A Discussion of Art Therapy Approaches Used in Classroom Activities to Help Students with Emotional and Behavioral Issues

The purpose of this paper was to inform the reader of the benefits of using art therapy activities in art lessons as a way to help students\u27 process emotional and behavioral issues. New and future art educators are not equipped to handle the wide range of issues that students face everyday. This is especially true for the students in the West Virginia public school system. As in larger, more urban locations, many students here deal with drugs, violence, bullying, abuse, and others contemporary social stressors. In this paper, I utilized my own personal experiences, literary research, experimentation, and observations of others art therapy activities to discuss ways in which these art therapy activities could be used within art lessons, specifically in the K-12 classroom. The lessons I formulated used three specific activities: HTP (house, tree, and person), color therapy, and action painting. My lessons were a combination of art making, art history, and art therapy. These lessons may be important for future art educators to use when gaining insight into their students lives and personalities.;My own lived experiences while working with clients at a health facility in urban West Virginian, coupled with art therapy courses I took during my graduate studies, led me to research what art therapy activities I could incorporate into my future art classroom. During my last year of my graduate studies I was able to conduct lessons using the activities, I learned during my art therapy courses. I also was able to observe counselors, social workers, practicing art teachers and art therapy professionals using the art therapy activities and other creative therapies during sessions. For my research I covered specifically the 3 approaches of art therapy: HTP, Action Painting, and Color Therapy. I briefly identified how art therapy could help students in different stages of their lives,--how it affects their minds, helps them form alliances, and the teacher knowledge gained? When dealing with special populations. I was able to incorporate some of these activities into my lesson plans. Throughout this paper, I reflected on how these activities could potentially help students cope with stress and trauma.;Within each lesson, I also suggest solutions and further research on how to use art therapy in the public schools to help students. While more research is needed to prove that art therapy activities in art education lessons can benefit students with emotional and behavioral issues, I found through my own lived experiences that students were able to feel safe and comfortable during these art-making processes to communicate their problems to the teacher in order to start the healing process

Frequent mild head injury promotes trigeminal sensitivity concomitant with microglial proliferation, astrocytosis, and increased neuropeptide levels in the trigeminal pain system.

BACKGROUND: Frequent mild head injuries or concussion along with the presence of headache may contribute to the persistence of concussion symptoms. METHODS: In this study, the acute effects of recovery between mild head injuries and the frequency of injuries on a headache behavior, trigeminal allodynia, was assessed using von Frey testing up to one week after injury, while histopathological changes in the trigeminal pain pathway were evaluated using western blot, ELISA and immunohistochemistry. RESULTS: A decreased recovery time combined with an increased mild closed head injury (CHI) frequency results in reduced trigeminal allodynia thresholds compared to controls. The repetitive CHI group with the highest injury frequency showed the greatest reduction in trigeminal thresholds along with greatest increased levels of calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) in the trigeminal nucleus caudalis. Repetitive CHI resulted in astrogliosis in the central trigeminal system, increased GFAP protein levels in the sensory barrel cortex, and an increased number of microglia cells in the trigeminal nucleus caudalis. CONCLUSIONS: Headache behavior in rats is dependent on the injury frequency and recovery interval between mild head injuries. A worsening of headache behavior after repetitive mild head injuries was concomitant with increases in CGRP levels, the presence of astrocytosis, and microglia proliferation in the central trigeminal pathway. Signaling between neurons and proliferating microglia in the trigeminal pain system may contribute to the initiation of acute headache after concussion or other traumatic brain injuries

Early, but not late visual distractors affect movement synchronization to a temporal-spatial visual cue

The ease of synchronizing movements to a rhythmic cue is dependent on the modality of the cue presentation: timing accuracy is much higher when synchronizing with discrete auditory rhythms than an equivalent visual stimulus presented through flashes. However, timing accuracy is improved if the visual cue presents spatial as well as temporal information (e.g., a dot following an oscillatory trajectory). Similarly, when synchronizing with an auditory target metronome in the presence of a second visual distracting metronome, the distraction is stronger when the visual cue contains spatial-temporal information rather than temporal only. The present study investigates individuals' ability to synchronize movements to a temporal-spatial visual cue in the presence of same-modality temporal-spatial distractors. Moreover, we investigated how increasing the number of distractor stimuli impacted on maintaining synchrony with the target cue. Participants made oscillatory vertical arm movements in time with a vertically oscillating white target dot centered on a large projection screen. The target dot was surrounded by 2, 8, or 14 distractor dots, which had an identical trajectory to the target but at a phase lead or lag of 0, 100, or 200 ms. We found participants' timing performance was only affected in the phase-lead conditions and when there were large numbers of distractors present (8 and 14). This asymmetry suggests participants still rely on salient events in the stimulus trajectory to synchronize movements. Subsequently, distractions occurring in the window of attention surrounding those events have the maximum impact on timing performance

Design of the advanced regional aircraft, the DART-75

This design analysis is intended to show the capabilities of the DART-75, a 75 passenger medium-range regional transport. Included are the detailed descriptions of the structures, performance, stability and control, weight and balance, and engine design. The design should allow for the DART to become the premier regional aircraft of the future due to some advanced features like the canard, semi-composite construction, and advanced engines

Multimodal spatial mapping and visualisation of Dinaledi Chamber and Rising Star Cave

The Dinaledi Chamber of the Rising Star Cave has yielded 1550 identifiable fossil elements – representing the largest single collection of fossil hominin material found on the African continent to date. The fossil chamber in which Homo naledi was found was accessible only through a near-vertical chute that presented immense practical and methodological limitations on the excavation and recording methods that could be used within the Cave. In response to practical challenges, a multimodal set of recording and survey methods was thus developed and employed: (1) recording of fossils and the excavation process was achieved through the use of white-light photogrammetry and laser scanning; (2) mapping of the Dinaledi Chamber was accomplished by means of high-resolution laser scanning, with scans running from the excavation site to the ground surface and the cave entrance; (3) at ground surface, the integration of conventional surveying techniques as well as photogrammetry with the use of an unmanned aerial vehicle was applied. Point cloud data were used to provide a centralised and common data structure for conversion and to corroborate the influx of different data collection methods and input formats. Data collected with these methods were applied to the excavations, mapping and surveying of the Dinaledi Chamber and the Rising Star Cave. This multimodal approach provides a comprehensive spatial framework from individual bones to landscape level

Gingerbread House Making with Patients with Dementia

As part of the LU Memory Makers for PSY 33000:Learning & Memory, we helped set up, participate, and clean up a special event for patients with dementia. This service-learning experience consisted of connecting with a community partner and engaging with older individuals who suffered with dementia and also their caregivers. Not only did we observe the process of building gingerbread houses with people with dementia, but also how they interacted with us as strangers and with their peers who also have dementia. We had a real world experience of material covered in our learning and memory class

Coherent Captain Mills: The Search for Sterile Neutrinos

The observation of neutrino oscillations confirms that the active neutrinos (νe, νμ, ντ) are comprised of three mass eigenstates with Δm2 values between 10-3 to 10-5 eV2 . However, a persistent phenomenon has been observed at LSND, MiniBooNE and other shortbaseline experiments (SBE) where Δm2 ~ 1eV2 and is not compatible with the current mixing between mass eigenstates. However, a 4th neutrino, a sterile neutrino (νs) that doesn’t participate in weak interactions could explain the phenomena observed as SBE’s. An experiment has been constructed at TA-53 at Los Alamos National Laboratory to investigate this large Δm2 ~ 1eV2 and determine conclusively whether or not this large Δm2 is due to a “new” sterile neutrino. POSTER PRESENTATION IGNITE AWAR

Pregnancy, parturition and preeclampsia in women of African ancestry.

Maternal and associated neonatal mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa remain unacceptably high. In Mulago Hospital (Kampala, Uganda), 2 major causes of maternal death are preeclampsia and obstructed labor and their complications, conditions occurring at the extremes of the birthweight spectrum, a situation encapsulated as the obstetric dilemma. We have questioned whether the prevalence of these disorders occurs more frequently in indigenous African women and those with African ancestry elsewhere in the world by reviewing available literature. We conclude that these women are at greater risk of preeclampsia than other racial groups. At least part of this susceptibility seems independent of socioeconomic status and likely is due to biological or genetic factors. Evidence for a genetic contribution to preeclampsia is discussed. We go on to propose that the obstetric dilemma in humans is responsible for this situation and discuss how parturition and birthweight are subject to stabilizing selection. Other data we present also suggest that there are particularly strong evolutionary selective pressures operating during pregnancy and delivery in Africans. There is much greater genetic diversity and less linkage disequilibrium in Africa, and the genes responsible for regulating birthweight and placentation may therefore be easier to define than in non-African cohorts. Inclusion of African women into research on preeclampsia is an essential component in tackling this major disparity of maternal health

Illness perceptions within 6 months of cancer diagnosis are an independent prospective predictor of health-related quality of life 15 months post-diagnosis

Objective: Studies have found that illness perceptions explain significant variance in health outcomes in numerous diseases. However, most of the research is cross-sectional and non-oncological. We examined, for the first time in breast, colorectal and prostate cancer patients, if cognitive and emotional illness perceptions near diagnosis predict future multidimensional health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Methods: UK-based patients (N = 334) completed the illness perception questionnaire-revised within 6 months post-diagnosis and the quality of life in adult cancer survivors scale 15 months post-diagnosis. Sociodemographic and clinical data were obtained from medical records. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted. Results: The sociodemographic and clinical factors collectively significantly predicted 8/12 HRQoL domains, although for 5/8 accounted for <10% of the variance. For all 12 HRQoL domains, illness perceptions collectively explained significant substantial additional variance (∆R² range: 5.6–27.9%), and a single illness perception questionnaire-revised dimension was the best individual predictor of 9/12 HRQoL domains. The consequences dimension independently predicted 7/12 HRQoL domains; patients who believed their cancer would have a more serious negative impact on their life reported poorer future HRQoL. The emotional representations and identity dimensions also predicted multiple HRQoL domains. Conclusions: Future research should focus on realising the potential of illness perceptions as a modifiable target for and mediating mechanism of interventions to improve patients' HRQoL

The Development of Self-Efficacy to Work with Suicidal Clients

Suicide is a public health crisis which counselors must be prepared to address. In this grounded theory study, the researchers advance a model to show how counselors develop self-efficacy to work with suicidal clients. Counselor educators may use this model to improve programmatic training and supervision of students