Putting Faith Into Action: A Model for the North American Middle Class

Pluralism presents faith communities with the challenge of continuity and discontinuity in relation to the community's tradition. The educational question becomes: How do we initiate persons into the tradition of the faith community so that they will function as agents who can extend the tradition in creative ways in changing contexts? Play is one area of human activity that is concerned with what is and what might be. This paper explores the nature of the pretend play of young children, especially its “as‐if'” and “what‐if” dimensions. It suggests possibilities for using play in the education of children and adults.     

Preverbal Infants' Attention to Manner and Path: Foundations for Learning Relational Terms

In the world, the manners and paths of motion events take place together, but in language, these features are expressed separately. How do infants learn to process motion events in linguistically appropriate ways? Forty‐six English‐learning 7‐ to 9‐month‐olds were habituated to a motion event in which a character performed both a manner and a path, and then tested on events that changed the manner, path, both, or neither. Infants detected each type of change, but only the girls showed evidence of processing manner and path as independent features. This gender difference provides clues about the universal development of manner and path concepts from more basic perceptual skills. Results have implications for how representations of linguistically relevant semantic elements develop conceptually.     

Effects of a Three-Year Exercise Program on Motor Function and Cognitive Processing Speed in Older Women

Abstract

This study evaluated the effects of a three-year exercise program on motor performance and cognitive processing speed of previously sedentary older women, ages 57–85. Variables tested were simple and choice reaction time (CRT), balance, sit and reach flexibility, shoulder flexibility, and grip strength. Subjects participated three times a week in exercise performance classes designed to meet American College of Sports Medicine guidelines. Results indicate that performance was significantly improved on all measures during the course of the study (p < .01) except for the sit and reach test (SRT), where significance was approached (p < .027), but not reached. A comparison of the exercise subjects with a comparable group of nonexercising control subjects revealed significant interactions between treatment and time on all variables except CRT and grip strength. Pretest to posttest scores of the exercise subjects tended to improve over the three-year period, whereas the scores of the control subjects declined. Improved reaction time indicated exercise is effective in reversing or at least slowing certain age-related declines in motor performance and in speed of cognitive processing.     

Family practice clerkship information seminars:the role of the health sciences library

This article will describe the New Jersey Medical School (NJMS) Family Medicine clerkship's Information Seminars for thirdyear medical students, conducted by the faculty and staff of the Department of Family Medicine and by librarians at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey's (UMDNJ) George F. Smith Library of the Health Sciences. Content of the information seminars will be briefly described, as well as the renewed focus on the library through the incorporation of evidence-based medicine concepts into practice.     

What is BioOne?

BioOne is a Web-based aggregation of full-text, high-impact bioscience research journals. Most of its titles are published by small societies or non-commercial publishers and have not been previously available in electronic format. This column describes the BioOne database and gives some basic information about the best ways to search its content.     

Essential Science Indicators

The Essential Science Indicators (ESI) database, published by Thomson Scientific/ISI, presents an array of data that ranks scientists/health professionals, their individual papers, and the journals in which they are published, as well as countries and institutions that perform scientific research. By using this resource, it is possible to prepare ranked statistical lists. The resource covers 6,000 journals published in both the United States and from international publishers. Users should note that ESI covers scientific information in the broadest possible scope, so this is not just limited to biomedical topics and resources.     

ISI's Journal Citation Reports on the Web

This column features an overview of the Institute for Scientific Information's (ISI) Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database. Basic searching techniques are presented, as well as simple ways to manipulate data contained in the file. The Journal Citation Reports database can provide information on highest impact journals, most frequently used journals, "hottest" journals, and largest journals in a field or discipline.     

PEDro: a physiotherapy evidence database

PEDro is produced by the Centre for Evidence-Based Physiotherapy (CEBP), located in Sydney, Australia. PEDro is intended to be used to gain "rapid access to bibliographic details and abstracts of randomized controlled trials, systematic reviews and evidence-based clinical practice guidelines in physiotherapy." This column will provide some background information on the database, as well as cover the basics of searching its content.