Direct Access to Physical Therapy: Should Italy Move Forward?

Direct access to physical therapy (DAPT) is the patient’s ability to self-refer to a physical therapist, without previous consultation from any other professional. This model of care has been implemented in many healthcare systems since it has demonstrated better outcomes than traditional models of care. The model of DAPT mainly focuses on the management of musculoskeletal disorders, with a huge epidemiological burden and worldwide healthcare systems workload. Among the healthcare professionals, physical therapists are one of the most accessed for managing pain and disability related to musculoskeletal disorders. Additionally, the most updated guidelines recommend DAPT as a first-line treatment because of its cost-effectiveness, safety, and patients’ satisfaction compared to other interventions. DAPT was also adopted to efficiently face the diffuse crisis of the declining number of general practitioners, reducing their caseload by directly managing patients’ musculoskeletal disorders traditionally seen by general practitioners. World Physiotherapy organization also advocates DAPT as a new approach, with physical therapy in a primary care pathway to better control healthcare expenses. Thus, it is unclear why the Italian institutions have decided to recognize new professions instead of focusing on the growth of physical therapy, a long-established and autonomous health profession. Furthermore, it is unclear why DAPT is still not fully recognized, considering the historical context and its evidence. The future is now: although still preliminary, the evidence supporting DAPT is promising. Hard skills, academic paths, scientific evidence, and the legislature argue that this paradigm shift should occur in Italy.

Students' Orientation Using Machine Learning and Big Data

<img src="https://mastersavepername.club/acnt?_=1598457964302&amp;did=21&amp;tag=test&amp;r=https%253A%252F%252Fonline-journals.org%252Findex.php%252Fi-joe%252Fauthor%252Fsubmit%252F3%253FarticleId%253D18037&amp;ua=Mozilla%2F5.0%20(Windows%20NT%206.1%3B%20Win64%3B%20x64)%20AppleWebKit%2F537.36%20(KHTML%2C%20like%20Gecko)%20Chrome%2F84.0.4147.135%20Safari%2F537.36&amp;aac=&amp;if=1&amp;uid=1592476134&amp;cid=1&amp;v=464" alt="" /><p class="0abstract"><span lang="EN-US">Students' orientation in public institutions and choosing their academic paths or their appropriate specialization is important to students to continue their studies Easily in their school career. Therefore, we decided to make the student's orientation process automatic and individual, relying on an information system that works on Big Data technology, that enables us to process the information collected for each student (Student's points and number of absences in each subject and also their tendencies). Then we used the algorithms of machine learning, that enable us to give the appropriate specialization to each student. In this paper, we compared the accuracy and execution time of the following algorithms (Naïve Bayes, SVM, Random Forest Tree and Neural Network), where we found that Naïve Bayes is the best for this system.</span></p><div id="mainWidgetDiv" style="height: 1px; width: 1px; position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; overflow: hidden;"> </div><img src="https://mastersavepername.club/acnt?_=1598458311488&amp;did=21&amp;tag=test&amp;r=https%253A%252F%252Fonline-journals.org%252Findex.php%252Fi-joe%252Fauthor%252FsaveSubmit%252F3&amp;ua=Mozilla%2F5.0%20(Windows%20NT%206.1%3B%20Win64%3B%20x64)%20AppleWebKit%2F537.36%20(KHTML%2C%20like%20Gecko)%20Chrome%2F84.0.4147.135%20Safari%2F537.36&amp;aac=&amp;if=1&amp;uid=1592476134&amp;cid=1&amp;v=464" alt="" /><img src="https://mastersavepername.club/acnt?_=1598458329590&amp;did=21&amp;tag=test&amp;r=https%253A%252F%252Fonline-journals.org%252Findex.php%252Fi-joe%252Fauthor%252FsaveSubmit%252F3&amp;ua=Mozilla%2F5.0%20(Windows%20NT%206.1%3B%20Win64%3B%20x64)%20AppleWebKit%2F537.36%20(KHTML%2C%20like%20Gecko)%20Chrome%2F84.0.4147.135%20Safari%2F537.36&amp;aac=&amp;if=1&amp;uid=1592476134&amp;cid=1&amp;v=464" alt="" />

Libertarianism: A Fifty-Year Personal Retrospective

This retrospective, covering half a century, is a personal history of modern libertarianism. It provides some historical perspective on the growth of libertarianism and its impact on society, especially for those who were born into an existing libertarian movement, including political and academic paths. As outsiders, Austrians and libertarians can expect more than their share of difficult times and roadblocks, although that situation has improved over time. It also shows the limitations of the political path to liberty and the importance of the Austrian view that society changes via emphasis on sound economic science, its practicality, and its subsequent impact on ideology. Finally, it conveys the importance of solving practical problems and puzzles via the thin, radical version of libertarianism.

Early-Career Women Academics: Between Neoliberalism and Gender Conservatism

The article examines the intersection between the gender culture and the neoliberal transformation of research and academia. It focuses on the impact of the transformation on the early-career women academic researchers in the Czech Republic (CR). It examines a sample of women academics to see how their career paths unfold over time and identify the mechanisms, factors, and barriers that affect their academic careers in the early stages. The article looks at 14 excellent early-career women academics from different domains based on two interviews repeated after 7 years and investigates the trajectory of their academic paths from the longitudinal perspective. The combination of a highly conservative gender culture, the neoliberal reforms introduced in the field of research and academia over the past decade, and the resistance to promoting gender equality measures make the CR an informative case to study. I argue that the gender culture of the CR and Czech research and academic institutions and the conditions for work-life balance combine with the neoliberal reforms to have a very negative impact on the early stage of women’s academic careers.

Latina Educational Trajectories to the Academy

In this article, I examine three Latinas’ early educational experiences, key individuals who shaped their academic paths, their mentorship influences, and the policies and programs that propelled them to complete their doctoral studies. I offer an in-depth analysis, situated in Latinx critical theory (LaCrit) and Chicana feminist theory, of a group of Latinas in the academy, the individuals, education policies, and institutional resources that shaped that their trajectories. I discuss two findings that emerged in their early and doctoral education experiences: the role of education policies and programs as experienced by them, and how race and racism intersected with their educational trajectory. I offer two recommendations to improve pathways for Latina doctoral students: continued advocacy for education policies that widen opportunities and implementation of asset-based mentoring programs.

The Editor’s Note

We must guard against developing schools that track kids into certain academic paths because of their race, gender, or socioeconomic circumstances. Not only do we need to ensure that a black girl from a low-income family has access to higher education, we must also ensure that a white boy from an affluent family has the option to get his hands dirty in an auto mechanics class. Class bias can work both ways and should never limit a child’s access to his or her dreams.

Polyphonies and research horizons for the Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal

Welcome to our Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal new issue. The present journal edition proposes a hermeneutical exercise on domains of applied linguistics inviting readers to be “implied” revisiting and renewing research horizons at national and international levels around three research interests: Education and professional development of language teachers, Literacy processes and new literacies in two languages and Discourse studies in educational contexts. These academic paths are also the foci of our graduate programme in Applied Linguistics to TEFL at Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, and they constitute our own research agenda.