Adolescent television viewing and belief in vampires

A total of 1133 13-15-year-old pupils in six secondary schools in South Wales were invited to complete questions concerning vampire belief and amount of television watching. The data demonstrate that belief in vampires was positively associated with higher levels of television watching

Psychological type and religious orientation : do introverts and extraverts go to church for different reasons?

This study set out to profile an Anglican congregation in the south of England in terms of religious orientation, assessed by the New Indices of Religious Orientation, and in terms of psychological type, assessed by the Francis Psychological Type Scales, in order to test the hypothesis that motivation for church attendance (religious orientation) is related to personality (psychological type). The data demonstrated that this congregation (N = 65) displayed clear preferences for judging (72%) over perceiving (28%) and for sensing (62%) over intuition (39%), slight preference for extraversion (54%) over introversion (46%) and a fairly close balance between feeling (51%) and thinking (49%), and included attenders who reflected all three religious orientations: intrinsic, extrinsic, and quest. Moreover, extraverts recorded significantly higher scores than introverts on the measure of extrinsic religiosity, while introverts recorded significantly higher scores than extraverts on the measure of intrinsic religiosity, demonstrating a link between psychological type and religious orientation

Unlocking the Reuse Revolution for Fashion: A Canadian Case Study

This research aims to explore the potential of clothing reuse as a stepping stone towards a more circular economy for fashion. A systems approach to problem finding, framing, and solving is applied to explore how we might increase fashion reuse behaviours amongst consumers and industry alike. This research includes an analysis of the key barriers that prevent higher rates of participation in fashion reuse despite the potential economic, environmental, and social benefits of doing so (Part 2), and identifies areas of opportunity to focus innovation (Part 3). Research methodology included more than 30 one-on-one consumer interviews, 20 interviews with industry professionals along the fashion value chain, and an extensive environmental scan with a particular focus on the Canadian market. While this research aims to be accessible for all, the intended audience for this paper includes industry professionals, individual consumers, and regulators with the desire or agency to create meaningful change to the current fashion system in Canada and beyond. This study identified a variety of psychological and physical barriers preventing reuse adoption. For consumers, this is primarily a self-regulation challenge, enabled by our biological design and a cultural environment that has been purposefully constructed to exploit consumer behaviour for profit. This is further reinforced by a deep stigma towards used fashions within a culture that values newness and convenience above quality and longevity. For industry, fast fashion business models challenge both the economics and practicality of reuse, while lack of regulation and barriers to scale reuse models enable the status quo to persist. An analysis of these barriers suggests several points of leverage to focus resources and efforts for innovation to drive increased participation in fashion reuse. Emergent examples from fashion reuse are presented and discussed to inspire action in four key opportunity areas for innovation including: (1) destigmatizing used clothing; (2) addressing our culture of accumulation and disposal; (3) increasing the attractiveness of reuse for consumers; and (4) motivating increased industry participation. Clothing reuse may not be the sole solution to the global fashion industry’s long-term sustainability challenges but it is a critical step along the path to creating a more circular and sustainable economy in which fashion can flourish and provides a mechanism for changing the way we think about the true cost, and potential value, of our clothing. While this research sheds light on many of the challenges and innovation opportunities that exist for clothing reuse on the horizon, turning insight into action is a key next step for further exploration

Guaging Aging: Mapping the Gaps Between Expert and Public Understandings of Aging in America

This report lays the groundwork for a larger effort to develop a new, evidence-based narrative around the process of aging in our country and the needs and contributions of older adults. By comparing experts' views to those of the general public, the report details a set of communications challenges to elevating public support for policies and programs that promote the well-being of older adults. Key among these issues is the public's view of aging as a decidedly negative and deterministic process, as well as its overall fatalism about our collective ability to find solutions to the challenges of an aging population

Immigration and the EU Referendum: claims from both campaigns require deeper analysis

Laura Robbins-Wright examines how immigration emerged as one of the key issues in the EU Referendum debate and argues that some of the claims from both the Leave and Remain campaigns don’t stand up to scrutiny

Database Review: SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System

Laura Pope Robbins is an advisor for The Charleston Advisor, and the review below is included in Scholarly Commons with the permission of the publisher. The Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is the premier Open Access research database for astronomy and astrophysics containing over 13 million bibliographic records. These records include journal articles, books, conference proceedings, historical observatory bulletins, and other gray literature. An exceptional feature of ADS is the visualizations it creates, showing author networks, overlapping citations, and frequently occurring terminology giving researchers new ways to explore the literature. It is a unique resource that is as easy for a novice to search as it is for skilled researchers to create precise search queries

Product Review: Mendeley or Zotero: Which Should the Mobile Researcher Use?

Laura Pope Robbins is an advisor for The Charleston Advisor, and the comparative review below is included in Scholarly Commons with the permission of the publisher. Today’s bibliographic managers provide cloud storage so that papers can be attached to citations and syncing services, in order for papers and citations to be available in multiple mediums. Mendeley and Zotero are two services that offer online storage of papers and citations, desktop applications, and tablet integration. Mendeley has an iPad application and an open API so that developers can create apps for Android tablets. Zotero is an open-source project that encourages developers to create both iPad and Android apps. Both suites can be integrated with word processing software for accurate in-text and bibliographic entries, provide full-text indexing of PDF documents, and can attach notes to citations. Choosing between them depends upon what features a mobile researcher would need and use

Product Review: GoodReader or PDF Reader Pro: Which Is Better for Reading and Annotating?

Laura Pope Robbins is an advisor for The Charleston Advisor, and the comparative review below is included in Scholarly Commons with the permission of the publisher. Today’s researchers are extremely mobile and are looking for ways to read and annotate documents when not in their offices. GoodReader and PDF Reader Pro are two apps that provide that capability for iPad users. Both apps can read multiple file formats and provide file management tools like rename, move, and delete. As well, they can both be linked to multiple cloud services to upload and download files. Neither app is integrated with an online bibliographic manager at this point, but since both can use Dropbox, which can be integrated with Zotero or Mendeley, this is not a problem. Additionally, both apps provide similar annotation tools, such as highlighting, underlining, strikethroughs, typed notes, sticky notes, and freehand drawing. With such similarities it would seem that a researcher could use either app, and indeed both are very useful, but there are distinctive differences between them. Choosing between them depends upon what features a researcher would need and use

Bringing Anime to Academic Libraries: A Recommended Core Collection

The author discusses Japanese anime and manga in the context of academic libraries. She notes that, while collections support the study of popular culture and give students access to materials that will engage them...they fail to include amime. To rectify this, the author discusses a core list of anime titles for academic library collection development. This list was assembled based upon the author’s twenty-plus years of viewing anime and is the culmination of a sabbatical in which the author studied the history of Japanese animation and read extensively from acknowledged experts in the field. The films included here have stood the test of time and inspire multiple viewings. The initial catalog of films which were reviewed for this project came from a variety of sources, including 500 Essential Anime Movies, The Anime Encyclopedia, The Complete Anime Guide, Watching Anime and Reading Manga, and The Rough Guide to Anime. In some cases, the sources included best of lists. In others, topical essays highlighted films and series that demonstrated the best of a genre. Compiling these recommendations into one list, viewing all of the films again, and comparing them with information from these experts and other readings resulted in this core list

Repository Review: NASA PubSpace

Laura Pope Robbins is an advisor for The Charleston Advisor, and the review below is included in Scholarly Commons with the permission of the publisher. PubSpace is a repository of full-text peer-reviewed articles resulting from NASA-funded research going back to 1961. The National Center for Biotechnology Information has integrated PubSpace into PubMed Central, a freely available repository of medical research. Using an established, stable, government-hosted platform for PubSpace seems to make sense. However, the lack of clear branding, an uneven application of phrase searching, and a missing thesaurus of NASA terminology highlights that this integration may not be the best