Chris Mould - The Wooden Mile

Miriam E. Nelson, PhD is director of the John Hancock Research Center on Physical Activity, Nutrition, and Obesity Prevention and associate professor of nutrition at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. She is also a fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine, an honor reserved for those who have demonstrated leadership and research in the field of exercise. For the past 20 years, Dr. Nelson has been principal investigator of studies on exercise and nutrition, work supported by grants from the government and private foundations. From 2007 to 2008, Dr. Nelson served as the vice chair of the Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee for US Department of Health and Human Services. The report was used to develop the inaugural Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans released in October of 2008. Most recently, she served on the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee for the US Department of Agriculture and US Department of Health and Human Services.

Dr. Nelson is the founder and director of the StrongWomen Program, a community-based exercise program for midlife and older women. This not-for-profit program is now running in communities in 40 states. Dr. Nelson has helped people learn how to stay younger, healthier, and stronger, and her research has revolutionized how people understand nutrition, exercise, and health. With colleagues, her current research is targeting obesity prevention.

Dr. Nelson is the author of the international best-sellers Strong Women Stay Young; Strong Women Stay Slim; Strong Women Eat Well; Strong Women and Men Beat Arthritis; The Strong Womens Journal; Strong Women, Strong Hearts; Strong Women, Strong Bones; and Strong Women, Strong Backs. These titles, published in 14 languages, have sold more than a million copies worldwide. Strong Women, Strong Bones received the esteemed Books for a Better Life Award for best wellness book of 2000 from the Multiple Sclerosis Society.

Dr. Nelson has appeared in her own PBS special entitled Strong Women Live Well, and she was the lead scientist for the PBS NOVA special entitled Marathon. She has also been featured on other television and radio shows, including The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, Good Morning America, ABC Nightly News, CNN, Fresh Air, and the Discovery Channel.

Dr. Nelson lives in Concord, Massachusetts, with her husband and three children. Please visit her Web site at Strongwomen.com

Jennifer Ackerman has been writing about health and science for the past two decades. She is the author of five books, including the forthcoming Ah-choo! The Uncommon Life of Your Common Cold (Twelve, 2011). Her most recent book, Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream: A Day in the Life of Your Body (Houghton Mifflin, 2007), takes the reader through a typical day, from the arousal of the senses to hunger, fatigue, stress, sex, and the reverie of sleep and dreams, exploring the new science of what happens in the body. The book was selected as an Editors Choice by the New York Times and a main selection by the Scientific American book club. It has been published in ten languages. Ackermans book Chance in the House of Fate: A Natural History of Heredity (Houghton Mifflin, 2001) was named a New York Times New and Noteworthy paperback and was selected as a Library Journal Best Book of the Year in 2002. She is also the author of Notes from the Shore (1995), which describes the natural life of the mid-Atlantic region, and the editor of The Curious Naturalist (1991). A writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Natural History, and many science, nature, and womens magazines, Ackerman has written essays and articles on subjects ranging from the sexual habits of dragonflies to food safety. Her writing has been collected in several anthologies, among them Best American Science Writing, ed. Alan Lightman (Perennial, 2005). For seven years Ackerman was a staff writer and researcher for the book division of the National Geographic Society, where she contributed to The Incredible Machine, a book about the human body (1986, 1992).

Ackerman is currently a Senior Fellow at the Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships in the past, including a 2004 NEA Literature Fellowship in Nonfiction, a fellowship from the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College, and a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Ackerman has been featured on many radio shows and has lectured at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Virginia and its Medical Center, the American Association of University Women, and for numerous other groups and organizations.

Ackerman is married to novelist Karl Ackerman and has two daughters. Please visit her Web site at jenniferackerman.net