Dose-response relationship of reported lifetime meditation practice with mental-health and wellbeing: A cross sectional study

Objectives: Experimental studies of meditation practice predominantly examine short-term programs and reveal modest benefits. Thus it is not clear to what degree these results represent how contemporary meditators practice nor the dose-response relationship between amount of practice and outcome. This study sought to characterize how contemporary meditators practice; examine any possible dose-response relationships between historical practice and measures of psychological wellbeing; and explore which characteristics of practice most strongly predict positive psychological outcomes.Methods: 1,668 meditators completed demographic and practice characteristics, and outcome measures assessing positive and negative affect, psychological distress, and life satisfaction.Results: We observed a positive relationship between historical meditation practice (accumulated lifetime hours) and improvements in psychological outcomes. Model fit was optimized with a generalized additive model, indicating non-linear effects. The strength of the relationship between practice time and outcomes was generally strongest for the first ~500 hours, before plateauing to some degree. Several practice types, including Vipassana (as taught by S.N. Goenka) and cultivating practices (e.g. compassion, lovingkindness) were more strongly associated with favorable psychological outcomes.Conclusions: Benefits of meditation accrue over time in a non-linear manner, and show variation based on the context within which the meditator practices. These results highlight the importance of understanding how the benefits of meditation accrue over longer time durations than typical standardized programs that have been subject to most empirical investigations in the field.

L EDUCATION PHYSIQUE ET SPORTIVE : DES VOLONTES ACTEES AUX DEFAILLANCES PRATIQUES

Physical and sports education, as well as legislative and pedagogical law, is characterized by its marginalization of which institutional causes are indexed in this study. Data on documentary research, participatory observation and maintenance with resource persons, state of the existence of general inspectors of education and training in EPS, of the deficit of specialty inspectors EPS, from the initial absence of training in STAPS from elementary school inspectors, school principals who do not require the practice of this discipline for the masters candidates in the CAP, principals validating the temporary transfer of hours of EPS in the disciplines of cognitive knowledge, exclusion of motor education in the promotion of quality, lack of adequate space for practice, time jobs and programs that reserve few time and coefficient factors to discipline in the fundamental cycle.

Deep symbolic processing of human-performed musical sequences

Artificial music tutors are needed for assisting a performer during his/her practice time whenever a human tutor is not available. But for these artificial tutors to be intelligent and fulfill the role of a music tutor, they have to be able to identify errors made by the performer while playing a musical sequence. This task is not a trivial one, since all musical activities are considered as open-ended domains. Therefore, not only there is no unique correct way of performing a musical sequence, but also the analysis made by the tutor has to consider the development level of the performer, the difficulty level of the performed musical sequence, and many other variables. This paper describes an ongoing research that uses cascading connected layers of symbolic processing as the core of a human-performed error identification and characterization module able to overcome the complexity of the studied open-ended domain.

Differences in instrumental practice time and strategies among Chinese music majors

The purpose of this study was to explore differences in time spent practicing and the practice strategies used by Chinese music majors according to university location, instrument played, and participant gender. A total of 154 participants who played string, woodwind, brass, and keyboard instruments, including 103 participants attending Chinese universities and 51 Chinese participants pursuing degrees abroad (in the United States, Russia, and Great Britain) completed a Likert-type scale questionnaire. Findings indicated that students studying abroad spent more hours on weekly practice and had more years of instrumental study than students studying in China, but their responses also indicated they were less organized about their practice and had more difficulty concentrating while practicing than students in China. According to the analyses by instrument, woodwind and brass players were more likely to organize their practice than keyboard players; string, woodwind, and brass players were more likely to use recordings and metronomes than keyboard players; and brass players reported concentrating better than keyboard players. Regarding gender differences, the only significant difference was that female participants had spent more years studying their instruments than males. Identified differences can help instrumental instructors better understand students’ practice habits and tailor their teaching to fit the needs of students in response to individual differences.

Audiobook routines: identifying everyday reading by listening practices amongst young adults

Purpose This article explores, identifies and conceptualises everyday audiobook reading practices amongst young adults.Design/methodology/approach Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten Swedish audiobook users aged 18–19. The material was analysed using qualitative content analysis and focused on their audiobook use during an average weekday, as this was the time that they listened the most. The theoretical framework consists of theories on practice, time and everyday routine.Findings Five timespaces emerged when audiobook practices were most prevalent: morning routines, commuting routines, school routines, after school routines and bedtime routines. Within these timespaces, several practices could be identified and conceptualised. Three mobile practices were commute listening, exercise listening and chore listening while more stationary practices were homework listening, schoolwork listening and leisure listening. An unexpected finding was how audiobooks routinely were used to aid respondents’ wellbeing. This wellbeing listening was used to alleviate stress, loneliness and help listeners relax or fall asleep. Furthermore, respondents switch between Music, Audiobooks and Podcasts, which is conceptualised as MAP-switching.Originality/value There is a scarcity of research on audiobook use, and this paper contributes with new knowledge on audiobook reading practices, how audiobooks fit into everyday routine and provides concepts to aid further research on audiobook practices.

A randomized clinical trial to stimulate the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway in patients with moderate COVID-19-pneumonia using a slow-paced breathing technique

ImportanceVagus nerve stimulation via slow-paced breathing could serve as adjuvant therapeutic approach to reduce excessive inflammation in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia.ObjectiveDoes a slow-paced breathing technique increasing vagal activity reduce Interleukin-6 (IL-6) in patients hospitalized with moderate COVID-19 pneumonia compared to standard care?DesignSingle-center randomized controlled clinical trial with enrolment from February 23rd 2021 through June 17th 2021 and follow-up until July 22nd 2021.SettingWard for infectious diseases and temporary COVID-19 ward, Ulm University Hospital, GermanyParticipantsConsecutive sample of patients hospitalized with confirmed severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection and moderate COVID-19 pneumonia (primary diagnosis). Of 131 patients screened, 48 patients were randomized and 46 patients analyzed (N=23 per group).InterventionsSlow-paced 20-minute breathing exercise three times a day with six breaths per minute (inhale-to-exhale ratio 4:6).Main outcomes and measuresDifferences between intervention and control group in IL-6 calculated using multilevel mixed-effect linear regression models with random slope including the covariates relevant comorbidities, COVID-19 medication, and age.ResultsMean age 57 years±13 years, N= 28 (60%) male, N=30 (65%) with relevant comorbidities. The model including group by time interaction revealed a significantly lower trajectory of IL-6 in the intervention group compared to the control group (effect size Cohens f2=0.11, LR-test p=.040) in the intention-to-treat sample, confirmed by treatment-per-protocol analysis (f2=0.15, LR-test p=.022).Exploratory analysis using the median split of practice time to predict IL-6 of the next morning indicated a dose-response relationship with beneficial effects of practice time above 45 minutes a day.Three patients in each group were admitted at ICU, one died. Oxygen saturation increased during slow-paced breathing (from 95.1%±2.1% to 95.4%±1.6%, p=0.006).Conclusion and relevancePatients practicing slow-paced breathing had significantly lower IL-6 values than controls without relevant side effects. Further trials should evaluate clinical outcomes as well as an earlier start of the intervention, i.e., at symptom onset. This would offer an access to a therapy option not only for high-income, but also for low- and middle-income countries.Trial registrationGerman register of clinical trials (ID: DRKS00023971) https://www.drks.de, Universal Trial Number (UTN) U1111-1263-8658;Key pointsQuestionCan slow-paced breathing reduce Interleukin-6 (IL-6) in hospitalized patients with moderate coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia?FindingsSingle-center randomized controlled clinical trial including 46 patients hospitalized with moderate COVID-19 pneumonia. Compared to controls, IL-6 values were significantly lower (small-to-medium effect sizes) in patients who were instructed to practice six breaths per minute for 20 minutes three times a day. More minutes of slow-paced breathing were significantly correlated with lower IL-6 values the next morning.MeaningSlow-paced breathing could be a safe and feasible adjuvant therapeutic approach in moderate COVID-19 pneumonia.

A Multi-Method Survey on the Use of Sentiment Analysis in Multivariate Financial Time Series Forecasting

In practice, time series forecasting involves the creation of models that generalize data from past values and produce future predictions. Moreover, regarding financial time series forecasting, it can be assumed that the procedure involves phenomena partly shaped by the social environment. Thus, the present work is concerned with the study of the use of sentiment analysis methods in data extracted from social networks and their utilization in multivariate prediction architectures that involve financial data. Through an extensive experimental process, 22 different input setups using such extracted information were tested, over a total of 16 different datasets, under the schemes of 27 different algorithms. The comparisons were structured under two case studies. The first concerns possible improvements in the performance of the forecasts in light of the use of sentiment analysis systems in time series forecasting. The second, having as a framework all the possible versions of the above configuration, concerns the selection of the methods that perform best. The results, as presented by various illustrations, indicate, on the one hand, the conditional improvement of predictability after the use of specific sentiment setups in long-term forecasts and, on the other, a universal predominance of long short-term memory architectures.

Practice

Practicing is an activity that accounts for the highest levels of musical expertise, but one that many musicians do not typically—or at least consistently—carry out. Most people have done some kind of independent practicing (or academic studying or athletic training) in their lives and have likely heard platitudes such as “Practice makes perfect.” Such folk knowledge tends to suggest that quantity of practice is the most important factor. Unfortunately, popular handling of psychological research has largely reinforced this misconception. More careful consideration of the research, however, shows that although developing musicians certainly must make time for practice, the efficiency and deliberateness of time spent are also crucial. This chapter begins by defining “deliberate practice” as the type of practicing that optimally contributes to musical skill acquisition. Through consistent practice over time, skills that began as highly conscious and effortful progress to ultimately becoming fluently and automatically performed. Rather than striving to simply amass hours of practice time, musicians are encouraged to be more productive and efficient by strategically planning, executing, and reflecting on their practice.

Effect of Vethathiri Maharishi’s Simplified Kundalini Yoga on Stress among Adolescent Girls

The purpose of the present study was to find out the effect of Simplified Kundalini Yoga (SKY) practices on stress among adolescent girls. It was hypothesized that there would be a significant difference in stress level among adolescent girls due to the influence of SKY practices than the control group. For achieving the purpose of the study a total of 30 adolescent girls were selected at random as samples from Government Higher Secondary school, Thiruvallur District. Adolescent girls aged between 13 and 15 years were selected at randomly and divided into an Experimental group and a Control group with 15 subjects each. The Experimental group underwent Simplified Kundalini Yogic practices in a schedule of weekly five days from Monday to Friday for six weeks. The duration of practice time for Experimental group, for first two weeks was 45 minutes, duly increasing the practice time from 45 minutes to 60 minutes during 3rd and 4th weeks and from 60 minutes to 90 minutes during 5th and 6th weeks. SKY practices include Simplified Yogic Physical Exercises, Simplified Kayakalpa Yogic Exercises, Introspection and Meditation practices. Subjects of Control group were allowed to continue with their normal day to day life routine during the Experimental period and were not given any yogic practices. Pre-test and post-test were conducted before and after the training program for both the groups. Stress level was assessed with the help of Everly Girdano(1980) stress scale questionnaire which consists of statements with four options and the score ranges from 0 to 42. Lesser the score, lesser the stress level. Analyze of Co-Variance (ANCOVA) was used as a statistical tool to find out the significant differences. The statistical findings of the study revealed that the stress level of the students of Experimental group, the practitioners of Simplified Kundalini Yoga significantly decreased than the Control group. Hence the hypothesis was accepted at 0.05 level of confidence. The conclusion was that the SKY practices help to decrease stress level among adolescent girls.