Suchergebnisse

In the year 1991, a new and independent state appeared on the map of Europe, inhabited largely by a Rumanian speaking ("Moldavian") population: the Republic of Moldavia, in Rumanian Moldova, in Russian Moldaviya. The capital city is Chisinau, known outside of Moldavia by its Russian name, Kishinev. Moldavia is for the first time in its history an independent state, having been formed as a result of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the same is true of Chisinau in its role as state capital. Moldavia's economic basis can be found in agriculture (wine, fruit, tobacco, sugar beet, vegetables, cereal, sunflowers), thanks to favourable natural conditions, as well as the food trade, linked to this. When the state was founded, Moldavia was faced with the question, whether it should attempt to forge close links or even merge with the neighbouring state of Rumania to the West, or to further pursue the close economic links to Eastern Europe, dominated by Russia. A first wave of Moldavian-Rumanian feelings of belonging together was followed by the political aspiration to retain Moldavia's territorial independence and integrity, which has remained until the present day. The second point was greatly affected by the Russian speaking minority group and the Russian troops, stationed in Moldavia, around Tiraspol. "After the elections, Moldavia starts drifting eastwards", were the words used by international observers to describe this Moldavian turnaround. It appears to be settled that, for the foreseeable future, Moldavia will remain an independent state and will retain close economical and political links to Eastern Europe, within the framework of the CIS (Confederation of Independent States).

The present cross-sectional study aimed to evaluate the impact of physical activity level (PA) on physical fitness by controlling for individual characteristics in Italian children. A total of 329 children (girls n = 155, 42.6%; from five primary schools, 17 classes) aged 8–10 filled out the Physical Activity Questionnaire for Older Children (PAQ-C) to assess their PA level and performed anthropometric measurements (body mass, height, and BMI) and physical tests for measuring sprint (20 m sprint), cardiorespiratory fitness (shuttle-run test), balance (single-leg stance), handgrip strength (handgrip), lower-limb power (standing long-jump), peak force (countermovement jump), and low-back flexibility (sit-and-reach) skills. Linear mixed-effects models were applied to determine the relationship between physical fitness and PAQ-C score controlling for individual characteristics (i.e., gender, age, BMI). Results reported significant relationships between PAQ-C scores and sit-and-reach, shuttle-run, long-jump, and sprint tests. All considered physical tests were correlated with gender, age, and BMI, except for sit-and-reach from BMI. The variance in age, gender, BMI, and PAQ-C score accounted altogether for 30.0% of the variance in handgrip, 23.0% in single-leg stance, 26% in sit-and-reach, 36% in shuttle-run, 31% in long-jump, 34% in sprint, and 31% in countermovement jump. Therefore, the relationship between PA and fitness is not absolute and depends on the test and children's characteristics.

The present study aimed to determine a cut-off value following the filling in of a questionnaire (PAQ-C-It) to identify active Italian children. One-hundred-twenty-nine primary school children (5 Piedmont schools; 47.3% female; mean age = 10 ± 1 years) wore an accelerometer (Actigraph wGT3X-BT) to objectively quantify individual moderate-to-vigorous physical activity during one week. Afterwards, the PAQ-C-It was filled in by participants. A ROC curve procedure was applied to obtain an active/non-active cut-off point. Spearman's correlation coefficient was also applied to establish the relationship between the two parameters. According to the ROC analysis, the PAQ-C-It cut-off point value is identifiable at >2.75 to indicate active children (area under the curve = 0.62; standard error = 0.05; p = 0.025; coefficient intervals = 0.518–0.716; sensitivity = 0.592, specificity = 0.382), determining that 65 participants (55%) were non-active (mean PAQ-C-It value = 2.3 ± 0.4; active mean PAQ-C-It value = 3.3 ± 0.4). Spearman's correlation coefficient results were significant but with a small effect size (rho = 0.214; p = 0.008). In conclusion, the present results suggest that the PAQ-C-It can be cautiously used as tool to practically classify active Italian children because of a non-solid relationship between respective accelerometer data and MVPA daily data.