated and 175 metabolites that were down-regulated in the testes compared with the ovaries in the positive/negative mode of an LC-MS/MS analysis. A variety of polyunsaturated fatty acids were found at higher concentrations in the testes than in the ovaries. 16 s rDNA sequencing analysis showed that the composition and structure of the intestinal microbiota were similar between males and females. These results suggest that sex differences in intestinal metabolism of A. japonicus are not due to differences in the microbiota, and we speculate that gonadal metabolism may be related to intestinal morphology. This information might be useful in improving the reproductive efficiency of sea cucumbers in captivity.

In government studies, electronic government has become a hot topic in recent decades. Many scholars believe that soon, the government might not be able to operate smoothly without the help of ICTs as the Internet has been overwhelming people's daily lives already. In analyzing people's behavioral factors towards adopting e-government services, most studies targeted the adult population, while those in the hard-to-reach groups are minimal. This study was designed especially to understand the behavioral factors of the younger generation aged between 18 and 24 and the senior citizens above 60 on their adoption of e-government services in Macao SAR. Sixteen in-depth interviews were conducted based on the semi-structured interview questions developed from the prior literature on the Theory of Planned Behavior and e-government studies. Six significant findings are yielded, which could serve as an important reference for policymakers designing e-government policy and promoting its implementation strategy. These behavioral factors also contribute empirical data to support the theoretical framework of TPB in the context of Macao SAR e-government services.

Objective. As the preclinical stage of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) is characterized by hidden onset, which is difficult to detect early. Traditional neuropsychological scales are main tools used for assessing MCI. However, due to its strong subjectivity and the influence of many factors such as subjects’ educational background, language and hearing ability, and time cost, its accuracy as the standard of early screening is low. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to propose a new key technology of fast digital early warning for MCI based on eye movement objective data analysis. Methodology. Firstly, four exploratory indexes (test durations, correlation degree, lengths of gaze trajectory, and drift rate) of MCI early warning are determined based on the relevant literature research and semistructured expert interview; secondly, the eye movement state is captured based on the eye tracker to realize the data extraction of four exploratory indexes. On this basis, the human-computer interactive 2.5-minute fast digital early warning paradigm for MCI is designed; thirdly, the rationality of the four early warning indexes proposed in this paper and their early warning effectiveness on MCI are verified. Results. Through the small sample test of human-computer interactive 2.5 fast digital early warning paradigm for MCI conducted by 32 elderly people aged 70–90 in a medical institution in Hangzhou, the two indexes of “correlation degree” and “drift rate” with statistical differences are selected. The experiment results show that AUC of this MCI early warning paradigm is 0.824. Conclusion. The key technology of human-computer interactive 2.5 fast digital early warning for MCI proposed in this paper overcomes the limitations of the existing MCI early warning tools, such as low objectification level, high dependence on professional doctors, long test time, requiring high educational level, and so on. The experiment results show that the early warning technology, as a new generation of objective and effective digital early warning tool, can realize 2.5-minute fast and high-precision preliminary screening and early warning for MCI in the elderly.