Background Children with a low socioeconomic status and migration background are more likely to exhibit unfavorable health behavior patterns and higher BMI scores as well as lower physical activity and physical fitness. Aim To evaluate the effect of migration background on the development of physical fitness among primary school children from first to third grade. Methods In this longitudinal study, height, weight, and physical fitness of primary school children from Tyrol/Austria were measured five times over a period of 2.5 years using the German motor performance test DMT 6‐18 consisting of eight items testing different subdomains of physical fitness. Results A total of 266 children (45% girls) participated in all five tests, of which 69 (26%) children reported to have a migration background (MB). Mixed‐model ANOVA did not reveal a significantly different development of physical fitness (according to the mean total Z‐score of DMT 6‐18) over time, P = 0.883, partial ƞ2 < 0.01. However, children with MB showed significantly lower physical fitness compared to children without MB, P < 0.001, partial ƞ2 = 0.06. Controlling for BMI and age did not alter the interpretation of the results. Analyses of the single test items revealed significant differences in motor tests involving strength and endurance. Conclusion Primary school children with and without MB significantly increased their physical fitness over time in a comparable manner. However, children with MB showed a significantly lower physical fitness at all test time points, which was only partly explained by a higher mean BMI in children with MB. Children with MB outreached the mean baseline fitness level of children without MB not until the fourth test time point, that is after two years. Therefore, a special focus on physical fitness particularly including strength and endurance capacities should be directed to children with MB already in young ages.
<p>Data on past vegetation compositions is crucial not only for understanding past vegetation dynamics and environmental interactions but also for predicting potential future vegetation trajectories and thus their feedback on climate and society. Pollen records from sediment cores provide temporally resolved data on pollen frequencies. These allow for inferences of taxa presence, but biased pollen deposition due to taxa-specific pollen productivity and dispersal prohibit direct inference of taxa abundance.</p><p>The model for Regional Estimates of Vegetation Abundance from Large Sites (REVEALS) corrects for these taxa-specific parameters and produces more realistic regional vegetation abundances. Previously applied in many regions such as North America, Southern Sweden, Norway, and more recently the entirety of Europe, REVEALS has performed well in providing estimates for large vegetation units as well as individual taxa.&#160;</p><p>With this data set, we present reconstructed past regional vegetation for more than 2200 sites across the Northern Hemisphere. The REVEALS model was applied by using a harmonized pollen dataset for the entire Northern Hemisphere, taxa-specific pollen productivity estimates, pollen fall speeds, as well as pollen dispersal models. First validations show an improved fit of the reconstructed vegetation with remotely sensed tree cover compared to pure pollen percentages. For validation tree cover datasets from the CONSENSUS global 1-km land cover product were used. The pollen source areas were defined to include 80% of the area from which deposited pollen originated.</p><p>This first-time reconstruction for the entire Northern Hemisphere will allow for detailed analysis of vegetation dynamics and trajectories ultimately improving our understanding of climate-vegetation interactions, and may even act as input and validation for other vegetation and climate models and proxies.</p>
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