(Press-News.org) KNOXVILLE—Middle school students who are more physically fit make better grades and outperform their classmates on standardized tests, according to a newly published study from a professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
The study is among the first to examine how academic achievement relates to all aspects of physical fitness including endurance, muscular strength, flexibility and body fat.
It appears in this month's issue of the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness.
"Not only does improving fitness have physical health implications for the child, it also has implications for their academic achievement," said Dawn Coe, assistant professor in the UT Department of Kinesiology, Recreation, and Sport Studies, and the lead researcher on the study.
"We know a lot of schools are cutting out physical education classes and physical activity opportunities throughout the day. Some of my previous research showed that if kids have one hour of physical education during the day instead of an academic class, they did not show a decrease in academic achievement compared with students who received an extra hour of academic instruction per day. By being active, they could potentially raise their grades."
Coe, who conducted the study while a doctoral student at Michigan State University, examined 312 sixth- through eighth-graders from a single public school in western Michigan. She conducted a series of assessments on the students including shuttle runs, curl-ups and push-ups. She then measured the children's academic achievement in four core classes over the course of one school year as well as their performance on a standardized test.
She found that the students with the highest fitness levels performed better on the standardized exam and earned better grades.
"Youth who are engaged in a physically active lifestyle reap benefits not only in their physical health but also in other aspects of their well-being, such as mental health and academic performance," the report states.
###
To learn more about the study, visit http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23187329.
To obtain a copy of the study, email lalapo@utk.edu or dcoe@utk.edu.
CONTACT:
Lola Alapo (865-974-3993, lalapo@utk.edu) END
UT study: Students who are more physically fit perform better academically
2012-12-11
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Drug resistant leukemia stem cells may be source of genetic chaos, Temple scientists find
2012-12-11
(Philadelphia, PA) – An international team of scientists, led by researchers from Temple University School of Medicine, has found that a source of mounting genomic chaos, or instability, common to chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) may lie in a pool of leukemia stem cells that are immune to treatment with potent targeted anticancer drugs. They have shown in mice with cancer that even after treatment with the highly effective imatinib (Gleevec), stem cells that become resistant to these drugs – tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) – may continue to foster DNA damage, potentially ...
Dead or alive? A new test to determine viability of soybean rust spores
2012-12-11
URBANA – Spores from Asian soybean rust (Phakopsora pachyrhizi) pose a serious threat to soybean production in the United States because they can be blown great distances by the wind. University of Illinois researchers have developed a method to determine whether these spores are viable.
"Finding spores is different from finding spores that are living and able to infect plants," said USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientist and crop sciences professor Glen Hartman.
Soybean rust, which first appeared in Japan at the beginning of the 20th century, is a foliar ...
EARTH: The bright future for natural gas in the United States
2012-12-11
Alexandria, VA – Hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," has changed the energy landscape. We can now affordably produce natural gas from previously inaccessible rock formations, which has led to increasing natural gas consumption. Thanks to its low prices and abundant domestic supply, natural gas may have a chance to overtake coal as the primary energy source for electricity in the United States.
Natural gas has been a part of our energy economy for more than a century; however, it wasn't until recently that it started to play a key role. While it has always been useful ...
Social ties help drive user content generation that leads to online ad revenue growth
2012-12-11
NEW YORK — December 11, 2012 — A research study on online social networks reveals that networking sites can drive advertising revenue by encouraging the density of social ties, or boosting the level of friendship or social connections between users. According to the findings, in a forthcoming paper in Management Science, more connected users prompt increases in visitation and browsing on the site, which helps stimulate online advertising revenue growth.
The research co-authored by Scott Shriver, assistant professor of marketing at Columbia Business School, Harikesh Nair, ...
Potential gene therapy approach to sickle cell disease highlighted at American Society of Hematology
2012-12-11
Boston, Mass.—Researchers at Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Cancer Center (DF/CHCC) have taken the first preliminary steps toward developing a form of gene therapy for sickle cell disease. In an abstract presented on Dec. 10 at the 54th annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology, the research team—led by DF/CHCC's Raffaele Renella, MD, PhD, Stuart H. Orkin, MD, and David A. Williams, MD—announced that they had demonstrated in an animal model the feasibility of activating a form of hemoglobin unaffected by the sickle cell mutation.
The study was included as ...
New anticoagulant discovered based on the same used by malaria vectors to feed on
2012-12-11
An international project lead by the Molecular and Cell Biology Institute of Porto University with the participation of researchers from IMIM (Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute) has, for the first time ever, deciphered the mechanism by which a substance called anophelin binds to an enzyme (thrombin) involved in the process of blood coagulation. This discovery was published in the last issue of the PNAS journal and opens the door to, on the one hand, designing a new generation of anticoagulant drugs with a totally different functioning to current ones and, on the ...
Daycare double duty
2012-12-11
Montreal, December 11, 2012 – Nearly 1.5 million Canadian children grow up living double lives: one at home with their parents and another in some form of childcare environment. While parents hope to be informed of what goes on when they're not around, a recent Concordia study suggests that parents ought to be more involved in the daycare experience, a major component of their child's development.
Nina Howe, a professor in Concordia's Department of Education and a lead author on the study, set out to uncover what Canadian parents really know about their children's care. ...
Primary care physicians play vital role in caring for diabetes patients
2012-12-11
Boston, MA – Previous research has shown that patients without a consistent primary care physician (PCP) have worse outcomes than those who do, but little is known about why this is true. New research from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) has brought to light the importance of the role of a primary care physician in a population of diabetes patients. Their findings are published in the December 10, 2012 issue of Diabetes Care.
"We found that primary care physicians provide better care to diabetes patients when compared to other providers in a primary care setting ...
Words have feelings
2012-12-11
Does the emotion in our voice have a lasting effect? According to Annett Schirmer and colleagues from the National University of Singapore, emotion helps us recognize words quicker and more accurately straight away. In the longer term however, we do not remember emotionally intoned speech as accurately as neutral speech. When we do remember the words, they have acquired an emotional value; for example words spoken in a sad voice are remembered as more negative than words spoken in a neutral voice.
The study, looking at the role of emotion in word recognition memory, ...
NIH scientists reflect on gains in emerging infectious disease awareness, research and response
2012-12-11
WHAT:
In a new essay, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., and David Morens, M.D., reflect on what has been learned about emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) in the two decades since a major report from the U.S. Institute of Medicine rekindled interest in this important topic.
Heightened awareness of EIDs is itself a countermeasure against disease, note the authors. The emergence of new diseases can now be monitored in real time online through Internet resources such as ProMED. In 2012 alone, such resources kept the ...