Fellowship, Service, and the \u27Spirit of Adventure\u27: The Religious Society of Friends and the Outdoors Movement in Britain, C. 1900-1950

This article considers the involvement of members of the Religious Society of Friends in various manifestations of the outdoors movement in early twentieth-century Britain. It examines the Edwardian \u27Quaker tramps\u27 and their role in the \u27Quaker renaissance\u27, and goes on to consider the influence of Friends in organisations such as the Holiday Fellowship and the Youth Hostels Association, as well as interwar Quaker mountaineers. It argues that, while the outdoor activities of the Quaker renaissance were essentially internal to the Religious Society of Friends, a wider conception of social service took Quakers beyond the boundaries of the Society in the interwar period, resulting in a more profound influence on the outdoors movement. These activities of Friends were associated with the promotion of the \u27social gospel\u27, and represented a significant strand of Quaker service in the first half of the twentieth century

Reading Books and Reading Minds: Differential Effects of Wonder and The Crossover on Empathy and Theory of Mind

We tested sixth graders for empathy and theory of mind before and after an academic unit on either Wonder or The Crossover. Wonder was associated with improved perspective-taking; students who read The Crossover increased in concern for others. Faux pas detection increased in both genders with Wonder, and in girls with The Crossover. Students who read The Crossover in print showed improved understanding of facial expressions, while students who used iPads declined. Young adult fiction is associated with improved social cognitive skills, but effects depend on gender and reading format, as well as on the choice of individual book

The Effects of Pre and Post Exercise Low-Level Laser Therapy on Biochemical Markers of Skeletal Muscle Fatigue in Equines

Our objective was to determine whether administering low-level laser therapy before or after exercise had the greatest effect on biochemical markers of skeletal muscle fatigue in equines such as cortisol and blood lactate. Twelve quarter horses were divided into three groups: Group A received no laser therapy, Group B received laser therapy before exercise, and Group C received laser therapy after exercise. A Class II ERCHONIA ® PL500 handheld low-level laser was utilized for treatment with a wavelength of 635nm. Exercise was utilized using a horse walker system for 30 minutes five days a week for three weeks. Blood was collected via jugular venipuncture at time zero and then once a week for the remainder of the study. According to the results of this study, there is no evidence to suggest that laser therapy had a significant effect on equine cortisol or lactate, regardless if it was performed before or after exercise. However, there was an interaction between group and time for both lactate and cortisol. The results also showed that lactate increased as time increased as a result of lactic acid build up due to exercise, and cortisol decreased over time, which could be due to several possible variables such as weather. Several factors could have altered the results of this study, such as age, gender, weather, and diet of the equine subjects

Heretical thoughts about science and society: Frederick S. Pardee distinguished lecture, November 1, 2005

A version of this essay was delivered in November 1, 2005 as the Frederick S. Pardee Distinguished Lecture at Boston University.Freeman Dyson illuminates the importance of having heretics to challenge assumptions, and gives six heretical predictions of his own. The first is that American hegemony will not last until the next century. The second is that global warming is not the enormous problem that people make it out to be, primarily because increasing topsoil can counteract the excess of carbon dioxide and also, our knowledge is still too limited to diagnose the situation. His third heresy is that the increase in carbon dioxide may take us back to that wettest and warmest point in the interglacial period when the Sahara Desert was wet, and that this may be a better climate overall, driving at the critical juncture between naturalists and humanists. The fourth heresy makes an analogy between the transition that computers made to become small and ubiquitous, and the direction that biotechnology perhaps ought to go. Number five elaborates on communal sharing of genes and a completely new path for biology and evolution, and his sixth is that rural poverty should be solved by increasing the productivity of rural activities using “green technology,” (based on biology) such that people are not forced to migrate to urban centers

Britain's spiritual life: how can it be deepened?: Seebohm Rowntree, Russell Lavers, and the "crisis of belief", ca. 1946-54

This article examines the response of two social investigators in the early post-World War II period to the apparent secularization of British society. It explains how an unpublished survey that the two men carried out, along with the work of other Christian and non-Christian commentators in this period, expressed the hope that religious influences would be strengthened through secular institutions, including communal organizations, workplaces, and the military. A revival of Christian belief, in some form, was seen as a bulwark against communism in the context of the Cold War in which the Soviet regime was seen to present a threat to the "Christian civilization" of the West. The "spiritual life of the nation" was synonymous with the "national character," and for the information and opinion on which their study was based, Seebohm Rowntree and Russell Lavers turned to those who they believed were in a position to influence the national character

The decline of the adult school movement between the wars

This article considers the decline of the adult school movement, one of the largest voluntary movements in the history of adult education, and critically examines some of the reasons that have been used to explain it. It explores a number of features of the decline, using records of selected adult schools and adult school unions, and discussing variations by region and gender. The article argues that adult schools pursued a strategy of 'resistance' to secularisation, and that they increasingly concentrated on their core religious activities rather than attempting to compete with secular adult education providers. As a result, whereas the late nineteenth and early twentieth century had seen a rapid turnover of adult scholars, by the 1930s they were increasingly restricted to a committed core of members, dominated by older men and, especially, women. Reasons for the decline include the availability of alternative leisure pursuits, a lack of unity within the movement, and the association of the adult schools with unfashionable styles of Victorian philanthropy