Couple Therapy with Religious Couples

Although 95% of married couples identify with a particular religion, there is great variation in how couples rely on their religion to define or structure their relationship. Various denominations will imply particular “rules” or will shape how the couple deals with interpersonal and family challenges, such as sexuality, parenting, and power. In this article, we review couple relationships within a religious context and advance several treatment principles for treating religious couples. We present a clinical case to illustrate marital therapy with a religious couple, with an Adlerian context

How Do They See Me? Examining The Experiences of Faculty In The Context of Classroom Whiteness Factors

Today polarized attitudes and aptitudes have created a subtle but steady paradigm shift in the way equity, diversity, and inclusivity (EDI) issues are seen by stakeholders. As a result, focusing on critical aspects of equity relationships and the fallout from discriminatory attitudes towards marginalized groups has become ever more needed. While diversity issues exist in all societal, professional, and personal realms, its impact within educational institutions is perhaps the most deeply profound. This Hermeneutic Phenomenology study examines the experiences of six higher education faculty who teach predominantly white student classrooms to identify issues and recommendations with respect to their relationship with students when such teachers belong to a group that is not the majority group representative of the students. This is an important topic to investigate given the dynamic role faculty and student relationships play in the context of EDI issues. Data suggests that while gender disparities drive students’ behavior towards faculty, the cultural and ethnic backgrounds of faculty are an even greater driving force for discrimination. Recommendations to deal with the fallout of student oppressions of faculty based on equity, diversity, and inclusivity lenses and future implications are also discussed

Culturally Responsive Strategies for Effective Teaching

Our proposal presents information regarding beliefs about diversity, implicit bias, ESSA, equality, equity, cultural disconnect, and culturally responsive teaching strategies. Our objective is to provide participants with research-based strategies and tools, knowledge, and understanding of culturally responsive strategies designed to raise the bar and close the gap for underserved student groups as identified in the ESSA

Sensitive Research and Vulnerable Participants: Accessing and Conducting Research with African Australian Teenage Mothers in Greater Melbourne, Australia

with African born immigrants, predominantly thosewith a refugee background. Focus has been on refugeeexperiences, health issues and settlement prior to andafter arrival in Australia. Little has been written aboutaccessing and conducting research with AfricanAustralian migrants. This paper provides reflectivediscussions on how to successfully access and doresearch with Australians of African descent.Methods and research participantsThis qualitative study is situated within the culturalcompetency framework. In-depth interviews and focusgroup discussions were conducted with AfricanAustralian teenage mothers (16) and key informants(five). A focus group was conducted with serviceproviders/key informants who worked and providedservices to African refugees/families and a second withsix African mothers/key informants with a refugeebackground in Greater Melbourne.DiscussionThere are several salient issues regarding accessing thisgroup of migrants that emerge from our research.These include: locating participants and gaining access;cultural knowledge; trust and sensitivity to the issue(s)under study; relationships and networks; researchknowledge by participants; acceptance of the researcherby the community and vice versa. Understanding oftheir lives and acknowledgement of previous researchexperiences by African descent persons and minoritygroups is vital for effective engagement with vulnerableparticipants.ConclusionWe conclude that culture sensitivity, cultural awarenessand knowledge, the ‘appropriate’ person, good rapport,and trust on the part of the researcher will yield positiveoutcomes. In addition race/ethnicity, gender,personal/shared experiences and respect of participantsall contribute to positive outcomes

Measuring the evolution of contemporary western popular music

Popular music is a key cultural expression that has captured listeners' attention for ages. Many of the structural regularities underlying musical discourse are yet to be discovered and, accordingly, their historical evolution remains formally unknown. Here we unveil a number of patterns and metrics characterizing the generic usage of primary musical facets such as pitch, timbre, and loudness in contemporary western popular music. Many of these patterns and metrics have been consistently stable for a period of more than fifty years, thus pointing towards a great degree of conventionalism. Nonetheless, we prove important changes or trends related to the restriction of pitch transitions, the homogenization of the timbral palette, and the growing loudness levels. This suggests that our perception of the new would be rooted on these changing characteristics. Hence, an old tune could perfectly sound novel and fashionable, provided that it consisted of common harmonic progressions, changed the instrumentation, and increased the average loudness.Comment: Supplementary materials not included. Please see the journal reference or contact the author

Polarization of coalitions in an agent-based model of political discourse

Political discourse is the verbal interaction between political actors in a policy domain. This article explains the formation of polarized advocacy or discourse coalitions in this complex phenomenon by presenting a dynamic, stochastic, and discrete agent-based model based on graph theory and local optimization. In a series of thought experiments, actors compute their utility of contributing a specific statement to the discourse by following ideological criteria, preferential attachment, agenda-setting strategies, governmental coherence, or other mechanisms. The evolving macro-level discourse is represented as a dynamic network and evaluated against arguments from the literature on the policy process. A simple combination of four theoretical mechanisms is already able to produce artificial policy debates with theoretically plausible properties. Any sufficiently realistic configuration must entail innovative and path-dependent elements as well as a blend of exogenous preferences and endogenous opinion formation mechanisms

Organic aerosol formation downwind from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

A large fraction of atmospheric aerosols are derived from organic compounds with various volatilities. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) WP-3D research aircraft made airborne measurements of the gaseous and aerosol composition of air over the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that occurred from April to August 2010. A narrow plume of hydrocarbons was observed downwind of DWH that is attributed to the evaporation of fresh oil on the sea surface. A much wider plume with high concentrations of organic aerosol (>25 micrograms per cubic meter) was attributed to the formation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) from unmeasured, less volatile hydrocarbons that were emitted from a wider area around DWH. These observations provide direct and compelling evidence for the importance of formation of SOA from less volatile hydrocarbons

Atmospheric emissions from the deepwater Horizon spill constrain air-water partitioning, hydrocarbon fate, and leak rate

The fate of deepwater releases of gas and oil mixtures is initially determined by solubility and volatility of individual hydrocarbon species; these attributes determine partitioning between air and water. Quantifying this partitioning is necessary to constrain simulations of gas and oil transport, to predict marine bioavailability of different fractions of the gas-oil mixture, and to develop a comprehensive picture of the fate of leaked hydrocarbons in the marine environment. Analysis of airborne atmospheric data shows massive amounts (∼258,000 kg/day) of hydrocarbons evaporating promptly from the Deepwater Horizon spill; these data collected during two research flights constrain air-water partitioning, thus bioavailability and fate, of the leaked fluid. This analysis quantifies the fraction of surfacing hydrocarbons that dissolves in the water column (∼33% by mass), the fraction that does not dissolve, and the fraction that evaporates promptly after surfacing (∼14% by mass). We do not quantify the leaked fraction lacking a surface expression; therefore, calculation of atmospheric mass fluxes provides a lower limit to the total hydrocarbon leak rate of 32,600 to 47,700 barrels of fluid per day, depending on reservoir fluid composition information. This study demonstrates a new approach for rapid-response airborne assessment of future oil spills. Copyright 2011 by the American Geophysical Union