Group Counseling for the Family Caregivers of Alzheimer\u27s Clients: An Existential Approach

This article provides an existential approach to group counseling that supports and assists caregivers of Alzheimer\u27s clients. Presented is a brief look at the nature of Alzheimer\u27s Disease, relevant findings on stress levels and emotional states of family members who takecare of Alzheimer\u27s clients, several key concepts of the existential approach to group counseling, and lastly, some tips for group leaders

Distinct contributions of attention and working memory to visual statistical learning and ensemble processing

The brain exploits redundancies in the environment to efficiently represent the complexity of the visual world. One example of this is ensemble processing, which provides a statistical summary of elements within a set (e.g., mean size). Another is statistical learning, which involves the encoding of stable spatial or temporal relationships between objects. It has been suggested that ensemble processing over arrays of oriented lines disrupts statistical learning of structure within the arrays (Zhao, Ngo, McKendrick, & Turk-Browne, 2011). Here we asked whether ensemble processing and statistical learning are mutually incompatible, or whether this disruption might occur because ensemble processing encourages participants to process the stimulus arrays in a way that impedes statistical learning. In Experiment 1, we replicated Zhao and colleagues' finding that ensemble processing disrupts statistical learning. In Experiments 2 and 3, we found that statistical learning was unimpaired by ensemble processing when task demands necessitated (a) focal attention to individual items within the stimulus arrays and (b) the retention of individual items in working memory. Together, these results are consistent with an account suggesting that ensemble processing and statistical learning can operate over the same stimuli given appropriate stimulus processing demands during exposure to regularities

Pre-project monitoring of the Qwuloolt restoration in the Snohomish River Estuary

The Qwuloolt restoration site is approximately 150 hectares of former estuarine wetland in the Snohomish River system that will have tidal inundation returned via levee breach in late 2015. Qwuloolt is one of several large restoration projects planned for the Snohomish River estuary in the next decade for recovery of salmon and other biota, which together could restore several thousand acres and constitute one of the most significant restoration efforts in Puget Sound. In 2008 we began development and implementation of a comprehensive monitoring plan for Qwuloolt that evaluates a broad suite of abiotic and biotic attributes (e.g., land forms, hydrology, and chemistry; taxonomic composition of plant, invertebrate, fish, and bird assemblages). Four years of pre-breach data document clear contrasts between Qwuloolt and adjacent reference sites. Qwuloolt is subsided, hydrologically isolated, and its biota composed of relatively few species and dominated by nonnative, freshwater species. These results provide an invaluable foundation for scientifically rigorous post-breach evaluation of project performance, and contribute to estuary-wide understanding of cumulative effects of restoration and basic estuarine ecology of Puget Sound

Volume Fractions of the Kinematic "Near-Critical" Sets of the Quantum Ensemble Control Landscape

An estimate is derived for the volume fraction of a subset $C_{\epsilon}^{P} = \{U : ||grad J(U)|\leq {\epsilon}\}\subset\mathrm{U}(N)$ in the neighborhood of the critical set $C^{P}\simeq\mathrm{U}(\mathbf{n})P\mathrm{U}(\mathbf{m})$ of the kinematic quantum ensemble control landscape J(U) = Tr(U\rho U' O), where $U$ represents the unitary time evolution operator, {\rho} is the initial density matrix of the ensemble, and O is an observable operator. This estimate is based on the Hilbert-Schmidt geometry for the unitary group and a first-order approximation of $||grad J(U)||^2$. An upper bound on these near-critical volumes is conjectured and supported by numerical simulation, leading to an asymptotic analysis as the dimension $N$ of the quantum system rises in which the volume fractions of these "near-critical" sets decrease to zero as $N$ increases. This result helps explain the apparent lack of influence exerted by the many saddles of $J$ over the gradient flow.Comment: 27 pages, 1 figur

Validation of a Climate-Data Record of the "Clear-Sky" Surface Temperature of the Greenland Ice Sheet

Surface temperatures on the Greenland Ice Sheet have been studied on the ground, using automatic weather station (AWS) data from the Greenland-Climate Network (GC-Net), and from analysis of satellite sensor data. Using Advanced Very High Frequency Radiometer (AVHRR) weekly surface temperature maps, warming of the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet has been documented since 1981. We extended and refined this record using higher-resolution Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data from March 2000 to the present. We developed a daily and monthly climate-data record (CDR) of the "clear-sky" surface temperature of the Greenland Ice Sheet using an ice-surface temperature (1ST) algorithm developed for use with MODIS data. Validation of this CDR is ongoing. MODIS Terra swath data are projected onto a polar stereographic grid at 6.25-km resolution to develop binary, gridded daily and mean-monthly 1ST maps. Each monthly map also has a color-coded image map that is available to download. Also included with the monthly maps is an accompanying map showing number of days in the month that were used to calculate the mean-monthly 1ST. This is important because no 1ST decision is made by the algorithm for cells that are considered cloudy by the internal cloud mask, so a sufficient number of days must be available to produce a mean 1ST for each grid cell. Validation of the CDR consists of several facets: 1) comparisons between ISTs and in-situ measurements; 2) comparisons between ISTs and AWS data; and 3) comparisons of ISTs with surface temperatures derived from other satellite instruments such as the Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+). Previous work shows that Terra MODIS ISTs are about 3 C lower than in-situ temperatures measured at Summit Camp, during the winter of 2008-09 under clear skies. In this work we begin to compare surface temperatures derived from AWS data with ISTs from the MODIS CDR

Two New Organic Co-Crystals Based on Acetamidophenol Molecules

Herein we present two new organic co-crystals obtained through a simple solution growth process based on an acetamidophenol molecule, either paracetamol or metacetamol, and on 7,7,8,8-tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ). These co-crystals are part of a family of potential organic charge transfer complexes, where the acetamidophenol molecule behaves as an electron donor and TCNQ behaves as an electron acceptor. Due to the sub-micron size of the crystalline domains, 3D electron diffraction was employed for the structure characterization of both systems. Paracetamol-TCNQ structure was solved by standard direct methods, while the analysis of metacetamol-TCNQ was complicated by the low resolution of the available diffraction data and by the low symmetry of the system. The structure determination of metacetamol-TCNQ was eventually achieved after merging two data sets and combining direct methods with simulated annealing. Our study reveals that both paracetamol-TCNQ and metacetamol-TCNQ systems crystallize in a 1:1 stoichiometry, assembling in a mixed-stack configuration and adopting a non-centrosymmetric P1 symmetry. It appears that paracetamol and metacetamol do not form a strong structural scaffold based on hydrogen bonding, as previously observed for orthocetamol-TCNQ and orthocetamol-TCNB (1,2,4,5-tetracyanobenzene) co-crystals