bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Improved Visualization of Artificial Pulmonary Nodules with a New Subvolume Rendering Technique
Authors: Abildgaard A. , Karlsen J. Skaarud , Heiberg L. , Bosse G. , Hol P. K.
Published: December 2015

Background:

The detection of small nodules in pulmonary multidetector computed tomography (MDCT) data sets is challenging, and there is a need for visualization techniques that can improve reader sensitivity and efficiency. We have developed a subvolume rendering technique (“Softslice”) with nonlinear, symmetrical modulation of the relative signal intensity along the viewing direction. Our hypothesis was that this technique might provide an advantageous visual differentiation between nodules and overlapping vessels in pulmonary MDCT subvolumes.

Purpose:

To compare the Softslice subvolume rendering technique and maximum intensity projection (MIP) rendering for visualization of artificial pulmonary nodules in MDCT data sets.

Material and Methods:

Virtual, artificial pulmonary nodules were created with custom-made software. The nodules had the same signal intensity as pulmonary vessels. Approximately 50 nodules with diameter 2–7 mm were inserted in the Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) image files of pulmonary MDCT data sets obtained without intravenous contrast. Each data set contained approximately 300 slices with 1-mm slice spacing. Four types of subvolumes were rendered: MIP with 10- and 20-mm subvolume thickness, and Softslice with 20- and 30-mm subvolume thickness. Three radiologists performed readings with free scrolling using 1-, 4- or 8-mm increments between subvolume positions.

Results:

No significant differences in the number of detected nodules were found between the different renderings with free scrolling using 1- and 4-mm increments. When 8-mm increment was used, nodule detection with the 30-mm Softslice rendering was significantly superior to the other renderings ( P = 0.012 vs. MIP 10 mm, P = 0.018 vs. MIP 20 mm, P = 0.021 vs. Softslice 20 mm). When the subvolume increments were changed from 4 mm to 8 mm, the most marked reduction in the number of detected nodules was seen for MIP subvolumes with 10-mm thickness ( P = 0.018).

Conclusion:

The Softslice rendering technique is promising for the detection of pulmonary nodules in MDCT data sets, and may allow more efficient reading than the standard MIP subvolume technique. With 10-mm MIP rendering, the detection rate for small pulmonary nodules substantially influenced by the incremental distance between subvolumes positions.
Occupation-focused health promotion for well older people — A cost-effectiveness analysis
Authors: Zingmark Magnus , Nilsson Ingeborg , Fisher Anne G , Lindholm Lars
Published: December 2015

Introduction

The aim of this study was to evaluate three occupational therapy interventions, focused on supporting continued engagement in occupation among older people, to determine which intervention was most cost effective, evaluated as the incremental cost/quality adjusted life year gained.

Method

The study was based on an exploratory randomized controlled trial. Participants were 77–82 years, single living and without home help. One hundred and seventy seven persons were randomized to an individual intervention, an activity group, a discussion group or a no intervention control group. All interventions focused on supporting the participants to maintain or improve occupational engagement. Outcomes were evaluated at baseline, three and 12 months and included general health and costs (intervention, municipality and health care). Based on linear regression models, we evaluated how outcomes had changed at each follow-up for each intervention group in relation to the control group.

Results

Both group interventions resulted in quality adjusted life years gained at three months. A sustained effect on quality adjusted life years gained and lower total costs indicated that the discussion group was the most cost-effective intervention.

Conclusion

Short-term, occupation-focused occupational therapy intervention delivered in group formats for well older people resulted in quality-adjusted life years gained. A one-session discussion group was most cost effective.
Jain Elites and the Mughal State under Shahjahan
Authors: Jain Shalin
Published: December 2015

This article is an attempt to analyse the double-edged social relationship between the merchant communities and the state beyond the technicalities of the economic considerations. It is generally argued that post-Akbar, the Mughal state saw a gradual shift from ‘spiritualism’ to ‘materialism’ vis-à-vis its engagement with the Jain community. Now Jain merchants were gaining prominence as the representatives of their community while interacting with Mughal royalty. The dominance of the merchants over the Jain sanghas and the importance given to these merchants by the Mughal state substantiates this argument. However, as a prelude to my future research, I argue that Mughal hegemony was being built more through everyday engagement and social relationships with the various communities rather just through structures like Mansabdari and Jagirdari. With a paramount control over the political and economic structures, the Mughal state ensured its stability and longevity through everyday interaction with the leadership of the various social groups. A farman issued by Shahjahan for the Jains of Bikaner and the everyday experiences of Seth Shantidas Jauhari of Ahmedabad show that the Mughal state under Shahjahan continued with the policies of his Mughal and pre-Mughal predecessors to maintain social harmony to expand its own social base. The Jain elites were as much active in the religious affairs of the community as their individual business interests to maintain their hold over the community. Their status of being community leaders was very important for these elites to acquire social legitimacy from the Mughal state as well as the community. Otherwise the medieval state and its local representatives never bothered about the ‘individual’ persona and stakes of these elites. An attempt has been made to reconstruct the processes of formation of medieval Jain community and its interaction with the larger apparatuses involved in the everyday making of the Mughal state.
Ways to Modernisation and Adaptation
Authors: Rai Santosh Kumar
Published: December 2015

This article is a study based on the United Provinces (UP) State Archive records on the early history of modern weaving schools in UP. Handloom weaving has been a major occupation in this region, diversified in skills, and involved some of the most skill-intensive types of textiles woven on the loom. Did the schools—as expected—formalise that knowledge to modernise it, bring it from the private domain to the public and encourage experiments upon it by making training less tradition-bound? These are important questions in the history of traditional industry, for the schools do represent some sort of paradigm shift in the way knowledge of technology forms. The case of experimental weaving schools in the United Provinces proved to be a site of contestation reflecting the overlapping and contradictory notions for the binary superstructures of modern state and community. As far as the dominant colonial power structure was concerned, a need to accommodate traditional ‘community’ and its product was certainly recognised in an attempt to legitimise many actions of the state. But this accommodation of the ‘community’ was possible only in a conditioned form in the new power structure. If ‘community’ was not ready to get accommodated in that particular conditioned form, then it had to suffer marginalisation. In fact, the colonial regime was certainly offering a technical alternative in the form of new content in the syllabi, modes of transmission, and enhancement of knowledge and motivational structures. But the parallel existence of traditional, sophisticated and complex knowledge, conveyed through kinship, dynasticism and close-knit cultural groups was not going to relent so easily. How, as per the new ground realities, both the systems interacted, co-existed, challenged and overlapped with each other and in the process transformed each other as well are some questions to be posed here.
One Event, Two States
Authors: Guite Jangkhomang
Published: December 2015

This article examines the way in which an event is remembered by two opposing states. It concerns, partly, with the way in which ‘official’ monuments came up in public space, and partly, with the process of transformation of social memory with the change in political regime. It takes the case of an 1891 event in Manipur (the Anglo-Manipur War). It will be seen that the erection of a ‘national monument’ under the colonial regime involved a tedious process of selection, representation, censoring, disagreement, consensus and delay in the interest of Empire. While the Empire was valourised and justified for its intervention, the defeated ‘natives’ were condemned and silenced as ‘rebels’ and ‘murderers’. The ‘natives’ remain sick, servile and nostalgic for their memory until independence. With regime change, silence become open and soon dominated the air. The post-colonial Manipur state was in full mode of detoxifying the colonial discourse by condemning the interference and in declaring the ‘natives’ as ‘patriots’ and ‘freedom fighters’. Memorials and monuments were erected, state-wide commemorations were organised and people socialised around such shared memory of ‘resistance’ for the purpose of reconstructing a new society.
Gender Differences at Work: Experiencing Human Resource Management Policies in Lebanese Firms
Authors: Ismail Hussein N. , Nakkache Lama
Published: December 2015

The existence of gender inequality at the workplace is a pervasive problem in many countries around the world. Although the situation may have improved in recent years, studies still point to the fact that men receive better rewards at work in terms of income, status, promotion and development opportunities among others. There may be a considerable amount of research on this topic in developed countries; however, there have been very few in the Middle East region. This research study aims to explore gender differences in the experiences of human resource (HR) management (HRM) policies in the workplace. Based on 100 participants in the country of Lebanon, the results of the study were somehow surprising. The findings show that women’s expectations at work were met to a larger extent than men’s. There was a significant difference in at least two HR practices including ‘recognition at work’ and ‘supporting managers/supervisors’. Results and discussions are presented.
Oil Price Shocks and Nigeria’s Macroeconomy: Disentangling the Dynamics of Crude Oil Market Shocks
Authors: Ekong Christopher N. , Effiong Ekpeno L.
Published: December 2015

Previous empirical literature on the oil price shocks–macroeconomy relationship was hinged on the implicit premise that oil price shocks originated exclusively from exogenous supply shock to the crude oil market. Recent research by Kilian (2009) shows that oil price shocks are endogenous outcomes of the underlying demand and supply shocks in the crude oil market. Based on a two-stage approach, this article investigates the effects of demand and supply shocks in the crude oil market on Nigeria’s macroeconomy for the period 1986–2011. Using a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model, oil price shocks are disentangle into three components: oil supply shocks, aggregate demand shocks and oil-specific demand shocks. The three shocks are recovered in the first analysis and conditioned on selected macroeconomic variables within a VAR framework in the second stage. The impulse response analysis shows that the macroeconomic aggregates are associated with different response pattern to each type of oil price shocks. However, their relative importance shows marginal effects.
Motives and Determinants of FDI: A VECM Analysis for Oman
Authors: Ibrahim Omer Ali , Abdel-Gadir Sufian Eltayeb Mohamed
Published: December 2015

The article examines the motives and determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Oman during the period 1980–2013. It investigates the market size, natural resources, inflation rate, trade openness and government expenditures as factors influencing FDI. Cointegration and vector error correction model (VECM) approach are used to identify the short- and long-run dynamics of the FDI determinants. The Johansen cointegration test reveals an existence of long-run relationship among the FDI determinants. This long relationship indicates that FDI flows in Oman are positively influenced by the market size and natural resources, and negatively by inflation rate and degree of openness. The error correction term suggests that approximately 36 per cent of total disequilibrium in FDI flows was being corrected each year. Moreover, Granger causality results show that there is a unidirectional causality running from each of the market size and natural resources to FDI, indicating that flows of FDI into Oman are characterized by market-seeking and resource-seeking motives.
Empirical Validity of Value Added Intellectual Coefficient Model in Indian Knowledge-based Sector
Authors: Ghosh Shantanu Kumar , Maji Santi Gopal
Published: December 2015

The purpose of this study is to investigate empirically the validity of the basic propositions of value added intellectual coefficient (VAIC) and extend VAIC models in Indian knowledge-based sector. Using panel data relating to 62 firms from two Indian knowledge-based sectors, namely, electronics and banking sectors, for a period of 10 years (from 2001–2002 to 2010–2011), the study indicates that the VAIC model cannot be rejected as a technique of measuring intellectual capital. The result shows that VAIC significantly and positively influences the corporate performance measured by return on assets (ROA) and market-to-book (M/B) ratio. All the components of VAIC except structural capital (SC) efficiency (SCE) significantly and positively influence the corporate performance. The insignificant association between SCE and firm performance, as observed in the present context and also observed earlier by many researchers, may be regarded as the inappropriateness of the model in capturing structural capital. In order to modify the SC component of the model, the components of extended VAIC model may be used as a value-creating entity.
A Study of the Mentees’ Perspective of the Informal Mentors’ Characteristics Essential for Mentoring Success
Authors: Joshi Gowri , Sikdar Chandrima
Published: December 2015

Researchers across the world have shown interest in studying organizational mentoring. This article attempts to identify informal mentor characteristics that are considered significant by mentees for the effectiveness of the mentoring experience. Data used for this research comprise 311 managerial-level employees, employed and residing in the city of Mumbai, Delhi and Kochi in India. First, an exploratory factor analysis is done to understand how the items representing the specific categories in the qualitative data would cluster. This results in six factors. A confirmatory factor analysis is then done to test this model, and it comes up with a not so adequate fit. Thereafter, the six factors are reorganized into four factors based on the canonical correlations between the factors. The resultant four-component model shows a good fit compared to the six-component model. The four mentoring characteristics that are identified through this study (in no specific order) are sincerity, commitment, skill and knowledge development and organizational ascendency and impact. The results obtained thus represent an attempt to describe the significant informal mentor characteristics from the mentees’ perspective in a contemporary business environment.
Linking Perceived Organizational Support to Organizational Trust and Commitment: Moderating Role of Psychological Capital
Authors: Shukla Amit , Rai Himanshu
Published: December 2015

Extant organizational behaviour (OB) literature widely acknowledges the importance of perceived organizational support (POS) in affecting workplace attitude and behaviour. However, studies that investigate the role of individual’s mental disposition in shaping the aforementioned relationship are scant, particularly in the Indian context. This study is intended to address this gap. Here, we examine the role of POS in the development of organizational trust and organizational commitment. By virtue of its conceptualization, psychological capital represents individual’s positive state of mind. Therefore and more importantly, we test the moderating role of psychological capital in the aforementioned relationships. We undertook a field-based questionnaire survey ( N = 289) in a leading Indian information technology (IT) company. Results revealed that POS was positively related to both organizational trust and organizational commitment, and the strength of these relationships diminished with higher levels of psychological capital, albeit in varying degree. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed, and the future course of research is suggested.
Configurations of Resources, Strategy, Structure and Environment in Young High-technology Firms: Evidence from Qualitative Comparative Analysis
Authors: Balodi Krishna Chandra , Basu Shubhabrata
Published: December 2015

Traditional configuration approach uses some combinations of four domains, namely, environment, strategy, structure and leadership, for identifying organizational configurations. Responding to call for improving extant theoretical specification, this article draws on resource-based view to argue for the inclusion of resource as a domain. Crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis is used to analyze the primary data collected through questionnaire from 60 Indian, young high-technology firms. Configurations of high-performing young firms from high-technology sector in India exhibit reliance on high entrepreneurial orientation (EO) to balance the issue of unavailability of managers with high-growth experience. Firms either choose new product development strategy or inorganic corporate development strategy depending mainly upon environmental contexts. In none of the configurations achieving high performance, ‘high number of experienced managers’ and high EO are simultaneously absent; in the majority of the configurations, the condition ‘high number of experienced managers’ is absent, and the absence of high EO coincides with the absence of ‘corporate development strategy’ or with ‘small size’. These findings on configurations, their internal causal mechanisms and implications are discussed.
Understanding the Indo-Japan Economic Relations in the Asia-Pacific Century
Authors: Barai Munim K. , Kar Rabi Narayan , Bhasin Niti
Published: December 2015

A period when the world’s economic gravity is shifting to the Asia-Pacific region with the promise of an Asia-Pacific twenty-first century, Japan is increasingly facing pressure to maintain its economic and political position vis-à-vis China. To minimize any adverse impact, Japan needs to expand its economic horizon crossing the hitherto established boundary, importantly focusing on one or more countries to increase its strategic depth in the international economic relationship. India seems to be uniquely placed to get Japanese attention for such engagement for a number of advantageous factors it holds. With a vast population, diverse demography, increasing economic promise, democratic governance, soft power and physical location at the core of South Asia, India makes a bona fide contender to play an important role in the emerging global order. This article argues that a deeper economic cooperation between Japan and India can benefit Japan Inc. through the expansion of economic space, on one hand, and may accelerate India’s rise in the global order, on the other. But for a cooperation of mutual betterment, both countries need to position themselves for becoming complementary to each other. They will face a number of barriers at both ends though.
Financial Crisis and Stock Market Integration: An Analysis of Select Economies
Authors: Srivastava Aman , Bhatia Shikha , Gupta Prashant
Published: December 2015

The financial integration of global markets has been an important topic of research and the behaviour of emerging markets is receiving even greater interest after the recent developments in financial markets across the world. The purpose of this article is to investigate the integration of the developed market of the US and emerging Asian stock markets before and after recent global financial crisis from the international portfolio diversification perspective. The study applies the concept of cointegration and uses Morgan Stanley Composite Index (MSCI) data for analysis, and the period of investigation is January 1992 to April 2014. The global indices which are sampled in the study are large and mid cap MSCI of USA, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and India. The findings of this study are very interesting and suggest the presence of strong long-term integration but the absence of short-term integration of Indian stock markets with global markets.
A Decade of Lean in Healthcare: Current State and Future Directions
Authors: Daultani Yash , Chaudhuri Atanu , Kumar Sushil
Published: December 2015

Over the last decade, many healthcare organizations have adopted lean thinking to reduce wastages and to improve flow efficiency in the patient flow processes. But there is limited research done on understanding the sequence to be followed by healthcare organizations to implement lean in their different departments, and on the applicability of various lean tools in different healthcare settings. This article aims to bridge this gap, map the current state of lean in healthcare and identify future research directions. Key concepts of lean thinking are introduced, and the current body of knowledge between 2002 and 2014 is explored to answer key research questions on the application of lean in different healthcare settings. Further, this article is one of the first attempts to classify healthcare services according to the service process matrix. Results show that different healthcare services pose unique challenges to lean implementation due to their inherent characteristics of service delivery. Research opportunities exist to determine the appropriate path which a hospital should follow while implementing lean, to identify the most appropriate set of lean tools and for empirically validating the benefits of lean.
Coming Back to Life: Jyotiprasad’s Joymoti and Nationalist Politics in Assam, 1890s–1940s
Authors: Rajkhowa Gaurav
Published: December 2015

In 1935, Jyotiprasad Agarwala released Joymoti, the first film in Assamese language. In this article, we will attempt to disengage the analysis of Jyotiprasad’s aesthetics from its monumentalization, situating the film within a particular ideological–political conjuncture that forms the horizon of both its conception as well as reception. We will take up two major renditions of the story of Ahom Princess Joymoti—one a drama by Lakshminath Bezbaruah, Joymoti Konwari (1915), and the other, Jyotiprasad’s film—as texts that stage significant conjunctures in the biography of nationalism in Assam. We take up, first, how the theater as an institutional space and the historical drama as a genre become sites of nationalist cultural politics and then, draw upon notions of ordinary language and popular representation to resituate Joymoti’s sacrifice. With Jyotiprasad’s Joymoti, we will see how the cinema facilitates reformulation of these issues as it maps new senses of landscape, materiality, and historicity in the cultural and political field.
Thiruvithamkoor, Malabar, Kerala: Speculations on the Regions in “Regional Cinema”
Authors: Radhakrishnan Ratheesh
Published: December 2015

The category of the region, in its use as an adjective to cinema, presumes a convergence of language, culture, and geography as its ground. This article attempts to understand the dynamics of unification and difference, aggregation and disaggregation that is central to the production of the linguistic region. Focusing on cinematic practices of the early 1950s in Malayalam, it examines the conditions under which a Thiruvithamkoor (Travancore)-based film industry transforms into an industry for “unified Kerala.” Sidestepping the teleological narrative of unification, the article attends to this period as one characterized by many possible futures. The article is organized around two sets of texts. The first set comprises Chalachitra Kala (The Art of Moving Pictures) by Nagavally R.S. Kurup and Cinima (Cinema) by Moorkoth Kunhappa. Published in 1951, these were the first books on cinema to be written in the Malayalam language. I read these books to understand the differential relationship to cinema that seemed to exist within the Malayalam-speaking territories—a difference founded on the ways in which the industry was organized, publics constituted, and markets formed. The second set comprises three films— Jeevitha Nauka (1951), Neelakkuyil (1954), and Thiramala (1953). These films demonstrate how the discourse of stardom during this crucial period, between the end of the colonial regime and linguistic reorganization of states in independent India, engendered industrial and narrative assemblages that (re)constituted the imaginaries of the region.
Constituting a Diffuse Region: Cartographies of Mass-mediated Bhojpuri Belonging
Authors: Hardy Kathryn C.
Published: December 2015

Contemporary Bhojpuri cinema has been celebrated as demonstrating a renaissance of regional culture, but also derided as commercially opportunistic, producing inauthentic regional cultural products. Instead of judging the authenticity of Bhojpuri media, this article addresses the ways that regional cinema produces durable ideas of geographic regionality by addressing a region that is constantly on the move. The referent of the “regional” in “regional cinema” is often taken to be an isomorphic dyad of language and geography. But in the case of Bhojpuri cinema, “the region” is not a straightforward place: the linguistic limits of Bhojpuri are always in question and the geographic limits of Bhojpuri have not been coterminous with any state; the Bhojpuri audience is taken to be highly migratory; and Bhojpuri cinema is produced far from its geographic center. Without a stable geo-linguistic referent, and without an unbroken history of filmmaking by linguistic insiders, contemporary Bhojpuri filmmakers shift Bhojpuri cartographies to address Bhojpuri migrants across the country. This article traces the shifting maps sketched out by recorded cassettes and cinema in Bhojpuri. I argue that through these modes of shifting geographic mapping, Bhojpuri media calls a diffuse public into being—one that does not consolidate pre-existing geo-linguistic borders, but suggests new, diffuse cartographies of mobility and belonging.
A comparative history of earnings management literature from Italy and the US
Authors: Leoni Giulia , Florio Cristina
Published: December 2015

Using the comparative international accounting history approach advocated by Carnegie and Napier (2002), this study compares US and Italian earnings management (EM) literature published in the second half of the twentieth century and identifies the main similarities and differences in the research topics and methodologies. The historical comparison finds that although Italian and US contributions to EM literature grew in notably different contexts and research settings, they both recognized the issue of EM, agreed on its origins and shared some research topics. However, the two bodies of literature differed in respect of the research topics addressed and research methodologies adopted to analyse the EM issue. The discussion of these results provides also initial evidence of areas of potential contribution to the international debate on EM through cross-fertilization. The analysis demonstrates the fundamental role of comparative international accounting history in uncovering the potential contributions of national literatures to the development of accounting research at a genuinely international level. It also contributes to EM literature by bringing to international attention fifty years of Italian EM research that was previously unknown beyond Italian borders.
Cultural diversity and mental health
Authors: Gopalkrishnan Narayan , Babacan Hurriyet
Published: December 2015

Objective:

Cultural diversity and its impact on mental health has become an increasingly important issue in a globalised world where the interactions between cultures continue to grow exponentially. This paper presents critical areas in which culture impacts on mental health, such as how health and illness are perceived, coping styles, treatment-seeking patterns, impacts of history, racism, bias and stereotyping, gender, family, stigma and discrimination.

Conclusions:

While cultural differences provide a number of challenges to mental health policy and practice they also provide a number of opportunities to work in unique and effective ways towards positive mental health. Ethno-specific approaches to mental health that incorporate traditional and community-based systems can provide new avenues for working with culturally diverse populations.
Evaluation of a Leadership in Mental Health course for Pacific Island Nation delegates
Authors: Charlson Fiona , Redman-MacLaren Michelle , Hunter Ernest
Published: December 2015

Objective:

We report the background to and preliminary evaluation of the Leadership in Mental Health: Island Nations course, run for the first time in Cairns in conjunction with Creating Futures 2015.

Conclusion:

The course was well attended and well received, with increased confidence in key areas demonstrated and concerns regarding local application identified. In addition to positive comments, content and delivery issues were raised. Future opportunities for expanding upon this initial course are discussed.
‘Forgotten’: a personal comment and communiqué on West Papuan refugees
Authors: Taime Trix
Published: December 2015

Objective:

To raise awareness of the ongoing human rights violations of the Indigenous residents of West Papua and their mental health consequences.

Method:

The author, herself a refugee from West Papua, provides a summary comment from a presentation to the Leadership in Mental Health: Island Nations course, based on personal experience in West Papua and Papua New Guinea, and a telephone survey of West Papuan refugees resident in Australia.

Result:

A communiqué in solidarity from all course delegates was produced and is included.

Conclusion:

Human rights violations continue in West Papua, and the plight of its indigenous residents and West Papuan refugees in Papua New Guinea and Australia are dire and should not be ‘forgotten’.
Disproportionate Prevalence Rate of Prisoners With Disabilities
Authors: Reingle Gonzalez Jennifer M. , Cannell M. Brad , Jetelina Katelyn K. , Froehlich-Grobe Katherine
Published: December 2015

Previous research suggests that prisoners have a higher rate of disability than non-institutionalized adults. This study used nationally representative data to update the prevalence rate, identify correlates of disability, and evaluate disability-related disparities in use of prison-based educational services, vocational programs, and work assignments. Data were obtained from 18,185 prisoners interviewed in the 2004 Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities. Survey logistic regression procedures were conducted using Stata 13. Disability prevalence remained substantially higher among prisoners than among the non-institutionalized population. Prisoners were more likely to report specific learning, sensory, and speech-related disabilities than non-institutionalized adults. Prisoners with at least one type of disability had more criminogenic risk factors and come from a more disadvantaged background than prisoners without disability. Prisoners with disabilities were also less likely to utilize vocational programs and work assignments but were more likely to use educational programs than prisoners without disabilities. In summary, 41% of prisoners reported a disability, most commonly, learning disabilities. Prisoners with disabilities were identified as an at-risk group for recidivism, given their pre-incarceration experiences, and limited vocational and work-related training received in prison.
Essential Qualitative Inquiry in the Development of a Cancer Literacy Measure for Immigrant Women
Authors: Buki Lydia P. , Yee Barbara W. K. , Weiterschan Kari A. , Lehardy Emaan N.
Published: December 2015

In this article, we describe the development of a comprehensive measure of breast and cervical cancer literacy for immigrant populations. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to use a health literacy framework in this endeavor. Using qualitative strategies, we (a) developed an understanding of the experiences of Mexican and Filipina immigrant women with low health literacy through individual interviews, (b) conducted focus groups to obtain feedback from experts and participants to determine the adequacy of items included in the measure, and (c) refined the set of items to create an empirically based measure. The final measure included 129 items that assess beliefs, attitudes, knowledge, emotions, and contextual factors related to breast and cervical cancer. Processes for adapting the measure for use with other immigrant groups are discussed.
Researching Lived Experience of Drugs and Crime
Authors: Facchin Federica , Margola Davide
Published: December 2015

This study identified the main components of the drugs and crime experience of a sample of 25 drug-dependent inmates interviewed in prison. Text analyses were conducted using a phenomenological method. The sample was characterized by a disruptive childhood in multi-problematic families and deviant social contexts where drug use and crime were considered normal since early adolescence. Drug initiation involved recreational use of dance drugs and/or cocaine, and the pleasure experienced was identified as the cause of subsequent persistent use. Three pathways that led to dependence were identified: The narcissistic pathway was defined as involving uncontrolled cocaine and amphetamines to feel powerful and limitless. The posttraumatic pathway was defined as involving post-trauma self-destructive drug use, while the pain relief pathway was defined as involving multiple substances to relieve pain. The second and third pathways were more directly associated with crime aimed at sustaining drug use.
Sociocultural Influences on Arab Women’s Participation in Breast Cancer Screening in Qatar
Authors: Hwang Jasmine J. , Donnelly Tam T. , Ewashen Carol , McKiel Elaine , Raffin Shelley , Kinch Janice
Published: December 2015

Breast cancer, the most common cancer among Arab women in Qatar, significantly affects the morbidity and mortality of Arab women largely because of low participation rates in breast cancer screening. We used a critical ethnographic approach to uncover and describe factors that influence Arab women’s breast cancer screening practices. We conducted semistructured interviews with 15 health care practitioners in Qatar. Through thematic analysis of the data, we found three major factors influencing breast cancer screening practices: (a) beliefs, attitudes, and practices regarding women’s bodies, health, and illness; (b) religious beliefs and a culturally sensitive health care structure; and (c) culturally specific gender relations and roles. Arab women’s health practices cannot be understood in isolation from the sociocultural environment. The problem of low rates of breast cancer screening practices and supportive interventions must be addressed within the context and not be limited to the individual.
Living in Limbo
Authors: Rebman Alison W. , Aucott John N. , Weinstein Eric R. , Bechtold Kathleen T. , Smith Katherine C. , Leonard Lori
Published: December 2015

Persistent, subjective symptoms of unknown etiology following treatment for Lyme disease have been termed post- treatment Lyme disease syndrome or chronic Lyme disease (PTLDS/CLD). The objective of this study was to give primacy to the patient experience of this medically contested condition by eliciting patient illness narratives and identifying emergent issues through semistructured interviews conducted among 29 participants. We used thematic narrative analysis to identify three predominant themes: (a) Physical and social limitations lead to a “new normal” characterized by fundamental shifts of ways of being in the world, (b) disease-specific factors contribute to symptom and illness invisibility that affects social support in nuanced ways, and (c) pervasive medical uncertainty regarding PTLDS/CLD promotes an increased sense of personal responsibility for care. Similar to other contested or medically unexplained syndromes, our findings suggest that the social sequelae of PTLDS/CLD can be equally protracted as the physical effects of this illness.
History, explanation, and war among the Yanomami: A response to Chagnon’s Noble Savages
Authors: Ferguson R Brian
Published: December 2015

Why do people make war? Is it in human nature? Publication of Napoleon Chagnon’s Noble Savages resurrects old arguments, largely displaced in recent times by study of larger scale political violence, and sidelined by more contemporary theoretical currents. This shift ceded the human nature issue to a variety of biologistic approaches, for which Chagnon’s image of the Orinoco-Mavaca Yanomamo is foundational. Chagnon proposes that war is driven by reproductive competition, with men fighting over women, revenge, and status, among a ‘Stone Age’ people living as they had for countless generations, in a tribal world untouched by larger history or the world system. This paper challenges each of those claims, and offers alternatives that provide a very different view of Yanomami warfare, and why men fight wars.
‘Don’t Look … Or It Takes You’: The Games of Horror Vacui
Authors: Soderman Braxton
Published: December 2015

While some scholars claim that games are not primarily visual texts, the horror genre is obsessed with vision and practices of looking. The aesthetic concept of horror vacui describes aspects of this obsession. Horror vacui is the fear of empty space that results in the over-marking of visual space, excessive decoration that threatens to overwhelm what is being decorated, the stuffing of gaps and caesura with further representation. Shed of its standard aesthetic meaning, horror vacui could also be used to describe the fear operable in off-screen space, the monstrous unseen that lies outside the frame and constantly threatens to appear within it. Forced to move through this blind space, horror games create the conditions for excessive representation and practices of looking that erupt around the threat of the unrepresentable and invisible. In recent horror games this threat is mobilized by anxieties concerning online and networked culture.
Gaming Horror’s Horror: Representation, Regulation, and Affect in Survival Horror Videogames
Authors: Krzywinska Tanya
Published: December 2015

This position article outlines a personal perspective on the way that Horror games create affect in a complex play between representation and performance and that, in some cases, operate against the usual Vitruvian coordinates of games that are used in order to work with the types of affect associated with pleasure, agency and assuredness. The author argues that against the usual informative pleasures of self-affirmation and a clockwork universe, Horror games configured against normative game vocabularies have the potential to create a more complex form of ‘pleasure’ that is both complex and transformational.
Paradoxes of the Heart: The Philosophy of Horror Twenty-Five Years Later : An Interview by Caetlin Benson-Allott
Authors: Carroll Noël
Published: December 2015

Since its publication 25 years ago – and despite controversy regarding some of its key claims – Noël Carroll’s The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart (1990) has led a renaissance in horror studies by paying close critical attention to the form and structure of scary movies. The Philosophy of Horror was one of the first academic monographs to attempt a theory of horror with its groundbreaking call for greater attention to negative affects in aesthetic experience. In this interview, Carroll reflects on horror studies since The Philosophy of Horror, historicizes some of his most controversial claims, and examines new developments in horror production, including horror film franchises and horror video games.
Eisenstein and Horror
Authors: Oeler Karla
Published: December 2015

‘Eisenstein and Horror’ places Eisenstein’s unfinished work, Method (2002 [1932–46]) in dialogue with key concepts that have been brought to bear on cinematic horror: ambivalence, excess, affect, and abjection. It argues that in Method, Eisenstein, largely through the astounding range of his examples, de-emphasizes the difference between narrative and non-narrative in favor of a broader compositional perspective that can only strengthen accounts of horror as reflex, and of self-referential horror. In Method, Eisenstein develops the idea that foundational structures of art (metaphor, metonymy, pars pro toto, and rhythm) are also those of thinking: thinking in art and life proceeds along, and undoes, associative pathways of similarity and contiguity that are variously calculable and unpredictable. In building its argument, this article offers an extremely condensed, but intensive reading of Method.
Sources of moral distress for nursing staff providing care to residents with dementia
Authors: Spenceley Shannon , Witcher Chad SG , Hagen Brad , Hall Barry , Kardolus-Wilson Arron
Published: December 2015

The World Health Organization estimates the number of people living with dementia at approximately 35.6 million; they project a doubling of this number by 2030 and tripling by 2050. Although the majority of people living with a dementia live in the community, residential facility care by nursing care providers is a significant component of the dementia journey in most countries. Research has also shown that caring for persons with dementia can be emotionally, physically, and ethically challenging, and that turnover in nursing staff in residential care settings tends to be high. Moral distress has been explored in a variety of settings where nurses provide acute or intensive care. The concept, however, has not previously been explored in residential facility care settings, particularly as related to the care of persons with dementia. In this paper, we explore moral distress in these settings, using Nathaniel’s definition of moral distress: the pain or anguish affecting the mind, body, or relationships in response to a situation in which the person is aware of a moral problem, acknowledges moral responsibility, makes a moral judgment about the correct action and yet, as a result of real or perceived constraints, cannot do what is thought to be right. We report findings from a qualitative study of moral distress in a single health region in a Canadian province. Our aim in this paper is to share findings that elucidate the sources of moral distress experienced by nursing care providers in the residential care of people living with dementia.
Improving education through research? From effectiveness, causality and technology to purpose, complexity and culture
Authors: Biesta Gert
Published: December 2015

This paper focuses on the role of research in the improvement of educational practice. I use the 10 Principles for Effective Pedagogy, which were formulated on the basis of research conducted in the UK's Teacher and Learning Research Programme as an example to highlight some common problems in the discussion about research and educational improvement. In the paper I explore three issues. The first concerns the idea that the improvement of education is identical to increasing the effectiveness of educational action. Here I suggest that in education the question is never whether something is effective or not, but what something is supposed to be effective for, which is the question of educational purpose. The second issue concerns the prevalence of quasi-causal thinking about educational practice and its improvement. Here I suggest that complexity theory and the idea of complexity reduction provides a much more meaningful educational ontology that makes it possible to think very differently about the drivers for educational change and improvement. Third, I make a distinction between two ways in which research knowledge can be meaningful and useful for educational practice – a technical way where research is supposed to generate knowledge about how to do things and a cultural way which has to do with generating different ways to make sense of education. Seeing that research can engage with educational practice in these two different registers, opens up a different way to think about what research might aim to achieve in order to contribute to educational improvement.
Health regulation and the prescription – and proscription – of educational practice
Authors: Tudor Keith , Shaw Susan
Published: December 2015

This article discusses the interface between health policy and education. Taking as a case example the power that regulatory “responsible authorities” have under the New Zealand Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003 to define scopes of practice of health professionals, including that of educator, the article discusses the implications of such power with regard to health authorities determining curricula, and approving – or disapproving of – certain educators. The authors argue that such power, wielded by government appointees, represents a conservatising agenda, compromises the role of the university to be “a critic and conscience of society”, and threatens the future of both independent health professionals and their educators. The research, conducted over some five years, is informed by relevant publications on professional regulation and the registration of professionals, and a critical review of the publications and websites of the various responsible authorities. The initial hypothesis that these authorities had – and have – different and differing views of this scope of practice and of the extension of their powers, was confirmed.
Palliative Care
Authors: Greer Steven , Joseph Marie
Published: December 2015

Although mind and body are inextricably interwoven, psychological factors have received insufficient attention within medicine. The biomedical model though necessary is not sufficient. In medicine and particularly in palliative care, a holistic biopsychosocial approach is required. A number of examples from clinical practice in a hospice setting are presented.