Lifetime Adherence to Physical Activity Recommendations and Fall Occurrence in Community-dwelling Older Adults: a Retrospective Cohort Study

Falling is a major health concern for community-dwelling older adults. Regular physical activity has been proposed to prevent falls. The aim of this study was to assess whether the achievement of the 2004 UK Department of Health physical activity recommendations over a lifetime had a protective effect against falling in older people. 313 community-dwelling older adults completed a questionnaire about lifetime physical activity and fall occurrence. There were significantly fewer falls in those who had led an active lifestyle compared to those who had not (χ2Yates=4.568, p=0.033), with a lower relative risk of fall occurrence for the active respondents (RR=0.671) compared to the inactive (RR=1.210). Of those who were sufficiently active in their early adulthood, the decade where there was the biggest decrease in remaining active enough was in the 60s. It is concluded that an active lifestyle may have decreased the likelihood of having a fall in older ag

Relational, Physical, and Mental Health: How Relationship Satisfaction Influences Exercise Self-Efficacy

Can being satisfied in a relationship create the confidence to exercise? Some research suggests a positive relationship between exercise and positive relationship events for both partners (Johnson et al., 2018), yet there may be important mediators between relationships and exercise, that have not been tested. Research has found that higher relationship satisfaction is associated with lower depressive and anxiety symptoms (Whisman, Uebelacker, & Weinstock, 2004). Another important mechanism linked with exercise is self-efficacy—or the confidence to carry out a behavior (i.e., exercise; Jackson, Tucker, & Herman, 2007). Self-efficacy and mental health are also significantly related (Bandura, 1997), as is exercise and mental health (Chekroud et al., 2018). The question remains then, how is relationship satisfaction and exercise self-efficacy linked? Utilizing dyadic data from 234 heterosexual couples, the purpose of the current study was to determine the association between relationship satisfaction and exercise self-efficacy mediated through mental health

Relationship Satisfaction & Diet: Exploring the Mechanisms through which Intimate Relationships Influence Physical Health

Understanding how intimate relationships influence physical health has been an important topic of focus; however, research remains unclear on the mechanisms through which this influence occurs. The purpose of this study was to examine how relationship satisfaction relates to diet quality, through mental health (depression and anxiety) and diet self-efficacy. Using a dyadic mediation model with a sample of 234 heterosexual couples, researchers found that women\u27s higher relationship satisfaction was associated with better diet through lower depression and higher diet self-efficacy. Results revealed the same association between women\u27s relationship satisfaction and diet through lower anxiety. Interestingly, rather than mediation through mental health, the association between men\u27s relationship satisfaction and diet was mediated through their partners\u27 diet self-efficacy. This presentation will review the gendered pathways by which relationship satisfaction influences diet in heterosexual couples and discuss the important implications of these findings for tracing how intimate relationships affect overall well-being

Development of Osteoinductive, High Porosity PolyHIPEs as Injectable Bone Grafts

Injectable bone grafts are space-filling materials that integrate with native bone to repair large defects from congenital deformities, trauma, and tumor resection. However, current injectable bone grafts limit healing due to lack of biodegradability, high temperatures during hardening, reduced porosity, and brittle compressive properties. In this work, polymerized high internal phase emulsions (polyHIPEs) were developed as high porosity scaffolds for injectable bone grafting applications. Methods to modulate polyHIPE pore architecture, compressive properties, and degradation rates were established. Injectable polyHIPEs with pore sizes ranging from 1- 200 μm, compressive properties comparable to human cancellous bone, and degradation profiles spanning days to months were fabricated by altering compositional parameters (i.e. organic phase composition including macromers and surfactant, addition of an electrolyte in aqueous phase, and the phase in which initiator is soluble) and processing parameters (i.e. mixing speed, and cure and storage conditions). Cytocompatibility of all HIPE components was first verified and human mesenchymal stem cell (hMSC) adhesion and morphology was then assessed on polyHIPE sections. In order to confer an osteoinductive character to the bone grafts, calcium phosphate nanoparticles and demineralized bone matrix were incorporated into the polyHIPEs. PolyHIPE pore size and compressive properties were negligibly altered with the incorporation of particles. Alkaline phosphatase activity, a marker of osteoblast differentiation, was elevated from hMSCs on polyHIPE sections with osteoinductive particles. Finally, hMSC viability post encapsulation in the polyHIPE was investigated to demonstrate the potential use as a cell carrier and viable cells were observed at 3 hours post encapsulation. Overall, these studies highlight the potential of injectable polyHIPEs as improved bone grafts that can deliver and retain autologous hMSCs at the defect site while also inducing osteogenic differentiation for enhanced bone regeneration. Elucidation of key structure-property relationships in emulsion templated scaffolds can be used in future studies to further modulate cell-material interactions

Ours is the Kingdom of Heaven: Racial Construction of Early American Christian Identities

This project interrogates how religious performance, either authentic or contrived, aids in the quest for freedom for oppressed peoples; how the rhetoric of the Enlightenment era pervades literatures delivered or written by Native Americans and African Americans; and how religious modes, such as evoking scripture, performing sacrifices, or relying upon providence, assist oppressed populations in their roles as early American authors and speakers. Even though the African American and Native American populations of early America before the eighteenth century were denied access to rights and freedom, they learned to manipulate these imposed constraints--renouncing the expectation that they should be subordinate and silent--to assert their independent bodies, voices, and spiritual identities through the use of literary expression. These performative strategies, such as self-fashioning, commanding language, destabilizing republican rhetoric, or revising narrative forms, become the tools used to present three significant strands of identity: the individual person, the racialized person, and the spiritual person. As each author resists the imposed restrictions of early American ideology and the resulting expectation of inferior behavior, he/she displays abilities within literature (oral and written forms) denied him/her by the political systems of the early republican and early national eras. Specifically, they each represent themselves in three ways: first, as a unique individual with differentiated abilities, exceptionalities, and personality; second, as a person with distinct value, regardless of skin color, cultural difference, or gender; and third, as a sanctified and redeemed Christian, guaranteed agency and inheritance through the family of God. Furthermore, the use of religion and spirituality allows these authors the opportunity to function as active agents who were adapting specific verbal and physical methods of self-fashioning through particular literary strategies. Doing so demonstrates that they were not the unrefined and unfeeling individuals that early American political and social restrictions had made them--that instead they were intellectually and morally capable of making both physical and spiritual contributions to society while reciprocally deserving to possess the liberties and freedoms denied them