Tag: Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development

Mild problem-solving task improves brain function after a concussion, new study suggests

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date June 18, 2018

A simple cognitive task as early as four days after a brain injury activates the region that improves memory function, and may guard against developing depression or anxiety

Concern is growing about the danger of sports-related concussions and their long-term impact on athletes. But physicians and healthcare providers acknowledge that the science is evolving, leaving questions about rehabilitation and treatment options.

Currently, guidelines recommend that traumatic brain injury patients get plenty of rest and avoid physical and cognitive activity until symptoms subside.

But a new pilot study looking at athletes with concussions suggests total inactivity may not be the best way to recover after all, say scientists at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, where the research was conducted.

The study found that a simple cognitive task as early as four days after a brain injury activated the region that improves memory function and can guard against two hallmarks of concussion — depression and anxiety.

“Right now, if you have a concussion the directive is to have complete physical and cognitive rest, no activities, no social interaction, to let your brain rest and recover from the energy crisis as a result of the injury,” said SMU physiologist Sushmita Purkayastha, who led the research, which was funded by the Texas Institute for Brain Injury and Repair at UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas.

“But what we saw, the student athletes came in on approximately the third day of their concussion and the test was not stressful for them. None of the patients complained about any symptom aggravation as a result of the task. Their parasympathetic nervous system — which regulates automatic responses such as heart rate when the body is at rest — was activated, which is a good sign,” said Purkayastha, an assistant professor in the Department of Applied Physiology and Wellness.

The parasympathetic nervous system is associated with better memory function and implicated in better cardiovascular function. It also helps to regulates stress, depression and anxiety — and those are very common symptoms after a concussion.

“People in the absolute rest phase after concussion often experience depression,” Purkayastha added. “In the case of concussion, cutting people off from their social circle when we say ‘no screen time’ — particularly the young generation with their cell phones and iPads — they will just get more depressed and anxious. So maybe we need to rethink current rehabilitation strategy.”

The new study addresses the lack of research upon which to develop science- and data-based treatment for concussion. The findings emerged when the research team measured variations in heart rate variability among athletes with concussions while responding to simple problem-solving and decision-making tasks.

While we normally think of our heart rate as a steady phenomenon, in actuality the interval varies and is somewhat irregular — and that is desirable and healthy. High heart rate variability is an indicator of sound cardiovascular health. Higher levels of variability indicate that physiological processes are better controlled and functioning as they should, such as during stressful (both physical and challenging mental tasks) or emotional situations.

Concussed athletes normally have lowered heart rate variability.

For the new study, Purkayastha and her team administered a fairly simple cognitive task to athletes with concussions. During the task, the athletes recorded a significant increase in heart rate variability.

The study is the first of its kind to examine heart rate variability in college athletes with concussions during a cognitive task.

The findings suggest that a small measure of brain work could be beneficial, said co-investigator and neuro-rehabilitation specialist Kathleen R. Bell, a physician at UT Southwestern.

“This type of research will change fundamentally the way that patients with sports and other concussions are treated,” said Bell, who works with brain injury patients and is Chair of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at UT Southwestern. “Understanding the basic physiology of brain injury and repair is the key to enhancing recovery for our young people after concussion.”

The researchers reported their findings in the peer-reviewed Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation, in the article “Reduced resting and increased elevation of heart rate variability with cognitive task performance in concussed athletes.”

Co-authors from SMU Simmons School include Mu Huang and Justin Frantz; Peter F. Davis and Scott L. Davis, from SMU’s Department of Applied Physiology and Wellness; Gilbert Moralez, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, Dallas; and Tonia Sabo, UT Southwestern.

Concussion symptom improved with simple brain activity
Volunteer subjects for the study were 46 NCAA Division I and recreational athletes who participate in contact-collision sports. Of those, 23 had a physician-diagnosed sports-related concussion in accordance with NCAA diagnostic criteria. Each of them underwent the research testing within approximately three to four days after their injury.

Not surprisingly, compared to the athletes in the control group who didn’t have concussions, the athletes with concussions entered answers that were largely incorrect.

More importantly, though, the researchers observed a positive physiological response to the task in the form of increased heart rate variability, said Purkayastha.

“It’s true that the concussed group gave wrong answers for the most part. More important, however, is the fact that during the task their heart rate variability improved,” she said. “That was most likely due to the enhancement of their brain activity, which led to better regulation. It seems that engaging in a cognitive task is crucial for recovery.”

Heart rate variability is a normal physiological process of the heart. It makes possible a testing method as noninvasive as taking a patient’s blood pressure, pulse or temperature. In the clinical field, measuring heart rate variability is an increasingly common screening tool to see if involuntary responses in the body are functioning and being regulated properly by the autonomic nervous system.

The parasympathetic is blunted or dampened by concussion
Abnormal fluctuations in heart rate variability are associated with certain conditions before symptoms are otherwise noticeable.

Monitoring heart rate variability measures the normal synchronized contractions of the heart’s atriums and ventricles in response to natural electrical impulses that rhythmically move across the muscles of the heart.

After a concussion, an abnormal and unhealthy decline in heart rate variability is observed in the parasympathetic nervous system, a branch of the autonomic nervous system. The parasympathetic is in effect blunted or dampened after a concussion, said Purkayastha.

As expected, in the current study, heart rate variability was lower among the athletes with concussions than those without.

New findings add evidence suggesting experts rethink rehab
But that changed during the simple cognitive task. For the athletes with concussions, their heart rate variability increased, indicating the parasympathetic nervous system was activated by the task.

Heart rate variability between the concussed and the controls was comparable during the cognitive task, the researchers said in their study.

“This suggests that maybe we need to rethink rehabilitation after someone has a concussion,” Purkayastha said. — Margaret Allen, SMU

Tags Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development, Sushmita Purkayastha

Culture, Society & Family Learning & Education Researcher news

Study: Impoverished students and black students suffer greater impact from closure of Houston schools

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date August 18, 2016

“It is particularly troubling that not only are economically disadvantaged and black students more likely to experience closures, but they are the least likely to subsequently transfer to the types of high-performing schools that are critical to their future academic success,” — Meredith Richards, SMU

School closures disproportionately displace impoverished and black students, according to a new study from researchers at Southern Methodist University and Rice University’s Houston Education Research Consortium.

In a look at the Houston Independent School District’s school closures between 2003 and 2010, researchers found that schools with a higher proportion of black students were particularly likely to be targeted by closures, said education policy researcher Meredith Richards, co-author of the study and assistant professor in the Department of Education Policy and Leadership at SMU, Dallas.

“This is particularly concerning,” Richards said, “given the pernicious history of inequity and structural racism and the already problematic achievement gaps between blacks and whites in Houston and nationally.”

Also, more than 90 percent of students were economically disadvantaged, qualifying for free or reduced meals under the federal school lunch program.

School closures in the face of tight budgets are a challenge nationwide — for both urban and rural districts.

The researchers note that students displaced by school closures in Houston did generally transfer to schools that were better performing than those that closed. However, there were concerning racial differences in transfer patterns.

White and Asian students displaced by closure are twice as likely as black and Hispanic students to transfer to high-performing schools, while most black and Hispanic students transferred to low-quality schools.

“Unfortunately, the negative effects of closures are disproportionately borne by Houston’s most disadvantaged students,” Richards said. “It’s also important to note that, despite going to higher quality schools on average, we find that students generally have slower achievement growth after closures — even students who transfer to high-quality schools. This suggests that although school closures may be necessary for budgetary reasons, they are not likely to be a successful reform strategy for improving student achievement.”

Findings of the study are presented by HERC as a research brief. For the study’s data, Richards and her colleague Kori Stroub, a researcher at Rice’s HERC, examined 4,168 students displaced by 27 of HISD’s 55 school closures between 2003 and 2010 and compared them with a matched group of students that did not experience closures during the same time period.

The paper used data from the state of Texas supplied by the Texas Education Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

School closures impact students as well as the wider community
Richards — whose research generally concerns the impact of a broad range of policies, particularly their unintended consequences for disadvantaged groups — first witnessed the impact of school closures while a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia’s school district proposed closing 37 schools, she recalls.

“The response of the local community and the media was overwhelming — a number of people were even arrested in protesting the closures,” she said. “I became interested in the effect of closures on not only students, but on the local communities in which schools are such important cultural institutions.”

Closures in Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit and other major cities in the Midwest and Northeast have received considerable attention.

“Kori and I realized that districts like Houston were more quietly shuttering urban schools with much less attention,” Richards said. “Thus, we applied for and received a $50,000 grant from the Spencer Foundation to allow us to study the effects of closures in this understudied context.”

Vast majority of students in closed schools are economically disadvantaged
The researchers found that 91 percent of students in HISD schools that were closed were economically disadvantaged, meaning they qualified for free or reduced meals under the National School Lunch and Child Nutrition Program, compared with 80 percent in HISD as a whole.

Also, 43 percent of students affected by those school closures were black, even though only 27 percent of HISD’s students were black.

Stroub, who is lead author on the study, and Richards, the grant’s principal investigator, also examined whether students from the closed schools transferred to high-performing schools (those in the top third of HISD schools based on Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, or TAKS, test scores) or low-performing schools (those in the bottom third of HISD schools based on TAKS scores).

High-achieving students were more likely to transfer to high-performing schools
Fifty-two percent of displaced students transferred to schools in the bottom third of the district in math achievement and 43 percent of displaced students transferred to schools in the bottom third of HISD in reading achievement.

Only 21 percent of displaced students transferred to high-performing schools in terms of math achievement and 18 percent transferred to schools with high reading achievement.

In addition, high-achieving students (those in the top third of HISD students) were 1.6 times more likely to transfer to high-performing schools than low-achieving students (those in the bottom third of HISD students).

However, low- and high-achieving students were about equally likely to transfer to low-performing schools (55 percent and 49 percent, respectively).

Students of color transferred disproportionately to low-achieving schools
Breaking things down by race, the researchers found that 51 percent of displaced white students transferred to schools that ranked in the top third of schools in terms of achievement and only 28 percent of black students and 20 percent of Hispanic students transferred to high-achieving campuses. By comparison, 26 percent of displaced white students, 42 percent of displaced black students and 53 percent of displaced Hispanic students transferred to low-achieving schools.

“It is particularly troubling that not only are economically disadvantaged and black students more likely to experience closures, but they are the least likely to subsequently transfer to the types of high-performing schools that are critical to their future academic success,” Richards said.

School closures and transfers take a toll on student achievement over time
The researchers also focused on the impact of school closures on student achievement over time, as measured by the math and reading TAKS scores of the displaced students and the type of schools to which they transferred.

Overall:
During their first year at a new school, displaced students got 1.3 more questions correct on their math TAKS compared with nondisplaced students. There was no significant change in their reading TAKS results.

In the years following closure, displaced students had slower academic progress than their nondisplaced peers. By their fourth year at a new school, displaced students got 0.3 fewer questions correct on their math TAKS and one fewer question correct on their reading TAKS compared with nondisplaced students.

Students transferred to low-performing schools:
During their first year at a new school, there was no effect on the math TAKS scores of displaced students, but the same students got two fewer questions correct on their reading TAKS compared with nondisplaced students.

In the years following closure, displaced students who transferred to low-performing schools had slower academic achievement than their nondisplaced peers. By their fourth year at a new school, displaced students got 4.1 fewer questions correct on their math TAKS and 3.6 fewer questions correct on their reading TAKS than nondisplaced students.

Students that transferred to high-performing schools:
During their first year at a new school, displaced students got 3.1 more questions correct on their math TAKS and 1.9 more questions correct on their reading TAKS than nondisplaced students.

In the years following closure, displaced students who transferred to high-performing schools had slower growth in academic achievement than their nondisplaced peers. By their fourth year at a new school, the initial bump in achievement after closure had narrowed to 2.2 questions on the math TAKS and 1.3 questions on the reading TAKS.

Findings imply closure policies should mitigate impact on students
“To help minimize the negative effects of closures, the district must be judicious in closing only the lowest-performing schools,” the authors said.

“In addition, students must be offered high-performing transfer options to the extent feasible. We recommend that displaced students are reassigned to schools that are significantly higher-performing than the schools from which they came,” they note. “We also suggest that displaced students be given preferential admissions or reserved slots in several high-performing campuses across the district.”

Stroub said this was especially important because low-performing schools tend to cluster geographically.

“The bulk of displaced students may not live near a meaningfully higher-performing school to which they can be re-zoned,” he said.

“However, HISD can leverage its well-developed choice programs to provide displaced students increased access to higher-performing schools.”

The study and research brief are Part 1 of a larger project, “Evaluating the impact of school closures in Houston ISD.” — Rice University, Houston, and SMU

Tags Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development, Meredith Richards

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Inverse: There is no limit to human speed — Fast, faster, fastest, and fastest-er.

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date August 11, 2016

“Weyand doesn’t see a future where records stop being broken; there are just too many different ways to legally influence performance through better training and better technology.”

Science writer Jacqueline Ronson tapped the expertise of SMU biomechanics expert Peter Weyand for an article on the news web site Inverse.com that examines the possibility for humans to continue running faster and faster — and faster.

Ronson cites physiologist Weyand’s numerous research findings, which have explored the mechanics of how sprinters like Usain Bolt and other world-class athletes are able to run so fast that they continually break speed records. The article “There is no limit to human speed” published Aug. 11, 2016.

Weyand, director of the SMU Locomotor Performance Laboratory, is one of the world’s leading scholars on the scientific basis of human performance. His research on runners, specifically world-class sprinters, looks at the importance of ground forces for running speed, and has established a contemporary understanding that spans the scientific and athletic communities.

In particular, Weyand’s finding that speed athletes are not able to reposition their legs more rapidly than non-athletes debunked a widespread belief. Rather, Weyand and his colleagues have demonstrated sprinting performance is largely set by the force with which one presses against the ground and how long one applies that force.

Weyand is Glenn Simmons Centennial Chair in Applied Physiology and professor of biomechanics in the Department of Applied Physiology & Wellness in SMU’s Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Jacqueline Ronson
Inverse.com
Usain Bolt seems to run impossibly fast: His record time of 9.58 seconds in the 100-meter sprint seems unbeatable — yet that’s what was said about so many of the record holders before.

But surely there must be a hard limit to human speed, after which no more records will be broken? Humans, after all, cannot run infinitely fast.

Peter Weyand, a physiologist who has studied the biomechanics of running for two decades, says no.

“You can always be confident, no matter how fast somebody runs, it’s possible to go faster,” he tells Inverse. “You’re never going to have absolutely perfect conditions and an absolutely perfect person and an absolutely perfect race all come together at the same time.”

Here’s a neat fact: If you can sprint, you can be as fast as Usain Bolt. Back in the late 1990s, Weyand and a team of researchers measured a bunch of different people running at their top speed, and they had something in common: Within a very small margin, they all took the same amount of time to swing a leg through the stride from back to front. “Whether you’re fast, slow, or in between, the repositioning time for the limb at top speed is basically the same,” he says.

Read the full story.

Follow SMU Research on Twitter, @smuresearch.

For more SMU research see www.smuresearch.com.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information, www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

Tags Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development, Peter Weyand

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Scientific American: Blade Runners — Do High-Tech Prostheses Give Runners an Unfair Advantage?

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date August 9, 2016

Four years after Oscar Pistorius made history at the London Olympics, the question remains unanswered

Science writer Larry Greenemeier cited the research of SMU biomechanics expert Peter Weyand for an article in Scientific American that examines the pros and cons of carbon-fiber blade prosthetics used by athlete amputees.

Greenemeier cites Weyand’s research findings from a study of Olympic blade-runner Oscar Pistorius to determine whether the double-amputee had a competitive advantage from his carbon-fiber prosthetic legs. The article “Blade Runners: Do High-Tech Prostheses Give Runners an Unfair Advantage?” published Aug. 5, 2016.

Weyand is Glenn Simmons Centennial Chair in Applied Physiology and professor of biomechanics in the Department of Applied Physiology and Wellness in SMU’s Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Larry Greenemeier
Scientific American
Paralympic long jump champ Markus Rehm’s bid to compete in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics fell short in July when he could not prove that his carbon-fiber “blade” prosthesis didn’t give him an advantage. His baffling case serves as a reminder that four years after South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius propelled himself into history as the first amputee Olympic athlete to compete using blade prostheses, the technology’s impact on performance remains unclear despite ongoing research.

Blade prostheses, like Rehm uses on his right leg and Pistorius used on both, share some characteristics with biological limbs. The blades store energy as they bear the runner’s weight and then release it as the runner pushes off the ground, much the way a leg’s calf muscles and Achilles’ tendons spring and recoil. But an important difference is the foot, which on a blade prosthetic does not pivot or generate its own energy. A biological foot has muscle fibers that help it push off the ground in a way that creates “metabolic efficiency so your muscles don’t have to put all of the work back in with every step as you’re running,” says David Morgenroth, an assistant professor in the University of Washington’s Department of Rehabilitation Medicine…

…Shortly after track and field’s governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), banned Pistorius in 2008 from competing against so-called “able-bodied” competitors, he underwent a series of tests at Rice University’s Locomotion Laboratory in an attempt to be reinstated. The researchers concluded that Pistorius used 17 percent less energy than that of elite sprinters on intact limbs. The tests also revealed that it took the South African 21 percent less time to reposition, or swing, his legs between strides. Big disagreements arose over how to interpret the research.

Southern Methodist University’s Peter Weyand and Matt Bundle from the University of Montana saw a clear overall advantage in Pistorius’s faster leg swings and more energy-efficient stride, which they said could create up to a seven-second advantage in the 400-meter race. “The more mass you have closer to the axis—in this case, your hips—the easier it is to stop the rotation and then turn it around,” Bundle says. “Whereas if you had that same amount of mass located a long way away from the axis—in your lower legs and feet—it becomes much more difficult to stop it and get it going in the opposite direction.”

Read the full story.

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Scientific American: Have We Reached the Athletic Limits of the Human Body?

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date August 9, 2016

Record-breaking has slowed, but science could find new ways to make us keep getting stronger and faster

Science writer Bret Stetka tapped the expertise of SMU biomechanics expert Peter Weyand for an article in Scientific American examining the potential for humans to continue improving strength and speed beyond what has already been achieved.

Stetka quotes Weyand for his expertise on the mechanics of running and speed of world-class sprinters like Usain Bolt. The article “Have We Reached the Athletic Limits of the Human Body?” published Aug. 5, 2016.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Bret Stetka
Scientific American
At this month’s summer’s Olympic Games in Rio, the world’s fastest man, Usain Bolt—a six-foot-five Jamaican with six gold medals and the sinewy stride of a gazelle—will try to beat his own world record of 9.58 seconds in the 100-meter dash.

If he does, some scientists believe he may close the record books for good.

Whereas myriad training techniques and technologies continue to push the boundaries of athletics, and although strength, speed and other physical traits have steadily improved since humans began cataloguing such things, the slowing pace at which sporting records are now broken has researchers speculating that perhaps we’re approaching our collective physiological limit—that athletic achievement is hitting a biological brick wall.

Common sense tells us that of course there are limits to athletic achievement: Barring some drastic amendment to the laws of physics, no human will ever run at the speed of sound. And physiologically speaking there’s only so much calcium that can flood into a muscle cell causing it to contract; there’s only so much oxygen our red blood cells can shuttle around.

In this vein, in 2008 running enthusiast and Stanford University biologist Mark Denny published a study attempting to determine if there are absolute limits to the speeds animals can run. To do so he analyzed the records of three racing sports with long histories of documentation: track and field and horse racing in the U.S., along with English greyhound racing…

…Bolt may be comforted to know that for Southern Methodist University physiology professor Peter Weyand, one of the leading experts on the biology of performance, we humans haven’t quite reached our athletic ceiling. Weyand explains that when considering endurance, for example, there are two paths to improvement: either increasing the amount of blood being pumped out of the heart or increasing the oxygen concentration in the blood itself, as is the case with blood doping. “I don’t think we’ve hit our limits yet,” he believes, “I think people will find ways to enhance oxygen delivery through the body and squeeze more performance out of humans. The only question is will these approaches be considered legal.”

Read the full story.

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The Wall Street Journal: The Science Behind Sprinter Usain Bolt’s Speed

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date August 9, 2016

Usain Bolt, the fastest-ever human, appears to have an extra gear that propels him ahead of other sprinters. But that’s not what’s going on.

Science writer Matthew Futterman tapped the expertise of SMU biomechanics expert Peter Weyand for an article about the world’s fastest-ever human, Usain Bolt.

Reporting in The Wall Street Journal, Futterman quotes Weyand for his expertise on the mechanics of Usain Bolt’s unusual speed. The article “The Science Behind Sprinter Usain Bolt’s Speed,” published July 28, 2016.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Matthew Futterman
The Wall Street Journal
Sprinters who have taken on Usain Bolt in the 100-meter dash often describe a moment in the second half of the race when the world’s fastest-ever human just runs away from them.

One minute they are shoulder-to-shoulder with Bolt, believing that this will be the night the legend will be toppled. The next they are staring at his back, watching him raise his hands in triumph, sometimes many meters before he crosses the finish line.

Last week Bolt expressed his usual, unflappable confidence, even though a hamstring injury kept him from Jamaica’s track and field trials. Granted a medical exemption by the country’s athletics federation, he was named to the team even though he couldn’t qualify at the national trials.

“My chances are always the same: Great!” he said. “If everything goes smoothly the rest of the time and the training goes well, I’m going to be really confident going to the championship.” …

…However, a 2012 study by Matthew Bundle of the University of Montana in Missoula and Peter Weyand at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, showed that the greatest decrease in muscular performance occurs within the first seconds of a sprint when runners are still accelerating, which would suggest that deceleration in a race as short as 100 meters may not be related to how sprinters metabolize glycogen.

“Muscle fatigue happens contraction by contraction,” Weyand said. He argues that the biological process that causes the fatigue is still a mystery. It also is very hard to measure, because it is difficult to examine what is happening to an incredibly fast person’s muscles when he can only run at full speed for roughly three seconds.

Still, the idea that muscle fatigue begins instantaneously and with each muscle contraction may say plenty about why Bolt is so hard to beat.

Read the full story.

Follow SMU Research on Twitter, @smuresearch.

For more SMU research see www.smuresearch.com.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

Tags Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development, locomoto, Peter Weyand

Culture, Society & Family Energy & Matter Health & Medicine Plants & Animals Researcher news SMU In The News

Scientific American: The Secret to Human Speed — “To sprint like a pro, think like a piston.”

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date July 26, 2016

“Weyand has conducted what many researchers consider to be some of the best science to date on the biomechanics of sprinting and how these elite athletes achieve their record-breaking speeds.” — Scientific American

The work of SMU biomechanics researcher Peter G. Weyand is featured in the August 2016 issue of the science news magazine Scientific American.

Science writer and associate editor Dina Fine Maron reports on Weyand’s leading-edge research about the key to human speed for sprinters in the article “The Secret to Human Speed” and the video report “How Elite Sprinters Run So Fast.” Hint: “Think like a piston,” says Maron.

Watch the Scientific American video on “How Elite Sprinters Run So Fast” showing how SMU’s Weyand and his lab study the stride of Olympic athlete Mike Rodgers.

The full story is available from Scientific American behind a paywall.

EXCERPT:

By Dina Fine Marone
Scientific American
… Before (Weyand’s) investigations, the prevailing wisdom about great sprinters was that they are particularly adept at quickly repositioning their limbs for their next step while their feet are in the air … Weyand was the first to test this idea scientifically — and his findings indicate that it is wrong …

… In subsequent work, Weyand further determined that at top speeds the best runners landed with a peak force up to five times their body weight, compared with 3.5 times among the average runner … Recently Weyand’s team additionally figured out how the best sprinters are able to generate those higher forces — and in so doing forced a revision of another central tenet of the running world.

The full story is available from Scientific American behind a paywall.

Follow SMU Research on Twitter, @smuresearch.

For more SMU research see www.smuresearch.com.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

Tags Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development, Peter Weyand

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SMU 2015 research efforts broadly noted in a variety of ways for world-changing impact

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date January 8, 2016

SMU scientists and their research have a global reach that is frequently noted, beyond peer publications and media mentions.

By Margaret Allen
SMU News & Communications
It was a good year for SMU faculty and student research efforts. Here is a small sampling of public and published acknowledgements during 2015:

Hot topic merits open access
Taylor & Francis, publisher of the online journal Environmental Education Research, lifted its subscription-only requirement to meet demand for an article on how climate change is taught to middle-schoolers in California.

Co-author of the research was Diego Román, assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development.

Román’s research revealed that California textbooks are teaching sixth graders that climate change is a controversial debate stemming from differing opinions, rather than a scientific conclusion based on rigorous scientific evidence.

The article, “Textbooks of doubt: Using systemic functional analysis to explore the framing of climate change in middle-school science textbooks,” published in September. The finding generated such strong interest that Taylor & Francis opened access to the article.

Research makes the cover of Biochemistry
Drugs important in the battle against cancer were tested in a virtual lab by SMU biology professors to see how they would behave in the human cell.

A computer-generated composite image of the simulation made the Dec. 15 cover of the journal Biochemistry.

Scientific articles about discoveries from the simulation were also published in the peer review journals Biochemistry and in Pharmacology Research & Perspectives.

The researchers tested the drugs by simulating their interaction in a computer-generated model of one of the cell’s key molecular pumps — the protein P-glycoprotein, or P-gp. Outcomes of interest were then tested in the Wise-Vogel wet lab.

The ongoing research is the work of biochemists John Wise, associate professor, and Pia Vogel, professor and director of the SMU Center for Drug Discovery, Design and Delivery in Dedman College. Assisting them were a team of SMU graduate and undergraduate students.

The researchers developed the model to overcome the problem of relying on traditional static images for the structure of P-gp. The simulation makes it possible for researchers to dock nearly any drug in the protein and see how it behaves, then test those of interest in an actual lab.

To date, the researchers have run millions of compounds through the pump and have discovered some that are promising for development into pharmaceutical drugs to battle cancer.

Click here to read more about the research.

SMU, Simpson Rowe, sexual assault, video

Strong interest in research on sexual victimization
Teen girls were less likely to report being sexually victimized after learning to assertively resist unwanted sexual overtures and after practicing resistance in a realistic virtual environment, according to three professors from the SMU Department of Psychology.

The finding was reported in Behavior Therapy. The article was one of the psychology journal’s most heavily shared and mentioned articles across social media, blogs and news outlets during 2015, the publisher announced.

The study was the work of Dedman College faculty Lorelei Simpson Rowe, associate professor and Psychology Department graduate program co-director; Ernest Jouriles, professor; and Renee McDonald, SMU associate dean for research and academic affairs.

The journal’s publisher, Elsevier, temporarily has lifted its subscription requirement on the article, “Reducing Sexual Victimization Among Adolescent Girls: A Randomized Controlled Pilot Trial of My Voice, My Choice,” and has opened it to free access for three months.

Click here to read more about the research.

Consumers assume bigger price equals better quality
Even when competing firms can credibly disclose the positive attributes of their products to buyers, they may not do so.

Instead, they find it more lucrative to “signal” quality through the prices they charge, typically working on the assumption that shoppers think a high price indicates high quality. The resulting high prices hurt buyers, and may create a case for mandatory disclosure of quality through public policy.

That was a finding of the research of Dedman College’s Santanu Roy, professor, Department of Economics. Roy’s article about the research was published in February in one of the blue-ribbon journals, and the oldest, in the field, The Economic Journal.

Published by the U.K.’s Royal Economic Society, The Economic Journal is one of the founding journals of modern economics. The journal issued a media briefing about the paper, “Competition, Disclosure and Signaling,” typically reserved for academic papers of broad public interest.

Chemistry research group edits special issue
Chemistry professors Dieter Cremer and Elfi Kraka, who lead SMU’s Computational and Theoretical Chemistry Group, were guest editors of a special issue of the prestigious Journal of Physical Chemistry. The issue published in March.

The Computational and Theoretical research group, called CATCO for short, is a union of computational and theoretical chemistry scientists at SMU. Their focus is research in computational chemistry, educating and training graduate and undergraduate students, disseminating and explaining results of their research to the broader public, and programming computers for the calculation of molecules and molecular aggregates.

The special issue of Physical Chemistry included 40 contributions from participants of a four-day conference in Dallas in March 2014 that was hosted by CATCO. The 25th Austin Symposium drew 108 participants from 22 different countries who, combined, presented eight plenary talks, 60 lectures and about 40 posters.

CATCO presented its research with contributions from Cremer and Kraka, as well as Marek Freindorf, research assistant professor; Wenli Zou, visiting professor; Robert Kalescky, post-doctoral fellow; and graduate students Alan Humason, Thomas Sexton, Dani Setlawan and Vytor Oliveira.

There have been more than 75 graduate students and research associates working in the CATCO group, which originally was formed at the University of Cologne, Germany, before moving to SMU in 2009.

Vertebrate paleontology recognized with proclamation
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings proclaimed Oct. 11-17, 2015 Vertebrate Paleontology week in Dallas on behalf of the Dallas City Council.

The proclamation honored the 75th Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, which was jointly hosted by SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in Dedman College and the Perot Museum of Science and Nature. The conference drew to Dallas some 1,200 scientists from around the world.

Making research presentations or presenting research posters were: faculty members Bonnie Jacobs, Louis Jacobs, Michael Polcyn, Neil Tabor and Dale Winkler; adjunct research assistant professor Alisa Winkler; research staff member Kurt Ferguson; post-doctoral researchers T. Scott Myers and Lauren Michael; and graduate students Matthew Clemens, John Graf, Gary Johnson and Kate Andrzejewski.

The host committee co-chairs were Anthony Fiorillo, adjunct research professor; and Louis Jacobs, professor. Committee members included Polcyn; Christopher Strganac, graduate student; Diana Vineyard, research associate; and research professor Dale Winkler.

KERA radio reporter Kat Chow filed a report from the conference, explaining to listeners the science of vertebrate paleontology, which exposes the past, present and future of life on earth by studying fossils of animals that had backbones.

SMU earthquake scientists rock scientific journal

Modelled pressure changes caused by injection and production. (Nature Communications/SMU)

Findings by the SMU earthquake team reverberated across the nation with publication of their scientific article in the prestigious British interdisciplinary journal Nature, ranked as one of the world’s most cited scientific journals.

The article reported that the SMU-led seismology team found that high volumes of wastewater injection combined with saltwater extraction from natural gas wells is the most likely cause of unusually frequent earthquakes occurring in the Dallas-Fort Worth area near the small community of Azle.

The research was the work of Dedman College faculty Matthew Hornbach, associate professor of geophysics; Heather DeShon, associate professor of geophysics; Brian Stump, SMU Albritton Chair in Earth Sciences; Chris Hayward, research staff and director geophysics research program; and Beatrice Magnani, associate professor of geophysics.

The article, “Causal factors for seismicity near Azle, Texas,” published online in late April. Already the article has been downloaded nearly 6,000 times, and heavily shared on both social and conventional media. The article has achieved a ranking of 270, which puts it in the 99th percentile of 144,972 tracked articles of a similar age in all journals, and 98th percentile of 626 tracked articles of a similar age in Nature.

“It has a very high impact factor for an article of its age,” said Robert Gregory, professor and chair, SMU Earth Sciences Department.

The scientific article also was entered into the record for public hearings both at the Texas Railroad Commission and the Texas House Subcommittee on Seismic Activity.

Researchers settle long-debated heritage question of “The Ancient One”

The skull of Kennewick Man and a sculpted bust by StudioEIS based on forensic facial reconstruction by sculptor Amanda Danning. (Credit: Brittany Tatchell)

The research of Dedman College anthropologist and Henderson-Morrison Professor of Prehistory David Meltzer played a role in settling the long-debated and highly controversial heritage of “Kennewick Man.”

Also known as “The Ancient One,” the 8,400-year-old male skeleton discovered in Washington state has been the subject of debate for nearly two decades. Argument over his ancestry has gained him notoriety in high-profile newspaper and magazine articles, as well as making him the subject of intense scholarly study.

Officially the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Kennewick Man was discovered in 1996 and radiocarbon dated to 8500 years ago.

Because of his cranial shape and size he was declared not Native American but instead ‘Caucasoid,’ implying a very different population had once been in the Americas, one that was unrelated to contemporary Native Americans.

But Native Americans long have claimed Kennewick Man as theirs and had asked for repatriation of his remains for burial according to their customs.

Meltzer, collaborating with his geneticist colleague Eske Willerslev and his team at the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen, in June reported the results of their analysis of the DNA of Kennewick in the prestigious British journal Nature in the scientific paper “The ancestry and affiliations of Kennewick Man.”

The results were announced at a news conference, settling the question based on first-ever DNA evidence: Kennewick Man is Native American.

The announcement garnered national and international media attention, and propelled a new push to return the skeleton to a coalition of Columbia Basin tribes. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) introduced the Bring the Ancient One Home Act of 2015 and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has offered state assistance for returning the remains to Native Tribes.

Science named the Kennewick work one of its nine runners-up in the highly esteemed magazine’s annual “Breakthrough of the Year” competition.

The research article has been viewed more than 60,000 times. It has achieved a ranking of 665, which puts it in the 99th percentile of 169,466 tracked articles of a similar age in all journals, and in the 94th percentile of 958 tracked articles of a similar age in Nature.

In “Kennewick Man: coming to closure,” an article in the December issue of Antiquity, a journal of Cambridge University Press, Meltzer noted that the DNA merely confirmed what the tribes had known all along: “We are him, he is us,” said one tribal spokesman. Meltzer concludes: “We presented the DNA evidence. The tribal members gave it meaning.”

Click here to read more about the research.

Prehistoric vacuum cleaner captures singular award

Paleontologists Louis L. Jacobs, SMU, and Anthony Fiorillo, Perot Museum, have identified a new species of marine mammal from bones recovered from Unalaska, an Aleutian island in the North Pacific. (Hillsman Jackson, SMU)

Science writer Laura Geggel with Live Science named a new species of extinct marine mammal identified by two SMU paleontologists among “The 10 Strangest Animal Discoveries of 2015.”

The new species, dubbed a prehistoric hoover by London’s Daily Mail online news site, was identified by SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, and paleontologist and SMU adjunct research professor Anthony Fiorillo, vice president of research and collections and chief curator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science.

Jacobs and Fiorillo co-authored a study about the identification of new fossils from the oddball creature Desmostylia, discovered in the same waters where the popular “Deadliest Catch” TV show is filmed. The hippo-like creature ate like a vacuum cleaner and is a new genus and species of the only order of marine mammals ever to go extinct — surviving a mere 23 million years.

Desmostylians, every single species combined, lived in an interval between 33 million and 10 million years ago. Their strange columnar teeth and odd style of eating don’t occur in any other animal, Jacobs said.

SMU campus hosted the world’s premier physicists

The SMU Department of Physics hosted the “23rd International Workshop on Deep Inelastic Scattering and Related Subjects” from April 27-May 1, 2015. Deep Inelastic Scattering is the process of probing the quantum particles that make up our universe.

As noted by the CERN Courier — the news magazine of the CERN Laboratory in Geneva, which hosts the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest science experiment — more than 250 scientists from 30 countries presented more than 200 talks on a multitude of subjects relevant to experimental and theoretical research. SMU physicists presented at the conference.

The SMU organizing committee was led by Fred Olness, professor and chair of the SMU Department of Physics in Dedman College, who also gave opening and closing remarks at the conference. The committee consisted of other SMU faculty, including Jodi Cooley, associate professor; Simon Dalley, senior lecturer; Robert Kehoe, professor; Pavel Nadolsky, associate professor, who also presented progress on experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider; Randy Scalise, senior lecturer; and Stephen Sekula, associate professor.

Sekula also organized a series of short talks for the public about physics and the big questions that face us as we try to understand our universe.

Click here to read more about the research.

Tags Alan Humason, Alisa J. WInkler, Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development, Anthony Fiorillo, Beatrice Magnani, Bonnie F. Jacobs, Brian W. Stump, Chris Hayward, Christopher Strganac, Dale A. Winkler, Dani Setlawan, David Meltzer, Dedman College, Diana Vineyard, Diego Román, Dieter Creme, Elfi Kraka, Ernest Jouriles, Fredrick Olness, Gary Johnson, Heather R. DeShon, Jodi Cooley, John F. Graf, John Wise, Kate Andrzejewski, Kurt Ferguson, Lauren Michael, Lorelei Simpson Rowe, Louis L. Jacobs, Marek Freindorf, Matthew Clemens, Matthew J. Hornbach, Michael J. Polcyn, Neil Tabor, Pavel Nadolsky, Pia Vogel, Randy Scalise, Renee McDonald, Robert Gregory, Robert Kalescky, Robert Kehoe, Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Santanu Roy, Simon Dalley, SMU Department of Anthropology, SMU Department of Biological Sciences, SMU Department of Chemistry, SMU Department of Economics, SMU Department of Physics, SMU Department of Psychology, Stephen J. Sekula, Thomas Sexton, Timothy S. Myers, Vytor Oliveira, Wenli Zou

Culture, Society & Family Learning & Education Researcher news SMU In The News Videos

WFAA: Can Technology Help Kids Learn to Read

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date September 17, 2015

Technology helpful in motivating young struggling readers, particularly boys, to read — Dara Rossi

SMU’s Dara Rossi was interviewed by the summer reading program Shelly’s Summer Bookworms for Dallas TV station WFAA.

Rossi is a clinical assistant professor and director of SMU’s Teach for American Teacher Education Program in the Simmons School of Education and Human Development. She was asked how using technology can help young students learn to read.

Rossi is an experienced educator with a strong science background, including K-12 curriculum development and administration.

Tags Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development, Dara Williams-Rossi

Culture, Society & Family Learning & Education Researcher news SMU In The News

The Texas Tribune: Coalition Publishes Study Touting Flagship Universities

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date December 11, 2012

An independent study by Michael McLendon was covered by The Texas Tribune in a Dec. 6 article by journalist Reeve Hamilton. McLendon is professor of higher education policy and leadership in SMU’s Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education & Human Development.

McLendon compiled the report “Committed to Excellence: An Assessment of the Conditions and Outcomes of Undergraduate Education at the University of Texas at Austin and at Texas A&M University” for The Texas Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education, www.TexasEducationExcellence.org.

McLendon examined the role and performance of UT Austin and Texas A&M compared to their national peers in the report released by the Coalition on Dec. 6. The report provides a baseline look at the state’s flagship public universities. McLendon was commissioned to do the study while at Vanderbilt University. Now at Simmons, he’s a faculty member in the Department of Education Policy and Leadership and serves as the school’s associate dean.

Read the full article.

EXCERPT:

By Reeve Hamilton
The Texas Tribune
A group that formed in 2011 in response to a prominent push for higher education policy proposals it viewed as misguided released a report on Thursday that makes a case for the value of the state’s flagship universities: the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University.

The Texas Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education report was written by Michael McLendon, a professor of higher education policy and leadership at Southern Methodist University. He previously worked at Vanderbilt University, where he completed much of the work on the report.

Jenifer Sarver, a spokeswoman for the coalition, said the group commissioned the report because it wanted a substantive, data-driven conversation about the value of the state’s top-tier public research universities. She said that among the universities’ supporters, as the statewide debate on reforming higher education has continued, there has been “a real desire to not just raise a fist and criticize others who are raising important questions.”

In the report, McLendon used national data to compare institutions and found that the two flagship universities are a bargain relative to their peers — UT charges about $1,000 less than the average tuition and fees in the peer group, while A&M charges roughly $2,000 less. He also found that they are both “among the nation’s foremost leaders in the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded nationally.”

Overall, he said in a statement, “they perform at high levels when compared to their national peers on many of the dimensions of importance to students, to the public, and to the state of Texas.”

The chief areas in which McLendon found the Texas flagships lagging were four-year graduation rates, which hover around 50 percent at both universities, and African-American student enrollment.

Read the full article.

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SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information, www.smu.edu.

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Tags Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development, Michael McLendon

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SMU-North Texas Food Bank study will analyze causes of hunger in Dallas and rural North Texas

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date November 6, 2012

SMU with The Hunger Center of North Texas will look at the impact of social networks and social capital

Economics researchers at SMU will analyze the roles social networks and isolation play in fighting hunger in North Texas.

Recent studies have found that household economic resources are not the only factor contributing to food insecurity, according to SMU economist Thomas B. Fomby.

About 1 in 6 U.S. households are affected by food insecurity, meaning there’s not enough food at all times to sustain active, healthy lives for all family members, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Reidus hilli, John Graf, SMU, coelacanth, Dipluridae,

“This study will analyze the role of other factors causing food insecurity, such as urban or rural settings, access to nutrition assistance programs, access to inexpensive groceries, family support and social stigma,” Fomby said.

Fomby, professor of economics and director of the Richard B. Johnson Center for Economic Studies, and Daniel Millimet, SMU professor of economics, are conducting the study. A $120,000 grant from the North Texas Food Bank is funding the research. The study will be complete in March 2014.

Household income a powerful predictor, but social networks play role
Although household income is the single most powerful predictor of food security, poverty and hunger are not synonymous. According to Feeding America, 28 percent of food insecure residents in Dallas County are ineligible for most nutrition assistance programs because they have incomes above 185 percent of the federal poverty level; and the U. S. Department of Agriculture reports that 58.9 percent of U.S. households with incomes below the poverty level are food secure. The reasons for this are not well understood.

“With this research, we expect to better understand the causes of food insecurity in North Texas and improve the assessment of at-risk households,” Fomby said.

The SMU study is one of two major research projects launching The Hunger Center of North Texas, a new collaborative research initiative created by the North Texas Food Bank. The University of North Texas is also collaborating on a study.

The studies will focus on the impact that “social networks” and “social capital” have on household food security. The central questions are:

How do social relationships and community conditions make it easier (or harder) for low-income households to keep healthy food on the table?
How do these social and community influences differ in the City of Dallas and rural areas of North Texas?

Groundbreaking research may help leverage social forces to reduce food assistance
“We believe that this research will be groundbreaking,” said Richard Amory, director of research for the North Texas Food Bank. “Nutrition assistance programs tend to approach individuals and households in isolation. Understanding the role that communities play in food security may help us leverage social forces to develop more effective programs and, ultimately, reduce the need for food assistance.”

The studies will start to shed some light on issues related to hunger in the community, said Kimberly Aaron, vice president of Policy, Programs and Research for the North Texas Food Bank.

“In performing our due diligence on existing research, while forming The Hunger Center, it became clear that many factors related to food insecurity are not well understood,” Aaron said.

SMU and the North Texas Food Bank recently formed a partnership, “Stampede Against Hunger,” to build on SMU’s strong support for NTFB, connecting campus groups already working with the food bank, as well as encouraging new types of participation for the campus and alumni community.

SMU support for the food bank has ranged from traditional food drives and volunteer work in the NTFB distribution center, to research for the food bank conducted by students in the Cox School of Business and the Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering. Faculty and students from the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development volunteer regularly in NTFB nutrition courses and Fondren Library staff organize a “Food for Fines” drive each year, waiving library fines in exchange for donations of non-perishable food items.

Fomby and Millimet are in the SMU Department of Economics in Dedman College. — Nancy George, and the NTFB

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For more SMU research see www.smuresearch.com.

Tags Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development, Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering, Cox School of Business, Daniel L. Millimet, Dedman College, Fondren Library, Richard B. Johnson Center for Economic Studies, SMU Department of Economics, Thomas B. Fomby

Culture, Society & Family Learning & Education

Academic achievement improved among students active in structured after-school programs

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date October 5, 2012

Grades improved among elementary and middle school children participating in after-school activities at Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Dallas

School-age children who participate in structured after-school activities improve their academic achievement, according to a new study from Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

The study by researchers in SMU’s Simmons School of Education and Human Development measured academic performance of students enrolled in Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Dallas.

“Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Dallas and other structured programs are really having a positive impact,” said Ken Springer, an associate professor. “We believe that the homework support that the clubs consistently provide students may be a key factor. Now we plan to extend the study and take into account more variables.”

The study looked at data on 719 students in second through eighth grade who participated in after-school activities at one of 12 clubs during the 2009-2010 academic year.

Among elementary and middle-school children who participated frequently in club activities, the researchers saw grades improve from the start of the year to the end of the year. That was especially true for elementary students. The researchers also saw improved school attendance for both age groups.

Among elementary students who participated in a greater variety of activities, the researchers observed that the students’ grade point averages improved, “but only among elementary students, and only when program participation was substantial,” said the authors.

Afterschool care can provide children with sense of success
Afterschool care activities can provide a child with a sense of success, even if that child isn’t necessarily successful in the classroom, said Deborah Diffily, co-author on the study and an associate professor in Simmons.

“For children who live in poverty — often those who attend Boys and Girls Clubs — the clubs can ameliorate the pressures of poverty, such as living in an overcrowded apartment or a lack of after-school snacks,” Diffily said.

The authors reported their findings in “The Relationship Between Intensity and Breadth of After-School Program Participation and Academic Achievement: Evidence from a Short-Term Longitudinal Study,” in the Journal of Community Psychology.

Springer and Diffily both teach within Simmons’ Department of Teaching and Learning.

Study considered how frequently children participated and the volume of activities
About 15 percent of American students participate in some sort of structured, supervised program outside of school, say the authors. Another 30 percent would participate if quality programming were available, they report.

“After-school programs are increasingly viewed as a means of supporting children’s physical, academic, social and behavioral development,” according to Springer and Diffily. Increasingly, federal funding is tied to empirical evidence that proves programs are beneficial.

Within the scientific literature, the psychological and social benefits of programs are well-documented, the authors said. Benefits observed include better social skills, greater motivation, better classroom behavior, higher self-esteem and lower rates of criminal activity.

However, evidence of any academic benefits is mixed. Some studies show benefits for grades or achievement test scores, while others don’t, said the authors. Those discrepancies have been attributed to variations in study methodologies. Rarely have studies considered intensity and breadth, as in the current study.

Boys and Girls Clubs’ unique structure is comprehensive, has history of success
Springer and Diffily looked specifically at children who are members of Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Dallas, which is part of Boys and Girls Clubs of America, one of the nation’s oldest after-school programs.

A nonprofit organization, Boys and Girls Clubs of America comprises about 4,000 community-based clubs that serve more than 4 million children after school every weekday. Annual membership costs are low and cover daily access, homework support and choice of age-appropriate activities.

Each club’s programs span five areas: Character and Leadership; Education and Career; Health and Life Skills; Arts; and Sports, Fitness and Recreation.

During a daily, designated homework period, staff and volunteers divide the students into groups by age and help them complete their homework.

Methodology tapped BGCGD data logged for each participant
The study relied on absences and students’ grades for English, math and science from the first six weeks and the final six weeks of the school year.

Besides looking at grades and attendance, the researchers also calculated overall GPA and overall school absences.

Springer and Diffily found that the more frequent the participation, the greater the improvement in overall GPA. That correlation was stronger for elementary students, and for grades as opposed to school attendance.

Likewise, the researchers observed a positive correlation between activity and GPA. The more activities attended, the greater the increase in overall GPA among elementary students. Breadth wasn’t associated with improved GPA among middle-schoolers. Also, breadth didn’t impact absences for either age group.

Academic benefits may be the result of club influences or to shielding students from negative influences outside the clubs, or both, said Springer and Diffily.

“Children benefited from the clubs regardless of the extent of participation in any one program,” the authors said, “but the more programs for which they attended the majority of meetings, the greater the benefits. — Margaret Allen

Follow SMU Research on Twitter, @smuresearch.

Tags Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development, Deborah Diffily, Ken Springer

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DMN: Cowlishaw: Research by SMU professor shows blades give Pistorius edge

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date August 13, 2012

SMU professor says ‘blade runners’ offer significant advantage

Sports journalist Tim Cowlishaw with The Dallas Morning News has covered the long-running global controversy surrounding double-amputee South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius. Controversy has swirled around the sprinter over whether his light-weight, carbon-fiber prosthetic “Cheetah” legs give him a competitive advantage.

Cowlishaw’s Aug. 12 column “Research by SMU professor shows blades give Pistorius edge” quotes SMU’s Peter Weyand, an expert on human locomotion and on Pistorius’ competitive advantage.

Weyand helped lead a team of scientists who are experts in biomechanics and physiology in conducting experiments on Pistorius and the mechanics of his racing ability.

Weyand is widely quoted in the press for his expertise on human speed. He is an SMU associate professor of applied physiology and biomechanics in the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education & Human Development.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Tim Cowlishaw
Dallas Morning News
Four years ago, Dr. Peter Weyand’s research at Rice University helped overturn a ban that kept Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee from South Africa, from using his “blade runners” to compete on the same track with the world’s finest athletes.

Pistorius made history this past week in London where he reached the semifinals of the 400 meters and ran the anchor leg for the South African team in the men’s 4×400 relay.

Today Weyand is an associate professor at SMU. His locomotor performance laboratory sits just off campus. And the man who helped make Pistorius’ barrier-breaking trip to the Olympics possible isn’t sure that’s such a good thing.

Weyand contends that Pistorius has a significant advantage over “intact limb” runners. Former gold medal winner Michael Johnson made that statement before the London Games and was, essentially, laughed at.

In Weyand’s case, he has years of data to support it.

“The first order of business is to acknowledge his achievement — his Olympic qualification,” Weyand said. “We all like him. What he’s done is remarkable. It’s a story you couldn’t make up.

“But there’s a legitimate performance question, and we got involved on a scientific level to evaluate that question.”

In 2007, Pistorius was banned from standard competition by the IAAF (track’s governing body) because of German research that suggested Pistorius had an advantage based on lower oxygen consumption. Pistorius appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and Weyand’s team at Rice conducted the study that eventually cleared him to compete. […]

Read the full story.

Tags Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development, Peter Weyand

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The Economist: Faster, higher, no longer

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date August 9, 2012

Is it time to update the Olympic credo?

The Economist explores the question of whether the human body has maxed-out when it comes to breaking future Olympic athletic records.

The Aug. 4 article “Faster, higher, no longer” quotes SMU’s Peter Weyand, an expert in human speed and human locomotion.

Weyand helped lead a team of scientists who are experts in biomechanics and physiology in conducting experiments on South African Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee whose artificial “Cheetah” legs have stirred controversy, and the mechanics of his racing ability.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

The Economist
ON AUGUST 5th millions of people will watch the 100-metre final at the London Olympics. Many will wonder if anyone can repeat Usain Bolt’s feat in Berlin in 2009, when the Jamaican clocked 9.58 seconds, lopping 0.11 seconds—aeons in a sprint—off the previous world record, which he set at the 2008 Beijing games.

One person who thinks this unlikely is Mark Denny. Another 0.11 seconds would take the time below what Dr Denny, from Stanford University, reckons is the absolute limit of human athletic performance in the 100-metre dash.

In 2008 Dr Denny published a paper in which he crunched through the highest speeds achieved each year in running events from sprints to the marathon, some dating back to 1900 (see chart). A statistical technique called extreme-value analysis discerned trends and the maximum possible deviations from them. For the 100 metres, the human speed limit is 10.55 metres per second. This translates to 9.48 seconds.

Predicting the limits of human athletic prowess has been a popular parlour game among number crunchers. One study from 1992 had female marathon runners drawing level with men by 1998, to complete the 42.195km (26.2-mile) course in just under two hours and two minutes. (The current male record remains 1.5 minutes slower; for women it is 12 minutes slower still.) A more recent analysis from 2004 suggested that male and female 100-metre times will converge in 2156, at 8.08 seconds.

Nowadays sport statisticians view such calculations as flawed because they relied on linear extrapolations. They prefer to fit data to variants of a “logistic” curve. This produces an S-shaped plot more in line with the intuition that performance starts off relatively flat. It then goes through a period of rapid improvement as more people take part and more systematic approaches to training and nutrition get more out of them. It finally levels off as athletes inch towards the most a body can manage. [ … ]

[ … ] Statistics suggest that feats like those of Messrs Bolt and Beamon are increasingly improbable. But are they impossible? Peter Weyand, of Southern Methodist University in Texas, has shown that whereas the peak force which elite sprinters apply to the track is more than four times their body weight, they can squeeze even more out of their muscles. Dr Weyand found that the forces generated while athletes hopped on one leg as fast as they could on a high-speed treadmill were roughly twice as high as during running at top speed. This translated into 30% more ground force.

Since ground force is the main determinant of sprinting speed, Dr Weyand’s results imply that human muscles are capable of producing enough oomph to propel sprinters one-third faster than Mr Bolt’s 2009 record. The reason they have not is that in the normal, two-legged gait the foot is in contact with the ground for only around one-tenth of a second, 0.05 seconds less than when hopping. As a consequence, muscle fibres do not have enough time to contract to their full potential. Although tapping all this force while sprinting seems biomechanically inconceivable, there may be scope for slight alterations in training and gait, focused on increasing the peak power available to sprinters. For his part, Dr Denny would be thrilled to see any athlete breach his limits, but he isn’t putting any money on it.

Read the full story.

Tags Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development, Peter Weyand

Culture, Society & Family Health & Medicine Researcher news SMU In The News Technology

Sports Illustrated: Fair or foul? Experts split over whether Pistorius has advantage

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date August 6, 2012

Scientists debate whether prosthetic legs give Pistorius an unfair advantage in the 400-meter race

Sports journalist David Epstein at Sports Illustrated has written a comprehensive piece on the long-running global controversy surrounding double-amputee South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius, the first amputee to compete in the Olympics.

The Aug. 2 article “Fair or foul? Experts split over whether Pistorius has advantage” quotes SMU’s Peter Weyand, an expert in human locomotion.

Controversy has swirled around Pistorius as the debate continues over the scientific advantage he enjoys as a result of his high-tech, carbon fiber artificial legs. Weyand helped lead a team of scientists who are experts in biomechanics and physiology in conducting experiments on Pistorius and the mechanics of his racing ability.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By David Epstein
Sports Illustrated
LONDON — Before he changed into his racing legs, South African double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius made sure to greet each and every photographer who showed up to shoot his training session last Sunday at St. Mary’s University College in Twickenham, far in the south of London. At the very same time that one of his PR reps was insisting that he wouldn’t be talking at all today, Pistorius was busily talking to everyone he could see. He greeted every onlooker with a handshake, going back when he missed one person. “I think I forgot to greet you,” he said softly, and extended his hand. The display prompted a British photographer to remark: “I’ve never come across that. He doesn’t need any PR, does he?” And it’s all the more remarkable considering that such manners flowed from a man who is an A-list celebrity in South Africa. Pistorius has owned white tigers and racehorses, and the gossip pages recently reported that he’s dating a Russian supermodel. (Two days ago, a zealous fan showed him a photo of “Pistorius 2012” tattooed on her arm.)

That Pistorius is charismatic is beyond questioning. Nor is there any doubt of the magnitude of the inspiration he engenders. Pistorius’s Twitter picture is a shot of him — in his crescent, carbon-fiber Cheetah Flex-Feet — leaning down and jogging beside a little blonde girl whose own Cheetah legs are protruding, adorably, from beneath her tiny yellow sun dress. Or how about this scene, which sounds like the Paralympic variation of a bad barroom joke: guy with no lower arms or legs walks up to a guy born with no fibulas and starts asking about sprinting. But that actually happened, last year, the day before Pistorius ran in a Diamond League meet in New York City. Pistorius was gracious and patient in giving advice to the man, Andre Lampkin, a 23-year-old former football player who had recently lost parts of all four limbs to bacterial meningitis, and was still extremely wobbly on his new Cheetahs.

When the “Blade Runner” steps onto the track Saturday, it will be as South Africa’s top quarter-miler of 2012 and the first double-amputee (and first male Paralympian of any sort) to compete in the Olympics. And even though Pistorius — who had both lower legs amputated before he was a year old — is a veritable fount of inspiration, questions about his carbon fiber racing legs have followed him to London. Just before the Games began, Michael Johnson — Pistorius’s friend and the 400-meter world record holder — said that Pistorius should not be competing against able-bodied runners.

“My position is that because we don’t know for sure whether he gets an advantage from the prosthetics that he wears, it is unfair to the able-bodied competitors,” Johnson said. “That is hard for a lot of people to take and to understand when you are talking about an athlete and an individual who has a disability.” [ … ]

[ … ] Pistorius appealed the ban to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). He went for more testing, this time in a lab at Rice University run by physiologist Peter Weyand. The data from that testing found that Pistorius fatigued at a normal rate. Not to mention that energy efficiency has about as much to do with sprint performance as fuel efficiency does with drag-racing performance. University of Colorado physiologist Rodger Kram and Hugh Herr, a professor at MIT and world-renowned designer of prosthetics — both members of the scientific team that did the second analysis of Pistorius — presented the data to the CAS.

Herr, whose own designs have been commercialized by Össur, the company that makes the Cheetah Flex-Feet, has been Pistorius’s most vigorous supporter. And his life narrative bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Pistorius. Herr was a mountain-climbing prodigy, known as the “Boy Wonder,” until he suffered frostbite on a climbing trip as a 17-year-old in 1982 and lost both lower legs. Rather than accept the end of his climbing career, Herr immediately began designing climbing-specific prostheses that could change length mid-ascent and find purchase on nooks too small for human feet. And, almost as quickly, some of Herr’s competitors who saw a potentially unfair advantage called for him to be disqualified from competitive climbing. [ … ]

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New study: Running mechanics, not metabolism, are key to performance for elite sprinters

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date August 1, 2012

Sprinting performance isn’t a factor of conserving energy; rather, forces applied by the foot hitting the ground maximize all-out bursts of sprinting

Sprinters competing in the 2012 Olympics might assume their championship performance is the result of their fuel-efficient physiology.

But a new study disproves the classic scientific view that conserving energy maximizes performance in a sprinting event.

The study by biomechanics researchers Matthew W. Bundle at the University of Montana and Peter G. Weyand at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, demonstrates that metabolic economy is not an important factor for performance in events lasting 60 seconds or less.

In fact, just the opposite is true.

“That prevailing view is no longer viable,” said Weyand. “Sprinters, if anything, are wasteful of energy. This is due to the biological trade-offs between faster muscle fibers that provide the large and rapid forces needed for sprinting, and slower muscle fibers that maximize metabolic economy.”

Instead, the key to top-flight sprinting is to maximize how hard each foot hits the ground, which allows sprinters to translate musculoskeletal and ground reaction forces into swift motion, said Bundle.

“Saving energy is critically important for endurance, but not for sprinting, which our findings indicate is not energy-limited,” Bundle said.

Metabolic energy available from sustainable, aerobic sources predominantly determines performance during endurance events by setting the intensity of the musculoskeletal performance that can be sustained throughout the effort, the study found.

For sprinters, Bundle and Weyand conclude the opposite is true.

“The intensity of the mechanical activity that the musculoskeletal system can (for a very short time) achieve determines the quantities of metabolic energy released and the level of performance attained,” according to the study.

The authors reported their findings in “Sprint Exercise Performance: Does Metabolic Power Matter?” in the July issue of Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews.

Sprint performance variations are a function of external forces
The authors write in their study that athletic performance can be analyzed considering either the input to, or the output from, the skeletal muscles that serve as biological engines. Input is the chemical energy that fuels muscular contraction. Output is the force or mechanical power the contractions produce.

To analyze the mechanics of burst-type sprint activities, the authors said they drew on all-out running speeds and cycling power outputs of humans because of the abundance and quality of the data available and because the mechanical and metabolic contrasts between the two provide informative insights. The authors focused on durations of up to five minutes, particularly on efforts of less than a minute.

For both exercises, differences in sprinting performance were predominantly a function of the magnitude of the external forces applied because running contact lengths and cycling down-stroke lengths, as well as stride and pedal frequency, exhibited limited variations. Additionally, for both cycling and running, external forces applied during sprinting are believed to be consistently related to the corresponding muscle forces, regardless of the intensity or duration of the effort.

So what determines the maximum external forces the musculoskeletal system can apply during a brief, all-out sprint? And why do those forces decrease over the duration of the sprint?

The researchers assessed neuromuscular activation using a diagnostic procedure called surface electromyography to measure electrical activity in the activated muscle fibers. That assessment showed that neuromuscular activation increases continuously during all-out sprint cycling and running trials. More rapid increases were typical for the briefest trials that required the greatest forces. That indicates that all-out sprinting performances are highly dependent on duration because of the speed of musculoskeletal fatigue during dynamic exercise requiring large force outputs, the authors reported.

Sprint performance linked to mechanics of applying external force
Bundle and Weyand altered three independent variables to maximize the variation observed in sprint performance: Subjects were individuals with large differences in their sprint performance capabilities; all-out sprint trials spanned a broad range of durations from 2 to 300 seconds; and performance was compared across different modes of sprinting, namely cycling and running.

“The predictive success of our force application model, both within and across modes of sprint exercise, indicates that as efforts extend from a few seconds to a few minutes, the fractional reliance on anaerobic metabolism progressively impairs whole-body musculoskeletal performance, and does so with a rapid and remarkably consistent time course,” the authors wrote. “In this respect, the sprint portion of the performance-duration curve predominantly represents, not a limit on the rates of energy re-supply, but the progressive impairment of skeletal muscle force production that results from a reliance on anaerobic metabolism to fuel intense, sequential contractions.”

Conclusion of study departs from prevailing physiological paradigm
Since the muscular engines of humans and other animals are similar in terms of their metabolic and mechanical function, the findings likely apply to the burst performance capabilities of vertebrate animals in general, say the researchers.

Bundle is an assistant professor of biomechanics at the University of Montana. Weyand is an associate professor of applied physiology and biomechanics in the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education & Human Development at SMU in Dallas.

Funding for the study came from the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command and the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center.

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Scientific American: Does Double Amputee Oscar Pistorius’s Prosthetic Legs Disqualify Him from the Olympics?

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date July 26, 2012

Scientists debate whether prosthetic legs give Pistorius an unfair advantage in the 400-meter race

Scientific American has written a comprehensive piece on the long-running global controversy surrounding double-amputee South African runner Oscar Pistorius, the first amputee to compete in the Olympics.

The July 24 article “Should Oscar Pistorius’s Prosthetic Legs Disqualify Him from the Olympics?” quotes SMU’s Peter Weyand, an expert in human locomotion.

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EXCERPT:

By Rose Eveleth
Scientific American
Runners who’ve faced off against Oscar Pistorius say they know when the South African is closing in on them from behind. They hear a distinctive clicking noise growing louder, like a pair of scissors slicing through the air—the sound of Pistorius’s Flex-Foot Cheetah prosthetic legs.

It’s those long, J-shaped, carbon-fiber lower legs—and the world-class race times that come with them—that have some people asking an unpopular question: Does Pistorius, the man who has overcome so much to be the first double amputee to run at an Olympic level, have an unfair advantage? Scientists are becoming entwined in a debate over whether Pistorius should be allowed to compete in the 2012 London Games.

Pistorius was born without fibulas, one of the two long bones in the lower leg. He was unable to walk as a baby, and at 11 months old both of his legs were amputated below the knee. But the growing child didn’t let his disability slow him down. At age 12 he was playing rugby with the other boys, and in 2005, at age 18, he ran the 400-meter race in 47.34 seconds at the South African Championships, sixth best. Now 25, the man nicknamed the “Blade Runner” has qualified for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, just three weeks before the games were to begin. But should he be allowed to compete?

The question seems preposterous. How could someone without lower legs possibly have an advantage over athletes with natural legs? The debate took a scientific turn in 2007 when a German team reported that Pistorius used 25 percent less energy than natural runners. The conclusion was tied to the unusual prosthetic made by an Icelandic company called Össur. The Flex-Foot Cheetah has become the go-to running prosthetic for Paralympic (and, potentially Olympic) athletes. “When the user is running, the prosthesis’s J curve is compressed at impact, storing energy and absorbing high levels of stress that would otherwise be absorbed by a runner’s ankle, knee, hip and lower back,” explains Hilmar Janusson, executive vice president of research and development at Össur. The Cheetah’s carbon-fiber layers then rebound off the ground in response to the runner’s strides.

After the German report was released, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) banned Pistorius from competing. Pistorius hired Jeffrey Kessler, a high-powered lawyer who’s represented athletes from the National Basketball Association and National Football League. It soon became clear that the IAAF’s study was very poorly designed, so when Pistorius’s team asked for a new study they got it. Soon scientists gathered at Rice University to figure out just what was going on with Pistorius’s body.

The scientific team included Peter Weyand, a physiologist at Southern Methodist University who had the treadmills needed to measure the forces involved in sprinting. Rodger Kram, at the University of Colorado at Boulder, was a track and field fan who studied biomechanics. Hugh Herr, a double amputee himself, was a renowned biophysicist. The trio, and other experts, measured Pistorius’s oxygen consumption, his leg movements, the forces he exerted on the ground and his endurance. They also looked at leg-repositioning time—the amount of time it takes Pistorius to swing his leg from the back to the front. (…)

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Discovery News: How Olympic ‘Blade Runner’ Sprints Without Feet

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date July 22, 2012

Oscar Pistorius will be the first amputee to compete in the Olympics. Here’s a look at the mechanics of how he runs.

Discovery News has written a comprehensive piece on the running mechanics of double-amputee South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius, the first amputee to compete in the Olympics.

The July 20 article “How Olympic ‘Blade Runner’ Sprints Without Feet” quotes SMU’s Peter Weyand, an expert in human locomotion.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Sheila Eldred
Discovery News
When the start gun goes off for the individual 400 and 4X400 relay at the 2012 London Olympics, double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius, the man known as the Blade Runner, will spring out of the blocks with the world’s best able-bodied athletes. It marks the first time an amputee will compete in the Olympics.

Pistorius will be wearing carbon-fiber prosthetics designed for sprinting. While the debate over whether his flex-foot Cheetahs makes it harder or easier for him to sprint continues, there’s no doubt that the way his body covers 400 meters is different from his competitors.

As the athletes explode from their starting blocks, the South African born without fibulas will likely get a slower start. Because he can’t flex an ankle or stiffen a leg, it takes slightly longer for Pistorius to start. As the athletes gain an upright position, however, Pistorius will be able to reposition his legs much more quickly than his competitors. It’s that repositioning speed that’s been the point of contention of much of the debate.

In 2008, the International Association of Athletics Federations, track and field’s governing body, banned Pistorius from competing against able-bodied competitors, deeming his blades an advantage.

Pistorius went to Rice University in Houston for what he hoped would be definitive testing that would prove he had no advantage. And at first, that appeared to be the case: using some of the data from the research, published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, the Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned the ban.

But later, two of the scientists pointed to key findings — the repositioning data — that they believe make up at least a 7-second difference in the 400-meter dash. Researchers Peter Weyand, an exercise physiologist at Southern Methodist University, and Matt Bundle, an assistant professor at the University of Montana, presented their case in a point-counterpoint article in the Journal of Applied Physiology in 2009.

The reason the data is so telling, says Weyand, is not just that it shows an advantage; it’s that the comparison between Pistorius and able-bodied world class sprinters is off the charts. (Weyand and Bundle released a statement that explains their science, hoping to clear up misconceptions.)

“With the most generous assumptions, he still comes out seven seconds ahead in the 400,” Weyand said. “He’s a below-average high school runner without those limbs. A lot of people don’t want to hear that.” (…)

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Science: Live Chat — Science at the Olympics

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date July 19, 2012

Live Chat: Science at the Olympics

Science magazine hosted a live chat with scientific experts about any competitive advantage provided by the cutting-edge, light-weight prosthetic legs of double-amputee South African runner Oscar Pistorius, the first amputee to compete in the Olympics.

The July 18 chat “Science at the Olympics” included SMU’s Peter Weyand, an expert in human locomotion.

Read the replay.

EXCERPT:

By Nicholas St. Fleur
Science
Every Olympic season brings new scientific innovations that help athletes earn the gold and break world records. This year’s London Games, for example, will see South African double-amputee runner Oscar Pistorius make his debut on the 400-meter-dash while donning cutting edge, lightweight prosthetics. At the same time, Olympic officials will be cracking down on another innovation: new drugs that help athletes outcompete their rivals. Do prosthetic limbs offer an unfair advantage? What is being done to keep steroids and blood doping out of the games? And has scientific innovation become as important a player in the Olympics as the athletes themselves?

Hello everyone and welcome to ScienceLive! As you know, the Olympics are just a week away, and today we’re discussing the role of science in the London Olympics from blood dopers to the ‘Blade Runner’ and whether scientific innovation has become as important a player in the games as the athletes themselves.

Fleur: With us today is Don Catlin, a sports drug expert and professor emeritus at UCLA who founded the UCLA Olympic sport testing laboratory which is a national testing site for performance enhancing drugs in athletes.

To comment on the use of prosthetics in this year’s games is Peter Weyand, an Associate Professor of Applied Physiology and Biomechanics at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, who has studied the mechanics, physiology and locomotor performance behind running for decades.

Also on the biomechanics scene is J.L. McNitt-Gray, a Professor in the Departments of Biological Sciences and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California, who studies the dynamics of human movement.

Let’s begin with a question for Peter and J.L. South African 400-meter-dash runner Oscar Pistorius will become the first amputee to compete against able-bodied athletes. What allows his prosthetic to help him keep up with the other athletes?

Weyand: Modern lower limb prostheses, in many respects, mimic the mechanical function of a biological leg during running. Two properties of the prostheses are particularly important: weight and springiness.

Excellent data is available to show that for single leg amputees, these limbs almost restore normal function, for double lower limb amputees, they enhance it due to the proerties above.

Single leg amputees are limited by their biological legs. Double limb amputees can fully exploit the mechanical properties of the prostheses for sprint running performance.

Weyand was asked whether the competitive advantage might prompt athletes to voluntarily have their legs amputated in order to have prosthetics.

Weyand: How realistic a voluntary amputation scenario might be is difficult to project at this time. One limitedly recognized aspect of the Pistorius controversy is that reaping the competitve advantages of lower limb prostheses requires having and using two of them. The primary reason Oscar Pistorius is so much faster than other amputees who use the same blades is because double lower limb amputees are quite rare.

Weyand was asked about the need for standardized prosthetics for the Olympics:

Weyand: The standardization issue is a critical one that raises difficult questions for the governing bodies of sport that are not unlike the performance enhancing drug issues in some ways. As science and technology progress, more and more powerful the avenues of performance enhancement become available and the lines between “natural” and unenhanced vs. enhanced become increasingly blurred.

Reasonable guidelines might be possible for prostheses, but the task of evaluating competitive fairness would be resource-intensive and probably never perfect. (…)

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Culture, Society & Family Economics & Statistics Health & Medicine Researcher news SMU In The News

The London Telegraph: Runner’s world: Usain Bolt and his entourage

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date April 28, 2012

The London Telegraph has written a comprehensive piece on Usain Bolt, the fastest sprinter on earth, as he is preparing for the London 2012 Olympic Games this summer.

The April 27 article, “Runner’s world: Usain Bolt and his entourage,” quotes SMU’s Peter Weyand, an expert in human locomotion.

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EXCERPT:

By Mark Bailey
The Telegraph
The fastest man on earth is lying motionless on the spongy blue running track at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. He appears to be asleep. The elongated limbs of his 6ft 5in body stretch across the track like felled branches. Protruding from beneath his hitched-up T-shirt, a xylophone of abdominal muscles glistens in the midday sun. From a nearby festival the mellow patter of reggae floats along the warm Caribbean breeze. A contented smile melts across Usain Bolt’s face.

This supine figure is surrounded by people in a hurry. A film crew, sponsors and PRs are scuttling around, planning, chattering. A photographer is preparing for his next shot, and wants Bolt in a horizontal position. Unbeknown to anyone, some teenage boys have clambered over a fence and are hiding behind an advertising banner. At intervals they pick up the banner and stealthily shuffle closer to their idol, like cartoon spies tiptoeing behind a cardboard bush. …

… Research by Ethan Siegel, an American theoretical astrophysicist, suggests that Bolt represents a physiological leap forward. The men’s 100m world record has dropped by 0.05 seconds every 10 years since 1968 (when Jim Hines became the first man to break 10 seconds). But Bolt has been performing at a level three decades beyond what should be achievable in the present era, according to Siegel’s graphs. And Dr Peter Weyand, a leading physiologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and an expert on the science of sprinting, says “Bolt is a freak – he defies the laws of biology.”

Bolt is blessed with unique physical gifts. “He is such an unusual physical specimen and one need not look beyond that for an explanation of his speed,” Mark Denny, a Stanford University biology professor, tells me. With his long legs, Bolt takes 41 steps to complete the 100m. His rivals take 44. He has a high percentage of fast-twitch muscle fibres, which produce explosive speed, and he can channel more than 1,000lb of force through each stride – double the human norm, according to Dr Weyand. Professor Alan Nevill, a biostatistician at the University of Wolverhampton, suggests his superior height enables him to dissipate heat faster, so his muscles can work harder. …

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goodereader.com: E-Readers Engage Middle School Male Students

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date April 25, 2012

The popular e-reader news site goodereader.com covered the research of Dara Williams-Rossi, clinical assistant professor and director of undergraduate programs in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education & Human Development.

The article by Mercy Pilkington, E-Readers Engage Middle School Male Students, published April 24. The research found that middle school boys who are reluctant readers rated reading more valuable as an activity after two months of using an e-reader.

The students in the study were part of a reading improvement class in their school that included Amazon’s Kindle e-reader. After use of the e-readers, boys’ attitudes about the value of reading improved, while girls’ attitudes declined, said Williams-Rossi.

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EXCERPT:

By Mercy Pilkington
goodereader.com
Results from the halfway point of a three-year study on using Kindle e-readers in low ability level reading classes in urban Texas have shown that middle school boys demonstrated an improved perception on the benefits of reading after using the Kindles. In the same setting, however, girls of the same age demographic did not seem to like reading more, nor did they seem to feel like their reading ability had improved as the boys did.

The study, led by Dara Williams-Rossi of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, along with three others—Twyla Miranda from Texas Wesleyan University, Kary A. Johnson of The Reading Connection, and Nancy McKenzie of Tarrant Community College—gave 199 students Kindle readers to use for 25 minutes per daily reading class period. The students cited some surprising reasons for appreciating the Kindles.

While the study is ongoing and all the data has not been compiled to determine the exact reasons for improvement, so far the students have mentioned a number of benefits to the Kindles. The books are always available, the letter size can be enlarged, and the device can often read-aloud the text depending on publisher and author preference. Perhaps the most profound argument for the use of e-readers in this type of setting is the fact that the other students are not aware of what book their neighbors are reading, minimizing the embarrassment that may come from having to read a book well below the students grade level.

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digitalshift.com: Boys Value Reading More with Ereaders

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date April 10, 2012

The digitalshift.com, the blog site of the School Library Journal has covered the research of Dara Williams-Rossi, clinical assistant professor and director of undergraduate programs in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education & Human Development.

The article by Lauren Barack, Boys Value Reading More with Ereaders, published April 6. The research found that middle school boys who are reluctant readers rated reading more valuable as an activity after two months of using an e-reader.

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EXCERPT:

By Lauren Barack
digitalshift.com
Middle school boys rated reading more valuable as an activity after two months of using an ereader, according to a study by researchers in Texas.

Classroom time spent using ereaders produced a positive attitude in boys in reading improvement classes at an urban middle school. However, the researchers from Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas found the opposite result in girls.

“Whatever is causing them to value reading, we have to do more research, because we want to help those boys who are reluctant to read,” says Dara Williams-Rossi, co-author of “Reluctant Readers in Middle School: Successful Engagement with Test Using the E-Reader” and an assistant clinical professor in SMU’s Department of Teaching and Learning. “But while boys valued reading more, we found that girls’ reading was valued less.”

As the use of ereaders grows in K–12 schools, school librarians and other educators want to learn how best to adopt devices for student use. But many schools are still in the pilot stage, and it’s unclear how they will eventually integrate these digital tools.

Researchers worked with 199 middle school students in the Dallas-Fort Worth area over two months, specifically using Kindles. A local Rotary Club looking to support the use of ereaders in schools donated the devices, says Williams-Rossi.

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Frontburner: SMU Research — Boys Prefer Reading on a Kindle

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date April 4, 2012

D Magazine’s popular Frontburner blog covered the research of Dara Williams-Rossi, clinical assistant professor and director of undergraduate programs in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education & Human Development.

The blog post by Jason Heid, SMU Research: Boys Prefer Reading on a Kindle, published April 3.

The research found that middle school boys who are reluctant readers rated reading more valuable as an activity after two months of using an e-reader.

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EXCERPT:

By Jason Heid
Frontburner
UPI reported about research at SMU in which middle-school boys who had been reluctant readers liked reading more after two months of using a Kindle. Meanwhile the girls in the study responded differently.

“The technology appeared to motivate the boys to read while many girls preferred the actual books,” [SMU researcher Dara] Williams-Rossi said. “It may be that they prefer curling up with actual books and that they enjoy sharing their reading with their friends.”

Because girls like to “curl up” more than boys do?

I have a Kindle, and I don’t find curling up with an e-reader to be any more difficult than with an actual book. In fact, it’s easier to do when you’re tackling a larger tome. I was recently glad to be reading The Pickwick Papers on my Kindle rather than having to balance the 800-page book in my hands when I laid in bed.

My inability to entirely love e-readers has more to do with the experience not quite feeling “real.” I’ve experienced some of the same strange inability to remember things from chapter to chapter as did the author of this Time article, which also explains how the physical presence of a book may make it easier to learn material:

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dailyRx: Digital Books Engage Young Readers

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date April 3, 2012

The health news site dailyRx covered the research of Dara Williams-Rossi, clinical assistant professor and director of undergraduate programs in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education & Human Development.

The article by Christopher Wright, Digital Books Engage Young Readers, published March 31. The research found that middle school boys who are reluctant readers rated reading more valuable as an activity after two months of using an e-reader.

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EXCERPT:

By Christopher Wright
dailyRx
Keeping students engaged has always been a teacher’s challenge. With mobile devices and games more prevalent than ever, it is only getting more difficult. However, the same technology may help students enjoy reading.

A new study has found that middle school boys found reading to be more valuable when using an e-reader. Interestingly, girls of the same age group did not – they seemed to enjoy paper books more.

The study was led by Dara Williams-Rossi, Ph.D., of Southern Methodist University. The researchers gave e-readers and e-books to a classroom for 199 middle school students who struggled with reading. The class was focused on reading improvement and the students were able to use the e-readers in class for about 15-25 minutes per class period.

After two months of using the readers the researchers assessed the value of the e-readers. Both teachers and students reported a satisfying experience in the class.

The boys reported that they had an improved attitude towards the value of reading. Teachers reported that the e-readers sparked excitement in the class and received positive attention from the students.

The girls in the class did not seem to benefit from the e-readers like the boys, but the researchers are continuing to investigate ways to better engage girls.

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Daily Mail Online: Can’t get your boy to read? Buy him a Kindle, say researchers

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 30, 2012

London’s Daily Mail Online covered the research of Dara Williams-Rossi, clinical assistant professor and director of undergraduate programs in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education & Human Development.

The article by Ted Thornhill, Can’t get your boy to read? Buy him a Kindle, say researchers, published March 29.

The research found that middle school boys who are reluctant readers rated reading more valuable as an activity after two months of using an e-reader.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Ted Thornhill
Daily Mail Online
Boys like using Kindles but girls prefer real books, a study suggests.

Research found that using the Kindle e-reader gave boys a greater appreciation of reading – but with girls they have the opposite effect.

Researchers looked at 199 kids aged eleven to 14 who were having trouble with reading and asked them to use a Kindle for two months.

Boys had a higher self-concept of their reading than girls in the first place, and after using the e-reader their attitude about reading improved.

But girls appreciated reading less after using the Kindle.

Researchers from the Southern Methodist University in Dallas say it shows that while technology motivated boys, girls appear to prefer actual books.

Dara Williams-Rossi, writing in the International Journal of Applied Science and Technology, said: ‘The data showing the girls’ preference were statistically significant and particularly intriguing.

‘This is part of a three-year study and this data came midway through, so we are continuing our investigation and interviewing girls to understand their reaction to the e-readers.

‘It may be that they prefer curling up with actual books and that they enjoy sharing their reading with their friends.’

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UPI: Study: E-readers improve boys’ reading

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 29, 2012

UPI covered the research of Dara Williams-Rossi, clinical assistant professor and director of undergraduate programs in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education & Human Development.

The article, Study: E-readers improve boys’ reading, published March 27.

The research found that middle school boys who are reluctant readers rated reading more valuable as an activity after two months of using an e-reader.

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EXCERPT:

UPI.com
DALLAS, March 27 (UPI) — Boys who are reluctant readers find reading a more valuable activity after two months of using an e-reader, researchers in Texas say.

Scientists at Southern Methodist University reported the findings based on a study of 199 middle school students who struggled with reading and participated in a reading improvement class that employed Amazon’s Kindle e-reader.

Boys consistently had a higher self-concept of their reading skill than girls both before and after using e-readers, researcher Dara Williams-Rossi said.

After use of the e-readers, boys’ attitudes about the value of reading improved, while girls’ attitudes declined, she said.

“The technology appeared to motivate the boys to read while many girls preferred the actual books,” Williams-Rossi said.

“It may be that they prefer curling up with actual books and that they enjoy sharing their reading with their friends.”

Read the full story.

Tags Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development, Dara Williams-Rossi

Culture, Society & Family Learning & Education Technology

Middle school boys who are reluctant readers value reading more after using e-readers

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 21, 2012

Study finds e-readers have opposite effect on middle school girls who struggle with reading

Middle school boys rated reading more valuable as an activity after two months of using an e-reader, according to a new study.

The findings come from a study of 199 middle school students who struggle with reading and who participated in a reading improvement class that included Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, said one of the study’s authors, Dara Williams-Rossi, Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

The researchers found that boys consistently had a higher self-concept of their reading skill than girls both before and after using the e-readers. After use of the e-readers, boys’ attitudes about the value of reading improved, while girls’ attitudes declined, said Williams-Rossi, an assistant clinical professor in the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development at SMU.

Technology motivated boys; girls appear to prefer actual books
“The technology appeared to motivate the boys to read, while many girls preferred the actual books,” said Williams-Rossi, who is also director of undergraduate programs in Simmons. “The data showing the girls’ preference were statistically significant and particularly intriguing. This is part of a 3-year study and this data came midway through, so we are continuing our investigation and interviewing girls to understand their reaction to the e-readers. It may be that they prefer curling up with actual books and that they enjoy sharing their reading with their friends.”

Among the findings, students generally liked using e-readers and many felt that using it helped their reading improve. Sixth- and seventh-graders were more enthusiastic than eighth-graders about the e-readers, the researchers found.

Based on anecdotal comments from the children, the researchers found the e-readers sparked excitement among the students, resulting in positive attention for the students in the reading improvement classes. Over the course of the study, word about the e-readers spread around the school, and students who weren’t in reading improvement classes began asking how they could join “the Kindle classes.”

Access to Internet a challenge; boosts need for teacher monitoring
For the study, the researchers provided e-books on the Kindle e-readers to 199 students at an urban middle school in Fort Worth, Texas. The students had about 15 to 25 minutes during their silent reading improvement class period to read high-interest chapter books and stories on the Kindle. Books included 25 classics, including The Wizard of Oz and Black Beauty, as well as ghost stories and scary stories, which were the most popular. Students said they read between one and four e-books over the course of the two-month study.

Teachers generally thought the e-readers were better at getting their reluctant readers engaged, but they reported being frustrated by students’ easy Internet access through the district’s Wi-Fi, which required them to monitor the students more closely. Also, the teachers had to spend time keeping the e-readers charged, checked-out and locked up each night, but teachers told the researchers they plan to incorporate e-readers into their classes in coming years.

Overall, the students and their two teachers rated the experience as highly satisfying. In asking individual students what they liked about the e-readers, they said they liked not having to carry a lot of books; they liked other students not knowing their reading level or choice of book; they liked that the book they were reading was always available and hadn’t been removed from the classroom. The voice-to-text feature was popular with students for whom English is a second language.

In describing their reactions to the e-readers, students advised improvements to the Kindle and the books: a light, so it can be read in the dark; pictures; more books; and graphic novels.

Middle schoolers read less than younger students; “boring way to spend time”
Study findings were published in the International Journal of Applied Science and Technology as “Reluctant Readers in Middle School: Successful Engagement with Text Using the E-Reader,” authored by Williams-Rossi with three other researchers from Fort Worth, Texas: Twyla Miranda, Texas Wesleyan University; Kary A. Johnson, The Reading Connection; and Nancy McKenzie, Tarrant Community College.

“It’s inevitable that e-reader technology will enter school classrooms,” said the study’s authors. “Our study presents reasons e-readers may be beneficial, in particular, to reluctant readers in middle grades.”

Previous research in the field has shown that upper elementary and middle school students tend to read less than younger students because of time spent with their friends and in other activities. Also, these same students, particularly boys, may not value reading as much as they did when they were younger. One study found that most students indicated reading is a “boring way to spend time.”

Among those students, research has shown that low-skilled readers have trouble starting, continuing and finishing a book, and that they are stymied by vocabulary and reading comprehension challenges. Skilled readers, on the other hand, enjoy books.

Researchers have suggested that technological gadgets, enlarged text and a more favorable environment might encourage reluctant readers. For those reasons the authors pursued a study to see how reluctant readers would respond to e-readers. Rotary International purchased the e-readers for the research.

The findings also will be published in “E-Readers: The Next Big Thing for Reluctant Middle School Readers,” in Educational Leadership, which Williams-Rossi authored with Miranda and Johnson; and “Using E-Readers to Engage Middle School Students” in the “Proceeding of the 35th Annual Reading Association of Ireland Conference,” which Williams-Rossi authored with Miranda, Johnson and McKenzie. — Margaret Allen

Tags Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development, Dara Williams-Rossi

Culture, Society & Family Learning & Education Mind & Brain Researcher news

Landmark education research aims to prepare nation’s middle school students for high school

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 7, 2011

David Chard, Dean of the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education & Human Development, and two leading SMU faculty investigators, Reid Lyon and Leanne Ketterlin-Geller, are part of the national research team working on the George W. Bush Institute‘s newest education initiative, Middle School Matters.

The program focuses on using proven practices to prepare middle school students to successfully enter high school. Former first lady Mrs. Laura W. Bush announced the program at Stovall Middle School of the Aldine Independent School District in Houston.

“Middle school is the last and best chance to prepare students for a successful high school career,” said Mrs. Bush in announcing the program. “Research shows with systematic, intensive interventions that students who started middle school behind can catch up.”

Nearly one-third of America’s young people fail to graduate from high school in four years.

“Leaders and teachers in middle schools across the country are looking for strategies and practices that will help their students prepare to be successful in high school and beyond,” said Chard. “Middle School Matters is a bold attempt to identify the strategies and practices supported by strong research to ensure that all middle schools are effective.”

Middle School Matters is the most comprehensive research-based program to be applied to middle schools. The Institute has partnered with the nation’s top researchers to integrate, for the first time, proven practices that yield significant advances in middle school student achievement and readiness for high school. Implemented as a total package, Middle School Matters provides the proven mix of interventions to guarantee success.

Researchers developing Middle School Matters have identified 11 elements as critical for middle school success. These elements include concepts such as “school leadership” and “reading and reading interventions.” Middle School Matters incorporates key benchmarks, such as the ability to read for learning, write to communicate and perform complex math equations at grade level. Under each of the 11 elements, a research team convened by the Bush Institute prescribes 5-8 data-driven specifications that include practical examples of how to best implement the research in the classroom.

“At the Bush Institute, we think big, work together, and get results,” said James K. Glassman, executive director of the Bush Institute. “Middle School Matters will dramatically transform our partner middle schools and create an environment where students enter high school ready to do the work.”

Middle School Matters will be implemented in three phases. The program is currently in Phase One, which includes building the platform and ensuring that all components work together cohesively. Phase Two will pilot the program in 10-15 schools. Each pilot school will undergo a tailored needs assessment and will be matched with a support team to assist in the implementation of the Middle School Matters specifications over two years.

Phase Three will evaluate the pilot programs and scale the initiative to engage more schools.

Initial funding for Middle School Matters has been generously provided by a $500,000 donation from the Meadows Foundation.

“The Meadows Foundation has long believed that middle school is a critical transition period for young people and we must provide special attention to these students to ensure their academic success,” said Linda Evans, president and CEO of the the Meadows Foundation. “We applaud the Bush Institute for taking the lead to develop effective strategies to improve middle school students’ outcomes and appreciate the opportunity to partner with them to focus on this effort.”

Other collaborators include America’s Promise, Civic Enterprises, Southern Regional Education Board, Center for Brain Health at the University of Texas, Dallas, and Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University.

“America’s Promise Alliance, Civic Enterprises and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University are excited about partnering with the Bush Institute,” said John Bridgeland, president and CEO of Civic Enterprises. “Middle School Matters is addressing a very critical part of the pipeline in helping students stay in school and be successful once they leave. The Institute’s focus on research-based strategies is an excellent one
and we look forward to working in tandem with this initiative.”

Tags Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development, David Chard, Leanne Ketterlin-Geller, Reid Lyon

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