Danialle Karmanos' Work It Out Evaluation Report: Winter/Spring 2013

The DKWIO program seeks to prevent childhood obesity by promoting a healthy mind, body, and spirit through yoga and nutrition programming. The purpose of DKWIO is to help children become healthier by reducing anxiety and increasing self-esteem through the calming and focused effects of yoga. Each week (10 weeks total) children are introduced to a unique one-hour formula that includes an introduction, nutritional information, yoga and activities, as well as relaxation and meditation exercises. The program is delivered by volunteer yoga instructors at urban elementary schools as part of students' existing physical education programming. By the end of the 10 weeks, the DKWIO program goals are that children will have a better understanding of and appreciation for yoga, healthy eating and physical activity, and that incorporating a practice of yoga will improve students' mental and physical health. This report is an evaluation of the program

Using Yoga to Reduce Stress and Bullying Behaviors Among Urban Youth

Background/Purpose: Obesity and secondary conditions continue to disproportionally affect the health of children living in urban areas. Studies show that a lack of resources and physical activity-unfriendly communities discourage 60 minutes of daily activity, including strengthening exercises, as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Using Social Ecological theory, the purpose of this study was to examine the multi-level influences of a yoga-based intervention on urban, inner city youth. Method: Using a mixed-methods design, ninety-three 3 - 5th grade students at five urban elementary schools participated in a ten-week yoga intervention. Analysis/Results: RM-ANOVA results revealed a significant reduction in stress and bullying behaviors among participants, and multiple regression analyses revealed that program attendance, change in stress, and change in yoga enjoyment significantly predicted change in yoga participation outside PE, when controlling for gender and age F(5, 87) = 5.36, p \u3c 0.01, adj. R2 = 0.19, but did not have a significant impact on physical activity participation outside of school. Student interviews and non-participant observations revealed strong enjoyment of yoga which led students to report substantial increases in yoga-related activities outside of school. Students also revealed that experience in yoga improved focus, attention, and reduced stress. Conclusions: Through convergence of qualitative and quantitative methods, this study showed a positive relationship between the number of yoga sessions attended (dose), enjoyment of yoga, and participation in yoga outside PE with friends and family. Findings suggest that urban PE should include more individual, non-competitive activities such as yoga, which students find to be stress-relieving, fun, inexpensive and easy to perform at home

Understanding Stress and Aggression Behaviors among Urban Youth

Background/Objective: Youth violence, including school bullying and fighting, has become a global public health problem. Stress has been identified as a factor related to aggression (i.e., bullying behaviors, fighting, and anger), of which inner-city youth are particularly vulnerable given their often disproportionately high stress living environments. Stress and aggression are of particular concern in urban physical education (PE) given the proliferation of competitive, sport-based curricula, “culture of basketball”, and the often-limited supervision that takes place. Using the Social Ecological Model, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between stress and aggression in inner-city elementary PE students. Methods: After parental consent, participants completed a questionnaire with validated scales measuring stress, aggression, and demographics. Participants included 138, 3rd-5th grade students (Mage = 9.77) from six inner-city schools in the Midwestern United States. Analysis/Results: After correlations were conducted to determine relationships, a series of multiple regression analyses were used to determine the predictors of aggression; controlling for gender, race, and age. Regression results revealed that fighting was significantly predicted by the independent variables with stress, anger, and bullying uniquely contributing (F (6,115) = 21.54, p \u3c 0.01, adj. R2 = 0.51). Additionally, bullying was uniquely predicted by fighting and anger (F (6,115) = 35.01, p \u3c 0.01, adj. R2 = 0.63). Conclusions: This study established a significant relationship between stress, anger, fighting and bullying behaviors in urban PE, possibly indicating a need for renewed focus on anti-aggressive approaches and positive stress response techniques. Specifically, mindfulness-based physical activities, such as Yoga, could enable educators to create more peaceful and less stressful climates, which might then lead to less bullying, fighting, and aggression, hence a more productive learning environment

Constitutive ablation of dendritic cells breaks self-tolerance of CD4 T cells and results in spontaneous fatal autoimmunity

Lack of immunological tolerance against self-antigens results in autoimmune disorders. During onset of autoimmunity, dendritic cells (DCs) are thought to be critical for priming of self-reactive T cells that have escaped tolerance induction. However, because DCs can also induce T cell tolerance, it remains unclear whether DCs are required under steady-state conditions to prevent autoimmunity. To address this question, we crossed CD11c-Cre mice with mice that express diphtheria toxin A (DTA) under the control of a loxP-flanked neomycin resistance (neoR) cassette from the ROSA26 locus. Cre-mediated removal of the neoR cassette leads to DTA expression and constitutive loss of conventional DCs, plasmacytoid DCs, and Langerhans cells. These DC-depleted (ΔDC) mice showed increased frequencies of CD4 single-positive thymocytes and infiltration of CD4 T cells into peripheral tissues. They developed spontaneous autoimmunity characterized by reduced body weight, splenomegaly, autoantibody formation, neutrophilia, high numbers of Th1 and Th17 cells, and inflammatory bowel disease. Pathology could be induced by reconstitution of wild-type (WT) mice with bone marrow (BM) from ΔDC mice, whereas mixed BM chimeras that received BM from ΔDC and WT mice remained healthy. This demonstrates that DCs play an essential role to protect against fatal autoimmunity under steady-state conditions

Coreceptor gene imprinting governs thymocyte lineage fate

Double-positive (CD4+CD8+) thymocytes differentiate into CD4+ helper T cells and CD8+ cytotoxic T cells. A knock-in approach replacing CD8-coding sequences with CD4 cDNA shows that it is the expression kinetics of CD8, and not the identity of the coreceptor, that governs thymocyte-lineage fate

High-Order Methods for Parabolic Equations using a Space-Time Flux Reconstruction Approach

A novel implementation of the flux reconstruction (FR) approach featuring a hyperbolic reformulation of the governing equations in space-time is presented for viscous linear and non-linear flow problems in both one and two spatial dimensions. The procedure generates high-order accurate schemes — in both space and time — that can analyse diffusion-type equations by recasting second-order equations as first-order systems. Conventional high-order accurate analysis of parabolic equations is severely restricted by limits on time step, which can be avoided by reformulation into a system of hyperbolic equations, with the caveat that only steady solutions may be considered. However, the computation of the resulting system within the space-time FR framework permits the high-order accuracy analysis of unsteady flows with rapid convergence to the steady state, in the pseudo-time sense, within a procedure that can be implemented in a straightforward manner for diffusion-type problems. Eigendecomposition is used to demonstrate that the new systems are hyperbolic in nature for both the 1D and 2D Advection-Diffusion Equations. The development and successful implementation of first-order space-time FR schemes for the 1D and 2D Diffusion Equations is illustrated. It is also verified that the target order-of-accuracy (OOA) is achieved for schemes involving both one and two spatial dimensions. An application of the space-time flux reconstruction approach to the Euler Equations is presented and discussed, with a view to future implementation to the Unsteady Navier-Stokes Equations with similar hyperbolic reformulation of viscous terms.</div