Enhancing the Effects of Theatre of the Oppressed through Systems Thinking: Reflections on an Applied Workshop

In this essay, we explore the idea that the use of Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) techniques in the quest for social justice, transformation, and liberation can be enhanced through application of a skill set called systems thinking. We facilitated a workshop at the 2015 Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed conference in which we presented a brief introductory course in systems thinking, led guided practice using the method, and invited sharing and reflection about the fusion of systems thinking and TO. We explain the workshop in detail, discuss its impact on participants, and offer future directions for considering the important contributions of systems thinking to TO practice

Investigation of the Cardiovascular Endurance of Dance Majors

Background: College dancers have demonstrated low levels of cardiovascular endurance compared to other athletes, which could be one of the factors that leads to more fatigue and injuries during performance. The effects of an education session on cardiovascular endurance and on college dancers’ attitudes towards cardiovascular exercise outside of dance class have not been previously studied. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to use the accelerated three-minute step test to compare lower level and upper level college dancers’ cardiovascular endurance before and 2 months after an education session emphasizing fitness and exercise. Additionally, assessed were the dancers’ attitudes towards cardiovascular activities outside of dance class and the amount of physical activity that they performed. Subjects: There were 25 subjects, 2 male and 23 female dancers between the ages of 18-30 who were declared as a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) Dance Major or had the intent to declare a BFA Dance Major. Methods: The subjects were divided into the lower level group and the upper level group based on the dance level into which the university dance program placed them. The subjects participated in the accelerated three-minute step test and were grouped into a cardiovascular fitness category based on their heart rate recovery (HRrecovery) ranging from 0 (excellent) to 6 (very poor). The results of the three-minute accelerated step test were presented during an education session along with guidelines to improve cardiovascular endurance. The subjects were retested using the accelerated three-minute step test two months after the education session. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) questionnaire and the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) were administered both before and after the education session. The pre- and post-education results were compared using a 2-way repeated measures ANOVA and post-hoc tests were performed. Results: From the originally recruited 38 subjects, 1 was unable to complete the initial step test and 12 others were unable to complete the second half of the study. A total of 25 dance majors were able to complete the entire study (7 lower level, 18 upper level). Of the initial 37 subjects who completed the step test, only 37.8% were in the recommended fitness categories for dancers of 0-2 (excellent to above average) and 62.2% were in fitness categories 3-6 (average to very poor). Two-factor repeated measures ANOVAs revealed a trend towards a significant interaction between dance level and HRrecovery (F(1)=3.338, P=0.081), and a main effect of time on HRrecovery with HRrecovery before the education session being 117.92± 19.28 bpm and HRrecovery after the education session being 109.64 ± 20.57 bpm (F(1)=4.540, P=0.044). Post hoc t-tests reported that the mean HRrecovery before the education session was similar between the lower level and upper level dancers, but that it was significantly lower for the upper level after the education session (P=0.040). There was no significant interaction of time on the IPAQ (F(1)=0.003, P=0.960), and there was no significant main effect of time (F(1)=0.224, P=0.641), or dance level (F(1)=0.069, P=0.795) on the IPAQ scores. For the TPB Questionnaire, there was a significant main effect of dance level on past behavior with the upper level dancers scoring higher than the lower level dancers (F(1)=5.750, P=0.025). There was no significant interaction of dance level on BMI (F(1)=0.385, P=0.541), but there was a significant main effect of time on BMI (F(1)=0.385, P=0.028). Discussion: At initial testing, almost two-thirds of the subjects had fitness levels that were below the recommendation, indicating that many university dancers have lower cardiovascular endurance and may benefit from increasing it. The subjects showed a statistically significant improvement in their cardiovascular endurance as indicated by their HRrecovery two months after an education session. Specifically, the upper level dancers showed more improvement in their cardiovascular endurance than the lower level dancers. A single education session may be an efficient way to increase college dancers’ cardiovascular endurance, but more research is needed to further evaluate the effects of an education session. Finally, this study continues to support the need for college dance majors to be educated regarding cardiovascular endurance

Public ground-water supplies in Illinois

Enumeration continues from preceding title.Bulletin No. 40 is published to fill the need for revising and supplementing the contents of Bulletin No. 21 and Supplements I and II, published in 1925, 1938 and 1940 respectively. It is intended not only to include in this Bulletin all of the basic data which were written into Bulletin No. 21 and Supplements I and II but to make Bulletin No. 40 more complete. This is possible because prior to the time of publication of the original Bulletin No. 21 the public-was not aware of the need for accurate records of their water resources. In many cases, no records were kept of water levels and other important well data. At that time a public well could be constructed without notice to the State Department of Public Health. Notice was later made compulsory by law. Possibly ten or fifteen public well supplies were not included in Bulletin No. 21 because their existence was not known to the Water Survey staff

Groundwater resources in Lee and Whiteside Counties

Enumeration continues through succeeding title

Groundwater resources in Lee and Whiteside Counties

Enumeration continues through succeeding title

Cognitive Sparing during the Administration of Whole Brain Radiotherapy and Prophylactic Cranial Irradiation: Current Concepts and Approaches

Whole brain radiotherapy (WBRT) for the palliation of metastases, or as prophylaxis to prevent intracranial metastases, can be associated with subacute and late decline in memory and other cognitive functions. Moreover, these changes are often increased in both frequency and severity when cranial irradiation is combined with the use of systemic or intrathecal chemotherapy. Approaches to preventing or reducing this toxicity include the use of stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) instead of WBRT; dose reduction for PCI; exclusion of the limbic circuit, hippocampal formation, and/or neural stem cell regions of the brain during radiotherapy; avoidance of intrathecal and/or systemic chemotherapy during radiotherapy; the use of high-dose, systemic chemotherapy in lieu of WBRT. This review discusses these concepts in detail as well as providing both neuroanatomic and radiobiologic background relevant to these issues

Cascaded Neural Networks for Identification and Posture-Based Threat Assessment of Armed People

This paper presents a near real-time, multi-stage classifier which identifies people and handguns in images, and then further assesses the threat-level that a person poses based on their body posture. The first stage consists of a convolutional neural network (CNN) that determines whether a person and a handgun are present in an image. If so, a second stage CNN is then used to estimate the pose of the person detected to have a handgun. Lastly, a feed-forward neural network (NN) makes the final threat assessment based on the joint positions of the person’s skeletal pose estimate from the previous stage. On average, this entire pipeline requires less than 1 second of processing time on a desktop computer. The model was trained using approximately 2,000 images and achieved a pistol and person detection rate of 22% and 55%, respectively. The final stage NN correctly identified the severity of the threat with 84% accuracy. The images used to train each stage of our multi-classifier model are available online. With an expanded dataset the accuracy of detecting people and pistols can likely be improved in the future