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Restoring ‘Love of Life’ Through Outdoor Adventures: A Biophilic Approach
Get PDFThis study, through the concept of biophilia, examines how we can restore a ‘love of life’ in a world often characterised by rationalisation, destruction and alienation from self and nature. Specifically, we observe how outdoor adventures during travels might contribute to the development of biophilic feelings. To this end, we employed a hermeneutic phenomenological approach to analyse the narratives from nine participants in the UK, Germany and Serbia. The findings suggest that adventure activities in the outdoors foster the development of meaningful relationships with the self, other humans and non-human nature, all contributing to the enhancement of eudaimonic wellbeing. The study adds to the tourism literature by arguing that more biophilic and ecological approaches, hitherto underutilised in studying the benefits of tourism from a positive psychology perspective, might serve as a lens through which to explore meaningful social transformation in times of polycrises
Stigma power, race and public accountability: an exploration of the hard lockdown of public housing in Melbourne
Get PDFThis study explores the intersection between stigma and accountability in the context of a disaster. We draw on the notion of stigma power to explore the COVID-19 pandemic-related hard lockdown of nine public housing towers in Melbourne, Australia, in July 2020. We investigate how stigma is implicated in the construction and operationalisation of systems of public accountability in relation to this disaster. The study adopts a qualitative approach and data is collected from secondary sources (including the Victorian Ombudsman’s report, media reports and social media posts) and 16 in-depth interviews with residents and a wide range of stakeholders. Our findings highlight the complexity of stigma which attaches to public housing and its residents and shows how stigma is drawn upon to create an image of residents as a danger to the public who are not owed care and accountability but rather need to be controlled, isolated and made to account for themselves. The study also shows how residents demonstrate care and accountability to themselves through resistance and how resistance to stigma drives the demand for accountability. This study is original as it provides new insights into the intersection between stigma and accountability particularly during times of crisis
Strength Training Practices in Amateur and Professional Boxing
Get PDFBeattie, K and Ruddock, AD. Strength training practices in amateur and professional boxing. J Strength Cond Res 39(6): 672–679, 2025—Previous research has highlighted that force development are key contributors to punch impact force in boxing; however, the strength training practices within the sport remain unclear. Identifying such practices is an important first step in the development of accessible educational resources and recommendations to develop strength at all standards in boxing. The aim of this study was to investigate strength training practices in amateur and professional boxing. Seventy-two trainers or support staff working in amateur or professional boxing completed an online survey comprising of 7 sections: Study Information and Informed Consent, Subject Information, Perceptions of Strength Training, Strength Training Characteristics, Power Training Characteristics, and Strength and Power Assessment. Frequency analysis was used to report responses to fixed-response questions, and thematic analysis was applied to 1 open-ended question. The main findings of this study demonstrate that the majority of practitioners (a) implemented strength training to improve “punching power” and muscular endurance and reduce the likelihood of injury (72–88%); (b) used punch-specific and reactive-strength training the most in programming (93%); (c) acknowledged that maximal-strength training improves “punching power” (84%), yet programmed it the least in training; and (d) highlighted that there was a fear in boxing that maximum-strength training may lead to unwanted increases in muscle mass and cited a lack of resources as a reason for maximal-strength training not being used. As there is a large contingent of volunteer practitioners in boxing without professional S&C or sport science accreditations (78%), it is recommended that national governing bodies provide adequate training and education to practitioners
An application of matching algorithms to generalize small-area estimates of chronic pain prevalence to neighbourhoods across England
Get PDFBackground
Local decision-makers lack granular data on the prevalence of chronic pain in their populations. We applied matching methods to generalize estimates from one local survey in England to other neighborhoods across the country with a similar sociodemographic composition.
Methods
We used propensity score matching to match lower-layer super output areas (LSOA) across England with 230 surveyed LSOAs in North Staffordshire by age, sex, ethnicity, deprivation, and rurality. LSOA-specific crude prevalence of chronic pain and high-impact chronic pain in adults aged 35+ years were estimated and mapped for matched LSOAs.
Results
Satisfactory matching was achieved for 24 871 of 31 580 LSOAs (79%). The 6709 LSOAs identified as either “off common support” or unmatched were principally inner-city neighborhoods with younger, more ethnically diverse populations. LSOA-specific estimates of chronic pain and high impact chronic pain ranged from 14% to 52% and from 4% to 31% respectively. Integrated Care Board estimates ranged from 27% to 38% and from 10% to 18%, respectively. Estimates for England were 31.9% and 12.6%, respectively.
Conclusions
Using matching methods we have produced the first detailed map of the distribution of chronic pain in England but with several strong assumptions. Our estimates highlight substantial variation in prevalence within ICBs
Addressing Potential Researcher Distress in Nurse‐Led Research: Ethical Considerations and Practical Strategies
Get PDFAims: To discuss the need for nurse researchers to consider to the potential for psychological distress when conducting studies on sensitive topics. Design: Discursive paper. Methods: Drawing from existing literature, we highlight the ethical obligations of researchers to recognise and manage their emotional responses, especially as these can potentially lead to burnout and re‐traumatization. In this paper, we propose practical strategies to mitigate these risks, including trauma‐informed practices, peer support systems, structured mentorship and the establishment of vicarious trauma (VT) plans. Conclusion: Prioritising researcher well‐being in nursing research is essential for ethical practices and the mental health of those involved in undertaking research in sensitive areas. Implications for the Profession and/or Patient Care: Support strategies, such as formal team debriefings, resilience training, VT plans and peer support, can foster safer and healthier research environments, when researching in sensitive areas
Fractured stories and voices of the future; coproduced research with young children and trees
Get PDFWhat does it mean to bring very young children into conversations about climate change? Voices of the Future was a 3-year, multi-site project based in the UK, aiming to investigate treescapes through participatory research with children and young people. This paper focuses on a strand of the project that explored playing and making in and with treescapes, with children aged under 5 years and their grownups. We interrogate what it looks like to do coproduced participatory research about sustainable futures with young children and some of the tensions and contradictions that this kind of work brings into sharper relief. In particular, we describe moments of ‘off-task-ness’, and the resultant ways in which trees and children came in-and-out of focus in the research, as important for surfacing what we have called ‘fractured stories’. Fractured stories enabled us to imagine otherwise and to ask different questions. As a result, we offer five working principles, shaped by and emerging from our research and the fractured stories it produced, which may act as guidance for both future scholarship and practice with young children and trees
Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) for Data Collection for Pediatric Radiotherapy [abstract only]
No full textSeeing Images, Reading Images: Circularity, Mirroring, and the Artwork in Dario Argento’s Cinema
Get PDFSince Dario Argento’s directorial debut, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, visual composition has played a key role in his work, as has the strict correlation between visual perception and image interpretation. Specifically, what emerges from Argento’s filmography since the early 1970s is the director’s ability to play with the ambivalence of pictorial images and techniques within a film in a specific duality that serves narrative purposes on the one hand, while challenging the self-enclosed mediality of classical cinematic narration on the other. In this regard, the diegetic art-historical repertoire, as well as the pictorial iconography and techniques displayed in Argento’s oeuvre, appear to transfer the dramatic tension from the narrative to the cinematic language, making the images the ultimate riddle to be solved. In a chosen corpus of the director’s work, it is evident that this ambivalence is already a prominent theme from the opening credit sequences. These sequences serve both a narrative and metanarrative function by foreshadowing the main themes of the films in question, and by serving as introductions to the aesthetic “textures” of the films through visual representation.
The purpose of this article is to examine specific instances in Argento’s oeuvre, namely Four Flies on Grey Velvet, Deep Red, Trauma and, most notably, The Stendhal Syndrome, where the visual symbols and methods shown in the opening credit sequences serve the defined metanarrative objectives. Additionally, it aims to explore the extent to which this metanarrative function of artistic references extends beyond the opening credits in these films. The director’s cinema exhibits aesthetic and narrative circularity by repeatedly framing and reworking the same visual motifs developed in the opening credits in mirror-like sequences throughout key scenes. These motifs ultimately resurface in the epilogue, serving as a clear example of this circularity. This article demonstrates how these examples from Argento’s work exemplify the core of the director’s comprehensive production of a harmonious integration of narrative and visuals, which can effectively communicate a self-reflexive message about the essence of the shown images and their potential interpretation
Childhood air pollution exposure is related to cognitive, educational and mental health outcomes in childhood and adolescence: a longitudinal birth cohort study
Get PDFBackgroundA growing body of evidence supports an association between air pollution exposure and adverse mental health outcomes, especially in adulthood however, very little is known about the effects of early life air pollution exposure during childhood. We examined longitudinal associations between the extent and timing of children's annual air pollution exposure from conception to age 10 years and a wide range of cognitive, educational and mental health outcomes in childhood and adolescence that were assessed prospectively as part of a large birth cohort study.MethodsWe linked historical air pollution data (μg.m-3) from pregnancy to age 10 years (1976-1987) using the addresses of all cohort members (n=1,265) of the Christchurch Health and Development Study (CHDS) who were born in New Zealand in mid-1977. Latent Class Growth Mixture Models were used to characterise different trajectories of air pollution exposure from the prenatal period to age 10 years. We then examined associations between these air pollution exposure trajectories and 16 outcomes in childhood and adolescence using R Studio and Stata V18.FindingsFour air pollution exposure trajectories were identified: i) low, ii) persistently high, iii) high prenatal and postnatal, and iv) elevated pre-school exposure. While some associations were attenuated, after adjusting for a variety of covariates spanning childhood, family sociodemographic background and family functioning characteristics, several associations remained. Relative to the lowest exposure trajectory, persistently high and high prenatal and postnatal exposure were both related to attentional problems. High prenatal and postnatal was also related to higher risk of substance abuse. Elevated pre-school exposure was associated with conduct problems, lower educational attainment and substance abuse and persistently high childhood exposure increased risk of substance abuse.ConclusionsOur study highlights potential adverse and longer-term impacts of air pollution exposure during childhood on subsequent development in later life