A Comprehensive Decision Approach for Rubber Tree Planting Management in Africa

The main objective of this study is to settle a rigorous field of decision analysis for rubber tree clones selection. Nowadays, there does not exist any process based upon a rigorous method to select the best clone to be plant in order to get the highest return on investment. The only known selection method is to use the experience of different protagonists acting in the plantation. So, we need a tool that takes into account very important criteria in order to achieve the main objective. This goal is achieved by using multicriterion analysis methods to the clone selection. The ranking procedure uses Elimination and Choice Expressing the Reality (ELECTRE III). For each criterion, indifference and preference thresholds are determined after establishing the relative importance of each criterion including rubber tapping, cumulative production during 15 years, cumulative production between 15 and 25 years, wind resistance, disease resistance, physiological resistance, grafting and quality of the rubber. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Psychometric properties of the five facet mindfulness questionnaire in depressed adults and development of a short form

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in therapies that include the learning of mindfulness skills. The 39-item Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) has been developed as a reliable and valid comprehensive instrument for assessing different aspects of mindfulness in community and student samples. In this study, the psychometric properties of the Dutch FFMQ were assessed in a sample of 376 adults with clinically relevant symptoms of depression and anxiety. Construct validity was examined with confirmatory factor analyses and by relating the FFMQ to measures of psychological symptoms, well-being, experiential avoidance, and the personality factors neuroticism and openness to experience. In addition, a 24-item short form of the FFMQ (FFMQ-SF) was developed and assessed in the same sample and cross-validated in an independent sample of patients with fibromyalgia. Confirmatory factor analyses showed acceptable model fit for a correlated five-factor structure of the FFMQ and good model fit for the structure of the FFMQ-SF. The replicability of the five-factor structure of the FFMQ-SF was confirmed in the fibromyalgia sample. Both instruments proved highly sensitive to change. It is concluded that both the FFMQ and the FFMQ-SF are reliable and valid instruments for use in adults with clinically relevant symptoms of depression and anxiety.     

Emotional reactions to scandals: When does moral character make a difference?

A scandal can evoke public outrage when it is widely publicized and involves an individual who is perceived to have a high level of cultural representativeness. Two experiments showed that when the scandalous target's moral character was highlighted, emotional responses towards the target were least negative when the scandal was widely circulated and when the target was seen as a representative of his culture. These results suggest that when a cultural symbol is implicated in a widely‐circulated scandal, the negative emotions directed towards the scandalous individual can be alleviated when the public remains confident in his or her commitment to morality.     

Awakening: Career Opportunities After the Storm

Immediately following natural disasters, basic needs are provided; however, the long‐term needs of individuals are neglected. The narrative approach (Brott, 2001; Cochran, 1997) to career counseling is offered as a method to assist survivors of natural disasters to tell their story and create new meaning related to their career paths.     

Embodied Cultural Cognition: Situating the Study of Embodied Cognition in Socio‐Cultural Contexts

Embodiment research has demonstrated that cognition is grounded in bodily interactions with the environment and that abstract concepts are tied to the body’s sensory and motor systems. Building upon this embodiment perspective and advancing our understanding, we discuss the extension of embodied cultural cognition. We propose that some associations between bodily experiences and abstract concepts are not randomly formed; rather, the development of such associations is situated in a socio‐cultural context, informed by cultural imperatives, values, and habits. We draw evidence supporting this view of embodied cultural cognition in body–mind linkages manifested in construal of emotions, time perception, person perception, social power, and moral reasoning. To further extend this research avenue that synthesizes the studies of embodied cognition and culture, we also suggest potential future research directions inspired by this view. This embodied cultural cognition account is useful in understanding and organizing accumulating discoveries of cultural variations in embodiments; it also highlights the social situatedness of embodied cognition and is, therefore, highly compatible with theorizing and research in social and cultural psychology.     

The role of encoding strategies in the verbal memory performance in patients with schizophrenia

Background. Verbal learning and memory is often compromised in patients with schizophrenia who prefer encoding words in order of their presentation (serial clustering) rather than using semantic categories (semantic clustering). Method. One hundred and four in‐patients with schizophrenia were assessed twice with the California Verbal Learning Test. Results. Patients showed significantly less semantic than serial clustering at both assessment times. Usage of encoding strategies were not stable over time. An increase in semantic clustering improved recall and recognition performance. Conclusions. Patients with schizophrenia should be taught to use the more effective encoding strategy of semantic clustering in order to improve their memory performance.     

Resilience: A Disability Studies and Community Psychology Approach

This paper contests traditional psychological understandings of resilience through reference to a research project exploring resilience in the lives of disabled people. The paper briefly historically locates individualistic accounts of resilience (which have often been unhelpful in the lives of disabled people) and then moves into more recent social constructionist theories of this phenomenon. This latter perspective necessarily locates resilience in a network of resources including material resources, relationships, identity, bodies and minds, power and control, community participation, community cohesion and social justice. We argue that the recognition of resilience as a relational product is important and in tune with attempts to make psychology less an individualistic encounter and more a community intervention. However, disabled people, their politics and the development of critical disability studies, contest and challenge normative ideas of what it means to live with a resilient network of resources. In this sense disability offers new and exciting ways of addressing resilience.     

Time-course of attention for threatening pictures in high and low trait anxiety

Cognitive studies about anxiety suggest that the interplay between automatic and strategic biases in attention to threat is related to the persistence of fear. In the present study, the time-course of attention to pictures with varying threat levels was investigated in high trait anxious (HTA, n=21) and low trait anxious (LTA, n=22) students. In a visual probe detection task, high and mild threat pictures were presented at three durations: 100, 500, and 1250 ms. Results indicated that all individuals attended to the high threat pictures for the 100 ms condition. Differential responding between HTA and LTA individuals was found for the 500 ms condition: only HTA individuals showed an attentional bias for mild threatening stimuli. For the 1250 ms condition, the HTA individuals attended away from high and mild threat pictures. The observed pattern of differential attention to threatening pictures may explain the persistence of fear in HTA individuals.     

Mushroom Bodies Suppress Locomotor Activity in Drosophila melanogaster

Locomotor activity of single, freely walking flies in small tubes is analyzed in the time domain of several hours. To assess the influence of the mushroom bodies on walking activity, three independent noninvasive methods interfering with mushroom body function are applied: chemical ablation of the mushroom body precursor cells; a mutant affecting Kenyon cell differentiation (mushroom body miniature¹); and the targeted expression of the catalytic subunit of tetanus toxin in subsets of Kenyon cells. All groups of flies with mushroom body defects show an elevated level of total walking activity. This increase is attributable to the slower and less complete attenuation of activity during the experiment. Walking activity in normal and mushroom body-deficient flies is clustered in active phases (bouts) and rest periods (pauses). Neither the initiation nor the internal structure, but solely the termination of bouts seems to be affected by the mushroom body defects. How this finding relates to the well-documented role of the mushroom bodies in olfactory learning and memory remains to be understood.     

Book reviews

The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History. Rodney Stark, 1996 Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press xiv + 247 pp., US$24.95, £16.95 ISBN 0–691–02749–8

Church Watch: Christianity in the Countryside. Leslie J. Francis, 1996 London: SPCK 248 pp., £9.99 ISBN 0–281–04951–3

Strategic Church Leadership. Robin Gill & Derek Burke, 1996 London: SPCK vii + 96 pp., £9.99 ISBN 0–281–04901–7

’Nice When They Are Young’: Contemporary Christianity in Families and Schools. Mairi Levitt, 1996 Aldershot: Avebury viii +171 pp., £32.50 ISBN 1–85972–388–8

Die Sekten‐Kinder. Kurt‐Helmuth Eimuth, 1996 Freiburg: Herder Verlag 239 pp., DM 19.80 (pb) ISBN 3–451–04397–1

The Good Heart: His Holiness the Dalai Lama Explores the Heart of Christianity—and of Humanity. H.H. The Dalai Lama, 1997. London: Rider xiv + 207pp., £9.99 (pb) ISBN 0–7126–7275–3

Scientists as Theologians: A Comparison of the Writings of Ian Barbour, Arthur Peacocke & John Polkinghome. John Polkinghorne, 1996 London: SPCK 95 pp., £9.99 ISBN 0–281–04945–9

Psychiatry and Religion: Context, Consensus and Controversies. Dinesh Bhugra, ed., 1996 London, New York: Routledge 236 pp., £50.00, US$65.00 ISBN 0–415–08955–7 (hb)

Ethical Issues in Six Religious Traditions. Peggy Morgan & Clive Lawton, eds, 1996 Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 278 pp., £14.95 (pb) ISBN 0–7486–0709–9

Religious Institutions and Women's Leadership: New Roles Inside the Mainstream. Catherine Wessinger, ed., 1996 Columbia: University of South Carolina Press x +434 pp., US$24.95 ISBN 1–57003–073–1

Traveller in Space: In Search of Female Identity in Tibetan Buddhism. June Campbell, 1996 London: Athlone Press 225 pp., £17.95 ISBN 0–485–11494–1

Forbidden Revolutions: Pentecostalism in Latin America, Catholicism in Eastern Europe. David Martin, 1996 London: SPCK 96 pp., £7.99 ISBN 0–281–04999–8

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Soviet State (1939–1950) Bohdan R. Bociurkiw, 1996 Edmonton, Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press 310 pp., Ca$39.95(hb) ISBN 1–895571–12‐X

Qur'an, Liberation & Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious Solidarity against Oppression. Farid Esack, 1997 Oxford: Oneworld Publications xii + 288 pp., 3 Appendices + Glossary + Bibliography; £14.99, US$22.95 ISBN 1–85168–121–3

A Sociological Analysis of the Theology of Quakers: The Silent Revolution Studies in Religion and Society Volume 34 Pink Dandelion, 1996 Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press xxxiv +417 pp., £59.95 ISBN 0–7734–8807–3

Counting the Days to Armageddon: The Jehovah's Witnesses and The Second Presence of Christ Robert Crompton, 1996 Cambridge: James Clarke & Co. 160 pp., £22.50 ISBN 0–2276–7939

Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft. James R. Lewis, ed., 1996 Albany, NY: State of New York University Press vi + 423 pp., US$19.95 (pb) ISBN 0–7914–2890–7

The Divine Versus The Asurian: An Interpretation of Indo‐European Cult and Myth. Michael York, 1995 Bethesda, MD: International Scholars Publications 635 pp., US$94.95 ISBN 1–57309–029–8