Effect of a prolonged altitude expedition on glucose tolerance and abdominal fatness

In the present study, we investigated the effect of a long-term mountain expedition on glucose tolerance and insulin action. Twelve registered mountaineers ages 31 years (SD = 1.1) participated in a 25-day expedition at a 2,200-3,800-m altitude with an average duration of 8 hr per day. Arterial oxygen saturation (SaO2) was substantially reduced during hiking. Glucose tolerance and insulin responses were measured prior to and twice during the expedition period. Maximal oxygen consumption increased from 43.0 +/- 2.7 to 49.1 +/- 2.2 mL/kg/min. Percentage of body fat decreased from 19.4 +/- 6.8% to 16.9 +/- 5.9%. The area under the curves for insulin and glucose during the oral glucose tolerance test were also reduced in Days 3 and 25. The present study demonstrated that altitude hiking activity is an effective lifestyle intervention to improve insulin action.     

Curricular decision-making among public sex educators

The content of sex education in government-funded schools in the USA varies dramatically and reflects its contested nature and goals. Drawing from 50 interviews with sex educators working in the public, government-funded school system in a Midwestern US state, this study explores the processes through which sex educators decide what and how to teach. Working from the theoretical framework of argument sphere theory, and, specifically, socio-scientific controversy, we find that sex educators often resolve the competing arguments they face through processes that we call deliberative conflation and deliberative co-optation. Deliberative conflation involves the use of criteria from one or more argumentative spheres to judge evidence appropriate to a different sphere. Deliberative co-optation involves the use of discourse practices from one sphere to make arguments actually grounded in another. Both of these processes enable the reconciliation of otherwise incommensurate arguments, but they do so in ways that foster unstable and ambiguous curricular decisions. Our findings provide guidance towards improving sex education and its attendant outcomes.     

A Shift to Inquiry: The Heart of Effective Teaching and Professional Development for the Twenty-First Century

This article explores how an experienced teacher navigates the demands of curriculum to implement her inquiry-centered teaching and learning philosophy, and how administrators along the way supported her during this change. Interviews with this classroom teacher surface suggestions for twenty-first-century professional development and support, including the development of equitable, intellectual, and trusting relationships between teachers and administrators, attitudes of curiosity and availability on the part of administrators, and the use of documentation to provide evidence and visibility of meaningful teaching and learning. This article invites teachers interested in change and administrators committed to supporting competent teachers to consider the strategies proposed.     

Women's work and academic culture: Adaptations and confrontations

This study presents a model of lifestyles based on the form of women's acculturation to academic life. The model rests on the assumptions of patterned behavior and values which can be termed women's culture and academic culture respectively. Since becoming academics requires women to mediate the boundary between behaviors expected of women and those expected by the overwhelmingly male academic profession, an acculturation rather than socialization model was employed.The in-depth study of the acculturative modes of professional behavior is both an exploratory and a qualitative effort to derive issues and categories from women's own perceptions. Forty-two women from diverse disciplines and institutions were interviewed. Interviewees were either advanced PhD candidates or had recently entered professional work.Three modal categories emerged from content analysis of intensive interviews. Reorientation reflected the effort of women to exemplify the norms of male academic culture. Reaffirmation required the command of both professional norms and traditional feminine roles and values. Reconstitution was an effort to reformulate professional participation into a lifestyle more compatible with women's cultural norms.     

Civil Society and Cyber Society: The Role of the Internet in Community Associations and Democratic Politics

A healthy civil society has long been held as vital to a healthy democracy and there is interest in whether the Internet affects this linkage. This paper explores the relationships between offline and online modes of associational life and also analyzes offline and online interactions with local governments in the US context. Based on our empirical analyses of 1,203 respondents, we show that online participation is not simply an extension of offline participation, but can be distinguished in important ways. First, we find that political and community-oriented engagements cluster separately from more private-regarding engagements. Second, participants of online democratic engagement are not characterized by the SES markers associated with offline democratic engagement who are older, have higher incomes, and have lived in the community longer. Finally, we find significant links between democratic engagement with the political system and involvement with political associations (but not social and community-oriented associations).     

Reporting possible sexual abuse: a qualitative study on children's perspectives and the context for disclosure

OBJECTIVE: The present study investigated the context in which children were able to report their child sexual abuse experiences and the children's views as to what made it difficult to talk about abuse and what helped them in the disclosing process. The aim was to study disclosures as they were occurring in their natural settings. METHOD: Data were obtained from therapeutic sessions and follow-up interviews from 20 families with 22 children. These children had said something that made their caregivers concerned about ongoing child sexual abuse. Qualitative analysis was conducted to capture the children's and caregiver's perspectives of the disclosure process. RESULTS: The children felt it was difficult to find situations containing enough privacy and prompts that they could share their experiences. They also were sensitive to others reactions, and whether their disclosures would be misinterpreted. When the children did disclose they did it in situations where the theme of child sexual abuse was in some form addressed or activated. The results indicate that disclosure is a fundamentally dialogical process that becomes less difficult if the children perceive that there is an opportunity to talk, and a purpose for speaking, and a connection has been established to what they are talking about. CONCLUSIONS: It is difficult for children to initiate a conversation about something secret, confusing and distressful, and where there are few conversational routines in a family for talking about such themes. Children also are sensitive to the needs of their caregivers and fear consequences for their family and offender. Children need a supportive structure or scaffold in order to reveal their experiences of child sexual abuse.     

A review of the use of virtual reality head-mounted displays in education and training

In the light of substantial improvements to the quality and availability of virtual reality (VR) hardware seen since 2013, this review seeks to update our knowledge about the use of head-mounted displays (HMDs) in education and training. Following a comprehensive search 21 documents reporting on experimental studies were identified, quality assessed, and analysed. The quality assessment shows that the study quality was below average according to the Medical Education Research Study Quality Instrument, especially for the studies that were designed as user evaluations of educational VR products. The review identified a number of situations where HMDs are useful for skills acquisition. These include cognitive skills related to remembering and understanding spatial and visual information and knowledge; psychomotor skills related to head-movement, such as visual scanning or observational skills; and affective skills related to controlling your emotional response to stressful or difficult situations. Outside of these situations the HMDs had no advantage when compared to less immersive technologies or traditional instruction and in some cases even proved counterproductive because of widespread cybersickness, technological challenges, or because the immersive experience distracted from the learning task.     

Effects of craniofacial deformity in infancy on the quality of mother-infant interactions

Self-report and behavioral observation procedures were used to assess the quality of mothers' interactions with facially deformed infants. This assessment strategy also provided an opportunity to evaluate the hypothesis that parents of facially deformed infants may deny or be unaware of deficits in their relationships with these children. 10 mothers, 5 with unattractive/craniofacially deformed infants and 5 with normal infants, completed self-report measures of stress, social support, satisfaction with parenting, and general life satisfaction. Mother-infant interactions were videotaped and rated on discrete and global behavioral measures. Results revealed that mothers of deformed infants rated their parental satisfaction and current life satisfaction more positively than did mothers of normal infants. However, these same mothers were observed to behave in a consistently less nurturant manner than mothers of normal children. These results suggest that infant facial deformity/unattractiveness may affect the quality of infant-caregiver interactions without parental awareness.