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<p>This paper tests whether people's sense of connectedness with the natural environment is related to cognitive styles such as Kirton's adaption–innovation (KAI), and analytic-holistic thinking (AHT). We conducted two studies with Singaporean secondary students as participants. Study 1 (N = 138), using an online survey, established the significant positive relationship between the nature relatedness self subscale and both the KAI and the AHT cognitive styles. Study 2 (N = 185), using pen and paper surveys, replicated Study 1's findings and found that connectedness with nature was significantly related to both the KAI and the AHT cognitive styles beyond alternative explanations (demographic and well-being status). Students who were more connected with nature preferred innovative and holistic cognitive styles, while controlling for their general emotional status and well-being. These findings are the first to establish the link between connectedness with nature and cognitive styles. Future research and implications are discussed.</p>
BACKGROUND: Therapeutical methods involving holistic medicine are of increasing interest. The present study deals with the psychophysical breath work by Middendorf and examines whether it has an effect on reactions of the body's equilibrium system. METHODS: Different optical patterns were projected on a video screen to the test subject standing on a modified posturographic platform. Subjects were instructed to shift their center of gravity according to the patterns projected on the video screen. The patterns consisted of a line that had to be followed in the anterior-posterior and in the lateral plane, and of a circle which had to be followed clockwise and counterclockwise. PATIENTS: Three groups each consisting of 17 healthy persons were tested; group 1: advanced in breath training, group 2: beginners in breath training, group 3: no experience in breath work at all. RESULTS: Group 1 und 2 show significantly better results in the posturographic test with visual feedback than subjects without experience in breast work (group 3). Furthermore, posturographic results immediately after one hour of breath work reveal clear improvements in the body equilibrium. CONCLUSIONS: Psychophysical breath work by Middendorf leads to a general improvement of the body equilibrium which is stable over time. The positive results of this study lead to the assumption that breath work by Middendorf is a valuable method for treatment and rehabilitation of balance disorders.
<p>The article attempts to find the function and importance of combs among the Newars of Nepal. The comb plays an important role in the culture and in ritual functions. It reveals the social meaning and traditional behaviour of the Newars. Most Newars believe that meeting a person with dishevelled hair first thing in the morning is inauspicious and will disturb their whole day. Therefore, the Newars comb their hair before starting the day. The Newar comb makers come from different castes, and combs are made up of different materials from bamboo to gold. The article discusses the ritual called "Gufa Basne" (sitting in the cave) of young Newari girls and includes a list of the ritual toiletries. A comb is given to brides as a ritual gift in the marriage ceremony. After the death of relative, none of the family members comb their hair until their first phase of purification is held. So, the comb is a symbol of joy and happiness. During several rituals the comb is offered from the seniors to the juniors. The article includes a total of 15 photos. (Rajeev Ranjan Singh 2006-10-17)</p>
Purpose: The use of PET/CT for monitoring treatment response in cancer patients after chemo- or radiotherapy is a very promising approach to optimize cancer treatment. However, the timing of the PET/CT-based evaluation of reduction in viable tumor tissue is a crucial question. We investigated how to plan and analyze studies to optimize this timing.; Methods: General considerations about studying the optimal timing are given and four fundamental steps are illustrated using data from a published study.; Results: The optimal timing should be examined by optimizing the schedule with respect to predicting the overall individual time course we can observe in the case of dense measurements. The optimal timing needs not to and should not be studied by optimizing the association with the prognosis of the patient.; Conclusions: The optimal timing should be examined in specific 'schedule optimizing studies'. These should be clearly distinguished from studies evaluating the prognostic value of a reduction in viable tumor tissue.;
<p>This is the fourth issue of the <em>Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies</em>, edited by Ken Bauer, Geoff Childs, Andrew Fischer, and Daniel Winkler and released in December, 2008 (Bill McGrath 2009-03-31).</p>
Despite substantial focus on sustainability issues in both science and politics, humanity remains on largely unsustainable development trajectories. Partly, this is due to the failure of sustainability science to engage with the root causes of unsustainability. Drawing on ideas by Donella Meadows, we argue that many sustainability interventions target highly tangible, but essentially weak, leverage points (i.e. using interventions that are easy, but have limited potential for transformational change). Thus, there is an urgent need to focus on less obvious but potentially far more powerful areas of intervention. We propose a research agenda inspired by systems thinking that focuses on transformational 'sustainability interventions', centred on three realms of leverage: reconnecting people to nature, restructuring institutions and rethinking how knowledge is created and used in pursuit of sustainability. The notion of leverage points has the potential to act as a boundary object for genuinely transformational sustainability science.
Mindfulness has become a fixture of both clinical treatment and popular culture. Much research and theoretical scholarship have operationalized “mindfulness” as clinicians use the term, yet no research has examined popular (i.e., lay) conceptions of mindfulness. Mindfulness trainings and interventions are now widely offered on college campuses. Thus, as a starting point for assessing lay conceptions of the construct, we examined how undergraduate college students at an urban university (N = 361) conceptualize mindfulness. In open-ended responses, participants linked mindfulness to awareness of external objects, internal sensations, or being in the present moment. When rating sentences on how well they represented mindfulness, participants strongly associated mindfulness with controlling emotions. In both the open-ended and sentence stem responses, mindfulness was rarely associated with psychological acceptance, which is notable because of the importance of acceptance in mindfulness-based clinical treatments. Implications and future directions are discussed.
This study examined the predictor and moderator effects of ego resilience and mindfulness on the relationship between academic stress and psychological well-being in a sample of Ghanaian college students (N = 431). The results indicated that academic stress was positively associated with both anxiety and depression and that mindfulness and ego resilience were both negatively associated with anxiety and depression. Mindfulness buffered the positive relationship between academic stress and depression but not anxiety. In contrast, ego resilience buffered the positive relationship between academic stress and anxiety but not depression. Implications for the study’s findings are discussed and recommendations for future research are presented.
This study examined the predictor and moderator effects of ego resilience and mindfulness on the relationship between academic stress and psychological well-being in a sample of Ghanaian college students (N = 431). The results indicated that academic stress was positively associated with both anxiety and depression and that mindfulness and ego resilience were both negatively associated with anxiety and depression. Mindfulness buffered the positive relationship between academic stress and depression but not anxiety. In contrast, ego resilience buffered the positive relationship between academic stress and anxiety but not depression. Implications for the study’s findings are discussed and recommendations for future research are presented.
Background: Fast and accurate staging is essential for choosing treatment for non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The purpose of this randomized study was to evaluate the clinical effect of combined positron-emission tomography and computed tomography (PET–CT) on preoperative staging of NSCLC. Methods: We randomly assigned patients who were referred for preoperative staging of NSCLC to either conventional staging plus PET–CT or conventional staging alone. Patients were followed until death or for at least 12 months. The primary end point was the number of futile thoracotomies, defined as any one of the following: a thoracotomy with the finding of pathologically confirmed mediastinal lymph-node involvement (stage IIIA [N2]), stage IIIB or stage IV disease, or a benign lung lesion; an exploratory thoracotomy; or a thoracotomy in a patient who had recurrent disease or death from any cause within 1 year after randomization. Results: From January 2002 through February 2007, we randomly assigned 98 patients to the PET–CT group and 91 to the conventional-staging group. Mediastinoscopy was performed in 94% of the patients. After PET–CT, 38 patients were classified as having inoperable NSCLC, and after conventional staging, 18 patients were classified thus. Sixty patients in the PET–CT group and 73 in the conventional-staging group underwent thoracotomy (P=0.004). Among these thoracotomies, 21 in the PET–CT group and 38 in the conventional-staging group were futile (P=0.05). The number of justified thoracotomies and survival were similar in the two groups. Conclusions: The use of PET–CT for preoperative staging of NSCLC reduced both the total number of thoracotomies and the number of futile thoracotomies but did not affect overall mortality. (ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00867412.) N Engl J Med 2009;361:32-9.
Calls for humanity to 'reconnect to nature' have grown increasingly louder from both scholars and civil society. Yet, there is relatively little coherence about what reconnecting to nature means, why it should happen and how it can be achieved. We present a conceptual framework to organise existing literature and direct future research on human-nature connections. Five types of connections to nature are identified: material, experiential, cognitive, emotional, and philosophical. These various types have been presented as causes, consequences, or treatments of social and environmental problems. From this conceptual base, we discuss how reconnecting people with nature can function as a treatment for the global environmental crisis. Adopting a social-ecological systems perspective, we draw upon the emerging concept of 'leverage points'-places in complex systems to intervene to generate change-and explore examples of how actions to reconnect people with nature can help transform society towards sustainability.
Given the central role of the amygdala in fear perception and expression and its likely abnormality in affective disorders and autism, there is great demand for a technique to measure differences in neurochemistry of the human amygdala. Unfortunately, it is also a technically complex target for magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) due to a small volume, high field inhomogeneity and a shared boundary with hippocampus, which can undergo opposite changes in response to stress. We attempted to achieve reliable PRESS-localized single-voxel MRS at 3T of the isolated human amygdala by using anatomy to guide voxel size and location. We present data from 106 amygdala-MRS sessions from 58 volunteers aged 10 to 52 years, including two tests of one-week stability and a feasibility study in an adolescent sample. Our main outcomes were indices of spectral quality, repeated measurement variability (within- and between-subject standard deviations), and sensitivity to stable individual differences measured by intra-class correlation (ICC). We present metrics of amygdala-MRS reliability for n-acetyl-aspartate, creatine, choline, myo-Inositol, and glutamate+glutamine (Glx). We found that scan quality suffers an age-related difference in field homogeneity and modified our protocol to compensate. We further identified an effect of anatomical inclusion near the endorhinal sulcus, a region of high synaptic density, that contributes up to 29% of within-subject variability across 4 sessions (n=14). Remaining variability in line width but not signal-to-noise also detracts from reliability. Statistical correction for partial inclusion of these strong neurochemical gradients decreases n-acetyl-aspartate reliability from an intraclass correlation of 0.84 to 0.56 for 7-minute acquisitions. This suggests that systematic differences in anatomical inclusion can contribute greatly to apparent neurochemical concentrations and could produce false group differences in experimental studies. Precise, anatomically-based prescriptions that avoid age-related sources of inhomogeneity and use longer scan times may permit study of individual differences in neurochemistry throughout development in this late-maturing structure.
<p><strong>Creator's Description</strong>: This article reflects on the pivotal role of subsistence in the livelihood strategies of rural Tibetan households within the context of rapid economic and social transition. It argues that subsistence is valued by these households because it provides the material foundations upon which they can choose to act in a variety of strategic ways in response to dislocating change. First, the apparent paradox between income poverty and asset wealth is examined and the concept of "subsistence capacity" is suggested as a lens to understand aspects of wealth that are difficult to capture through conventional income or human development measures. Second, this paradox is related to the resistance of many rural Tibetans to relying on low wage manual jobs as a main source of income, despite the fact that such jobs would seem to be the most appropriate for their transition out of agriculture given their apparent income poverty and their low levels of education. The argument commonly cited in the Chinese literature that this employment behavior derives from "backwardness" is contended. The article concludes with a reflection on the consequences of recent government resettlement strategies in pastoral areas.</p>
The purpose of this investigation was to assess teachers on their knowledge and use of the social emotional learning standards, as well as their opinions as to whether the teaching of these standards is necessary in the education of their students. The population of possible participants included 440 professionally licensed teachers, primarily in southern Cook County, Illinois. The teachers polled were licensed in either general education, special education, or dually licensed in both disciplines. The data was collected by means of an electronically disbursed, anonymous survey. The responses, while noteworthy, were very poor in terms of the return rate. The overall results were that special educators were more knowledgeable, planned for and used the standards at greater percentages than did their general education counterparts. However, results on teacher perceptions as to the need for teaching these standards were more closely aligned. Future investigations into disparity might involve educator training.
<p>This paper argues that contemporary experiences of social exclusion and interethnic conflict in the Tibetan areas of Western China are interrelated and revolve around three processes – population, growth and employment – all of which centre on the urban areas. In this setting, the critical factors generating exclusion and fuelling conflict are the differentials between groups, such as urbanisation rates and education levels, rather than base line characteristics, such as population shares or poverty levels. The paper starts with a brief overview of ethnic conflict in the Tibetan areas, followed by an analysis of population issues and the economic fundamentals of exclusionary growth. It closes with some reflections on the role that ethnic conflict plays within these processes. (from the paper's abstract)</p>
Yoga is being used by a growing number of youth and adults as a means of improving overall health and fitness. There is also a progressive trend toward use of yoga as a mind-body complementary and alternative medicine intervention to improve specific physical and mental health conditions. To provide clinicians with therapeutically useful information about yoga, the evidence evaluating yoga as an effective intervention for children and adolescents with health problems is reviewed and summarized. A brief overview of yoga and yoga therapy is presented along with yoga resources and practical strategies for clinical practitioners to use with their patients. The majority of available studies with children and adolescents suggest benefits to using yoga as a therapeutic intervention and show very few adverse effects. These results must be interpreted as preliminary findings because many of the studies have methodological limitations that prevent strong conclusions from being drawn. Yoga appears promising as a complementary therapy for children and adolescents. Further information about how to apply it most effectively and more coordinated research efforts are needed.
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You Can Count on Animals to Make Yoga Fun!What could be more fun for kids than to hop like a frog, slither like a snake, and roar like a lion—all while learning an empowering, healthy life skill? Zoo Zen: A Yoga Story for Kids is a delightful pose-along adventure for children ages four to eight. Young readers will join our heroine Lyla as she learns ten yoga poses from her friends at the zoo, receiving helpful tips along the way from each animal she encounters. Using rhyming and counting to make memorization easier, here is an imaginative book that combines the benefits of yoga with kids’ natural love for animals to create a magical learning journey that parents and kids can enjoy together.
Ages 4–8