Protocol for a randomized controlled study of Iyengar yoga for youth with irritable bowel syndrome

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Irritable bowel syndrome affects as many as 14% of high school-aged students. Symptoms include discomfort in the abdomen, along with diarrhea and/or constipation and other gastroenterological symptoms that can significantly impact quality of life and daily functioning. Emotional stress appears to exacerbate irritable bowel syndrome symptoms suggesting that mind-body interventions reducing arousal may prove beneficial. For many sufferers, symptoms can be traced to childhood and adolescence, making the early manifestation of irritable bowel syndrome important to understand. The current study will focus on young people aged 14-26 years with irritable bowel syndrome. The study will test the potential benefits of Iyengar yoga on clinical symptoms, psychospiritual functioning and visceral sensitivity. Yoga is thought to bring physical, psychological and spiritual benefits to practitioners and has been associated with reduced stress and pain. Through its focus on restoration and use of props, Iyengar yoga is especially designed to decrease arousal and promote psychospiritual resources in physically compromised individuals. An extensive and standardized teacher-training program support Iyengar yoga's reliability and safety. It is hypothesized that yoga will be feasible with less than 20% attrition; and the yoga group will demonstrate significantly improved outcomes compared to controls, with physiological and psychospiritual mechanisms contributing to improvements.</p> <p>Methods/Design</p> <p>Sixty irritable bowel syndrome patients aged 14-26 will be randomly assigned to a standardized 6-week twice weekly Iyengar yoga group-based program or a wait-list usual care control group. The groups will be compared on the primary clinical outcomes of irritable bowel syndrome symptoms, quality of life and global improvement at post-treatment and 2-month follow-up. Secondary outcomes will include visceral pain sensitivity assessed with a standardized laboratory task (water load task), functional disability and psychospiritual variables including catastrophizing, self-efficacy, mood, acceptance and mindfulness. Mechanisms of action involved in the proposed beneficial effects of yoga upon clinical outcomes will be explored, and include the mediating effects of visceral sensitivity, increased psychospiritual resources, regulated autonomic nervous system responses and regulated hormonal stress response assessed via salivary cortisol.</p> <p>Trial registration</p> <p>ClinicalTrials.gov <a href="http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01107977">NCT01107977</a>.</p

Polyamory: Intimate practice, identity or sexual orientation?

Polyamory means different things to different people. While some consider polyamory to be nothing more than a convenient label for their current relationship constellations or a handy tool for communicating their willingness to enter more than one relationship at a time, others claim it as one of their core identities. Essentialist identity narratives have sustained recent arguments that polyamory is best understood as a sexual orientation and is as such comparable with homosexuality, heterosexuality or bisexuality. Such a move would render polyamory intelligible within dominant political and legal frameworks of sexual diversity. The article surveys academic and activist discussions on sexual orientation and traces contradictory voices in current debates on polyamory. The author draws on poststructuralist ideas to show the shortcomings of sexual orientation discourses and highlights the losses which are likely to follow from pragmatic definitions of polyamory as sexual orientation

Optical fibres - Beyond the diffraction limit

By adding a tiny hole into the solid-core of a photonic-crystal fibre, scientists have been able to beat the diffraction limit and confine and guide light in the subwavelength regime.Tanya Monr

Assorted core air-clad fibre

An optical fibre containing a selection of,independently addressable air-clad cores with different dimensions is presented. The intrinsic properties of such an assorted core fibre are studied and potential applications are reviewed The physical dimensions required for guidance at various wavelengths are explored

Sensing with microstructured optical fibres

The optical and geometrical properties of microstructured optical fibres present new alternatives for a range of sensing applications. We present the design criteria for achieving significant overlap between the light guided in the fibre and the air holes and hence for producing efficient evanescent field devices. In addition, the novel dispersive properties combined with the tight mode confinement possible in holey fibres make ultra-broadband single-mode sources and new source wavelengths a possibility. Microstructuring technology can be readily extended to form multiple-core fibres, which have applications in bend/deformation sensing. Finally, fibre-based atom waveguides could ultimately be used for rotational or gravitational sensing

Polarization mode dispersion reduction in spun large mode area silica holey fibres

We report the fabrication of the first spun holey optical fibre. Our experiments show that the complex air/glass transverse structure can be retained when the preform is spun during the fibre drawing process. Measurements of differential group delay (DGD) confirm that significant reductions in polarization mode dispersion (PMD) can be readily achieved using this approach. (C) 2004 Optical Society of America

UV generation in a pure-silica holey fiber

We report supercontinuum generation extending to 300 nm in the UV from a pure-silica holey fiber. The broad spectrum was obtained by launching ultra-short pulses (similar to 150 fs, 10 nJ at 820 nm) from an amplified Ti:sapphire laser. The extension of holey-fiber-based supercontinuum generation into the UV should prove to be of immediate application in spectroscopy. By slightly detuning the launch conditions we excited a higher order spatial mode, which produced a narrower supercontinuum. but with enhanced conversion efficiency at a series of blue/UV peaks around 360 nm. We present numerical simulations, which suggest that differences in the dispersion profiles between the modes are an important factor in explaining this enhancement. In a related experiment, using the same laser source and fiber, we demonstrate a visible supercontinuum from several subsidiary cores, with distinct colours in each core. The subsidiary cores were excited by an appropriate input coupling. Fabrication of a fiber with a range of core sizes (dispersion profiles) for tailored supercontinuum generation can therefore be envisaged for practical applications

Gender identity minorities and workplace legislation in Europe

It is a fact that transgender people experience severe discrimination in various forms not only in their everyday lives but also in their working lives, especially when transitioning. It seems that Europe is slowly changing over the years as there are constant calls to tackle this complex issue by considering the inclusion of a third gender option, the abolition of any abusive practices, recommendations for legal redress in cases of violation, and a more transparent and self-determined legal recognition procedure. There are national laws which offer protection on the basis of gender identity at national and international levels. Nevertheless, there is still a lack of uniformity due to a number of unresolved matters such as uncertainty about who is covered, whether gender identity should be covered as a protected ground, what is required to gain a legal change of name and gender marker in official documents, who is responsible for authorisation and uncertainty over the stages, nature and duration of the actual procedure. Fewer distressed transgender employees and transphobic incidents are observed when there is greater social acceptability, organisational effort and national intervention. Research and collective actions by movements, political leaders, academics, medical experts and non-governmental organisations are further required to minimise societal and employment exclusions of transgender people