Ground test program for new Atlas payload fairings

To establish the competitiveness of the revitalized family of Atlas launch vehicles (I, II, IIA, and IIAS) a new series of payload fairings, an 11-foot and a 14-foot diameter version, were designed to accommodate the widest possible variety of satellites. Because these aluminum fairings are new designs, the plant at which they are produced is new, and launch customers are very anxious to fly their payloads, an ambitious and efficient test program is essential. Five major tests have been planned for completion within the span of one calendar year. One of these has been completed, with every indication that it was a success, one is currently under way, and two more are scheduled to start in the month of April. Through effective use of test assets, facilities, and personnel, all testing will be completed, allowing the fairing design to be completely characterized and then qualified through analysis prior to first launch of each of the fairings

Work-related psychological health among Church of England clergywomen : individual differences and psychological type

Using the balanced affect model of work-related psychological health proposed and measured by the Francis Burnout Inventory, this paper set out to assess the work-related psychological health of a sample of 874 stipendiary parochial clergywomen working within the Church of England to examine the association between work-related psychological health and psychological type as assessed by the Francis Psychological Type Scales. The data demonstrate that these clergywomen experience a high level of emotional exhaustion often off-set by a high level of satisfaction in ministry, but that these levels are roughly consistent with those reported by clergymen and clergywomen working in other cultural and denominational contexts. In terms of psychological type theory, the data demonstrate that extraverts and feelers enjoy a better level of work-related psychological health in comparison with introverts and thinkers. This finding is consistent with the view that introverted thinking clergywomen may find themselves operating in ministry for long periods with their less preferred orientation of extraversion and their less preferred judging function of feeling. Suggestions are offered to help introverted and thinking clergy to deal more effectively with the stresses of ministry

Public Health Versus Court-Sponsored Secrecy

Public health practice relies on access to information. Givelber and Robbins discuss the debate about court-sponsored secrecy: Whether or not courts should tolerate, edorse, or protect secrecy when the sequestered information might help protect the public health

Teachers at faith schools in England and Wales : state of research

This study begins by distinguishing between three kinds of ‘faith schools’ (known as schools with a religious character) within England and Wales: faith schools that operate within the state-maintained sector and had their origin in voluntary church-related initiatives prior to the Education Act 1870; ‘traditional’ independent faith schools, many of which had their roots in or before the nineteenth century; and ‘new’ independent faith schools, particularly Christian and Muslim schools, following the Rochester initiative in 1969. Second, this study draws attention to and summarises a quantitative research tradition established in 1982 concerned with identifying the attitudes and values of teachers working specifically within Anglican faith schools within the state-maintained sector, and with modelling the influence of personal and religious factors in shaping their attitudes. Third, this study reanalyses a new database profiling the views of subject leaders in religious education across a broad range of primary schools with a religious character in England. These new analyses demonstrate the different priorities given to different aims of religious education by teachers in this sector, and illustrates the relative influence of personal factors (age, sex and church attendance), professional factors (years teaching, qualifications, and continuing professional development) and contextual factors (type of school)

The relationship between denominational affiliation and spiritual health among weekly-churchgoing 13- to 15-year-old adolescents in England and Wales

THIS PAPER DRAWS on John Fisher’s formative definition of spiritual health as comprising good relationships within four domains (the personal, the communal, the environmental and the transcendental) and uses the operationalization of these constructs proposed by Francis and Robbins (2005). Comparisons are made between the responses of five groups of 13- to 15-year-olds who report weekly church attendance: 1,549 Anglicans, 1,458 Roman Catholics, 830 members of one of the Free Churches, 212 members of one of the Pentecostal churches, and 212 Jehovah’s Witnesses. The data demonstrate significant variations in the levels of spiritual health reported by weekly churchgoers according to denominational affiliation. The conclusion is drawn that denominational affiliation needs to be taken into account alongside frequency of church attendance in constructing a view of the relationship between Christian practice and spiritual health during the adolescent years

Prayer, purpose in life, and attitudes toward substances: a study among 13- to 15-year-olds in England and Wales

This study set out to examine the association between prayer frequency, purpose in life and attitude toward substances, among a sample of 2,563 13- to 15-year-old secondary school pupils in England and Wales. Multivariate models controlling for sex, school year and personality (as defined by the Eysenkian dimensional model) demonstrated that higher levels of purpose in life are associated with greater prayer frequency, and that more proscriptive attitudes toward substances are associated with both higher levels of purpose in life and greater prayer frequency. These findings are consistent with a model suggesting that prayer frequency promotes a more negative view of substances both directly and indirectly through cultivating a greater sense of purpose in life

Still worlds apart: The worldviews of adolescent males attending Protestant and Catholic secondary schools in Northern Ireland

This study draws together two research traditions: John Greer's pioneering research among pupils in Protestant and Catholic schools in Northern Ireland and Leslie J. Francis's research concerning teenage religion and values in England and Wales. A sample of 1,585 13- to 15-year-old male pupils attending Catholic schools (n = 712) and Protestant schools (n = 873) completed the Teenage Religion and Values Survey. The present analyses highlight the significant differences in world views between the Catholic and Protestant adolescents across eight domains defined as: religious beliefs, paranormal beliefs, church-related attitudes, attitudes toward sex and family life, law-related attitudes, school-related attitudes, locality-related attitudes, and personal anxiety and depression. These data confirm that in many key ways young people growing up in these two religious communities are still living worlds apart