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Anthocyanin-Rich Supplementation: Emerging Evidence of Strong Potential for Sport and Exercise Nutrition
Get PDFDark-coloured fruits, especially berries, have abundant presence of the polyphenol anthocyanin which have been show to provide health benefits. Studies with the berry blackcurrant have provided notable observations with application for athletes and physically active individuals. Alterations in exercise-induced substrate oxidation, exercise performance of repeated high-intensity running and cycling time-trial and cardiovascular function at rest and during exercise were observed with intake of New Zealand blackcurrant. The dynamic plasma bioavailability of the blackcurrant anthocyanins and the anthocyanin-derived metabolites must have changed cell function to provide meaningful in-vivo physiological effects. This perspective will reflect on the research studies for obtaining the applied in-vivo effects by intake of anthocyanin-rich supplementation, the issue of individual responses, and the emerging strong potential of anthocyanins for sport and exercise nutrition. Future work with repeated intake of known amount and type of anthocyanins, gut microbiota handling of anthocyanins, and coinciding measurements of plasma anthocyanin and anthocyanin-derived metabolites and in-vivo cell function will be required to inform our understanding for the unique potential of anthocyanins as a nutritional ergogenic aid for delivering meaningful effects for a wide range of athletes and physically active individuals
Joan Littlewood and Ariane Mnouchkine against the canon: Developing the actors’ social representations through clowning
Get PDFThe investigation of how Joan Littlewood and Ariane Mnouchkine used clowning to develop actors with social purposes responds to the current interest in the neglected counterhegemonic training processes of women. It also contributes to current efforts to decolonise and decentre actor training. Using Theatre Workshop’s Oh What A Lovely War (1963) and Théâtre du Soleil’s Les Clowns (1969) as exemplars, this article traces how Littlewood and Mnouchkine trained actors on clowning to theatricalise social struggles and develop their social representations. Through ensemble improvisations that exploited clown devices such as the master-servant, clown logic, object misuse, misfitness, and the flop the actors tackled their biases in two stages: the serious/comedic dissonance alienated the actor to critically explore social gests, and the process of finding the appropriate social representations during group improvisations. Contemporary actor training that wishes to invite students to explore how their body, voice and imagination in performance can resist dominant ideologies and historical stereotypes might proliferate from the use of clowning to create social representations. The tracing of Mnouchkine’s and Littlewood’s clown training processes through the deconstruction of their key works, can inspire and offer insights to pedagogues who wish to decolonise and decentre their processes
Further validation of the 18-item Portuguese CompACT scale using a multi-sample design: Confirmatory Factor Analysis and correlates of psychological flexibility
Get PDFAn 18-item Portuguese-language version of the CompACT scale has recently been proposed for the Portuguese population. This study aims at conducting the first Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Portuguese CompACT in participants from two different samples (community adults and women in the post-partum period; total N = 1090). Given that the CompACT had yet to be subjected to gender invariance testing, the present study also presents an invariance analysis between male and female community participants. The measurement invariance of the Portuguese CompACT between community and post-partum women was also examined. The current study additionally explored the scale’s relationships with theoretically relevant outcomes associated in the literature with psychological flexibility. Results showed that the three-factor correlated model of the Portuguese CompACT was an adequate fit for the data taken from the complete sample, with most items presenting statistically and practically significant loading values. The Portuguese CompACT presented acceptable to good internal consistencies for all factors - Openness to Experience (OE), Behavioral Awareness (BA), and Valued Action (VA). Full measurement invariance was found, with results further indicating that community women presented lower scores in BA than community men, and that women in the post-partum period scored higher than community women in BA and VA, and lower in OE. The three subscales of the Portuguese CompACT, that underpin the overarching construct of psychological flexibility, demonstrated different patterns of association from one another with various aspects of individual functioning. Although those associations were in the expected directions with flexibility being associated with lower distress, some forms of psychological flexibility assessed by the CompACT were not significantly associated with measures of positive affect or resilience. This result underscores the difficulty of measuring psychological flexibility as a single construct, as it comprises a number of sub-component processes. Further implications of findings are discussed
Creating Meaningful Interactions for Young Children, Older Friends, and Nursery School Practitioners within an Intergenerational Project
Get PDFIntergenerational practice, where children and older adults come together for shared activities, has grown in popularity in many Western countries. However, research about intergenerational practice, particularly in the UK, is limited. This paper reports on the findings from an exploratory case study about a small intergenerational project between a maintained nursery school and a residential care home for older adults with dementia in the South-East of England. The methodology was informed by a narrative dialogic approach drawing on the work of Bakhtin. Data was collected using naturalistic observations of children's weekly visits to the care home and qualitative interviews with nursery school practitioners. The analysis explores how meaningful interactions were created between the children, the older adults, and the nursery school practitioners. Our findings suggest that singing, unstructured moments, continuity, context (open spaces/flexible sessions), and objects contribute to meaningful interactions between young children and older adults. The ability to be flexible and "go with the moment" were identified as key skills for practitioners supporting children and older adults. We conclude that intergenerational projects afford benefits not just for children and older adults, but also for practitioners in the form of "emotional rewards". The importance of re-establishing intergenerational practice is recognised, as well as the ways in which barriers created by social distancing might safely be addressed through the use of outdoor spaces and digital technologies
Negative Focus, Self-Doubt, and Issues of ‘Tool Proficiency’: Beginner-Coaches’ Reflections on Reflective Practice
Get PDFIn the field of sports coaching education and learning, reflective practice is considered central to transforming experience and knowledge into expertise, and many governing bodies execute this through professional development and specific guidelines (Vallance, 2019). However, whilst the general consensus within academia and the vocational sector of coaching continue to espouse this approach, there is a lack of evidence to suggest how this is useful for beginner-coaches (defined as emerging-new, with less than three years of experience) as studies generally focus on expert coaches and oftentimes sit within the context of performance and/or elite sport. This study, therefore, aimed to explore the benefits and limitations of reflective practice, and to identify aspects of ideal learning for in-situ, practice-based context as perceived by beginner-coaches who operate more within recreational (although still competitive) sport fields. Situated within the UK context, the methodology comprised of semi-structured interviews conducted with six beginner-coaches. The findings demonstrated that whilst there were tangible benefits to the use of reflective practice (such as perceived additional competency and critical thinking), there were also limitations centred on time constraints, and an over-focus on negative emotions with a subsequent adverse impact on self-confidence and anxiety. The implications, including recommendations and thoughts for the future, are outlined within the paper
Is Iris Murdoch a Philosophical Novelist?
No full textAn outstanding reference source to the full span of Murdoch's work, comprising 37 specially commissioned chapters written by an international team of leading scholars. This is the first volume to do justice to the incredibly rich and wide-ranging nature of her work
A profile of children’s physical activity data from the 2012 and 2015 health survey for England
Get PDFLow childhood physical activity levels constitute an important modifiable risk for adult non-communicable disease incidence and subsequent socio-economic burden, but few publications have explored age and sex related patterns within the UK population. The aims were to profile child physical activity data from the Health Survey for England from 2012 (1,732 respondents) and 2015 (5,346 respondents). Methods: Reported physical activity episodes were converted to metabolic equivalents with reference to child-specific compendiums. Physical activity levels were aggregated for each domain, and again to produce total physical activity estimates. Contributions from each domain to total physical activity were explored, stratifying for age, sex, socio-economic deprivation, ethnicity, and weight status. Further analyses were run stratifying for physical activity levels. Few differences were detected between the survey iterations. Results: Boys reported higher absolute levels of physical activity at all ages and across all domains. For boys and girls, informal activity reduces with age. For boys this reduction is largely mitigated by increased formal sport, but this is not the case for girls. Absolute levels of school activity and active travel remained consistent regardless of total physical activity, thereby comprising an increasingly important proportion of total physical activity for less active children. Conclusions: We recommend a specific focus on establishing and maintaining girl’s participation in formal sport thorough their teenage years, and a recognition and consolidation of the important role played by active travel and school-based physical activity for the least active children
The effects of acute high-intensity aerobic exercise on cognitive performance: A structured narrative review
Get PDFIt is well established that acute moderate-intensity exercise improves cognitive performance. However, the effects of acute high-intensity aerobic exercise on cognitive performance have not been well characterized. In this review, we summarize the literature investigating the exercise-cognition interaction, especially focusing on high-intensity aerobic exercise. We discuss methodological and physiological factors that potentially mediate cognitive performance in response to high-intensity exercise. We propose that the effects of high-intensity exercise on cognitive performance are primarily affected by the timing of cognitive task (during vs. after exercise, and the time delay after exercise). In particular, cognitive performance is more likely to be impaired during high-intensity exercise when both cognitive and physiological demands are high and completed simultaneously (i.e., the dual-task paradigm). The effects may also be affected by the type of cognitive task, physical fitness, exercise mode/duration, and age. Second, we suggest that interactions between changes in regional cerebral blood flow (CBF), cerebral oxygenation, cerebral metabolism, neuromodulation by neurotransmitters/neurotrophic factors, and a variety of psychological factors are promising candidates that determine cognitive performance in response to acute high-intensity exercise. The present review has implications for recreational, sporting, and occupational activities where high cognitive and physiological demands are required to be completed concurrently
Creating a hierarchy of mental health stigma: testing the effect of psychiatric diagnosis on stigma
Get PDFLevels of mental health stigma experienced can vary as a function of the presenting mental health problem (e.g. diagnosis and symptoms). However, these studies are limited because they exclusively use pairwise comparisons. A more comprehensive examination of diagnosis-specific stigma is needed. The aim of our study was to determine how levels of mental health stigma vary in relation to a number of psychiatric diagnoses, and identify what attributions predict levels of diagnosis-specific stigma. We conducted an online survey with members of the public. Participants were assessed in terms of how much stigma they had, and their attributions toward, nine different case vignettes, each describing a different mental health diagnosis. We recruited 665 participants. After controlling for social desirability bias and key demographic variables, we found that mental health stigma varied in relation to psychiatric diagnosis. Schizophrenia and antisocial personality disorder were the most stigmatised diagnoses, and depression, generalised anxiety disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder were the least stigmatised diagnoses. No single attribution predicted stigma across diagnoses, but fear was the most consistent predictor. Assessing mental health stigma as a single concept masks significant between-diagnosis variability. Anti-stigma campaigns are likely to be most successful if they target fearful attributions