Surfistas for Change: Building New Identity and Community in Poor Brazilian Communities Through Sport and Education

The purpose of my research was to test the hypothesis that sports can be a preventative method for youth risk behaviors such as gang membership. My hypothesis was that sports could provide some of the same benefits as gang membership and other risk behaviors, but in a more healthy and productive way. To test this thesis, I spent three weeks researching the work of ARCA, the Associaçao Recreativa e Esportiva para Crianças e Adolescentes in Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil. While I studied all the projects of ARCA, I focused my research on their Escola do Surf, in the poor beach community of Goiabeiras. While with ARCA, my main methods were observation and participant observation. I also conducted informal and formal interviews, as well as a small survey of some of the older students at the Escola do Surf. What I found was that ARCA fights risk behavior in two ways. First, they work to prevent risk behaviors in the present. But their higher goal is to create consciousness and opportunity, so that their students can take control of their lives in the future

An Investigation of the Effects of Using Literature to Promote the Understanding of Mathematical Concepts in Children with Learning Disabilities

This study was designed to test the hypothesis that including children\u27s literature in the mathematics curriculum improves understanding of math concepts for children with learning disabilities. The subjects included 47 third grade students from a suburban school district outside of Rochester, New York. The children were divided into experimental and control groups. The control group received their regular mathematics curriculum, while the experimental group received the addition of children\u27s literature to the regular curriculum. No statistical significance was noted quantitatively, while qualitatively, improvements were noted in children\u27s attitudes and involvement with the curriculum

The Relationship of Waist Size to Blood Pressure and Cholesterol Among College Students

The relationship between food consumed and the resulting body size is not easy to understand. Considering the vast array of nutritional input, numerous hypotheses have been tested for connections among diet constituents and the shape of the human body. The purpose of this study was two fold: to determine the correlation between the level of blood cholesterol and waist size among college students and to determine the correlation between blood pressure and waist size among college students. Volunteers from an upper level Kinesiology class at Liberty University were measured around the waist, screened for blood pressure, and administered a cholesterol blood test. Three groups were formed based on waist size measurements. Significant differences were found between waist size and blood pressure. Results of this study extended the research of Roizen and Oz (2006) using college students and should be used for preventative purposes

Pressure Injury and Restraint Prevalence Surveys: Saving Time and Dollars for Patient Care by Automating Manual Chart Abstraction

Bronson Healthcare Group performs quarterly pressure injury and restraint audits as part of the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI). The chart abstraction portion of the audit previously required nurses to manually abstract 31 data points. To save time and cost, we used Lean and PDSA process improvement tools to automate the chart abstraction portion of the audit, reducing the number of data points requiring manual abstraction to 2. We validated the automated abstraction by comparing it to abstractions done manually by the audit nurses. We found that an automated process has the potential to reduce the impact of human error inherent in manual abstraction