Rewriting German and Japanese primeval history: a comparative historical analysis of the Takeuchi monjo and ‘Himmler's Bible'

This study is concerned with two examples of religious re-interpretation of the origins of a ‘nation' legitimated by a text, respectively a ‘corpus' of material of allegedly ancient origin. The first examples are the Japanese Takeuchi monjo (‘Takeuchi texts'), which propose an extended and amended variant of the official ‘State Shintō' and its version of history and became the centre of a small ultra-nationalistic religious movement at the beginning of the 20th century. The second example is a text which was once labelled ‘Himmler's bible', the so-called Oera Linda Boek or Ura Linda Chronik, as it was introduced by its main German interpreter and exegete Herman Wirth in the 1930s. In both cases the texts overturn the view of history and mankind through insights into a so-far undetected prehistory.     

Do maternal stress and home environment mediate the relation between early income‐to‐need and 54‐months attentional abilities?

Using Ecological Systems Theory and stage sequential modelling procedures for detecting mediation, this study examined how early developmental contexts impact preschoolers' performances on a measure of sustained attention and impulse control. Data from 1273 European‐American and African‐American participants in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care were used to identify the potential mediators of the relation between early household income‐to‐need (INR) and 54‐month impulsivity and inattention. Exploratory analyses were also conducted to determine whether the relationships between early income, home environment, parenting stress, and the outcome variables differ for African‐American versus European‐American‐American children. We found modest support for the study hypothesis that 36‐month home environment quality mediated the INR/attention relationship. INR accounted for more home environment score variance and home environment accounted for more Impulsivity score variance for African‐American children. Home environments were related to inattention in the European‐American, but not African‐American, group. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.