Splitting Hairs or Parsing Concepts, Fuzzy Thinking or Fuzzy Categories: Where Does Motivational Interviewing End and Client-centered Therapy Begin?

An increasingly robust debate is emerging about the role of equanimity, equipoise and equality of concepts in defining what constitutes motivational interviewing (MI) versus client-centered therapy. At the heart of this debate is whether a MI practitioner may remain neutral about a goal and still be practicing MI. After that point of agreement, the debate becomes increasingly complex and defuse. However, MI has never included in its definition that the clinician identifies a specific behavioral goal. Nor is this articulated in any of the principles. Instead, it seems to be an ad hoc explanation of what does and does not constitute MI practice in an effort to establish the boundaries of MI. It is clear that a lack of data and only a nascent theory of how MI works contribute to this problem, but it may also be issues of fuzzy thinking and fuzzy categories. An exploration of these areas suggests it is possible that a practitioner could be practicing MI and not have a specific behavioral goal, other than assisting the client in resolving ambivalence

The dynamical structure of the MEO region: long-term stability, chaos, and transport

It has long been suspected that the Global Navigation Satellite Systems exist in a background of complex resonances and chaotic motion; yet, the precise dynamical character of these phenomena remains elusive. Recent studies have shown that the occurrence and nature of the resonances driving these dynamics depend chiefly on the frequencies of nodal and apsidal precession and the rate of regression of the Moon's nodes. Woven throughout the inclination and eccentricity phase space is an exceedingly complicated web-like structure of lunisolar secular resonances, which become particularly dense near the inclinations of the navigation satellite orbits. A clear picture of the physical significance of these resonances is of considerable practical interest for the design of disposal strategies for the four constellations. Here we present analytical and semi-analytical models that accurately reflect the true nature of the resonant interactions, and trace the topological organization of the manifolds on which the chaotic motions take place. We present an atlas of FLI stability maps, showing the extent of the chaotic regions of the phase space, computed through a hierarchy of more realistic, and more complicated, models, and compare the chaotic zones in these charts with the analytical estimation of the width of the chaotic layers from the heuristic Chirikov resonance-overlap criterion. As the semi-major axis of the satellite is receding, we observe a transition from stable Nekhoroshev-like structures at three Earth radii, where regular orbits dominate, to a Chirikov regime where resonances overlap at five Earth radii. From a numerical estimation of the Lyapunov times, we find that many of the inclined, nearly circular orbits of the navigation satellites are strongly chaotic and that their dynamics are unpredictable on decadal timescales.Comment: Submitted to Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy. Comments are greatly appreciated. 28 pages, 15 figure

Measuring site fidelity and spatial segregation within animal societies

© 2017 The Authors. Methods in Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society. Animals often display a marked tendency to return to previously visited locations that contain important resources, such as water, food, or developing brood that must be provisioned. A considerable body of work has demonstrated that this tendency is strongly expressed in ants, which exhibit fidelity to particular sites both inside and outside the nest. However, thus far many studies of this phenomena have taken the approach of reducing an animal's trajectory to a summary statistic, such as the area it covers. Using both simulations of biased random walks, and empirical trajectories from individual rock ants, Temnothorax albipennis, we demonstrate that this reductive approach suffers from an unacceptably high rate of false negatives. To overcome this, we describe a site-centric approach which, in combination with a spatially-explicit null model, allows the identification of the important sites towards which individuals exhibit statistically significant biases. Using the ant trajectories, we illustrate how the site-centric approach can be combined with social network analysis tools to detect groups of individuals whose members display similar space-use patterns. We also address the mechanistic origin of individual site fidelity; by examining the sequence of visits to each site, we detect a statistical signature associated with a self-attracting walk – a non-Markovian movement model that has been suggested as a possible mechanism for generating individual site fidelity

SOS model partition function and the elliptic weight functions

We generalize a recent observation [arXiv:math/0610433] that the partition function of the 6-vertex model with domain-wall boundary conditions can be obtained by computing the projections of the product of the total currents in the quantum affine algebra $U_{q}(\hat{\mathfrak{sl}}_{2})$ in its current realization. A generalization is proved for the the elliptic current algebra [arXiv:q-alg/9703018,arXiv:q-alg/9601022]. The projections of the product of total currents are calculated explicitly and are represented as integral transforms of the product of the total currents. We prove that the kernel of this transform is proportional to the partition function of the SOS model with domain-wall boundary conditions.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figures, requires iopart packag

Essentialist Reasoning and Knowledge Effects on Biological Reasoning in Young Children

Biological kinds undergo a variety of changes during their life span, and these changes vary in degree by organism. Understanding that an organism, such as a caterpillar, maintains category identity over its life span despite dramatic changes is a key concept in biological reasoning. At present, we know little about the developmental trajectory of children’s understanding of dramatic life-cycle changes and how this might relate to their understanding of evolution. We suggest that this understanding is a key precursor to later understanding of evolutionary change. Two studies examined the impact of age and knowledge on children’s biological reasoning about living kinds that undergo a range of natural life-span changes—from subtle to dramatic. The participants, who were 3, 4, and 7 years old, were shown paired pictures of juvenile and adult animals and asked to endorse biological or nonbiological causal mechanisms to account for life-span change. Additionally, reasoning of 3- and 4-year-old participants was compared before and after exposure to caterpillars transforming into butterflies. The results are framed in terms of a developmental trajectory in essentialist reasoning, a cognitive bias that has been associated with difficulties in understanding and accepting evolution

Quantum Ising model in a transverse random field: A density-matrix renormalization group analysis

The spin-1/2 quantum Ising chain in a transverse random magnetic field is studied by means of the density-matrix renormalization group. The system evolves from an ordered to a paramagnetic state as the amplitude of the random field is increased. The dependence of the magnetization on a uniform magnetic field in the z direction and the spontaneous magnetization as a function of the amplitude of the transverse random magnetic field are determined. The behavior of the spin-spin correlation function both above and at criticality is studied. The scaling laws for magnetization and correlation functions are tested against previous numerical and renormalization-group results.Comment: 5 pages with 7 figures inside them, proper format of authors' names use

Bronchial mucosal mast cells in asymptomatic smokers relation to structure, lung function and emphysema

AbstractThe pathologic mechanisms of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) most certainly involves neutrophil granulocytes, cytotoxic T-cells, macophages and mast cells. The aim of this study was to investigate the relation between the number of mast cells in different compartments in bronchial biopsies of central proximal airways to structural changes, lung function tests and emphysema detected by high resolution computed tomography (HRCT).Twenty nine asymptomatic smoking and 16 never-smoking men from a population study were recruited. Central bronchial biopsies were stained to identify mast cells by immunohistochemistry. The number of mast cells in the epithelium, lamina propria and smooth muscle as well as epithelial integrity and thickness of the tenascin and laminin layer were determined.Smokers had increased numbers of mast cells in all compartments (P<0.001). Structural changes were correlated to mast cell numbers with the closest associations to mast cell numbers in the smooth muscle [epithelial integrity (Rs=−0.48, P=0.008), laminin layer (Rs=0.63, P=0.0002), tenascin layer (Rs=0.40, P=0.03)]. Similar correlations between mast cells and lung function tests were seen [functional residual capacity (FRC) (Rs=0.60, P=0.0006), total lung capacity (TLC) (Rs=0.44, P=0.02) and residual volume (RV) (Rs=0.41, P=0.03)]. No correlations could be detected between mast cells and FEV1 or to emphysema.Smoking is associated with an increase of mast cells in all compartments of the bronchial mucosa, including smooth muscle, and this is related to altered airway structure and function