Spirituality and mental health status among Northern Plain tribes

Spirituality measures often show positive associations with preferred mental health outcomes in the general population; however, research among American Indians (AIs) is limited. We examined the relationships of mental health status and two measures of spirituality – the Midlife Development Inventory (MIDI) and a tribal cultural spirituality measure – in Northern Plains AIs, aged 15–54 (n?=?1636). While the MIDI was unassociated with mental health status, the tribal cultural spirituality measure showed a significant relationship with better mental health status. Mental health conditions disproportionately affect AIs. Understanding protective factors such as cultural spirituality that can mitigate mental health disorders is critical to reducing these health disparities.     

Role strain among South African seminarians in the Anglican Church: toward a typology of congregational support

This phenomenological study explored student value perceptions of religious participation among nontraditional South African distance learners who persisted in theological distance education. Four basic types of churches emerged including the Equipping Church, the Empowering Church, the Engaging Church, and the Endangering Church. However, in examining religious coping strategies among South African distance learners, it was discovered that the four women interviewed experienced a deep sense of loneliness in their calling and had to rely almost exclusively on resources outside their local church. These Black South African women’s sense of being called alone is both inconsistent with the theoretical framework of role theory and the theological framework of the Anglican Church as expressed by the official Prayer Book.     

The role of regional heterogeneity in age-related differences in functional hemispheric asymmetry: an fMRI study

Neuroimaging literature has documented age-related hemispheric asymmetry reduction in frontal regions during task performances. As most studies employed working memory paradigms, it is therefore less clear if this pattern of neural reorganization is constrained by working memory processes or it would also emerge in other cognitive domains which are predominantly lateralized. Using blocked functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the present study used a homophone judgment task and a line judgment task to investigate age-related differences in functional hemispheric asymmetry in language and visuospatial processing respectively. Young and older adults achieved similar task accuracy although older adults required a significantly longer time. Age-related functional hemispheric asymmetry reduction was found only in dorsal inferior frontal gyrus and was associated with better performance when the homophone condition was contrasted against fixation, and not line condition. Our data thus highlights the importance of considering regional heterogeneity of aging effects together with general age-related cognitive processes.     

Summarization of videos by analyzing affective state of the user through crowdsource

Video summarization is one of the key techniques to access and manage a huge chunk of videos. Video summarization is used to extract the effective contents of a video sequence to generate a concise representation of its content. The involvement of crowdsourcing models in recent years is effectively used by researchers in E-commerce domain to increase the quality of the data contents. In this paper, we present a video summarization framework based on users emotion while they watch videos by analyzing cerebral activities through Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. Three emotions, namely happy, sad and neutral have been extracted from the EEG signals. Video frames have been synchronized with EEG signals and tagged with various emotions. Finally, a crowdsourcing model has been used for effective summarization of the videos. The qualitative assessment of video summarization has been conducted with the help of user ratings using online Google Forms application. EEG signals of 28 users have been recorded while video streams of different emotions. An average accuracy of 83.93% has been recorded in emotion classification using crowdsourcing. Output summarized videos include dynamic video skims and the corresponding audio stream for better understanding.     

非工作时间使用通信技术处理工作的“双刃剑”效应及心理机制

在当前的互联网时代下,个体“在非工作时间使用通信技术处理工作”的现象已经非常普遍,并因其对个体日常工作生活适应可能产生的深远影响而受到研究者的广泛关注。基于对该领域已有研究文献的全面回顾,本文着重探讨了非工作时间使用通信工具处理对个体工作生活适应的“双刃剑”效应及效应发生的心理机制,并对该领域未来的研究方向进行了针对性的展望。     

Perceived stigma of caregivers: Psychometric evaluation for Devaluation of Consumer Families Scale

Background/Objective: The Devaluation of Consumer Families Scale (DCFS) is commonly used to measure perceived stigma towards family members of people with mental illness. However, its factorial structure has never been confirmed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). This study aimed to test the psychometric properties of the DCFS Taiwan version (DCFS-TW). Method: Family caregivers (N=511) completed the DCFS-TW (97 completed the DCFS again after 2 to 4 weeks) and other instruments. CFA, test-retest reliability, internal consistency, concurrent validity, and known-group validity were analyzed. Results: The three-factor structure of the DCFS-TW performed better than the one-factor structure. Test-retest reliability (r = .66) and internal consistency were satisfactory (α = .85); concurrent validity (absolute r = .20 to .58) was acceptable; known-group validity was supported by the significantly different DCFS-TW scores in clinical characteristics (had been vs. had not been hospitalized; had been vs. had not been compulsorily admitted). Conclusions: The DCFS-TW has decent psychometric properties and is suitable for health professionals to measure perceived stigma towards family members of people with mental illness.     

The Trait Anxiety Scale for Children: A validation study for European Portuguese children and adolescents

The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children is a self-report instrument inspired on the State-Trait theory extended by Spielberger that measures a momentary state of anxiety (state) and a stable tendency to experience anxiety (trait). This study presents an exploratory adaptation of the Trait Scale and provides its psychometric properties for European Portuguese children and adolescents. The influence of sex and age were also explored. Our sample, composed of 402 participants aged 8–14 years, revealed a mean anxiety value of 28.37 (SD = 5.99). As expected, females revealed higher levels of anxiety than boys. Higher anxiety was obtained in our youngest group as compared to the oldest group. The exploratory factor analysis led to retaining only 16-items that presented acceptable adjustment to a one-factorial solution. Good indexes were obtained in the confirmatory analysis. The results also revealed good internal consistency and good test-retest reliability. Our results provide initial evidence that this scale is adequate to measure trait-anxiety in European Portuguese young people.     

论行政调解的法制建构

行政调解是我国调解制度的重要构成部分,是"大调解"纠纷解决机制的重要环节,对解决社会纠纷、化解社会矛盾具有特殊重要的地位和功能。但是我国行政调解法律制度至今尚未建立起来。本文认为,我国调解法律制度建设的目标是在《人民调解法》的基础上,制定统一的《调解法》,建构较为完备的调解法律制度。当前的重点是建立和完善行政调解制度,建议在《调解法》制定之前由国务院制定《行政调解条例》,建立较为完整的行政调解法律制度,国务院行政法规制定以前,各省、自治区、直辖市人大常委会可以先行制定行政调解的地方性法规,将行政调解纳入法治轨道。进而,本文围绕构建我国行政调解法律制度,对我国行政调解的概念界定、行政调解主体、行政调解的范围、行政调解的基本原则、行政调解的程序和行政调解协议的法律效力等问题进行了较为系统的探讨。     

上善若水为而不争：老子处世哲学的生命启慧

老子是道家自然美学的开创者,并以《道德经》印证了高远深邃的人生智慧。可以说,＂上善若水＂、＂为而不争＂、＂自然皈依＂作为一种理想化的君子人格模式,体认着老子＂以水喻道＂的敏锐睿智的思辨特质,召唤了历代仁人志士在人格实现上日趋走向完善、达求和升华,从而使得老子哲学始终蕴含着悠长隽永的生命意趣。