Regular Recreation Research Articles

Mental health aspect of quality of life in the menopausal transition

Purpose To evaluate factors associated with mental health quality of life (QOL), such as depressed mood, anxiety, poor memory and sleep, among midlife women according to the menopausal status. Material and methods Participants were 500 women aged 40–65 years. Data were collected using socio-demographic questionnaire, Women’s Health Questionnaire (domains of depressed mood-DEP, anxiety-ANX, memory-MEM and sleep-SLE) and Short Form-36 (Mental Composite Score) for assessment of health-related QOL. Factors associated with poorer DEP, ANX, MEM and SLE were examined using adjusted linear regression models. Results In premenopausal women, lower household monthly income (p = .046) was associated with higher level of DEP; higher body mass index (p = .045) was associated with higher ANX; having gynecological illnesses (p = .017) and menopause-related symptoms (p = .039) were associated with poorer MEM; being married (p = .036), drinking alcohol (p = .036) and having more physical activity (p = .041) was associated with better SLE. In postmenopausal women, worse DEP was more likely among women residing in city outskirts (p = .009), who are not married (p = .038) and with sedentary occupations (p = .049); lower education level (p = .030) was associated with more ANX; lower education level (p = .045) and having menopause-related symptoms (p = .044) were associated with poorer MEM; not engaging in regular recreation (p = .031) was associated with better SLE. Conclusions To improve QOL, pre- and postmenopausal women should not only be supported in the management of menopause-specific symptoms. Women should also receive recommendations as to the behavioral and personal changes when approaching the midlife period.

Biotechnological bases of the global ecological crisis

Anthropogenic impacts on nature endangered the normal implementation of its inherent biotic processes, upset the balance of the state of the biosphere. The most important function of any biocenosis, biogeocenosis and biosphere is the regular recreation of living matter and the energy accumulated in it. Meanwhile, it is the soil cover that ultimately takes on the pressure of the flow of industrial and municipal emissions and waste, performing the most important role of a buffer and detoxifier. The soil accumulates heavy metals, pesticides, hydrocarbons, detergents and other chemical pollutants, thereby preventing their entry into natural waters and purifying the atmospheric air from them. On the other hand, the same substances or their derivatives, as well as heavy metals, fluorine, nitrogen and sulfur oxides in their original or transformed form, are intensively bound by mineral and organic substances of the soil, which sharply reduces their availability to plants and, accordingly, the general level of toxicity. Zinc content in soil ranges from 10 to 800 mg / kg, although most often it is 30-50 mg / kg. The greatest buffer capacity and the ability to reduce the negative impact of pollutants on plant and animal organisms are found in soils with a high humus content, with a heavy particle size distribution, high absorption capacity, enriched with lime materials (carbonates).

Counter-mapping theory and its application to a constantly changing Aboriginal stone arrangement site

In pre-contact times, the Gummingurru Aboriginal stone arrangement site on Queensland’s Darling Downs was a complex locale of motif creation and constant maintenance, social alliance formation, male initiation and cultural education. Since European settlement, the arrangements have undergone a raft of changes, yet the site remains a place of constant narration based around regular recreation of motifs, alliance-making and sharing of cultural experiences. As a consequence, the site was and is constantly changing. How do we, as archaeologists, represent such a site, ensuring the rigour required of archaeological place characterisation and yet avoid the ‘fixity’ that comes with conventional archaeological place recording? In this paper, we demonstrate some of the opportunities available to archaeologists to document both the tangible and the intangible elements of an ever-changing, constantly evolving site like Gummingurru. We evaluate different counter-mapping strategies, and technologies ranging from computer-based maps and programs, to 2D and 3D animations. The aim is to explore the relevance of these approaches for archaeology and heritage place representation.

Factors associated with general and health-related quality of life in menopausal transition among women from Serbia

ABSTRACTThis study assessed factors associated with quality of life (QOL) among Serbian peri- and postmenopausal women using two menopause-specific scales. This cross-sectional study included 500 women aged 40–65 years who had a gynecologic check-up in one of two Community Health Centers in Belgrade during February 2014 to January 2015. Women completed: a questionnaire about socio-demographics, habits, and health status; a menopause-specific questionnaire, Utian’s Quality of Life Scale (UQOL); and a Women’s Health Questionnaire (WHQ) and Beck’s Depression Inventory (BDI). Higher education was associated with better occupational UQOL and memory/concentration, but with lower emotional UQOL and more anxiety/fears. City center residency was associated with better occupational and sexual UQOL. Being employed was associated with better occupational UQOL and lower anxiety/fears. Higher income was associated with better emotional UQOL. Not having uterine prolapse, insomnia, or tachycardia was associated with better occupational UQOL and fewer sleep problems. Higher parity was associated with better sexual UQOL. Having regular recreation was associated with better health and sexual UQOL but with more frequent vasomotor symptoms. Leaner women felt more attractive. QOL during the menopausal transition does not entail only somatic symptoms and therefore requires a more comprehensive approach that includes psychosocial underpinnings.

Flight Initiation Distance in a Freshwater Turtle,Chrysemys picta

Abstract Many wild animals are subjected to anthropogenic stressors in the form of direct human disturbances from recreational activities. However, for many species it is unknown how these stressors affect individual fitness and behavior. We tested whether painted turtles (Chrysemys picta), an imperiled freshwater species, would allow closer human approach as measured by the flight initiation distance in the regular presence of humans compared with turtles not exposed to humans. We collected data at a site closed to recreation and at one with regular recreation and found that painted turtles regularly exposed to the presence of humans had significantly shorter average flight initiation distances compared with those at the nonrecreation site. The ability of turtles to tolerate closer human approaches in recreational areas may allow turtle populations to coexist in the presence of some recreational uses.

The Vision for Inclusion

As immediate past president of the board of directors, I would like to welcome you to the inaugural edition of Inclusion, a new ejournal of the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD), and to share with you my vision for this exciting new venture. Inclusion is a peer-reviewed journal that provides a forum for the presentation and discussion of evidenceand research-based interventions and strategies that promote the full inclusion of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in society. Inclusion will address the needs of administrators, clinicians, policy makers, and other professionals dedicated to improving the lives of people with intellectual and related developmental disabilities. In this introductory article, I’d like to reiterate some of the points I made in my presidential address about the meaning of inclusion, my vision for an inclusive society, steps to take to realize that vision, and benchmarks and outcomes of inclusion. It was the discussions generated by the focus on AAIDD’s role in promoting inclusion during my presidential year that led to the idea for this ejournal, and I would like to share with you some of my thoughts on what we can, together, achieve through Inclusion.

Wild West Innovation

see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who You dig. Clint Eastwood, The Good, the Bad and the UglyThe Western movie has been a part of American culture for over a century, almost since the invention of the movie projector. Such an established form of entertainment would seem to be outside the need for business innovation. But it is precisely because the genre is so well trodden that innovation has always been an essential ingredient, producing new plots and new leading that keep the genre fresh.The plot and hero of the western movie have been in constant evolution, with a number of very clear disruptors that shifted the entire genre, punctuating decades of incremental change. Just as the hero of many a Western film rode into town and overturned the established power brokers, new actors regularly rode into Hollywood and changed the established hierarchy of the Western movie business. These changes on the screen and on the back lot are characteristic of the disruption that inno vation cowboys like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg have had on established markets. And today's innovators can take some important lessons from these silver screen disruptors.Western InnovationWorld famous innovator Thomas Edison is widely known as the creator of many of the technologies that led to the motion picture projector, but few know that he also owned the Edison Manufacturing Company, which produced and distributed movies to create commercial demand for the projector. His company created 1,200 films, beginning with short clips and moving on to full-length movies. Some of its earliest hit titles were The Life of an American Cowboy (1902) and The Great Train Robbery (1903), two of the first Western movies ever made ( Matthews 1984 ). In the years that followed, producers and actors created various images of the cowboy hero to appeal to the general public, making cultural icons of men like Bronco Billy Anderson, the star of the The Great Train Robbery, who appeared in 466 short films between 1902 and 1922, and Bill Hart, who brought a range-rough image that included shooting up the bad guys and hard drinking to 74 films from 1907 to 1925. Both of these stars were created from the rough clay of their own personalities and their own ideas about what a cowboy was and did. With more than 500 movies carrying their images to the American public, they created the Hollywood version of this American hero.But this image has never been set in stone, secure against change. Rather, the cowboy image has been open to regular re-creation, innovation, and disruption. New actors brought new styles to the screen, unseating reigning stars and redefining the Western. Hart's rough-clothed cowboy just offthe range was unseated by the newcomer Tom Mix, a clean-shaven, fancy-dressed cowboy who preferred to rope the bad guys rather than shoot them dead. Mix created the dandy cowboy, a wellgroomed, clean-living hero who looked good on the screen but was a far reach from Hart's range cowboy.Mix ' s career was in its latter years when a notable extra appeared on the set of The Great K&A Train Robbery (1926)-a football player from the University of Southern California who looked and acted the part of a strong onscreen cowboy. John Ford, the director of the film, invited Marion Morrison, or Duke, as he was known to friends, to appear in several movies and eventually cast him as the lead in The Big Trail (1930) under his new Hollywood name, John Wayne. Wayne did not wear fancy rhinestone suits, polished silver, or spotless chaps. His image was reminiscent of Bill Hart's rough range cowboy but without the violent vices. This update of the roughand-ready cowboy became the face of the Western for the next 30 years.But there was room for more than one type of cowboy on the silver screen. The 1940s saw the introduction of an innovative new idea in Western entertainment: the singing cowboy. …

Presidential Address 2012 Creating Inclusive Communities: Pathways to the Vision

In the words of Shafik Asante (2002), a former leader of New African Voices in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, ‘‘Inclusion entails recognition of our universal ‘oneness’ and interdependence. Inclusion is recognizing that we are ‘‘one’’ even though we are not the ‘‘same’’ (p. 1). Fighting for inclusion involves assuring that support systems are in place to ease the person’s entry into social and civic life. Providing and maintaining support systems are civic responsibilities, not a favor to the less fortunate. We were all born ‘‘in.’’ Society will immediately improve at the point we honor this truth! Inclusion, therefore, really means accepting, embracing, and celebrating the gifts, talents, and differences in all of us as a means of shaping communities that are welcoming places for all people (Asante, 2002). The notion of inclusion has, in one form or another, been a motivating force for reform in the field of intellectual and developmental disabilities throughout the past 30 years. Conceptually, inclusion has evolved from an aspiration linked to place to one tied to participation, choice, and relationships. Probably the earliest expression of the idea of normalization was advanced by Bengt Nirje (1969/ 1994). The notion was further elaborated on in 1972 by Wolf Wolfensberger in his piece on normalization. He used the concept of normalization or social role valorization to criticize, among other things, infantilizing decorations and language and inadequate day activities. As the concept of normalization was refined and honed, it spawned more encompassing aspirations, such as community integration and community membership (Bradley, Ashbaugh, & Blaney, 1994). The notion of community integration was directly related to the movement of people out of institutions and implied a re-entry by those who had been excluded. Likewise, community membership implied joining a fellowship from which one had been alienated. Conceptions that stressed integration and community-based services also influenced public policy, which in turn influenced practice. Phrases such as ‘‘least restrictive environment’’ and ‘‘mainstreaming’’ emerged as part of the landmark right to education legislation. Class action lawsuits brought during the 1970s also echoed these notions, including the Halderman v. Pennhurst (1977) litigation, which found a right to habilitation in the community. These powerful legal ideals had a transformative impact on the delivery of educational as well as residential and day services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. As fewer and fewer children and adults left their communities to receive services and as institutional populations began a precipitous decline, the ideals that emerged to goad the system had less to do with opposition to a dominant norm (e.g., exclusion, extrusion, institutionalization, alienation) and more to do with affirmative notions of equality and the accommodation of differences. No longer was the system exhorted to provide better surroundings and opportunities than those available in the institutions, but to facilitate supports that would allow people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to lead lives available to all other citizens; in other words, to invite in those who had been traditionally locked out of our communities. The basis for judgment is now whether people with disabilities are able to enjoy such shared ‘‘goods’’ as relationships, friendships, home ownership, real jobs, spiritual fulfillment, and exercise of personal choice. These assumptions about what constitutes satisfying life have come to be known as inclusion (Bradley, 2000). The concept is relevant to the whole of society in that all people are unique with unique capacities. Everyone can learn and grow. Everyone has gifts to share and desire opportunities to make contributions. These assumptions do apply to everyone, no matter who they are. With this as a backdrop, the INTELLECTUAL AND DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES VOLUME 49, NUMBER 5: 360–364 | OCTOBER 2011

School Physical Education and Physical Fitness: A Study of Secondary School Students in Gaborone, Botswana

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in English; abstract also in Chinese.
 Physical Education (PE) was introduced into Botswana junior secondary schools as a curriculum subject eight years ago. Although it has the status of an optional subject, it appears to enjoy wide acceptability in many schools. One would normally expect the effects of participation in classroom physical education on students to depend on the PE curriculum’s physical activity contents and how these activity contents are implemented. The study was aimed assessing the role of school PE programme in Botswana secondary schools in promoting the physical fitness levels of students. It involved 300 male Junior secondary school students in Botswana. Twenty students each were selected from 15 schools. The 20 from each school comprised 10 second and third year students offering PE as a subject and another 10 from the same years not offering PE (Non-PE). The students from each school were randomly selected from among the regular recreation participants in each school. The details and demands of the study and tests were carefully explained to the students and their PE teachers after which the school’s PE teacher signed the informed consent form on behalf of the students. Data were collected on health Fitness components of body weight, BMI, Hand grip strength, flexibility, abdominal muscle endurance and cardio-respiratory endurance using established and acknowledged tests, instruments and protocols. Null hypothesis was set for each of the measured variables with the alpha level set at p<0.05. Data were analysed for means, standard deviations and the difference between groups’ means using the independent groups t test. The results showed that the PE group was significantly superior to the Non-PE group in grip strength, abdominal muscle endurance and cardio-respiratory endurance. The two groups were not significantly different in age, body weight, BMI and flexibility. It was concluded that participation in school PE among urban male junior secondary school students in Botswana enhanced selected physical fitness components. This enhancement could be specifically attributed to the regular participation in the physical activities inherent in the PE subject and/or the PE students’ increased and motivated participation in the schools’ recreational and sporting activities.
 本文旨在探討非洲博茨瓦納學校體育和體適能，結果顯示學校體育有助提升學童的體適能，以及參與康體活動的動機。

Participation in Competitive Sport and Sport Leisure Among Working Inhabitants of Warsaw Based on Selected Groups

Participation in Competitive Sport and Sport Leisure Among Working Inhabitants of Warsaw Based on Selected Groups Introduction. The aim of this work was to explore sports activities among various socio-professional groups based on the example of the inhabitants of Warsaw. Material and methods. The sample comprised of 6547 inhabitants of Warsaw - representatives of 16 professional groups. The study was conducted with the use of an especially designed questionnaire, featuring two sections - the first one devoted to organised sport, and the second and on the participation in sport leisure (regular, periodical, sporadic) within the previous year. In keeping with the European definition, sport is understood as both competitive sport, and regular sport leisure or recreation. The survey was carried out by trained interviewers exclusively in March and November 2006-2008. Results. Participation in sport activities among Poles increased not only compared to other European countries, but also to previous Polish studies, as it pertained to 43% of Warsaw inhabitants. The proportion of Warsaw residents involved in organised sport amounted to 6%, and those involved in regular recreation to 41%. Pupils and students are the most active both in sport and in leisure. Nearly 19% of pupils and nearly 8% of students are involved in organised sport activities, while for sport leisure this proportion amounts to 55% and 50% respectively. In the case of both competitive sport activities and leisure the number of men exceeds the number of women involved in them. Conclusions. Sport activities that Poles involve in are still not close to the recommended WHO and ATMS norms.