2,338 research outputs found
Forever young(er): potential age-defying effects of long-term meditation on gray matter atrophy
Get PDFWhile overall life expectancy has been increasing, the human brain still begins deteriorating after the first two decades of life and continues degrading further with increasing age. Thus, techniques that diminish the negative impact of aging on the brain are desirable. Existing research, although scarce, suggests meditation to be an attractive candidate in the quest for an accessible and inexpensive, efficacious remedy. Here, we examined the link between age and cerebral gray matter re-analyzing a large sample (n = 100) of long-term meditators and control subjects aged between 24 and 77 years. When correlating global and local gray matter with age, we detected negative correlations within both controls and meditators, suggesting a decline over time. However, the slopes of the regression lines were steeper and the correlation coefficients were stronger in controls than in meditators. Moreover, the age-affected brain regions were much more extended in controls than in meditators, with significant group-by-age interactions in numerous clusters throughout the brain. Altogether, these findings seem to suggest less age-related gray matter atrophy in long-term meditation practitioners.Nicolas
Cherbuin is funded by Australian Research Council fellowship number 120100227
Meditation effects within the hippocampal complex revealed by voxel-based morphometry and cytoarchitectonic probabilistic mapping.
Get PDFScientific studies addressing anatomical variations in meditators' brains have emerged rapidly over the last few years, where significant links are most frequently reported with respect to gray matter (GM). To advance prior work, this study examined GM characteristics in a large sample of 100 subjects (50 meditators, 50 controls), where meditators have been practicing close to 20 years, on average. A standard, whole-brain voxel-based morphometry approach was applied and revealed significant meditation effects in the vicinity of the hippocampus, showing more GM in meditators than in controls as well as positive correlations with the number of years practiced. However, the hippocampal complex is regionally segregated by architecture, connectivity, and functional relevance. Thus, to establish differential effects within the hippocampal formation (cornu ammonis, fascia dentata, entorhinal cortex, subiculum) as well as the hippocampal-amygdaloid transition area, we utilized refined cytoarchitectonic probabilistic maps of (peri-) hippocampal subsections. Significant meditation effects were observed within the subiculum specifically. Since the subiculum is known to play a key role in stress regulation and meditation is an established form of stress reduction, these GM findings may reflect neuronal preservation in long-term meditators-perhaps due to an attenuated release of stress hormones and decreased neurotoxicity
Space shuttle navigation analysis
Get PDFA detailed analysis of space shuttle navigation for each of the major mission phases is presented. A covariance analysis program for prelaunch IMU calibration and alignment for the orbital flight tests (OFT) is described, and a partial error budget is presented. The ascent, orbital operations and deorbit maneuver study considered GPS-aided inertial navigation in the Phase III GPS (1984+) time frame. The entry and landing study evaluated navigation performance for the OFT baseline system. Detailed error budgets and sensitivity analyses are provided for both the ascent and entry studies
Giving children a voice through partnership: a child rights-based approach to the co-design of postgraduate nurse education.
Get PDFBackground: There is an increasing need for the voice of children and young people to be more evident in planning and designing services, including the delivery of higher education, for school nurses to ultimately influence service delivery. Aim: To raise awareness of the importance of children’s rights by embedding them in postgraduate school nurse education to influence school nurse service delivery. Methods: A model was developed through direct partnership with representatives of the Children’s Parliament in Scotland. This model facilitated the inclusion of children and young people’s opinions in the co-design of postgraduate nurse education in order to incorporate children and young people’s rights and opinions and improve the delivery of the school nurse service in Aberdeen. Results: In a supported environment, children and young people were able to negotiate relationships with multiagency professionals on an equal basis, building connections and trust with them in partnership, based on their perceptions of school nurses’ daily actions and characteristics. Their negotiation of relationships identified various change management categories for improving the delivery of higher education and services. Conclusions: Children and young people have clear opinions and views when consulted in an inclusive age-appropriate way through rights-based participation. It is important that listening and taking due cognisance of children’s voices becomes the norm in influencing higher education, and that children and young people have a direct influence on improving children’s services
The message of the violet : song
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From Science in the Arctic to Arctic Science: A Transnational Study of Arctic Travel Narratives, 1818-1883
Get PDFThis thesis examines the making and communicating of knowledge about the Arctic from a transnational perspective between 1818 and the First International Polar Year in 1882-83. By examining both well-known and hitherto neglected narratives from Danish, British, and British-Canadian Arctic explorations, I show that changes in ideas about what it meant to be an authoritative observer of Arctic phenomena were linked to tensions in imperial ambitions, national identity, and international collaboration. By framing polar surveying in the broadest sense as the ordering and quantifying of nature through travel, I analyse how abstract notions of the Arctic became tangible in the nineteenth century. I am concerned with the practices of writing the Arctic experience, especially the relationship between science, and the strategies for constructing a trustworthy narrative voice. That is, I investigate the ways in which the identities of the explorers and the organizing bodies shaped the expeditions, and by extension the representation of the ventures, the explorers, and the science they produced. In doing so, I argue that the Arctic played a key role in shaping Western science, and understandings of national and imperial identities, and that travel narratives were a significant resource for communicating this knowledge. This thesis is divided into four chapters that each considers three case studies, roughly organized according to chronology. Drawing on major themes within British and Danish imperial history, Canadian studies, studies in travel writing, history of science, transnational and global history, and environmental studies, I show how perceptions of the Arctic as a field-site for the production of scientific knowledge varied according to time and place throughout the nineteenth century, and how this influenced science in the Arctic. In particular, I show the shift from early scientific practices during Arctic explorations, to a more unified Arctic science as part of the International Polar Year. What emerges is a new and interdisciplinary look at how science was produced in the Arctic, how this information was perceived by both a specialist and general reading audiences, and how this process differed depending on national and cultural contexts at different points in the nineteenth century
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