Jiling Liu, M. Ed Regular physical activity (PA) is important for children’s health and development. Exercising daily can reduce heart disease, obesity, and bone problems. Regular PA burns out stress and makes people feel good. Children’s academic learning can also improve through habitual exercises. Recently, PA opportunities for children are becoming fewer. One reason is that schools have focused more on students’ academic performances. At the same time, schools have cu...

Priya Patel, M.S.Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) is a delay in the development of motor skills, or difficulty in coordinating movements, which results in problems performing in sports and everyday tasks (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Around 4- to 10% of school aged children in United States are affected by DCD (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). DCD prevalence rates range from about 2% in the United Kingdom to 19% in Greece, with a worldwide average of 6%. Owing t...

Erin SimmonsProtein is often thought to be a workout necessity, the essential complement to every gym bag. Missing protein during the post-workout anabolic window is viewed as unfortunate, if not detrimental to one’s training goals. However, the scientific literature on this subject isn’t quite so black and white. Reviews of protein requirements have touted 1.8 g-1kg-1day-1 as the optimal protein intake for individuals undergoing training, when in fact the literature has propose...

Corrine Metzger, M.S.An uncontained fire can quickly spread and wreak havoc on areas both near and far to the instigating source. Under the right conditions, one flame can set a whole forest on fire and soon spread beyond its confines. In a similar way, inflammation can start at a local region in the body, but the damaging effects can spread to distant sites. One example of far spread damage of inflammation is the bone loss concurrent with inflammatory bowel disease. Inflammatory bowel disease (...

Kelsey McLaughlin, M.S.L-citrulline (CIT), a nonessential amino acid that can be found in abundance in watermelon and watermelon rind, has garnered an increasing amount of attention among sport nutrition researchers for its potential benefit to sport performance, particularly in endurance events. The effects of CIT on an exercising individual are thought to be two-fold, both increasing blood flow to working muscle through the enhancement of nitric oxide (NO) production and enhancing clearance of...

Jiling Liu, M. EdRegular physical activity (PA) is important for children’s health and development. Exercising daily can reduce heart disease, obesity, and bone problems. Regular PA burns out stress and makes people feel good. Children’s academic learning can also improve through habitual exercises.Recently, PA opportunities for children are becoming fewer. One reason is that schools have focused more on students’ academic performances. At the same time, schools have cut down t...

Adam Kieffer, MSIf you’ve visited your doctor for a check-up and had your blood cholesterol checked, chances are you were told about “good” and “bad” cholesterol. If your numbers weren’t the best, or you have a family history of heart disease, your doctor may have recommended that you decrease your “bad” cholesterol and increase your “good” cholesterol. Your “bad” cholesterol, or low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol del...

Jessica Cardin, MSThe regulation of protein assembly and disassembly (protein flux) within the body has been a topic that has been studied extensively for the last 60 years. However, the majority of the research has been mostly focused on the rates of assembly (synthesis) and the related methodologies. Protein disassembly (degradation) is an equally viable research endeavor, as it is the other half of protein flux within tissues and whole body systems.The body has many protein pools that ar...

Anita Mantri, B.S.Since the introduction of “the pill,” its use as a form of birth control and contraception has steadily increased in women of child-bearing age as seen in reports from the CDC. When the pill first came out in the 1970s, its use was very limited out of caution about the unknown effects of adding extra hormones to the body. Usually, the hormones estrogen and progesterone have distinct cycling patterns that prepare a woman’s body for pregnancy and lead to her per...

Jacqueline I. Perticone, B.S.Loss of muscle mass with advancing age, disease or lifestyle has a profound influence on healthcare and society. Our laboratory uses hindlimb suspension in rodents to better understand loss of muscle mass occurring with disuse in an effort to design specific interventions that may be suitable to maintain muscle health and function in a number of populations. It is well-known that loss of muscle mass with reduced activity results from a slowdown in the muscle’s ...