http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/services/Feed ${session.getAttribute("locale")} 5 http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:12812 The decline and fall of the Soviet empire in the last decade of the 20th century put an end to the cultural and political epoch that was rigidly disciplined by the aesthetics of a mainly socialist realist type. The social-political setting, traditionally looked upon as the Other by the Western mind, has lost its distinguishing features, has lost its proverbial “otherness”. Soviet literature and fiction used to be informed, at least during the years between the 1970s and 1990s, by the legacy of historical materialism and social realism. The present essay addresses a formidable exploration of this particular three-decades-long period in Soviet literature by Nadia Peterson in her book Subversive Imaginations: Fantastic Prose and the End of Soviet Literature, 1970s - 1990s published in 1997 by Westview Press. 2013-04-29T05:37:35.520Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:9946 Cooper et al. report US evidence of the ‘other January effect,’ where returns in January are shown to have predictive power for returns over the subsequent 11 months. We re-examine the latest sub-period that they examine and find that the results using excess returns are not unique to January and that the effect for January is not apparent for raw returns. Further, using excess (raw) return data for 38 (44) other countries, limited support is found for the other January effect, with eight (five) of the remaining 11 months demonstrating a statistically significant effect in at least as many countries as exhibited the ‘other January effect.’ Further, there is no evidence to suggest that different tax-year ends across countries can explain the result. 2012-02-08T22:50:05.469Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:9833 In Chapter 9 we saw how Jürgen Habermas's ethical theory epitomizes social work's modern ethical tradition, not least his distinction between values, ethics and morals. For Habermas, since all societies and cultures have values, they assume the character of objective facts that are distinguishable from ethics, the socially agreed-upon normative requirements of a particular group or society about what can rightfully be expected from people in that society or group. And ethics are distinguishable from morals, our beliefs about right and wrong. For Habermas morality is personal and Bauman, the major proponent of a postmodern ethics, agrees, but for different reasons. 2012-01-19T04:50:03.723Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:1290 This selective review was undertaken in order to highlight the need for alcohol and other drug treatment services to provide intervention for tobacco smoking to their clients. The reasons for the failure of treatment services to date to deal with nicotine addiction within their programmes are discussed and positive suggestions for change are proferred. In addition to the transformation of institutional culture which will be required, managers and staff of alcohol and other drug agencies need to know how best to implement smoking intervention within the treatment setting. The paper concludes with some practical suggestions for the management of intervention for tobacco smoking within treatment settings. These suggestions include: making decisions and formulating policies and procedures with regard to how tobacco smoking will be addressed; considering the particular physical, psychological and social/environmental factors that apply to substance abuse clients; building intervention around a simple structure such as the '5 A's'; encouraging and facilitating the use of nicotine replacement therapies; and allowing flexibility to tailor intervention to the individual. A great deal of further research is required to inform us as to how to intervene most effectively for tobacco smoking among this population group. 2011-12-01T23:20:02.281Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:8669 Angela Carter's subversive rewriting of traditional European fairy tales in The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979) has been extensively studied for its radical treatment of gender and sexuality. Most such scholarly comment focuses on the plots of the stories and, in the case of the title story - a rewrite of "Bluebeard" - on its powerful visual imagery, to support arguments about the implications of Carter's work. But Carter's language evokes other senses beside the visual in order to seduce the reader into confronting the experience of sexuality in the patriarchal tradition. For most critics, somewhat surprisingly, that richness and sensuality appear to be associated primarily with evocation of the visual. Yet not only the adjectival density of Carter's prose, in which almost every object, action and experience is described through parallel phrases, but also its quasi-poetic deployment of a range of linguistic techniques demands a more detailed attention to its sensory power. Her language has an extraordinarily sensuous quality that is reflected in its continual appeals to the senses of sound, smell, taste and especially touch, as well as sight, and, as I shall demonstrate, is also manifested through the immediate aural and tactile effects of particular words and phrases. 2011-08-18T04:50:09.196Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:1940 This study investigated the clinical factors associated with a wish to hasten death among patients with advanced cancer receiving palliative care, with a focus on the role of clinician-related factors. Patients were grouped into high- and low-scoring groups on the basis of their wish to hasten death; doctor-patient pairs were formed. Questionnaire data collected from patients and their treating doctors were subjected to multivariate analysis. Significant predictors of a high wish to hasten death in terminally ill patients from among treating clinicians included the clinician's perception of the patient's lower optimism and greater emotional suffering, the patient indicating a wish to hasten death, the doctor willing to assist the patient in hastening death (if requested and legal), and the doctor reporting less training in psychotherapy. When these variables were combined with patient factors identified in a previous study, the model significantly predicted a wish to hasten death with the following variables—patient factors: a higher perceived burden on others, higher depressive symptom scores, and lower family cohesion; physician factors: the doctor willing to assist the patient in hastening death (if requested and legal), the doctor's perception of lower levels of optimism and greater emotional distress in the patient, and the doctor having less training in psychotherapy; and the setting of care: recent admission to a hospice. The findings support the multifactorial influences on the wish to hasten death and suggest that the role of the clinician is a vital context within which the wish to hasten death should be considered. 2010-04-27T06:58:55.436Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:880 A cross-sectional survey was mailed to all Australian drug and alcohol treatment agencies to assess their smoking cessation policies and practices and related staff attitudes. Barriers to smoking cessation interventions were also examined. Completed questionnaires were returned by 213 managers and 204 other staff representing 260 agencies (59.8% consent rate). Approximately one-quarter of agencies have smoking cessation intervention policies and one-third of clients receive adequate smoking advice. Of 12 intervention strategies, only the recording of smoking status on file occurs in a majority of cases. Concerns about the potential negative impact of smoking interventions and lack of client interest were endorsed as very important barriers by the highest percentage of respondents. 12.6% of managers and 16.5% of other staff agreed that it is occasionally useful for staff to smoke with a client. Smoking cessation receives little systematic attention from drug and alcohol agencies. Training and policy initiatives are needed urgently to address negative staff attitudes impeding progress in this area. 2010-04-27T06:23:01.090Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:621 A cross-sectional survey was mailed to all Australian drug and alcohol treatment agencies to assess their smoking cessation policies and practices and related staff attitudes. Barriers to smoking cessation interventions were also examined. Completed questionnaires were returned by 213 managers and 204 other staff representing 260 agencies (59.8% consent rate). Approximately one-quarter of agencies have smoking cessation intervention policies and one-third of clients receive adequate smoking advice. Of 12 intervention strategies, only the recording of smoking status on. le occurs in a majority of cases. Concerns about the potential negative impact of smoking interventions and lack of client interest were endorsed as very important barriers by the highest percentage of respondents. 12.6% of managers and 16.5% of other staff agreed that it is occasionally useful for staff to smoke with a client. Smoking cessation receives little systematic attention from drug and alcohol agencies. Training and policy initiatives are needed urgently to address negative staff attitudes impeding progress in this area. 2010-04-27T05:41:29.262Z ]]>