Group items tagged

Physical inactivity has been deemed a significant, contributing factor to childhood overweight and obesity. In recent years, many school systems removed recess and/or physical education from their curriculum due to growing pressure to increase academic scores. With the vast majority of children’s time spent in school, alternative strategies to re-introduce physical activity back into schools are necessary. A creative yet underutilized solution to engage children in physical activity may be in before-school programs. The objective of the proposed study is to examine the effect of an unstructured, moderate to vigorous, before-school physical activity program on academic performance, classroom behavior, emotions, and other health related measures.

Physical inactivity has been deemed a significant, contributing factor to childhood overweight and obesity. In recent years, many school systems removed recess and/or physical education from their curriculum due to growing pressure to increase academic scores. With the vast majority of children’s time spent in school, alternative strategies to re-introduce physical activity back into schools are necessary. A creative yet underutilized solution to engage children in physical activity may be in before-school programs. The objective of the proposed study is to examine the effect of an unstructured, moderate to vigorous, before-school physical activity program on academic performance, classroom behavior, emotions, and other health related measures.

A national mail survey of adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 (n = 876) was conducted immediately before the U.S. presidential election (October 2012) to investigate socialization agents that may correlate with political and civic engagement. The relative importance of potential correlates of engagement including demographics, parents, peers, schools, religion, traditional media, social networks, and digital communication were evaluated. Regression analysis revealed that civically engaged youth identify with a religion, participate in civic education activities at school and extracurricular activities, take action (e.g., boycotting or buycotting), develop attitudes about citizenship, and engage in online/social media political activities. Politically engaged youth come from higher income households, discuss news and politics, take action, and are very prone to engage in online/social media political activities. While a wider range of activities appear to be related to civic engagement, those who are politically engaged appear to have a strong interest in online media usage. Implications are discussed.

A national mail survey of adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 (n = 876) was conducted immediately before the U.S. presidential election (October 2012) to investigate socialization agents that may correlate with political and civic engagement. The relative importance of potential correlates of engagement including demographics, parents, peers, schools, religion, traditional media, social networks, and digital communication were evaluated. Regression analysis revealed that civically engaged youth identify with a religion, participate in civic education activities at school and extracurricular activities, take action (e.g., boycotting or buycotting), develop attitudes about citizenship, and engage in online/social media political activities. Politically engaged youth come from higher income households, discuss news and politics, take action, and are very prone to engage in online/social media political activities. While a wider range of activities appear to be related to civic engagement, those who are politically engaged appear to have a strong interest in online media usage. Implications are discussed.

Although concern is often expressed that frequent media exposure may adversely affect the self-esteem and racial self-esteem of African American youths, evidence to support this assumption has been limited. To examine this issue, the author collected data among 156 African American high school students, testing connections among racial self-esteem, three dimensions of self-esteem, and multiple forms of media use. Whereas initial comparisons revealed media use to be a negative correlate of self-esteem, further analysis demonstrated that this association varied depending on the media genre and the domain of self in question, the content of students' media diets, and the individual characteristics of the viewer. In addition, both stronger identification with popular Black characters and greater religiosity emerged as possible protective factors.

"Individual Characteristics" "African American Students" "Adolescents" "Stereotypes" "High School Students" "Mass Media"

Although concern is often expressed that frequent media exposure may adversely affect the self-esteem and racial self-esteem of African American youths, evidence to support this assumption has been limited. To examine this issue, the author collected data among 156 African American high school students, testing connections among racial self-esteem, three dimensions of self-esteem, and multiple forms of media use. Whereas initial comparisons revealed media use to be a negative correlate of self-esteem, further analysis demonstrated that this association varied depending on the media genre and the domain of self in question, the content of students' media diets, and the individual characteristics of the viewer. In addition, both stronger identification with popular Black characters and greater religiosity emerged as possible protective factors.

On a hot afternoon in July 2012, Giuseppe Vercellotti was digging up bones near the wall of an abandoned medieval church here, thinking about getting a cold drink, when he heard his students call his name. Faces glistening with sweat, they told him that they had found something strange buried half a meter down. Vercellotti took a look and saw a layer of lime, used in ancient times to squelch the stench of rotting corpses. When he tapped the hard layer with his trowel, it sounded hollow. "We immediately thought it was a mass grave," says Vercellotti, a biological anthropologist at Ohio State University, Columbus, who co-leads a field school here. "We instructors were all excited and hopeful."

On a hot afternoon in July 2012, Giuseppe Vercellotti was digging up bones near the wall of an abandoned medieval church here, thinking about getting a cold drink, when he heard his students call his name. Faces glistening with sweat, they told him that they had found something strange buried half a meter down. Vercellotti took a look and saw a layer of lime, used in ancient times to squelch the stench of rotting corpses. When he tapped the hard layer with his trowel, it sounded hollow. "We immediately thought it was a mass grave," says Vercellotti, a biological anthropologist at Ohio State University, Columbus, who co-leads a field school here. "We instructors were all excited and hopeful."

FOR THE PAST SIXTEEN YEARS, the Alabama Historical Commission (AHC), the Alabama Trust for Historic Preservation (ATHP), and Alabama Heritage magazine have joined forces to publicize historic places endangered by neglect, lack of funds, or demolition. This year's Places in Peril highlights ten significant properties dating from the late 1840s to the late 1940s, including a "modern" apartment complex, a theater, a railroad depot, a church and community center, a hardware store, a collection of citywide schools, a slave cemetery, a historic district, an entire community, and an antebellum house. Inspired by the National Trust for Historic Preservation's America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places list, Places in Peril generates awareness of the threats facing Alabama's important historic resources.

FOR THE PAST SIXTEEN YEARS, the Alabama Historical Commission (AHC), the Alabama Trust for Historic Preservation (ATHP), and Alabama Heritage magazine have joined forces to publicize historic places endangered by neglect, lack of funds, or demolition. This year's Places in Peril highlights ten significant properties dating from the late 1840s to the late 1940s, including a "modern" apartment complex, a theater, a railroad depot, a church and community center, a hardware store, a collection of citywide schools, a slave cemetery, a historic district, an entire community, and an antebellum house. Inspired by the National Trust for Historic Preservation's America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places list, Places in Peril generates awareness of the threats facing Alabama's important historic resources.

To understand the persistence of racial disparities across multiple domains (e.g., residential location, schooling, employment, health, housing, credit, and justice) and to develop effective remedies, we must recognize that these domains are reciprocally related and comprise an integrated system. The limited long-run success of government social policies to advance racial justice is due in part to the ad hoc nature of policy responses to various forms of racial discrimination. Drawing on a systems perspective, I show that race discrimination is a system whose emergent properties reinforce the effects of their components. The emergent property of a system of race-linked disparities is über discrimination-a meta-level phenomenon that shapes our culture, cognitions, and institutions, thereby distorting whether and how we perceive and make sense of racial disparities. Viewing within-domain disparities as part of a discrimination system requires better-specified analytic models. While the existence of an emergent system of über discrimination increases the difficulty of eliminating racial disparities, a systems perspective points to strategies to attack that system. These include identifying and intervening at leverage points, implementing interventions to operate simultaneously across subsystems, isolating subsystems from the larger discrimination system, and directly challenging the processes through which emergent discrimination strengthens within-subsystem disparities.

This focuses on the school system and the rates of violence, which can be related to the beautification process.

A review of efforts at social system change in 526 universal competence-promotion outcome studies indicated that 64% of the interventions attempted some type of microsystemic or mesosystemic change in

! City bountiful : a century of community gardening in America. [Laura J Lawson] -- Since the 1890s, providing places for people to garden has been an inventive strategy to improve American urban conditions. There have been vacant-lot gardens, and school gardens.

Social media and the movement of activism towards the maintenance of the environment.