New Releases by Neil Christopher

Kappianaqtut provides readers with an in-depth academic examination of two mythological creatures from Inuit mythology.

Quitting smoking is a major problem for many people all over the world. Each year, thousands of people attempt to quit untreated, but only 3% to 5% maintain abstinence for six to 12 months after a given quit attempt. When treated, the success rate increases to a range of 13% to 36%. The people who are not successful often get discouraged, which can make it even harder for them to quit. This study examined the effectiveness of a program using an Internet-based delivery system (www.smokefade.com), based on the gradual reduction approach used in Project SCRAP-Tobacco, which employed both cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and motivational interviewing (MI) approaches to reduce smoking behavior. A total of 73 California smokers were recruited from the student population at San Diego State University (SDSU) for this test of a self-administered, Internet-based program. Smokers, who received class research credit for participating, were randomly assigned to either 28-day CBT/MI treatment or a self-report control condition. Initially, website failure caused complications; there was simultaneous implementation of control and experiment conditions. However, this error was rectified with manual implementation of the control condition. Cigarette consumption and motivation levels were recorded at baseline and daily in both conditions. Participants in the experiment condition received daily, automated emails that employed MI and CBT techniques to encourage gradual smoking reductions and increase non-smoking self-efficacy. Per-week totals of cigarette consumption over 4 weeks were compared using a mixed-model ANOVA for analysis. Participants in the CBT/MI condition showed a steady and significant decline in consumption over the 4-week intervention period: on average, 1.85 cigarettes per week. Conversely, participants in the control condition showed no reduction in cigarette consumption over the 28-day period. It is expected that participants who continue to use the techniques learned via the experiment condition would be able to exhibit greater control over their smoking behavior and would have more success at cutting back, quitting, and maintaining this change. Overall, the results of this research suggest smokefade.com has the potential to be a useful tool for individuals interested in quitting smoking.

This revised edition, originally published as Stories of the Amautalik, shares two spinetingling tales of the dreaded ogress of the tundra, a creature that carries away unsuspecting children on her back! New illustration in this edition bring the amautalik to life in even greater, creepier detail than the original. Revised text and additional content make this new edition a must-buy for young readers who are intrigued with the dark and dreaded beings of Inuit mythology!

Finally, we present a framework for application scheduling that is specifically targeted at computational scientists. This framework allows for the selection of scheduling objective function, but generally aims at dependability over speed because of the inherent need for reproducibility of results.