Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

In this article I return to the ideas developed in the previous papers, one made for approval of a graduate seminar and one published in 2007, which link the themes of old age and aging with the theory of Physical Education and teaching. My intention is to cover other gerontological perspectives, unlike the classic, advocating positive images of aging that exceed the vision that sees the elderly as synonymous with a disabled patient. This article will try to present epistemological and didactic perspective on embodied practice with older adults in order to rethink a few things like the driving involution and motor learning, on which the PE has hasty answers. This will eventually allow us to propose some prescriptive guidelines for educational policy and interventions for the Physical Education professional.

Biological human evolution has an irreducible cultural dimension. It is through adaptations that humans dealt with their own evolutionary genetic challenges for achieving and sustaining biological fitness. One salient strategy was sexual selection in human groups. This was further on strengthened through the domestication of other species, a process that lead to the establishment of a close behavioral bond between the domesticated and the domesticator. As a corollary to this bonding process, bilateral behavioral and genetic adaptations ensued that today makes independent life for both domesticator and the domesticated nigh impossible. After plants, animals, and other organisms humans attempted to domesticate each other through enslavement; a failed experiment with devastating consequences that still resonate today, particularly in slaveholding societies like the United States. Lastly, the process of establishing organized and stratified societies during the Holocene became also a process of human "self-domestication", and the product of that process is the modern "civilized" human with a genetic and cultural makeup strikingly different from the one held in the Pleistocene environment of evolutionary adaptation.

This article explores the perception on television offering of people over 55 years in the island of Puerto Rico. It uses the quantitative methodology with data provided by the company Brand Science and qualitative data through group interviews to elderly people and also television program producers. It applies the Theory of the uses and gratifications of media proposed by Elihu Katz. People over 55 years see less than 10% of all programming on the island. Production of television projects in Puerto Rico not only cover the elderly as theirs goal. The television offering for people over 55 years in Puerto Rico does not respond to their interests. The percentage of television offer in Puerto Rico for people over 55 is not related to the percentage of the population.

In the world, diabetes disease affects about 347 millions of people, according to the World Health Organization, (WHO). In the United States, this disease has increased from 5.6 millions in 1980 to 20.9 in 2011 (Centers for Disease Control, CDC, 2013). Moreover, the Hispanic group has the greatest rate of increase, specially puertorricans. In Puerto Rico, 2011, 13.5% of the adult population was diagnosed with diabetes. The development of cardiovascular and chronic kidney diseases, sometimes prematurely, is the most significant complications of the diabetes. Therefore, exploring alternative strategies that will help in the prevention of diabetes is of utmost importance. Physical activity/exercise can be used for primary and secondary prevention. Clinical investigations have shown the effectiveness of physical activity/exercise interventions in clinical outcomes in diabetics. However, these patients remain living a sedentary lifestyle. In this article, a description of a new strategy model, participatory action research and social marketing, to establish physical/activity as viable tool for the prevention and treatment of diabetes disease is presented, changing the biomedical model of treatment currently used.

This brief article is a summary of a comprehensive historiographical essay about the Marquet Place in Santurce, Puerto Rico. The academic research was performed, beginning in 1990 through a period of time of six years, ending year 1996; as a requirement to meet the curriculum to obtain a Ph.D in Social Psycology in the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (UAB), Spain. As a part of this research, thirty eigh testimonies were used along with other official sources like; real estate registries, maps, photos, journals, police complaints report and recent events reports on file. All these aforementioned sources mix themselves like a spider‘s web to give birth to a historic investigation and psico-sociological alternative. Market-men and clients as well that coexist in the San Mateo de Cangrejos suburb (as they were known before, in the Santurce community) tell theirs needs, penuries and happiness in a simple and subtle way leading to an endless journey of adventures. The lebaneses, those called vox-populi as "Arabians" can‘t stay out of this libretto. They showed tenaciousness, thus transmiting hope to our island farmers so called "jíbaros" and for the inhabitants of the so called "loza" (i.e., the urban zone of the city of San Juan and all its suburbs) as well.

Based on the experience in the implementation and in the academic work of university projects aimed at transdisciplinary research and based on participatory action research methodology, the authors show how such projects can strengthen university-community links and establish a new sense of university work through the research proposal forms that cross simple and utilitarian logic of knowledge production.

The development of a transdisciplinary general education is an important condition for the transformation and strengthening of the 21st century university. Transdisciplinarity and general education have a similar origin and purpose. Both pursue to correct the fragmentation of knowledge provoked by the disciplinary organization of the university. Both have moved away from the disciplines in their commitment to develop a democratic citizenship. Frequently some general education models which have had and have much influence in university structures have relegated, in some way, its original vocation and have assumed multidisciplinary curricular approaches (the sum of diverse disciplines without integration or without transcending them), which have affected the fulfillment of the university mission. From the beginning, its mission has been to study of what is universal and the human being as an integral entity, without fragmentation and within its context.For the above reasons, in order to strengthen the university nowadays, we need a transdisciplinary general education.

This text was presented by Josefina Iglesias in the Seminary of General Education of the College of General Studies at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus on January 30, 2013. In her commentary of Velez's paper, Iglesias emphasizes on the importance of the academic community for the General Studies goals. Vélez's presentation is available at the International Network of General Studies website, www.rideg.org.