John Cleese takes us on a tour of a laughter therapy practice in India.
Laughter promotes stress reduction, community bonding, stronger immune system... and joy. What a simple solution!
American Bird watchers coast to coast are invited
to take part in the 13th annual Great Backyard Bird Count, Friday,
February 12, through Monday, February 15, 2010. Participants in
the free event will join tens of thousands of volunteers counting
birds in their own backyards, local parks or wildlife
refuges.
Each checklist submitted by these "citizen scientists" helps
researchers at the Cornell Lab
of Ornithology,the National
Audubon Society , and Bird
Studies Canada learn more about how the birds are doing--and how to
protect them. Last year, participants turned in more than 93,600
checklists online, creating the continent's largest instantaneous
snapshot of bird populations ever recorded.
Anyone can take part in the Great Backyard Bird Count,
from novice bird watchers to experts.
Participants count birds for as
little as 15 minutes (or as long as they wish) on one or more days of
the event and report their sightings online at www.birdcount.org. One 2009
participant said, "Thank you for the opportunity to participate in
citizen science. I have had my eyes opened to a whole new interest and
I love it!"
Winter is such a vulnerable period for birds, so winter
bird distributions are likely to be very sensitive to change.
There is
only one way--citizen science--to gather data on private lands where
people live and GBBC has been doing this across the continent for many
years.
GBBC has enormous potential both as an early warning system and
in capturing and engaging people in more intensive sampling of birds
across the landscape."
Bird populations are always shifting and changing.
For example, 2009 GBBC data highlighted a huge southern invasion of Pine Siskins across much of the eastern United States. Participants counted 279,469 Pine Siskins on 18,528 checklists, as compared to the previous high of 38,977 birds on 4,069 checklists in 2005. Failure of seed crops farther north caused the siskins to move south to find their favorite food.
Bird Count Website
On the www.birdcount.org website, participants can explore real-time maps and charts that show what others are reporting during the count. The site has tips to help identify birds and special materials for educators. Participants may also enter the GBBC photo contest by uploading images taken during the count. Many images will be featured in the GBBC website's photo gallery. All participants are entered in a drawing for prizes that include bird feeders, binoculars, books, CDs, and many other great birding products.
Canadian Bird Studies Birdcount
In 2010, Bird Studies Canada
(BSC) joins the GBBC as the program's Canadian partner. "Bird Studies
Canada is delighted to be the Canadian partner for this extremely
valuable program," said George Finney, President of BSC. "Participating
in the GBBC is an excellent way for Canadians to reconnect with their
love of nature and birds."
For more information about the GBBC, visit the website at www.birdcount.org.
Baby boomers may be popularly portrayed as whiners, complainers and narcissists, but a new study by University of Massachusetts Amherst psychology Professor Susan Krauss Whitbourne says the 50-somethings are getting a bad rap.
Connection to Younger Generations...Social Conscience
"It's wrong to say baby boomers are selfish and only care about staying young," says Susan Krauss Whitbourne. "They have a feeling of connection to younger generations and a social conscience."
Whitbourne's findings, based on three decades of data from two groups of baby boomers, were published in the September issue of the journal Developmental Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association.
The study began in 1966 at the University of Rochester in New York, when a group of students participated in a research project on personality development. Similar studies of successive generations of students at Rochester as well as follow-up surveys with participants in the earliest groups have yielded 34 years of information about the life changes experienced by leading edge boomers, who were in their mid- to late 50s, and trailing edge boomers, who were in their mid-40s, at the time of the most recent survey.
Boomers in Midlife
"What's most interesting is seeing what happened to baby boomers in midlife," says Whitbourne. "Some became more fulfilled, others became despairing, and yet others remained relatively stable. My research design allowed me to suggest which changes in their lives were most closely connected with a growth in fulfillment.
- More fulfilled
- Despairing
- Relatively Stable
According to Whitbourne, the results suggest that personality growth doesn't follow a ladder model where one stage succeeds another, but more closely resembles a matrix, in which issues associated with early stages of life are continuously revisited through life.
Matrix of Early Life's Issues
For Whitbourne, the study illustrates that we are not
locked into a narrowly defined life by the time we are of college age.
"I've seen people overcome social deficits over the course of the
study," she says. "This really shows that you don't have to give up on
yourself. People can change through their entire life."
Fulfillment Beyond the Workplace
Since the last study, the boomers have found fulfillment beyond the workplace, says Whitbourne. In the 1980s, the "me generation" was working hard and making a lot of money, but something was missing from their lives. At the time, Whitbourne said the results were shaped by Reagan-era social values.
Volunteerism
By the '90s, however, the volunteerism of the Clinton years seems to have taken root among those unfulfilled boomers, she says. "There is a real concern about social well-being that goes back to the core values they developed in college."
Industriousness
Another change Whitbourne notes concerns "industry," a personality trait associated with the work ethic. The oldest boomers in the study had measured far lower on industry than other age groups in earlier surveys, but the latest data show they've caught up with their peers.
"It would appear from the present analyses that the very lowest industry scores were obtained in college from participants who, in early adulthood, had jobs with extremely low prestige," says the study. "However, they managed to exceed their peers in industry scores throughout the course of the study."
Self-confidence and Determination in Women
For midlife women, the results also support other studies that found gains in self-confidence and determination through the workplace, says Whitbourne. "It is possible that for these leading-edge baby boomer women, feelings of competence were suppressed in college, when it seemed as though their careers would play an important role in their future success," she writes.
Intimacy and Relationships are Not the Only Change Agents
The study also reinforces the idea that individuals can
overcome early issues with intimacy and relationships, notes
Whitbourne, and "catch up" with their psychologically more fortunate
peers.
According to the data, participants who were not in a committed relationship early in adulthood showed continued gains throughout the period of the study and moved toward an increasingly favorable resolution that exceeded those peers who were in a committed relationship in early adulthood.
Later Parenting
"Enhanced development gains"
were also noted for boomers who became parents after the age of 31. By
waiting until their careers were established, those study participants
may have been "best able to enjoy their new parenthood status to the
fullest," says Whitbourne.
What Midlife Crisis?
Whitbourne says the study also lays to rest the myth of the midlife crisis. Based on the interviews and surveys, she says, "My study confirms others in the empirical literature that despite its popularity in the pop culture, the majority of adults don't freak out in their 40s or 50s."
That's not to say the study participants haven't had their ups and downs, says Whitbourne, but individuals grapple with their problems in a variety of ways. "People may experience depression in midlife, but it's too glib to write that off as a midlife crisis. Other factors must be considered."
The study is co-authored by Joel R. Sneed of Queens College, City University of New York, Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and Aline Sayer, visiting associate professor of psychology at UMass Amherst.However, maintaining a healthy body mass index (BMI), not smoking and being physically active are associated with higher fitness levels throughout adult life.
"The U.S. population
is aging and is becoming more obese and sedentary," the authors write
as background information in the article. "It is well documented that
the cardiorespiratory fitness of men and women declines with age and
that body composition and habitual physical activity are related to
cardiorespiratory fitness."
Low fitness levels increase the risk of diseases and interfere with older adults' ability to function independently.
Andrew S. Jackson, P.E.D., of the University of Houston, and colleagues studied 3,429 women and 16,889 men age 20 to 96. During the study, participants completed between two and 33 health examinations that included counseling about diet, exercise and other lifestyle factors along with a treadmill exercise to assess fitness.
Statistical models showed that while fitness levels declined continuously over time, the decrease was not linear or steady--cardiorespiratory fitness declined more rapidly after age 45. The decline for men was greater than that for women.
The
results also "showed that being active, keeping a normal BMI and not
smoking were associated with substantially higher levels of
cardiorespiratory fitness during the adult life span studied," the
authors write.
"Being inactive and having a high BMI were associated with a lower age at which an individual could be expected to reach threshold cardiorespiratory fitness levels associated with substantially higher health risks."
Given the high rates of
obesity and low levels of physical activity previously observed in the
general population, the results also suggest that more men and women
will reach the fitness level designated by the Social Security
Administration as representing disability at a younger age, the authors
note.
CONCLUSION:
"These data indicate the need for physicians to recommend to their patients the necessity to maintain their weight, engage in regular aerobic exercise and abstain from smoking," they conclude.
Editor's Note: The ACLS was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health.