Physical therapy student develops program for Girl Scouts

2:17 p.m., Jan. 29, 2013--As a Girl Scout, Jazmine Tooles participated in activities like self-defense classes and mock space shuttle missions, so it?s not surprising that she chose the organization as a way to teach young girls about the field of physical therapy.

Now a student in the University of Delaware?s doctor of physical therapy (DPT) program, Tooles and her colleagues in the class of 2013 recently hosted a workshop called ?Explore the Magic of Motion? for Girl Scouts ranging from 6th to 12th grade. ?

Legislative Fellows

UD students are working with the Delaware General Assembly as part of the Legislative Fellows Program.

In Memoriam

Wenbo V. Li, professor of mathematical sciences at UD, died of a heart attack on Jan. 26.

Tooles also created three Scout badges and had them approved by Girl Scouts USA last fall.

The Magic of Motion badge teaches 6th to 8th graders how to be physically active and demonstrates the role exercise plays in healing the body and maintaining health. It also invites girls to investigate professions that use exercise for healing.

The Healing through Motion badge teaches 9th and 10th graders how physical therapy improves the quality of life for many people and encourages girls to promote healthy living through exercise as physical therapists. ?

The Healing People, Changing Lives badge is a career-oriented patch that teaches 11th and 12th graders about the profession of physical therapy and the steps involved in becoming a physical therapist.?

?Jazmine did an amazing job designing these new Girl Scout badges, and she developed a great program for the 40 girls who attended the workshop,? says Laura Schmitt, associate director of clinical education in UD?s physical therapy department.

The workshop used four stations ? ?Technology that Treats,? ?Muscles and Machines,? ?Follow Your Heart,? and ?Stress Strategies? ? to teach the participants many of the principles incorporated into the badges. The scouts also toured UD?s PT Clinic, made their own stress balls, and created information cards about stress management so they could promote wellness to family and friends.

?The event stemmed from an idea sparked at an American Physical Therapy Association conference I attended in 2011,? Tooles says. ?A prominent topic was how physical therapy professionals could better promote the field and show that it entails much more than just giving massages. As we brainstormed in small groups, I reflected on the many experiences I had as a Girl Scout. That?s when I decided that creating Girl Scout badges would be a great avenue for promoting the profession to young girls and their parents.?

Tooles hopes to see the program continue at UD after she graduates in December.? Her bigger dream is for it to be shared with other physical therapy programs around the nation. ?

?I think the Girl Scouts is a great way to reach girls who are beginning to think about not only what what they want to pursue in college but also how to gain control of their own health,? Tooles says.

UD?s DPT curriculum includes a service learning requirement that comprises four categories: diversity, promoting the profession, promoting primary and secondary prevention in health and wellness, and volunteerism.

Article by Diane Kukich

Source: http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2013/jan/scouts-physical-therapy-012913.html

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Brandi Glanville: LeAnn Rimes Can Go F--k Herself!

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/01/brandi-glanville-leann-rimes-can-go-f-k-herself/

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Tear Down the Swing Sets

Imagination Playground in New York

Photograph courtesy of Imagination Playground.

In 1888, the psychologist Stanley Hall published a story about a sand pile. A minor classic, it describes how a group of children created a world out of a single load of sand. These children were diligent, they were imaginative, they were remarkably adult.

More than a century later, at the architect David Rockwell?s Imagination Playground in lower Manhattan, small humans scurry back and forth all day long, carrying Rockwell?s oversized blue foam blocks from self-devised task to self-devised task. These children are intent, they are cooperative, they are resourceful. The scene resembles nothing so much as Stanley Hall?s sand pile?with each grain of sand much bigger and much bluer. (Except for the bits of actual sand, that is.)

More than any playground in recent memory, the Imagination Playground has inspired an outburst of excitement. It?s a hit with the hip parents who take their kids to Dan Zanes concerts, and is just as crowded as one. But it also represents something much more mundane: the triumph of loose parts. After a century of creating playgrounds for children, of drilling swing sets and plastic forts into the ground, we have come back to children creating their own playgrounds. Loose parts?sand, water, blocks?are having a moment.

The resurgence of loose parts is an attempt to put the play back in playgrounds. The late 1960s and early 1970s were a time of exuberant playground design, culminating in the great Richard Dattner adventure playgrounds in New York City. Then the grownups got skittish. Down came the merry-go-rounds and the jungle gyms, and in their place, a landscape of legally-insulated, brightly-colored, spongy-floored, hard-plastic structures took root. Today, walking onto a children?s playground is like exiting the interstate: Regardless of where you are, you see the exact same thing.

A lot of people agree that playgrounds are now too boring, and for years there?s been talk about how we should make them more challenging, more risky. But so far, that talk hasn?t turned into more interesting playgrounds. The most adventurous playgrounds tend to be singular projects, often built through fundraising, for the rich. (A genuine exception is this amazing project in Philadelphia.) ?People talk about making playgrounds more risky,? says Susan Solomon, the author of American Playgrounds, which charts their demise. ?But there?s this sense that if you talk about it, that?s enough. There?s this very real reluctance to get involved in anything that might at least potentially cause an injury.?

In Europe, the assumptions are radically different. Even the head of play safety at England?s Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents?a man whom you?d assume would be paranoid about preventing all accidents?has said that ?children should be exposed to a certain degree of risk, not because an activity is risky per se but because it is fun, exciting, and challenging.?

As the psychologist Ellen Sandseter has pointed out, the American attitude is a fundamental miscalculation of the risks: Kids who are bored stay inside and staying inside is ultimately far worse for your health than a broken arm. Talk about why we can?t have nice playgrounds here typically begins and ends with lawsuits. But potential legal action is too easy an excuse for not rethinking playgrounds, says Darell Hammond, head of the play-promoting nonprofit KaBOOM!. Change ?requires all of us doing something different, not just a few law changes.? In short, it requires all of us to be a little less panicked, and honestly, that?s probably too much to ask, at least in the short term. Which is why loose parts may be the best hope for the future of playgrounds right now.

Rockwell?s playground is still an adventure playground?a construction site with all the splintery edges sanded down. It?s what an adventure playground looks like in a risk-averse culture. And it promotes the kind of play we think children should be doing now: not with just their bodies, but with their minds. The Imagination Playground is a much more cognitive vision of the playground. No one would confuse it with a jungle gym.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=67aa3d62412c8bdd99fffa01295cf58e

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Gore hits corporate media, defends Current TV sale

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore talks during an interview, Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2013 in New York. Gore, who takes aim in his new book at the corporate media for "suffocating the free flow of ideas," on Tuesday defended the sale of his own television channel to Al-Jazeera. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore talks during an interview, Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2013 in New York. Gore, who takes aim in his new book at the corporate media for "suffocating the free flow of ideas," on Tuesday defended the sale of his own television channel to Al-Jazeera. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore talks during an interview, Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2013 in New York. Gore, who takes aim in his new book at the corporate media for "suffocating the free flow of ideas," on Tuesday defended the sale of his own television channel to Al-Jazeera. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) ? Al Gore, who takes aim in his new book at the corporate media for "suffocating the free flow of ideas," on Tuesday defended the sale of his television channel to Al-Jazeera.

The Qatar government-owned news network earlier this month struck a deal to buy Current TV, the cable news network co-founded by the former vice president. The price tag was $500 million.

Gore told The Associated Press that he had no reservations about selling the channel to Al-Jazeera, which has won U.S. journalism prizes but has been criticized by some for an anti-American bias. The new owner plans to gradually transform Current into a network called Al-Jazeera America.

"They're commercial-free, they're hard-hitting," he said in a phone interview. "They're very respected and capable, and their climate coverage has been outstanding, in-depth, extensive, far more so than any network currently on the air in the U.S."

The 64-year-old Gore said he considers Current TV, which was largely outflanked by MSNBC in its effort to be a liberal alternative to Fox News Channel, to have been a success.

"We won every major award in television journalism, and we were profitable each year," said Gore, who has a home in Nashville. "But it's difficult for an independent network to compete in an age of conglomerate."

In a new 592-page book titled, "The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change," Gore makes only a fleeting reference to Al-Jazeera, calling it "the feisty and relatively independent satellite television channel" that played a key role in bringing about the Arab Spring.

Gore in the book likens the influence of money in the political process to a "slow-motion corporate coup d'etat that threatens to destroy the integrity and functioning of American democracy."

"Corporations are not people," Gore said in the interview. "Might doesn't make right. Money is not speech. And those who advocate the dominance of American politics by large corporations, special interests and anonymous donors are working against the original design by our founders."

"Our democracy has been hacked," he said.

Corporations have enlisted politicians and lobbyists to further their goals and have also "recruited a fifth column in the Fourth Estate," he said in the book.

"The one-way, advertising-dominated conglomerate-controlled television medium has been suffocating the free flow of ideas necessary for genuine self-determination," he writes.

The Internet provides a path for breaking the corporate stranglehold on the media, Gore said in the interview, as it "is less vulnerable to the dominance of special interests, because individual voices play a larger and more influential role."

Gore, who won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to raise awareness about climate change, also calls for a carbon tax, though he acknowledged that passage does not appear to be imminent.

"Well, I wouldn't go to Vegas and bet on it right now," he said. "But neither would I say that it's impossible ... The day has passed when we can use the earth's atmosphere as an open sewer."

"Yes it's tough, because we've been relying on these fossil fuels for 150 years. But the cost of solar and wind is coming down rapidly and energy efficiency saves money while it reduces pollution," he said. "And we need to move in that direction quickly."

Gore, who represented Tennessee in the U.S. Senate and House before he was tapped by President Bill Clinton as his running mate, blames procedural rules in the Senate for blocking popular measures.

"I fully appreciate the virtues of the filibuster, but it's gotten so out of control that I do think that it needs to be dialed back significantly," he said. "It has been abused to the point where American democracy is paralyzed.

"Nothing can pass the Senate that is opposed by special interests," he said. "And that's not right."

Gore points out in the introduction of his book that as a "recovering politician," the chances of his returning to public office become slimmer the more time passes. Gore won more popular votes than George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential contest, but was defeated in the electoral college after the Supreme Court stopped a hotly debated recount in Florida.

So the book shouldn't be seen as a "manifesto" for a future political campaign, he writes in the book.

But he's not shy about making a series of policy recommendations.

"We should have more progressive taxation, we should have higher inheritance taxes. I've always believed that," Gore said. "I advocated that during my political career and I continue to advocate it."

"We need to restore our democracy, we need to reform markets so they operate the way they're supposed to," he said. "And the U.S. leadership of the world needs to be restored."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-01-29-Gore-Book/id-f0c22d4246b340d6bd8370b0205f402a

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Obama: Gun-control advocates should listen more

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama says gun-control advocates have to do a little more listening than they do sometimes in the debate over firearms in America.

Obama tells The New Republic that he has a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that date back for generations.

He also says that moving forward on the topic means understanding that the realities of guns in urban areas are very different from the realities of guns in rural areas.

The president says it's understandable that people are protective of their family traditions when it comes to hunting.

Has Obama himself ever fired a gun? Yes, he says, he and others shoot skeet frequently at the president's Maryland retreat, Camp David.

The interview appears in the Feb. 11 issue of The New Republic.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-gun-control-advocates-listen-more-060214484--politics.html

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UK: Imminent threat against westerners in Benghazi

LONDON (AP) ? Britain's Foreign Office urged U.K. nationals to immediately leave the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi in response to an imminent threat against Westerners.

The Foreign Office has advised against all travel to Benghazi since September, and on Thursday it said is aware of a "specific and imminent threat."

It urged all British nationals still in the eastern city of Benghazi to "leave immediately" and declined to comment on the nature of the threat.

The warning comes a day after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton testified to U.S. lawmakers about the handling of the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the American mission in Benghazi. The attack killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans.

In addition to the attack on the U.S. consulate, an Italian diplomat's car was fired on by militants

Britain's Foreign Office said it does not have a diplomatic presence in Benghazi, where the Libyan uprising against longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi began in 2011.

Libya's security sharply deteriorated after Gadhafi's ouster and killing.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/uk-imminent-threat-against-westerners-benghazi-125509324.html

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Controlled crumpling of graphene forms artificial muscle

Jan. 23, 2013 ? Duke University engineers are layering atom-thick lattices of carbon with polymers to create unique materials with a broad range of applications, including artificial muscles.

The lattice, known as graphene, is made of pure carbon and appears under magnification like chicken wire. Because of its unique optical, electrical and mechanical properties, graphene is used in electronics, energy storage, composite materials and biomedicine.

However, graphene is extremely difficult to handle in that it easily "crumples," which, depending on circumstances, can be a positive or negative characteristic. Unfortunately, scientists have been unable to control the crumpling and unfolding of large-area graphene to take advantage of its properties.

Duke engineer Xuanhe Zhao, assistant professor in Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, likens the challenge of controlling graphene to the difference between unfolding paper and wet tissue.

"If you crumpled up normal paper, you can pretty easily flatten it out," Zhao said. "However, graphene is more like wet tissue paper. It is extremely thin and sticky and difficult to unfold once crumpled. We have developed a method to solve this problem and control the crumpling and unfolding of large-area graphene films."

The Duke engineers attached the graphene on a rubber film that had been pre-stretched multiple times of its original size. Once the pre-stretch in the rubber film was relaxed, part of the graphene detached from the rubber while other part kept adhering on the rubber, forming an attached-detached pattern with a size of a few nanometers. As the rubber was relaxed, the detached graphene was compressed to crumple. Once the rubber film was stretched back, the adhered graphene will pull on the crumpled graphene to unfold it.

"In this way, the crumpling and unfolding of large-area atomic-thick graphene can be controlled by simply stretching and relaxing a rubber film, even by hand," Zhao said.

The results were published online in the journal Nature Materials.

"Our approach has opened avenues to exploit unprecedented properties and functions of graphene," said Jianfeng Zang, a postdoctoral fellow in Zhao's group and the first author of the paper. "For example, we can tune the graphene from being transparent to opaque by crumpling it, and tune it back by unfolding it."

In addition, the Duke engineers layered the graphene with different polymer films to make a "soft" material that can act like muscle tissues by contracting and expanding on demand. When electricity is applied to the graphene, the artificial muscle expands in area; when the electricity is cut off, it relaxes. Varying the voltage controls the degree of contraction and relaxation, giving actuation strains over 100 percent.

"Indeed, the crumpling and unfolding of graphene allows large deformation of the artificial muscle." Zang said.

"New artificial muscles are enabling diverse technologies ranging from robotics and drug delivery to energy harvesting and storage," Zhao said. "In particular, they promise to greatly improve the quality of life for millions of disabled people by providing affordable devices such as lightweight prostheses and full-page Braille displays. The broad impact of new artificial muscles is potentially analogous to the impact of piezoelectric materials on the global society."

Zhao's work is supported by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Triangle Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, NSF Materials and Surface Engineering program, and National Institutes of Health (NIH). Other members of the team are Duke's Qiming Wang and Qing Tu.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Duke University. The original article was written by Richard Merritt.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Jianfeng Zang, Seunghwa Ryu, Nicola Pugno, Qiming Wang, Qing Tu, Markus J. Buehler, Xuanhe Zhao. Multifunctionality and control of the crumpling and unfolding of large-area graphene. Nature Materials, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/nmat3542

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/OvIiUOFjQuc/130123165042.htm

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