Reducing Adolescents’ Perceived Barriers to Treatment and Increasing Help-seeking Intentions: Effects of Classroom Presentations by General Practitioners

The Building Bridges to General Practice (BBGP) program is an outreach initiative. It aims to reduce young peoples’ perceived knowledge- and belief-based barriers to engaging in treatment and to increase their behavioral intentions to consult a general medical practitioner (GP) for physical and psychological problems. By increasing intentions, the BBGP program aims to increase actual consultations with a GP for both types of problem. A quasi-experimental nested design was used to evaluate the effect of the intervention in three Australian high schools. A Treatment group (n = 173, M = 16 years) and Comparison group (n = 118, M = 15 years) completed questionnaires of perceived barriers, intentions and self-reported consultations with a GP. Questionnaires were completed 1 week before the intervention, 5 then 10 weeks post-intervention. The Treatment group, but not the Comparison group, showed reductions in perceived barriers over time, increased intentions to consult a GP for psychological problems and a significant correlation between intentions and subsequent GP consultations. Results support the utility of the intervention for improving adolescents’ beliefs, intentions and behavior related to consulting a GP for physical and psychological problems.

No longer docile daughters or handmaidens of the lord: Women in religion contest their divine and human condition(ing)s

There are many feminists who believe that no woman of intelligence would have anything to do with religion — of all institutions it is the most conservative and recalcitrant to change. Yet the resurgence of interest in the Goddess illustrates that many women still have religious, if not divine, yearnings. These developments are occurring simultaneously with a startling revival of fundamentalism. How to negotiate this minefield-like mixture of religious ideals and desperation that continues to attract the loyalties of the majority of humankind? These loyalties, however, have mostly been manipulated to serve the male-dominated institutions. Yet the pervasiveness of religion's influence on virtually all contemporary social structures is, I believe, sufficient reason for a concerned, if suspicious, feminist analysis. This article investigates both the claims of women who have chosen to remain withing religion's orbit and to attempt reform from within, as well as those who no longer feel bound by traditional restictions.     

Suture Embolism of the Left Superior Lobar Pulmonary Artery

Endogenous pulmonary thromboemboli are a common cause of noncardiac sudden natural death. Embolism of exogenous material is a rare but potential finding in autopsies following surgeries, medical procedures, penetrating trauma, and nonparenteral drug abuse. This report describes the first case of a suture embolism of the left superior lobar pulmonary artery following complicated abdominal surgery.     

Carrion fly (Diptera: Calliphoridae) larval colonization of sunlit and shaded pig carcasses in West Virginia, USA

Two pig (Sus scrofta L.) carcasses were placed in sunlit and shaded plots in September 2003, and again in May 2004. Mean ambient temperatures between sunlit and shaded plots were not significantly different in either September or May, but mean ambient temperatures at sunlit and shaded plots in 2004 were significantly higher than corresponding means for sunlit and shaded plots in 2003. Mean maggot mass temperatures were significantly higher than ambient plot temperatures for all four experimental plots (i.e., sunlit and shaded carcasses in both 2003 and 2004). In addition, maggot mass temperatures on sunlit carcasses were positively, and significantly, correlated with ambient temperatures, whereas there was no significant correlation between maggot mass and ambient temperatures at shaded plots. Carcass decomposition proceeded more rapidly in 2004 in the presence of higher ambient temperatures, and sunlit carcasses decomposed faster than shaded ones in both 2003 and 2004 experiments. Phaenecia coeruleiviridis (Macquart) and Phormia regina (Meigen) third instars dominated collections on all four carcasses, but there was little temporal overlap between these species with third instars of the former dominating collections in the early portion (approximately 40%) of each experimental period (with the exception of the shaded carcass in 2004 where both species were co-dominant), and the latter assuming dominance in the latter portion (approximately 60%). Lower accumulated degree hour values were calculated for instar development on 2004 carcasses subjected to higher ambient temperatures.