Interventions for children’s dental anxiety: Validating a coping styles scale

Dental anxiety is a widespread phenomenon with deleterious oral health correlates. Consideration of variation in coping styles may be useful in the selection of effective dental anxiety interventions. Miller (1981, 1987) defined two key modalities for coping with threatening information: monitoring (attending to threatening information) and blunting (avoiding threatening information). This study will report on the New Zealand validation of a measure of children's monitoring-blunting copying styles in dental situations (the MBDS) in a sample of 240 New Zealand children aged 11-13 years. Internal consistency reliability and convergent validity with respect to a related scale wre adequate for both the monitoring and blunting subscales, although discriminant validity with regard to dental anxiety was weak for the blunting subscale. Use of a scale such as the MBDS may be one way in which dental staff can bring children's preferred copying styles into consideration when formulating interventions to manage dental anxiety.fals

Shiina Rinzo: imaging hope and despair in occupation Japan

With defeat in the Pacific War in 1945, the very notion of ‘community’ (as described by Benedict Anderson) in Japan was under threat, the future of the nation dependent, as never before, on the response of the international community. Viewed in a different light, however, the slate was clean—the possibilities, indeed the need, for revised terms of reference for this ‘imagined community’ now of paramount importance. The ensuing attempts to define the parameters of the emerging national identity were far-reaching and multi-faceted, seeking as they did to encompass the memories of loss and devastation through the realm of everyday culture as well as through political discourse. The focus of this paper will be on the contribution to this radical reassessment of the relationship between the nation and the individual made by the group of authors collectively known as the Sengoha (après guerre literary coterie). More specifically, I shall be examining the novellas, Shin'ya no shuen (The midnight banquet, 1947) and Eien naru josho (The eternal preface, 1948), two early texts by the author, Shiina Rinzo, arguably the most representative Sengoha writer, for evidence of the extent to which this literature helped to shape and modify the ‘imagined community’ of Japan

Radar And Visual Observations Of Autumnal (Southward) Shorebird Migration On Guam

Several species of shorebirds migrate between eastern Asia and the southern Pacific islands, Australia, and New Zealand. Observations made from Guam (13°25′N, 144°45′E) during autumn 1983 indicate that a significant number of birds take a direct route over the western Pacific Ocean. Radar observations and ground counts of migrants on Guam showed two periods of autumnal migratory activity. The first, largely adult birds, was in August and September. The second, largely juveniles, was in late September and October. Radar indicated that large numbers of birds passed over the island to the south with no evidence of compensation for drift by the easterly winds. Comparison of radar and ground observations on Guam showed that only a small subset of migrants stop on the island, suggesting that some species may make nonstop flights between eastern Asia and the South Pacific

Richard Kearney's Anatheistic Wager: Philosophy, Theology, Poetics (Review)

Here I review the recent edited volume "Richard Kearney's Anatheistic Wager: Philosophy, Theology, Poetics.

Better Together: A Collaborative Approach to Graduate Student Affairs

As the student affairs profession evolves to better support the needs of graduate students, a re-building of the relationship between academic and student affairs is vital for the success of graduate student support programs. Rates of mental illness are extremely high in the graduate population, and this trend is closely related to elevated attrition rates in recent years. Universities are attempting to support their graduate students through this crisis via separate faculty- and student affairsled initiatives, which have been ineffective in addressing the needs of today’s graduate population. Partnering with faculty members will result in holistic interventions that support students’ needs both inside and outside of the classroom