Implementation of high intensity interval training offers opportunity to enhance glycemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes

A clinical decision report using Alvarez C, Ramirez-Campillo R, Martinez-Salazar C, et al. Low-Volume High-Intensity Interval Training as a Therapy for Type 2 Diabetes. Int J Sports Med. 2016;37(9):723-729. https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0042-104935 for a patient with newly diagnosed diabetes mellitus type 2

Interactive Meaning Potentials in Weight-loss Web-advertising: The Female Body in Crisis

The common saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words” is no longer questioned in the twenty-first century where information is extensively rendered in visual terms. The rise of digital capture devices and online social media presumes that visual culture is heading towards greater influence in every aspect of life. This paper explores the ways visual representations attract the viewer’s attention, and based on Jewitt and Oyama’s analytical framework of visual social semiotics seeks to understand the meaning-making potentials of weight-loss advertising. Three key factors: distance, contact, and point of view are shown to be crucial in creating complex and subtle relations between the represented and the viewer. I examine several images from a weight-loss website advertisement (www.acaiburnmax.com) to demonstrate how the semiotic resources of meaning making are comprehended, and more importantly, to expose the flawed gender message that only a slim, shapely, beautiful woman is attractive and succeeds in a heterosexual relationship.

Our Charitable Children: Engaging Children in Charities and Charitable Giving

Why charitable donors give has been a topic of much debate amongst practitioners, policy makers and academics alike. Recent efforts to grow and strengthen the culture of charitable giving in the UK have focused on increasing people's propensity to give and the total amounts they are likely to give. However little attention has been paid to how people learn to give at a younger age. Given early education is fundamental in securing individuals long-term social and political orientations, this is a critical oversight. The absence of much commentary on, or significant research into, how individuals are socialised into giving, specifically younger children, means we have little knowledge about how people come to be the donors we pay so much attention to later in life.In this report we situate charitable giving as part of much larger debate on children's active engagement within civil society and their role as competent and active social actors.This research report engages the voices of over 150 young children aged 4-8 years old. Through participative action research methods, we explore their perceptions and preferences of charity and charitable giving. We explore the trends across the age group and discuss how children may develop philanthropic behaviours.We start our findings celebrating children's knowledge and involvement in charities. We found they have a wide and varied range of opportunities to engage in fundraising and charitable giving through schools, communities and the family. However, we also suggest that children have relatively limited spaces to meaningfully engage in these charitable behaviours, often associating giving as a transactional process without critically engaging with the cause. Nonetheless, when given opportunity to meaningfully engage in giving decisions children demonstrated a heightened critical consciousness and desire for increased social justice in their giving decisions.Importantly we argue that conscious, active and participative engagement in giving decisions helps children develop a critical consciousness about the world around them and increases social orientated behaviours. We promote the idea that children, as present citizens (as opposed to viewed as future citizens only), are capable and competent of selecting and assessing the charities they wish to support, and in turn this helps them develop a greater understanding of the world around them

Spelling Mastery via Google Classroom among Year 4 Elementary School ESL Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Spelling mastery is an important prerequisite of proficiency in the English language. The conventional language teaching strategy needs to be revolutionized for the 21st century by utilizing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to enable English as a Second Language (ESL) students to master spelling. As such, online teaching and learning becomes a crucial strategy to impart and receive knowledge. This case study focused on teaching spelling mastery via Google Classroom to elementary school ESL students, coincidently during the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic which has resulted in the emergence of a new norm in education. This case study involved thirty mixed-proficiency Year 4 ESL students from a sub-urban national primary school in Selangor. These students were divided into two groups, the experimental and control groups. The experimental group comprised a class of fifteen students who participated in the intervention, whereas the control group consisted of another fifteen students who did not participate in the intervention. The research instruments included pre- and post-test results, field notes and semi-structured interviews. To maintain the integrity of the data, the researchers took the necessary measures to ensure that the instruments were reliable and valid. This included assessing the content and face validity of the research instruments, expert validation for the interview questions and adequate engagement in data collection. The principal findings regarding the use of Google Classroom revealed students’ improvement and increased motivation in mastering spelling

Our Charitable Children - Engaging Children in Charities and Charitable Giving

Why charitable donors give has been a topic of much debate among practitioners, policy makers and academics alike. Recent efforts to grow and strengthen the culture of charitable giving in the UK have focused on increasing people’s propensity to give and the total amounts they are likely to give. However little attention has been paid to how people learn to give at a younger age. Given early education is fundamental in securing individuals long-term social and political orientations, this is a critical oversight. The absence of much commentary on, or significant research into, how individuals are socialised into giving, specifically younger children, means we have little knowledge about how people come to be the donors we pay so much attention to later in life. In this report we situate charitable giving as part of much larger debate on children’s active engagement within civil society and their role as competent and active social actors. This research report engages the voices of over 150 young children aged 4-8 years old. Through participative action research methods, we explore their perceptions and preferences of charity and charitable giving. We explore the trends across the age group and discuss how children may develop philanthropic behaviours. We start our findings celebrating children’s knowledge and involvement in charities. We found they have a wide and varied range of opportunities to engage in fundraising and charitable giving through schools, communities and the family. However, we also suggest that children have relatively limited spaces to meaningfully engage in these charitable behaviours, often associating giving as a transactional process without critically engaging with the cause. Nonetheless, when given opportunity to meaningfully engage in giving decisions children demonstrated a heightened critical consciousness and desire for increased social justice in their giving decisions. Importantly we argue that conscious, active and participative engagement in giving decisions helps children develop a critical consciousness about the world around them and increases social orientated behaviours. We promote the idea that children, as present citizens (as opposed to viewed as future citizens only), are capable and competent of selecting and assessing the charities they wish to support, and in turn this helps them develop a greater understanding of the world around them

Enhancing Job Awareness Through Career Exploration Course – A Report

In recent years, in developed countries such as the USA, Europe and Japan, ‘career search behaviour’ awareness and practice via university courses have been a keen focus. However, this is not the case in Malaysia, even worse is, university students do not think about it at all.  This career exploration course was introduced with the aim to raise undergraduate students’ awareness toward job searching before graduation. This was a 14-week career exploration introductory course with four main interventions; 1) to set your future career goal, conduct an interview with a graduated senior from the same faculty, who work in the industry you are interested in and then share with your course mate the interview results and what you have learned from the interview via oral presentation, 2) once the career goal is set,  learn the techniques of making career-related documents(e.g., resume writing), 3)do a self-examination on the knowledge and skills required in the job market and make a career searching action plan, 4) share and discuss your actual job search action plan via second oral presentation. Learning achievement is measured via continuous assessments and final written examination. Excerpts from the written examination revealed that students were more aware of the importance of conducting job searching activities before graduation and skills learned on career-related documents and writing the job search action plan have been useful to them.近年、欧米、日本を中心に大学生の「キャリア探索行動」のような意識と実践に着目してきた一方、マレーシアでは大学生が職業の前に職業探索を行うところか、それを考えることさえ意識していない。そこで就職活動に対する意識向上させる授業実践を行った。本実践では一学期、すなわち１４週間にわたり、次の４つを学生にさせた。１）職業についての希望や目標を明確にしていくため、自分が興味のある業界で働いている学部の先輩を訪ね、実際の仕事と内容などをインタビューする。そのインタビューの結果をクラス内発表し、発表を通じて、教室でクラスメートとOBOG訪問する際に必要であったマナーなどの情報を共有する。２）明確になった自己の職業に対する目標を設定し、企業への履歴書など書類作成する。３）職場における必要な知識、スキルなど自己検討し、今後のキャリア計画を考え作成する。４）再びクラス内で、キャリア計画を発表し、クラスメート間でコメントし合う。本授業の学習達成度は、教師の継続評価と期末試験で測る。期末試験で本授業に対する内省文を書かせたところ、多くの学習者が自己理解、就職活動の準備を卒業する前に行う、キャリア計画の重要性が有意義であったと回答した。また、本授業の学習者同士のコメントの話し合いを通じて、OBOGに対するマナーや言葉遣いなどが重要であることを学ばせることができた

The Association Between Vigorous Physical Activity and Alcohol Use

Evidence supports a positive association between excessive exercise and alcohol use among young adults. Past research has looked at the effects of medium-intensity physical activity regarding alcohol use prevention among college students, suggesting a positive linear association between these two variables. However, prior research has primarily focused on men. Thus, questions regarding health-compromising behaviors, such as excessive drinking and exercise among women, remain to be investigated. Further, questions have been raised concerning the pattern of association between vigorous physical activity and alcohol use among men versus women. The present study aims to replicate prior research by evaluating (1) the association between vigorous physical activity and alcohol use and (2) the degree of association between vigorous physical activity and alcohol use levels separately for men and women. It is hypothesized that (1) there is a positive correlation between vigorous physical activity and drinking quantity and (2) a relatively higher association between vigorous physical activity and alcohol use quantity exists among men. College-attending emerging adults (N = 1053; 72.60% female; 50.20% White; Mage =22.23, SD = 1.94) completed an online cross-sectional survey. Results from Aim 1 show a significant positive correlation between vigorous exercise and alcohol consumption (r = .139, p \u3c .001). When separated by sex, the association between vigorous exercise and alcohol consumption was nonsignificant for males (r[189] = .114, p = .116) and females (r[544]= .063, p = .143). Reaffirming past research, those who engage in excessive exercise are at risk for elevated alcohol use. This association could be related to environmental factors or unconscious motivations, such as the “work hard, play hard” mentality. Though a weak yet significant correlation between exercise and alcohol use exists in the overall sample, when evaluating men and women separately, the sample sizes were likely not large enough to detect such a small effect. Future research utilizing larger sample sizes should explore why moderate to heavy drinkers are predisposed to vigorous physical activity and examine relevant factors that could further clarify the co-occurrence of exercise and alcohol use, such as stress, perceived control, or relevant social norms. Additionally, future research should look at how different types of prolonged exercises, such as aerobic activity, cardio, and muscle-building exercise, may impact drinking habit

The Role of Vigorous and High Intensity Interval Training Physical Activity Counseling in Prenatal Care

Background: Physical activity is becoming a more common component of preventative medicine and patient counseling; however, the prevalence of physical activity counseling and specific social determinants of health have prevented women, namely prenatal patients, from receiving this counseling from their providers1. Physical activity, including high intensity interval training (HIIT), has been shown to be feasible for implementation in patient counseling3 and shown to be safe for pregnant women, even into the third trimester2. We hypothesize that the current percentage of patients, including prenatal patients, being counseled on physical activity is lacking. In addition, we hypothesize the current guidelines and advancements in research on physical activity, including during pregnancy, are not being shared adequately with patients during clinic and hospital visits. This pertains especially to education on the feasibility of execution, safety and benefits of high intensity interval training (HIIT) and vigorous exercise. Methods: In this descriptive study, we will distribute our patient survey at local ob/gyn clinics to assess the current level of patient perceptions of physical activity, physical activity counseling and current level of activity. We will then provide educational materials to the clinics and patients on physical activity, namely HIIT, and reassess patient perceptions and activity levels via survey. Results: Preliminary research shows that the majority of prenatal patients have not been given counseling or education materials on physical activity but are motivated to increase their physical activity and work with providers to do so. Conclusion: Will be presented at the Wayne State Medical Student Research Symposium in February 2022