Characterizations of finite and infinite episturmian words via lexicographic orderings

In this paper, we characterize by lexicographic order all finite Sturmian and episturmian words, i.e., all (finite) factors of such infinite words. Consequently, we obtain a characterization of infinite episturmian words in a "wide sense" (episturmian and episkew infinite words). That is, we characterize the set of all infinite words whose factors are (finite) episturmian. Similarly, we characterize by lexicographic order all balanced infinite words over a 2-letter alphabet; in other words, all Sturmian and skew infinite words, the factors of which are (finite) Sturmian.Comment: 18 pages; to appear in the European Journal of Combinatoric

Media and Technology in Counseling: Emerging Practices and Ethical Considerations in Response to COVID-19

COVID-19 has ushered in a new chapter of counseling in the United States and throughout the world. Counselors’ responses to the pandemic have been fundamentally reshaped by universal elements of the information age, including high-speed internet, smartphones, and computerbased technologies such as synchronous meeting software and collaboration tools. Now, clinicians can use technology to ally with clients, deliver psychoeducational media, and open new categories of intervention and engagement that alter the size, shape, and availability of the “counseling room” by extending it into a virtual space. The immediate investment in information technology demanded by the pandemic highlights an increasing need to deepen clinicians’ awareness of the psychology of cyberspace, the clinical applications of technological capabilities, and the use of synchronous online video counseling, all of which can directly increase quality of care, strengthen the therapeutic bond, and improve clinical outcomes. This manuscript explores the pairing of technology and counseling, outlining an open, integrative approach to counseling with updated practice and ethical competence. Properly conceived and combined, technical innovation and advanced counseling strategies developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic will lead to updated practices of technology-assisted counseling that offer a new modality of care as fundamental and as potentially impactful as talk therapy was over a century ago

Utilizing the Stepped Care Model to Empower University Students with Learning Disabilities

Students with learning disabilities face several challenges in postsecondary education settings. The authors explore the issue and shed light on the importance of self-advocacy for academic success. The stepped care model (SCM) is suggested as an approach to assist college students with learning disabilities in developing these skills and obtaining services. A brief case example from 1 of the authors’ work is shared to illustrate the use of the SCM with a student with a learning disability

A Corpus Linguistic Analysis of Counseling Alliance Ruptures: A Pilot Study

Establishing a therapeutic alliance or a therapeutic bond has long been seen as an essential component of obtaining positive treatment outcomes in clinical practice. More recently, the idea of recognizing therapeutic alliance ruptures (disagreements about the tasks or goals of therapy or a problem in the therapeutic bond) during counseling has become an important part of training and competence in clinical practice. Many subjective observational tools have been developed to identify alliance ruptures in counseling sessions, but although they are helpful they often have issues with interrater reliability. This has created the need for more objective measures of alliance quality and detection of rupture events to ensure easier identification of various markers for effective and competent clinical practice. Little research has been conducted to establish clear, objective criteria regarding the quality of the therapeutic alliance and specifically when a rupture event has occurred. The present research consists of two methodological pilot studies demonstrating that researchers can investigate the underlining psychological meaning behind the words that occur during an alliance rupture between a counselor and client to develop an objective measure of this important alliance-related phenomena. The studies were conducted using a cross-sectional analysis of four linguistic corpuses. These corpuses were created by transcribing mock counseling vignettes obtained from a publicly available website developed by nationally recognized experts in alliance ruptures and from recorded sessions of Carl Rodgers, Fritz Pearls, and Albert Ellis in a series on their three approaches to therapy. The first study, methodological pilot study, involved an examination of key words and collocates for each alliance rupture type. Results of this keyness pilot study showed that the word “just” (often used as part of a less direct filler expression) was the most frequent word in the confrontation rupture corpus as well as a top five word in the other two corpuses. Regarding the withdrawal rupture corpus, the node word “know,” a cognitive-oriented token (that can create emotional distance), had four high intensity words (collocates), two of which were shared with the confrontation type corpus including “I” and “you.” Regarding the mixed rupture corpus, the most common word “like,” often used as a preposition (and has been implicated in low empathy encounters), unexpectedly did not appear as a collocation in the confrontation or withdrawal rupture collocation analysis. This methodological pilot study contributes to the field of therapeutic alliance rupture research by demonstrating a methodological approach that has the potential to provide several implications for both counseling and research. Following the analysis of the same data with Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software, the second pilot study methodology was utilized to find a significant difference between she/he words (third-person singular pronouns) and certainty words when comparing the withdrawal and mixed rupture corpuses with the confrontation rupture corpus. In addition, a significant difference was found between positive emotion words and discrepancy words when comparing rupture infused psychotherapy with general psychotherapy

Randomized, parallel-group, double-blind, controlled study to evaluate the efficacy and safety of carbohydrate-derived fulvic acid in topical treatment of eczema

controlled study to evaluate the efficacy and safety of carbohydrate-derived fulvic acid in topical treatment of eczem

Cryo-Electron Tomography Elucidates the Molecular Architecture of Treponema pallidum, the Syphilis Spirochete

Cryo-electron tomography (CET) was used to examine the native cellular organization of Treponema pallidum, the syphilis spirochete. T. pallidum cells appeared to form flat waves, did not contain an outer coat and, except for bulges over the basal bodies and widening in the vicinity of flagellar filaments, displayed a uniform periplasmic space. Although the outer membrane (OM) generally was smooth in contour, OM extrusions and blebs frequently were observed, highlighting the structure’s fluidity and lack of attachment to underlying periplasmic constituents. Cytoplasmic filaments converged from their attachment points opposite the basal bodies to form arrays that ran roughly parallel to the flagellar filaments along the inner surface of the cytoplasmic membrane (CM). Motile treponemes stably attached to rabbit epithelial cells predominantly via their tips. CET revealed that T. pallidum cell ends have a complex morphology and assume at least four distinct morphotypes. Images of dividing treponemes and organisms shedding cell envelope-derived blebs provided evidence for the spirochete’s complex membrane biology. In the regions without flagellar filaments, peptidoglycan (PG) was visualized as a thin layer that divided the periplasmic space into zones of higher and lower electron densities adjacent to the CM and OM, respectively. Flagellar filaments were observed overlying the PG layer, while image modeling placed the PG-basal body contact site in the vicinity of the stator–P-collar junction. Bioinformatics and homology modeling indicated that the MotB proteins of T. pallidum, Treponema denticola, and Borrelia burgdorferi have membrane topologies and PG binding sites highly similar to those of their well-characterized Escherichia coli and Helicobacter pylori orthologs. Collectively, our results help to clarify fundamental differences in cell envelope ultrastructure between spirochetes and gram-negative bacteria. They also confirm that PG stabilizes the flagellar motor and enable us to propose that in most spirochetes motility results from rotation of the flagellar filaments against the PG

BIOLOGICAL MOVEMENT VARIABILITY DURING THE GOLF SWING

This study quantified the level and effect of biological movement variability (BCV %) on the golf swing performance of 10 skilled and 10 unskilled golfers. Selected twodimensional kinematic measures were obtained from each player performing ten golf swings with a five iron club. Linear regression analysis was employed to establish relationships between kinematic measures (absolute, CV%, BCV %) and club-head velocity (absolute, BCV %) using SPSS version 12.0. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to assess the effect of handicap on all of these measures. Results revealed between-group differences in the mean, CV% and BCV% of several swing kinematic measures. Regression analysis revealed that the strongest predictive model for club-head velocity included handicap and wrist angle at address