RESEARCH QUESTION: Does Online "Working Out Work" as a Treatment and Prevention for Depression in Older Adults? An Analysis of a Prescribed and Monitored Exercise Program Administered via the Internet for Senior Adults with Depression.
OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to investigate and access the effectiveness of an online prescribed and monitored exercise program for the treatment of depression in Older Adults. The Dependent Variable for the study is Depression. The Independent Variable for the study is the Effects of Exercise administered via the Internet and the population is geriatric adults defined as senior adults aged 50 and older. Depression is defined by Princeton University Scholars (Wordnet, 2006) as a mental state characterized by a pessimistic sense of inadequacy and a despondent lack of activity.
METHODS: The presence and severity of depression will be assessed by using The Merck Manual of Geriatrics (GDS-15) Geriatric Depression Scale. Assessments will be performed at baseline, before and after the treatment is concluded. The subjects will complete the Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire (PAR-Q) prior to participating in an exercise program three times per week.
LIMITATIONS OF RESEARCH: The limitations of this study are: 1) There is a small sample size limited to Senior Adults aged 50 - 80, and 2) there is no control group with structured activity or placebo, therefore researcher is unable to evaluate if the marked improvement was due to a non-specific therapeutic effect associated with taking part in a social activity (group online exercise program). Further research could compare and analyze the positive effects of a muscular strength training exercise program verses a cardiovascular training exercise program.

This research on the early metal ages of the Wadi el-Hasa focuses on settlement systems and attempts to explain how social, economic and political adjustments helped tribal groups survive under natural (i.e., climatic) and anthropogenic (i.e., land degradation, erosion) stress factors. The shifting of subsistence base from agropastoral to pastoral is reflected in site and population densities, diversity of site types, levels of internal complexity, and levels of social organization via the presence of large settlements, like villages, which acted as economic and administrative centers emerge as risk reduction mechanisms.

The cycles of abandonment and resettlement are evaluated within the concept of social reorganization and such changes are assessed as parts of economic revitalization attempts. The social changes that emerge from such shifts are evaluated from the perspective of the scale-free networks modeled and tested through statistical methods, such as ANOVA, for spatial and temporal patterns, while patterns of land use and the impacts of changing climate and anthropogenic activities are evaluated with GIS.

Following the dimorphic society and heterarchic social organization concepts, the discussion emphasizes that tribal groups adjust population density, range and intensity of activities in marginal landscapes, like the Hasa, in order to prevent environmental degradation. These patterns may change once these marginal landscapes are integrated to more complex social organizations. Although this takes place in the Hasa during the Iron Age, the research results imply that environmental degradation did not take place possibly due to the continuation of extensive subsistence patterns, along with the emergence of the long-distance caravan trade as a major economic incentive.