The Culture of CrossFit: A Lifestyle Prescription for Optimal Health and Fitness

The increasing frequency of obesity related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension are often the product of a nutritionally inadequate diet along with sedentary lifestyle. The fitness movement called CrossFit, formed by Greg Glassman in 1996, provides an alternative prescription to battling these physical ailments by incorporating high intensity-functional exercise along with a Paleolithic-inspired diet (The Paleo Diet). CrossFit is a distinct lifestyle that encourages participants to strive for an elite and optimal state of fitness and health. In this thesis I provide ethnographic data collected from participant-observation at a CrossFit gym in Bloomington, IL. I examine scientific research on the exercise and physiology of CrossFit training and the Paleo Diet, and I explore the history of fitness movements in America to place the culture of the CrossFit into historical perspective

A Look Inside The Freshman 15

This paper seeks to explore the factors that lead to freshman weight gain as well as the services the University provides to combat weight gain. This paper provides a detailed study through the perils of the freshman lifestyle

Understanding Interhousehold Transfers in a Transition Economy: Evidence from Russia

This paper uses data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey to describe and model the determinants of interhousehold transfers. Russian households have experienced large reductions in income during the post-Soviet transition period, with a particularly severe decline occurring in the fall of 1998. Sharply declining fertility, increasing mortality, and past demographic catastrophes has left a population which is both young (few elderly) and old (one of the oldest working-age populations in the world). Informal networks in Russia are likely to take on distinctive characteristics as the country?s economic institutions are underdeveloped and there is a very limited social safety net, while household structure closely resembles that found in much wealthier countries. Although it is often assumed that the elderly in Russia are a highly vulnerable economic group, we actually find that transfers flow strongly from the elderly to their adult children, whom are typically in the early part of the life-course (i.e. in school, starting to work, or recently married). This is especially true for the elderly in rural areas. While households with higher longer-term resources receive on net more transfers, we also find strong evidence that transfers respond to economic needs (i.e. transitory fluctuations in resources)

Notes on Some Ideas in Lloyd Humberstone’s Philosophical Applications of Modal Logic

Lloyd Humberstone’s recently published Philosophical Applications of Modal Logic presents a number of new ideas in modal logic as well explication and critique of recent work of many others. We extend some of these ideas and answer some questions that are left open in the book

Beyond the Crossroads of magic, health, and wellbeing

Magicians and scientists have begun collaborating to gain insight into various psychological functions. However, one underexplored area is the use of magic tricks to enhance health and well-being. Several magic programmes currently use magic tricks to enhance cognitive, emotional, social, and physical well-being. The applications of these magic programmes range from physical and psychological therapies to gang prevention, hospitals and classrooms. A few programmes have been empirically investigated and there is now a growing number of empirical studies that explore the well-being value of magic. Therefore, we conducted an up-to-date summary review of magic, health, and well-being. These studies are reviewed in light of a proposed hierarchical model based on how the magic was applied. Overall, methodologies could be improved but distinctions between levels of the hierarchy are observed and discussed. Furthermore, the positive effects on well-being can also be organized into interrelated physical, cognitive, social, and affective components that reflect existing theoretical frameworks on well-being. To conclude, we discuss possible mechanisms and theoretical frameworks based on more established psychological theories to help guide future research

The magical means of building closeness and community during the college transition: A novel arts-based positive intervention

The arts have long been intertwined with wellbeing and empirical attention is shifting back toward the wellbeing value of the arts. One art that has been applied in educational contexts but received limited empirical attention is that of achieving the impossible, namely, the art of performing magic. While research is young, reviews on the wellbeing-value of magic have revealed theoretical frameworks suggesting its potential to enhance self-processes and social aspects. These aspects are especially important for university students to have a psychologically healthy transition to university life because it involves integrating one’s adult identity with the self, which can challenge one’s self-esteem. Thus, the present study investigated how community magic workshops affect self-esteem, wellbeing, closeness, and sense of belonging for first-year university students in London. Students were allocated to either magic workshops where they learned magic tricks or mindfulness workshops during their first university term. Measures were taken at baseline, post-intervention, and a one-month follow-up. Both groups improved on all measures but students in magic workshops perceived greater benefits than the mindfulness group. Results provide preliminary evidence for using magic-based workshops as an appealing, preventative intervention that enhances the college experience for first-year students

Cavitation scaling experiments with headforms : bubble dynamics

Utilizing some novel instrumentation which allowed detection and location of individual cavitation bubbles in flows around headforms. Ceccio and Brennen (1991 and 1989) recently examined the interaction between individual bubbles and the structure of the boundary layer and flow field in which the bubble is growing and collapsing. They were able to show that individual bubbles are often fissioned by the fluid shear and that this process can significantly effect the acoustic signal produced by the collapse. Furthermore they were able to demonstrate a relationship between the number of cavitation events and the nuclei number distribution measured by holographic methods in the upstream flow. More recently Kumar and Brenncn (1991-1992) have closely examined further statistical properties of the acoustical signals from individual cavitation bubbles on two different headformsm in order to learn more about the bubble/flow interactions. However the above experiments were all conducted in the same facility with the same size of headform (5.08cm in diameter) and over a fairly narrow range of flow velocities (around 9m/s). Clearly this raises the issue of how the phenomena identified in those earlier experiments change with changes of speed, scale and facility. The present paper will describe experiments conducted in order to try to answer some of these important qucstions regarding the scaling of the cavitation phenomena. We present data from experiments conducted in the Large Cavitation Channel of the David Taylor Research Center in Memphis, Tennessee, on similar headforms which are 5.08, 25.4 and 50.8cm in diameter for speeds ranging up to 15m/s and for a range of cavitation numbers. In this paper we focus on visual observations of the cavitation patterns and changes in these patterns with speed and headform size

Cavitation Scaling Experiments with Axisymmetric Bodies

Several experiments by Ceccio and Brennen (1991, 1989) and Kumar and Brennen (1992, 1991) have closely examined the interaction between individual cavitation bubbles and the boundary layer, as well as statistical properties of the acoustical signals produced by the bubble collapse. All of these experiments were, however, conducted in the same facility with the same headform size (5.08cm in diameter) and over a fairly narrow range of flow velocities (around 9m/s). Clearly this raises the issue of how the phenomena identified change with speed, scale and facility. The present paper describes experiments conducted in order to try to answer some of these important questions regarding the scaling of the cavitation phenomena. The experiments were conducted in the Large Cavitation Channel of the David Taylor Research Center in Memphis Tennessee, on geometrically similar Schiebe headforms which are 5.08, 25.4 and 50.8cm in diameter for speeds ranging up to 15m/s and for a range of cavitation numbers

Early Upper Paleolithic Ornaments from Üçaǧizli Cave, Turkey

Beads and similar ornaments appear early in the archaeological record associated with modern humans (Homo sapiens), first in Africa and somewhat later in Eurasia. They are thought to be among the first indicators of human use of symbols. This paper discusses criteria used to distinguish early mollusk-shell beads from other kinds of shells in archaeological deposits, focusing on evidence from the site of Üçaǧizli Cave in Turkey. Upper Paleolithic beadmakers at this and other sites clearly preferred certain forms of shell for ornamental purposes, although the reasons for that selectivity remain obscure

Modeling Effects of Local Extinctions on Culture Change and Diversity in the Paleolithic

The persistence of early stone tool technologies has puzzled archaeologists for decades. Cognitively based explanations, which presume either lack of ability to innovate or extreme conformism, do not account for the totality of the empirical patterns. Following recent research, this study explores the effects of demographic factors on rates of culture change and diversification. We investigate whether the appearance of stability in early Paleolithic technologies could result from frequent extinctions of local subpopulations within a persistent metapopulation. A spatially explicit agent-based model was constructed to test the influence of local extinction rate on three general cultural patterns that archaeologists might observe in the material record: total diversity, differentiation among spatially defined groups, and the rate of cumulative change. The model shows that diversity, differentiation, and the rate of cumulative cultural change would be strongly affected by local extinction rates, in some cases mimicking the results of conformist cultural transmission. The results have implications for understanding spatial and temporal patterning in ancient material culture