Interleukin-6 and delayed onset muscle soreness do not vary during the menstrual cycle

The purpose of this study was to determine if a difference in interleukin-6 (IL-6) and delayed onset muscles soreness (DOMS) exists in two different phases of the menstrual cycle. Nine runners performed one 75-min high-intensity interval running session during the early follicular (EF) phase and once during the midluteal (ML) phase of the menstrual cycle. Estrogen and progesterone levels were significantly reduced in the EF phase when compared to the ML phase. IL-6 levels increased from pre- to postexercise in the EF and ML phases (p < .001). There was no relationship between the IL-6 level and DOMS. The results suggest that menstruating female runners need not vary training throughout the month to reduce DOMS.     

真爱爸爸

我努力去做一个好爸爸。给孩子们买礼物,带他们去游泳,为了供他们上学,我工作夜以继日,勤勤恳愚。可与迪克·霍伊特相比,我这个父亲却逊色许多。迪克用轮椅推着身患残疾的儿子参加了85次马拉松,每次行程26．2英里。他不但用轮椅连续8次推着儿子行驶26．2英里,用橡皮艇搭载着儿子,自己游泳拖着游了2．4英里,他还把儿子放在自行车把手座位上,骑车112英里,所有这些都在一天之内完成。同样,迪克也曾用轮椅推着儿子到美国各地滑雪,把儿子背在身上翻山越岭。还有一次,他用自行车驮着儿子周游全美。与迪克相比,你带儿子去打保龄球这件事真是不值一提,不是吗?那么作为儿子的里克为父亲做了些什么呢?除了挽救了父亲生命之外,里克并没有帮过父亲什么忙。43年前,这个动人的亲情故事始于马萨诸塞州的温切斯待镇,由于里克出生时被脐带所勒,大脑受到损伤,失去了支配四肢的能力。“他这辈子将会是一个植物人,把他送到福利院吧。”迪克说在里克9个月大的时候医生这样告诉他和妻子。可是迪克·霍伊特夫妇不相信医生的诊断结果。他们发现小里克的眼神尾随他们在屋子里转     

Recreational activities and motor skills of children in kindergarten

Background: Developmental theorists suggest that physical activity during early childhood promotes fundamental motor skill (FMS) proficiency; and that differences in FMS proficiency are largely related to children's experiences.

Aim: To examine associations between participation in different types of recreation/leisure and FMS proficiency of boys and girls in their first year of school. We hypothesized that there would be positive associations between FMS proficiency and participation in organized sport, physical activities, and active physical recreation; but not for other types of recreation/leisure.

Method: Participants (n?=?74) were kindergarten children (Mage?=?5y11?m; boys?=?55%). Parents completed the diversity dimension of the Children's Assessment of Participation and Enjoyment (CAPE) survey. The CAPE measures children's participation in everyday activities outside of mandated school activities in the past four months in five types of formal and informal activities, specifically: Recreational activities, Physical activities, Social activities, Skill-Based activities, and Self-Improvement activities. Two categories of activities were also reported: Organized Sport and Active Physical Recreation. Locomotor and object control skills were assessed using the Test of Gross Motor Development-2 and static balance was assessed using a stork stand. Sex-based differences in motor skills and participation were examined using chi-squared analyses. Correlation coefficients were used to examine relationships between motor skills and CAPE sub-domains and categories. Linear regression was used to examine whether the type of activity predicted motor skill proficiency and the reverse.

Results: There were no sex-based differences in locomotor skills; whereas boys' object control skill scores were significantly higher than girls, and girls' stork stand scores were higher than boys'. Although there were no sex-based differences in the more active categories of recreational pastimes; girls participated in significantly more formal and informal dance and the prevalence of participation in team sports was significantly higher for boys. For boys, participation in physical activities predicted both locomotor and object control skill scores, organized sport predicted object control skills, and active recreation predicted stork stand times and object control skill scores. These relationships were not evident among the girls.

Conclusions: These findings illustrate that young children participate in a narrower array of physically active recreational pursuits compared with less active pursuits. There were notable sex-based differences in the relationships between participation and motor skill proficiency. For girls, none of the associations between recreational pastimes and motor skill proficiency were significant. This suggests that the motor proficiency of girls, as assessed in this study, is neither a precursor to, nor an outcome of, participation in active recreational pastimes. Contrastingly, the findings for boys support theory that suggests that physical activity is driving the acquisition of particular types of motor skills. Less active recreational activities were not associated with motor skill levels of boys, whereas each of the more active categories of recreational pastimes (active recreation, physical activities, and organized sport) predicted at least one sub-type of motor skill. It also seems clear from our findings that more light needs to be shed on how to optimally portray young girls' motor skill proficiency; as well as the relationships between their participation and motor skills.     

Rescuing the Childcare Center: One Community’s Efforts to Manage Change Through Generating and Coordinating Resources

Childcare centers are business organizations and are subject to some of the same issues and problems as any small business. Many childcare administrators have little or no business training, and are unable to embrace change in order to help their programs survive economic problems. This article describes how one community saved their childcare center through collaboration.     

Latent habituation of the orienting response in the preweanling rat

The effect of inhibiting the orienting response on information processing was examined in four experiments. A nonsignal auditory stimulus was presented four times to preweanhng rats either 30 sec or 15 min after they had been placed in an unfamiliar environment (Experiments 1A and 2), shocked (Experiment 1B)5 or experienced a shift in environmental context (Experiment 1C). Both an autonomic (heart rate) and a behavioral componentx of the orienting response to the novel stimulus were recorded. In the 15-min condition, the auditory stimulus elicited a consistent orienting response on the first trial that habituated rapidly with successive trials. In contrast, the auditory stimulus did not elicit a detectable orienting response in the 30-sec condition on any of the four trials. However, when the auditory stimulus was re-presented after a brief retention interval, a comparable level of habituation was seen in both groups. These results demonstrate that animals in the 30-sec condition detected, attended to, and encoded the auditory stimulus even though they did not orient, either autonomically or behaviorally, to that stimulus when it was first presented. This process of response-independent habituation is best described as latent habituation. Like latent learning, latent habituation took place in the absence of any observable change in behavior. The implications of this effect for current theories of habituation and of the orienting response are discussed.     

Book Reviews

Evaluating Electronic Resource Programmes and Provision: Case Studies from Africa and Asia Diana Rosenberg (ed.) Oxford, International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications, 2008, 124 pp. ISBN 978‐1802928‐31‐9, £10.00, pbk     

Quality,reliability, and productivity education: America's hope for enhanced competitive position

In the aftermath of World War II, Japan was left with little choice but to rebuild from the rubble of a shattered economy. Led by American statistical quality control disciples, Dr. W. Edwards Deming and J. M. Juran, Japan rapidly succeeded in transforming the phrase made in Japan from a synonym for junk to a hallmark for quality. Keyed by an emphasis on quality, reliability and productivity Japan has, like the mythical Phoenix, ascended from the ashes. The impact on America has been a significant decline in key world markets. Universities must accept leadership in the competitive challenge facing America.Rick L. Edgeman received the Ph.D. degree in statistics and operations research from the University of Wyoming where he received the W. Edwards Deming Excellence Award in Statistics. Currently he is an associate professor of quality science at Colorado State University. He has also held faculty positions at Bradley University, in the Center for Quality Applied Statistics at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and at North Texas State University where was responsible for the development of M.B.A. and Ph.D. programs in Quality and Reliability Management. He was the first fellow of the Caterpillar Tractor Company Research Foundation and serves on the Quality and Productivity Committee of the American and Statistical Association. His publications have appeared in numerous journals including theReliability Review, Quality Progress, Technology Transfer Advocate, The American Statistician, Mathematics and Computer Education, and theBrazilian Journal of Probability and Statistics.     

Reinstatement of fear to an extinguished conditioned context

Rats were shocked in the black but not the white compartment of a shuttlebox and then exposed to the black compartment in the absence of the shock unconditioned stimulus (US) to extinguish fear responses (passive avoidance). In five experiments, rats were then shocked in a reinstatement context (distinctively different from the shuttlebox) to determine the conditions that reinstate extinguished fear responding to the black compartment. Rats shocked immediately upon exposure to the reinstatement chamber failed to show either reinstatement of avoidance of the black compartment or fear responses (freezing) when tested in the reinstatement chamber. In contrast, rats shocked 30 sec after exposure to the reinstatement chamber exhibited both reinstatement of avoidance of the black compartment and freezing responses in the reinstatement chamber (Experiment 1). Rats shocked after 30 sec of exposure to the reinstatement chamber but then exposed to that chamber in the absence of shock failed to exhibit reinstatement of the avoidance response and did not freeze when tested in the reinstatement chamber (Experiment 2). Rats exposed to a signaled shock in the reinstatement chamber and then exposed to that chamber in the absence of shock also failed to exhibit reinstatement of the avoidance response (Experiment 5). These rats showed fear responses to the signal but not to the reinstatement chamber. Finally, rats exposed for some time (20 min) to the reinstatement chamber before shock exhibited reinstatement of the avoidance response but failed to freeze when tested in the reinstatement chamber (Experiments 3 and 4). These results are discussed in terms of the contextual conditioning (Bouton, 1994) and the US representation (Rescorla, 1979) accounts of postextinction reinstatement.