The influence of ventilatory control on heart rate variability in children

The aim of this study was to determine the influence of breathing frequency and tidal volume on resting heart rate variability in children aged 9 years (n = 29) and 16 years (n = 19). Heart rate variability was measured in four conditions: (1) without the control of ventilation followed at random by (2) a fixed breathing frequency of 12 breaths x min(-1), (3) a breathing frequency of 12 breaths x min(-1) but with a fixed tidal volume of 30% vital capacity and (4) a fixed breathing frequency of 6 breaths x min(-1) and a tidal volume of 30% vital capacity. A total of 128 RR intervals (the time between two spikes in the heart rate) were detected and absolute high- and low-frequency spectral components were calculated using autoregressive modelling. The younger children were unable to control ventilation to achieve conditions 3 and 4; therefore, a 2 x 2 (group x condition) analysis of variance was used to analyse conditions 1 and 2. There were significant interactions between group and heart rate variability conditions for the low-frequency component and the ratio of low to high frequencies (P < 0.001). The main effect for condition showed that at 12 breaths x min(-1) with no fixed tidal volume there was a significantly higher standard deviation of the RR interval, total power and high-frequency (P< 0.01) and low-frequency spectral components (P < 0.05) than in the condition with no ventilatory control. Across the four breathing conditions for the older participants, the high-frequency spectral component was significantly higher in the condition at 6 breaths x min(-1) with a fixed tidal volume than in that with no ventilatory control (P < 0.005); the ratio of high to low frequencies was significantly lower for the spontaneous condition than those performed at 12 breaths x min(-1) (P < 0.001). The results provide evidence of the need for ventilatory control when assessing short-term resting heart rate variability in children.     

Imagery use in elite youth sport participants: reinforcing the applied significance of achievement goal theory

This study examined the motivational profiles of elite youth athletes to determine whether individual differences in goal orientation corresponded with differential levels of imagery use. Two hundred ninety male (n = 88) and female (n = 202) young athletes (M = 16.6 years, SD = 1.48) completed the Perceptions of Success Questionnaire (POSQ, Roberts, Treasure, & Balague, 1998) to assess dispositional goal orientations and the Sport Imagery Questionnaire (Hall, Mack, Paivio, & Hausenblas, 1998) to assess frequency and function of imagery use. A two-stage cluster analysis on the POSQ scores revealed a three-cluster solution with a multivariate analysis of variance indicating significant differences among cluster groups in imagery use. Athletes in Cluster 3 (higher task/higher ego) used significantly more imagery, regardless of the function than athletes in Cluster 1 (lower task/moderate ego) or Cluster 2 (moderate task/lower ego). These findings are discussed with reference to the role of achievement motivation in influencing young athletes' behavioral investments in mental strategies.     

Narrative accounts of US teachers' collaborative curriculum making in a physical education department

Through the use of narrative inquiry, this research study explores the collaborative curriculum making experiences of six teachers (three males; three females) in one physical education (PE) department in an urban middle school in the U.S. Collaboration; as defined in this work, this has to do with teachers’ voluntary interactions and their shared decision making in support of common goals. Where curriculum making is concerned, it refers to interactions between and among the four commonplaces of curriculum (teacher, learner, subject matter, milieu). The paper features the perspectives of the department head (female), experienced teachers (male and female) and teachers new to the profession (male and female). The narrative accounts of the individual teachers are set against the backdrop of the PE department with which they identify and within the storied history of the school in which they work. The story constellations representational form conveys the interrelatedness of the narratives and instantiates the teachers’ experiences of collaborative curriculum making. In the final analysis, this research enterprise makes a major contribution to the study of PE as well as to education generally. To date, no inquiries have focused on the collaborative curriculum making of teachers lodged in a PE department in one school context, despite collaborative curriculum making most closely reflecting how PE teachers typically approach the teaching task due to shared classrooms/gymnasiums/fields and the communal use of equipment.     

Thermally multiplexed polymerase chain reaction

Amplification of multiple unique genetic targets using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is commonly required in molecular biology laboratories. Such reactions are typically performed either serially or by multiplex PCR. Serial reactions are time consuming, and multiplex PCR, while powerful and widely used, can be prone to amplification bias, PCR drift, and primer-primer interactions. We present a new thermocycling method, termed thermal multiplexing, in which a single heat source is uniformly distributed and selectively modulated for independent temperature control of an array of PCR reactions. Thermal multiplexing allows amplification of multiple targets simultaneously—each reaction segregated and performed at optimal conditions. We demonstrate the method using a microfluidic system consisting of an infrared laser thermocycler, a polymer microchip featuring 1 μl, oil-encapsulated reactions, and closed-loop pulse-width modulation control. Heat transfer modeling is used to characterize thermal performance limitations of the system. We validate the model and perform two reactions simultaneously with widely varying annealing temperatures (48 °C and 68 °C), demonstrating excellent amplification. In addition, to demonstrate microfluidic infrared PCR using clinical specimens, we successfully amplified and detected both influenza A and B from human nasopharyngeal swabs. Thermal multiplexing is scalable and applicable to challenges such as pathogen detection where patients presenting non-specific symptoms need to be efficiently screened across a viral or bacterial panel.     

Collaborative Approaches to the Management of Geospatial Data Collections in Canadian Academic Libraries: A Historical Case Study

The Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) is a consortium of the twenty-one university libraries in Ontario, Canada. Since 1967, OCUL member institutions have worked together to share costs and workload through collective purchasing and licensing of information resources and more recently through the establishment of a shared digital infrastructure known as Scholars Portal. Under the auspices of OCUL, Ontario's university map librarians formed the OCUL Map Group in 1973 to seek opportunities to communicate and collaborate to improve the collections and services they offer their users. The opportunities provided by collaboration have ensured a greater capacity to manage evolving collections of geospatial data. The group has served as a community of practice, which has provided educational opportunities and facilitated collaborative problem solving through a listserv, conference calls, and face-to-face meetings. This collegial environment has also led to the completion of a number of projects, which have resulted in the creation of new technical infrastructures and strategies for sharing the workload of data management tasks. This paper discusses the role of collaboration in OCUL projects and offers some suggestions for others considering embarking on collaborations of their own.     

Mindfulness‐Based Awareness and Compassion: Predictors of Counselor Empathy and Anxiety

Mindfulness‐based awareness and compassion were examined as predictors of empathy and anxiety among 152 master's‐level counseling interns. Results of hierarchical multiple regression analysis supported that awareness and compassion differentially contributed to explaining the variance in counselor empathy and anxiety. Implications for counselor education are discussed.     

A dialogic about using Facebook status updates for education research: a PhD student's journey

Facebook status updates provided the data for a study about the transition learning experiences of 1st-year university students. Strict ethical guidelines were proposed by the PhD researcher from the outset of the study. Anonymity was considered important for the approved ethical clearance for both the university and the participants. Phenomenography was adopted and adapted for the study because it both conceptually and methodologically managed anonymity as well as questions of authenticity. An ethical dilemma arose during the research because the archival parameters were expanded by the researcher to allow the collection of data from the participants’ network. Questions of consent in an online space and how to report findings, which included data from people unaware of their involvement in the research, needed to be considered.     

School students’ confidence when answering diagnostic questions online

Educational Studies in Mathematics - In this paper, we analyse a large, opportunistic dataset of responses (N = 219,826) to online, diagnostic multiple-choice mathematics questions, provided by...     

Language and reading impairments are associated with increased prevalence of non-right-handedness

Handedness has been studied for association with language-related disorders because of its link with language hemispheric dominance. No clear pattern has emerged, possibly because of small samples, publication bias, and heterogeneous criteria across studies. Non-right-handedness (NRH) frequency was assessed in N = 2503 cases with reading and/or language impairment and N = 4316 sex-matched controls identified from 10 distinct cohorts (age range 6–19 years old; European ethnicity) using a priori set criteria. A meta-analysis (N_cases = 1994) showed elevated NRH % in individuals with language/reading impairment compared with controls (OR = 1.21, CI = 1.06–1.39, p = .01). The association between reading/language impairments and NRH could result from shared pathways underlying brain lateralization, handedness, and cognitive functions.