Maintains that the prevention of heart disease begins in childhood with good dietary habits and health care. Provides parents and child care professionals with guidelines they can use to help prevent heart disease in children. (BB)

Two studies examined preschoolers' physical activity patterns, through the use of wrist-mounted portable heart rate monitors, during structured and unstructured daily activity. Found that the children's heart rates were significantly higher during developmental movement sessions than during other day-care sessions or home activities, which were…

Developments in the biomedical sciences affect how people think about health and fitness, as do social and cultural factors. This paper examines two topics of interest to educators, physicians, and researchers in the physiological sciences from 1867-1950 (the phenomenon referred to as the athlete's heart and anthropometrical/growth and development…

A relationship between physical fitness and cognition has been difficult to document. The paper describes cognition and examines the effects of aging on cognition, the fitness-cognition relationship hypothesis, difficulties in determining the fitness-cognition relationship, and the current status of the relationship. (SM)

A whole-class exercise used in college composition classes to demonstrate the writing process is described. The class works together to produce a collaborative paper, in rough draft, in one hour. Steps used to produce it include specification of topic, discussion of purpose and audience, prewriting for ideas, development of thesis and outline,…

Reviews articles on stress and exercise. After defining stress, the paper analyzes competition as either eustress or distress, provides evidence for Berger's taxonomy of stress and exercise, examines Type A behavior, discusses multidimensional anxiety and stress management, describes the inverted-U hypothesis and task characteristics, and explains…

Evaluates the association of age, self-rated health, and walking activity with 4 measures of cognitive functioning in 6,979 randomly selected people ranging in age from 18 to 94. Assessments included a face-to-face interview regarding health and health beliefs as well as cognitive testing. Analyses indicated that faster reaction time speed was…

Four case studies evaluated the use of self-recorded word counts of freewriting in grade one, two, three, and four classes, under both loose and restricted time limits. In each case, the number of words written in a session increased over time and this increase accompanied improvements in the expressiveness of the freewriting, with little evidence…

Presents exercises and role plays designed to help English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students enrolled in or bound for American universities understand plagiarism and the need to properly document essays and term papers. (five references) (MDM)

Clinical experience and recent research challenge the current standards of exercise duration and intensity for pregnant women. By carefully assessing patients' self-monitoring techniques, physicians can work with active women to create safe exercise programs during pregnancy. Safety guidelines for developing home exercise programs are included.…

This study examined the use of story impressions as a prereading writing activity. Students either received story impressions, read a story, then wrote stories using clues; received story impressions and listed predictions about a story; or received no preview activity before story reading. Story impressions produced the highest level of story…

Discusses the differences between exercise alone and exercise with medication (e.g., diuretics, beta blockers, and ACE inhibitors) for treating hypertensive patients. Guidelines are presented for physicians wanting to change the therapeutic regimen or to step down from medical therapy, noting exercise must always be part of the program. (SM)

Three forms of auditory stimulation were compared as reinforcers with 13 severely mentally retarded adults performing a task to promote cardiovascular fitness. Subjects received stimulation if they pedalled at a specified rate above baseline performance. Results indicated that music was an effective reinforcer in promoting continuous work output,…

In discussing pharmacologic control of hypertension in children and adolescents who participate in sports, the second of two articles emphasizes drugs with few side effects and that usually do not alter heart rate (e.g., long-lasting angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors or calcium channel blockers). Such drugs allow continued sports…

A teacher describes use of a three-phase freestyle writing activity to encourage students with disabilities to develop independent expressive written language. Students develop their skills by writing for brief periods, first whatever comes to mind, then a self-selected topic, and subsequently a teacher-selected topic. (DB)