Promoting the development of creativity in students

Creativity may contribute to student success in each of ASCA\u27s key areas of student development: career, academic, and personal-social. However, the wide range of theoretical constructs of creativity may impede school counselors seeking methods for supporting creative development. This literature review explores various definitions of creativity and suggests a recently proposed developmental model may be most useful to school counselors in conceptualizing all students as creative and capable of growth. Using this model, the paper examines research into factors influencing creativity, including personality, self-efficacy, appropriate feedback, the perception of judgment, mood and affect, and motivation, and suggests practical ways school counselors can help shape the school environment to encourage creativity

Giving Community Psychology Away: A case for open access publishing

Amidst increased pressure for transparency in science, researchers and community members are calling for open access to study stimuli and measures, data, and results. These arguments coincidentally align with calls within community psychology to find innovative ways to support communities and increase the prominence of our field. This paper aims to (1) define the current context for community psychologists in open access publishing, (2) illustrate the alignment between open access publishing and community psychology principles, and (3) demonstrate how to engage in open access publishing using community psychology values. Currently, there are several facilitators (e.g. an increasing number of open access journals, the proliferation of blogs, and social media) and barriers (e.g. Article Processing Charges (APCs), predatory journals) to publishing in open access venues. Openly sharing our research findings aligns with our values of (1) citizen participation, (2) social justice, and (3) collaboration and community strengths. Community psychologists desiring to engage in open access publishing can ask journals to waive APCs, publish pre-prints, use blogs and social media to share results, and push for systemic change in a publishing system that disenfranchises researchers, students, and community members

My titles are always in pencil : projects in the absurd

The Absurd, in terms of existentialist philosophy, is born out of the conflictbetween the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life and the inabilityto find any (Absurdism). Through my work, I examine the conflict of the individual’srole and search for the state of freedom in which Absurdism leaves us. This is not toquestion the necessity or aim of society for the common good but examines the socialroles that are imposed on individuals within a given society.Absurdism describes how we, as humans, desire order, purpose and meaning inlife. As a result, we are left unsatisfied by what Camus calls the “silence of the world(Camus 20),” and its unwillingness to unquestionably provide us with such answers.With no meaning to our lives, there seems no point in living. Yet, suicide is alsomeaningless. This brings us to a position of existence where we are left living our liveswith no meaning. An acceptance of this meaningless state of being alive is supposed toleave us living in total freedom. (Camus 20)In our social positions, the stage is set for us to play a perceived intended role. Inthe universal pursuit of meaning and happiness, we find ourselves together on this stagein which we must ask ourselves if we can find truth in the role we are playing.According to Jacque Rancière in The Emancipated Spectator, the stage desires tobe a “magnifying mirror where spectators see the virtues and vices of their fellow humanbeings in fictional form” and its purpose is “to prompt specific changes in their minds”by producing “the dual effect of intellectual recognition and appropriate emotion.” Thecritique of this goal manifesting through the stage lies within the passivity of spectatorsversus the role of actors who are knowingly performing. Rancière poses the alternativeand better solution is a pensive (“full of thoughts”) image. An image exists as such whenit refuses to give a finite answer because it never ceases to pose relevant questions thusalways inhabiting a contemporary conversation. (Rancière 62 – 132)By observing and investigating common social scenarios, my work inducesconversations about social conditions and promotes change within the individual. Byshedding light on the absurdity of social roles, viewers are prompted to ask themselveswhether the role they play in life is merely an act or if there is some truth in who they areand the potential of whom they can become

Giving Community Psychology Away: A case for open access publishing

Amidst increased pressure for transparency in science, researchers and community members are calling for open access to study stimuli and measures, data, and results. These arguments coincidentally align with calls within community psychology to find innovative ways to support communities and increase the prominence of our field. This paper aims to (1) define the current context for community psychologists in open access publishing, (2) illustrate the alignment between open access publishing and community psychology principles, and (3) demonstrate how to engage in open access publishing using community psychology values. Currently, there are several facilitators (e.g. an increasing number of open access journals, the proliferation of blogs, and social media) and barriers (e.g. Article Processing Charges (APCs), predatory journals) to publishing in open access venues. Openly sharing our research findings aligns with our values of (1) citizen participation, (2) social justice, and (3) collaboration and community strengths. Community psychologists desiring to engage in open access publishing can ask journals to waive APCs, publish pre-prints, use blogs and social media to share results, and push for systemic change in a publishing system that disenfranchises researchers, students, and community members

Nuclear Repulsion Enables Division Autonomy in a Single Cytoplasm

SummaryBackgroundCurrent models of cell-cycle control, based on classic studies of fused cells, predict that nuclei in a shared cytoplasm respond to the same CDK activities to undergo synchronous cycling. However, synchrony is rarely observed in naturally occurring syncytia, such as the multinucleate fungus Ashbya gossypii. In this system, nuclei divide asynchronously, raising the question of how nuclear timing differences are maintained despite sharing a common milieu.ResultsWe observe that neighboring nuclei are highly variable in division-cycle duration and that neighbors repel one another to space apart and demarcate their own cytoplasmic territories. The size of these territories increases as a nucleus approaches mitosis and can influence cycling rates. This nonrandom nuclear spacing is regulated by microtubules and is required for nuclear asynchrony, as nuclei that transiently come in very close proximity will partially synchronize. Sister nuclei born of the same mitosis are generally not persistent neighbors over their lifetimes yet remarkably retain similar division cycle times. This indicates that nuclei carry a memory of their birth state that influences their division timing and supports that nuclei subdivide a common cytosol into functionally distinct yet mobile compartments.ConclusionsThese findings support that nuclei use cytoplasmic microtubules to establish “cells within cells.” Individual compartments appear to push against one another to compete for cytoplasmic territory and insulate the division cycle. This provides a mechanism by which syncytial nuclei can spatially organize cell-cycle signaling and suggests size control can act in a system without physical boundaries

A One-sided, Highly Relativistic Jet from Cygnus X-3

Very Long Baseline Array images of the X-ray binary, Cygnus X-3, were obtained 2, 4 and 7 days after the peak of a 10 Jy flare on 4 February 1997. The first two images show a curved one-sided jet, the third a scatter-broadened disc, presumably at the position of the core. The jet curvature changes from the first to the second epoch, which strongly suggests a precessing jet. The ratio of the flux density in the approaching to that in the (undetected) receding jet is > 330; if this asymmetry is due to Doppler boosting, the implied jet speed is > 0.81c. Precessing jet model fits, together with the assumptions that the jet is intrinsically symmetric and was ejected during or after the major flare, yield the following constraints: the jet inclination to the line of sight must be < 14 degrees; the cone opening angle must be < 12 degrees; and the precession period must be > 60 days.Comment: 12 pages 7 figures, accepted by Ap