• An investigation of a novel three-dimensional activity monitor to predict free-living energy expenditure.

      Carter, James; Wilkinson, David; Blacker, Sam; Rayson, Mark; Bilzon, James; Izard, Rachel; Coward, Andy; Wright, Antony; Nevill, Alan M.; Rennie, Kirsten; et al. (Routledge (Taylor & Francis), 2008)
      The aim of this study was to assess the capability of the 3dNXTM accelerometer to predict energy expenditure in two separate, free-living cohorts. Twenty-three adolescents and 14 young adults took a single dose of doubly labelled water and wore a 3dNXTM activity monitor during waking hours for a 10-day period while carrying out their normal routines. Multiple linear regression with backward elimination was used to establish the strength of the associations between various indices of energy expenditure, physical activity counts, and anthropometric variables. 3dNXTM output accounted for 27% and 35% of the variance in the total energy expenditure of the adolescent and young adult cohort, respectively. The explained variance increased to 78%, with a standard error of estimate of 7%, when 3dNXTM output was combined with body composition variables. The 3dNXTM accelerometer can be used to predict free-living daily energy expenditure with a standard error of estimate of 1.65 MJ in adolescents and 1.52 MJ in young adults. The inclusion of anthropometric variables reduces the error to approximately 1 MJ. Although it remains to cross-validate these models in other populations, early indications suggest that the 3dNXTM provides a useful method of predicting energy expenditure in free-living individuals.
    • Giving up reading: re-imagining reading with young adult readers.

      Kendall, Alex (Lancaster: Lancaster University / Stevenage: Avantibooks, 2008)
      Alex is associate dean at the University of Wolverhampton with responsibility for undergraduate awards, post-compulsory teacher education and the Black Country Skills for Life professional development centre, BLEND. Alex also teaches [less than she would like] on the literacy & language CPD programmes at Wolverhampton. Background: In this article I explore the thoughts and reflections of young adults from the Black Country in the West Midlands about what it means to read and to be a reader. Beginning with discussions of newspaper reading I suggest that whilst the participants in this study were likely to feel comfortable with their 'technical skills' as readers they were not always so confident in their abilities to 'grasp', as they saw it, the 'correct' meanings of the texts they read, most Especially those they encountered in the course of their studies at college. Drawing on data collected in relation to 'reading for pleasure' begin to consider the ways in which new media textualities, in this case gaming, may offer young adults new ways of being as readers that although both pleasurable and motivating find little legitimate expression within educational spaces. I make use of Gee's notions of active and critical learning to suggest that if the reading subject identities constructed through schooled literacy are to be meaningful (valued) and useful (permit learners to exercise power as readers perhaps even in ways that are not predictable, or we I dare to say, desirable) to young adult readers then a broader range of theoretical understandings must be brought to bear on practice. These seem pertinent in the environment of Web 2.0 (O'Reilly, 2007) and Media 2 .0 (McDougall, 2007; Gauntlett 2008) which seems at once to offer both exciting new possibilities for young people to enact reading (and writing) and to further trouble the possibility of a proximal relationship between educational and cultural life world literacy identities. I go on to consider what might usefully be learnt about reading by beginning to theorise the enjoyment young adults find in out of college textual experience. The findings of this article may be of interest to those involved in the teaching of reading as they illustrate compellingly the need for pedagogical approaches to reading and literacy that not only take serious account of the social practices through which readers experience text but which rigorously theorise the making and taking of meaning and in so doing teach learners to "really read" ( Gee, 2003: 16).
    • Identification of extensive genomic loss and gain by comparative genomic hybridisation in malignant astrocytoma in children and young adults.

      Warr, Tracy; Ward, Samantha; Burrows, J.; Harding, Brian; Wilkins, Peter; Harkness, William; Hayward, Richard; Darling, John L.; Thomas, David G. (Wiley Interscience, 2001)
      Although astrocytomas are the most common central nervous system tumours in all age groups, there is substantial evidence that tumours arising in young patients (< 25 years of age) do not have the same genetic abnormalities that are characteristic of tumours in older patients. Furthermore, novel, consistent changes have not been identified in astrocytomas in children and young adults. We analysed 13 malignant astrocytomas from young patients using comparative genomic hybridisation. Regions of genomic imbalance were identified in 10 cases. The most common recurrent copy number aberrations were loss of 16p (54% of cases), 17p (38%), 19p (38%), and 22 (38%) and gain on 2q (38%), 12q (38%), 13 (38%), 4q (31%), 5q (31%), and 8q (31%). Seven regions of high copy number amplification were observed at 8q21-22 (three cases), 7q22-23 (two cases), and 1p21-22, 2q22, 12q13-pter, 12q15-21, and 13q11-14 (one case each). This study provides evidence of new characteristic chromosomal imbalances from which potential candidate genes involved in the development of malignant astrocytoma in children and young adults may be identified.
    • Inspiratory muscle training improves rowing performance.

      Volianitis, Stefanos; McConnell, Alison K.; Koutedakis, Yiannis; McNaughton, Lars R.; Backx, Karriane; Jones, David A. (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2001)
      To investigate the effects of a period of resistive inspiratory muscle training (IMT) upon rowing performance. Performance was appraised in 14 female competitive rowers at the commencement and after 11 wk of inspiratory muscle training on a rowing ergometer by using a 6-min all-out effort and a 5000-m trial. IMT consisted of 30 inspiratory efforts twice daily. Each effort required the subject to inspire against a resistance equivalent to 50 % peak inspiratory mouth pressure (PImax) by using an inspiratory muscle training device. Seven of the rowers, who formed the placebo group, used the same device but The inspiratory muscle strength of the training group increased by 44 +/- 25 cm H2O (45.3 +/- 29.7 %) compared with only 6 +/- 11 cm H2O (5.3 +/- 9.8 %) of the placebo group (P < 0.05 within and between groups). The distance covered in the 6-min all-out effort increased by 3.5 +/- 1.2 % in the training group compared with 1.6 +/- 1.0 % in the placebo group (P < 0.05). The time inthe 5000-m trial decreased by 36 +/- 9 s (3.1 +/- 0.8 %) in the training group compared with only 11 +/- 8 s (0.9 +/- 0.6 %) in the placebo group (P < 0.05). Furthermore, the resistance of the training group to inspiratory muscle fatigue after the 6-min all-out effort was improved from an 11.2 +/- 4.3 % deficit in PImax to only 3.0 +/- 1.6 % (P < 0.05) pre- and post-intervention, respectively. IMT improves rowing performance on the 6-min all-out effort and the 5000-m trial.
    • Playing and resisting: rethinking young people’s reading cultures.

      Kendall, Alex (Wiley InterScience, 2008)
      In this paper I will argue that while young adult readers may often be represented through 'othering' discourses that see them as 'passive', 'uncritical' consumers of 'low-brow', 'throw-away' texts, the realities of their reading lives are in fact more subtle, complex and dynamic. The paper explores the discourses about reading, identity and gender that emerged through discussions with groups of young adults, aged between 16 and 19, about their reading habits and practices. These discussions took place as part of a PhD research study of reading and reader identity in the context of further education in the Black Country in the West Midlands. Through these discussions the young adults offered insights into their reading cultures and the 'functionality' of their reading practices that contest the kinds of 'distinction[s]' that tend to situate them as the defining other to more 'worthy' or 'valuable' reading cultures and practices. While I will resist the urge to claim that this paper represents the cultures of young adult readers in any real or totalising sense I challenge the kinds of dominant, reductive representations that serve to fix and demonise this group and begin to draw a space within which playfulness and resistance are alternatively offered as ways of being for these readers.
    • Reading Reader Identities: Stories about Young Adults Reading.

      Kendall, Alex (Lancaster: Lancaster University, RaPAL / Stevenage: Avantibooks, 2007)
      Alex Kendall is Associate Dean for Education at the University of Wolverhampton. Whilst this role involves her in a broad range of educational work, her focus as a teacher educator and research lies in the areas of initial teacher education and continuing professional development programmes for adult literacy specialists. Background In 2002 The Times Higher Education supplement ran a report which challenged and reoriented my thinking about reading and readers and had a profound impact on the theorising I then was immersed in as part of the PhD research process. The report sought to re-present a selection of the findings from a reading habits survey I had (tentatively) presented to the British Educational Research conference a few weeks previously. The report entitled 'Books lose out to tabloids' read, "Half of the FE students taking English courses in a deprived part of the Midlands rarely or never read for pleasure, according to a survey of students aged sixteen to nineteen at seven colleges in the Black Country. Their most popular reading matter is tabloid newspapers and magazines. Four out of five of the 340 students surveyed were studying for A-levels and three-quarters were female, yet 15 per cent said they never read for pleasure and 34 per cent did not do so regularly. The rest read for pleasure at least once or twice a week but only 3 per cent did so every day. Most preferred to socialise and watch TV. The findings were presented to last week's British Educational Research Association conference by Alex Kendall of the University of Wolverhampton. They supported views of college teachers who told her many A-level students had "poor reading skills and weak vocabulary" and few read beyond their coursework." (Passmore, 2002: 32) Some months later the press office at my University was contacted by a BBC Radio researcher who had come across the BERA abstract via the TES article and wanted to invite me to contribute to a late night BBC radio discussion programme addressed to the BBC' Big Read' campaign. The "students don't read novels" quote in the TES article had caught the researcher's eye and I was invited to share my knowledge about the 'illiteracy’ of young people and also to identify a high consuming or idiosyncratic reader who might also join the discussion. The research seemed 'instinctively’ to be making a connection between students choices about not to read novels and the degree to which they were or weren't 'literate'. And indeed it was not implied that the 'interesting' reader might be found amongst the student participants.
    • Young people of minority ethnic origin in England and early parenthood: views from young parents and service providers.

      Higginbottom, Gina Marie Awoko; Mathers, N.; Marsh, P.; Kirkham, M.; Owen, J.M.; Serrant-Green, Laura (Elsevier, 2006)
      The paper explores the phenomenon of early parenthood in minority ethnic communities in England. The data were collected using focus group interviews, in-depth semi-structured interviews and a telephone survey. The sample consisted of 139 participants (41 service providers, 10 grandmothers, 88 young parents). The findings map out the complexity and diversity of experience of early parenthood amongst young people of minority ethnic origin, not least the multiple attachments many experience in relation to their social groups, religious affiliations and the traditional patterns of parenting within their immediate and extended family. Both the young parents and professionals in this study constructed early parenthood in more positive terms than is currently portrayed in the contemporary policy. The findings are analysed and discussed in relation to ethnic identity, social inclusion and exclusion. We explore participants' attempts to counter negative 'deficit' models of early parenthood with reference to perspectives on youth, parenthood and contemporary strategic policy. In conclusion, we suggest an unambiguous focus on the reduction of pregnancy is not a credible message when teenage pregnancy is a social norm for a particular ethnic or cultural group. For young parents of Muslim faith in particular, teenage parenting within marriage is not necessarily considered a 'problem' or seen as a distinctive event. Most participants did not view early parenthood as a barrier to re-establishing career and educational aspirations. A wide diversity of experience amongst young parents is evidenced in the communities studied; this needs to be reflected more comprehensively both in UK policy and in support services.