Predicting therapy working alliance through client adult attachment and client perceptions of therapist behaviors

This study explores the influence of adult attachment patterns on working alliance, presumed to share with the alliance construct several important conceptual elements such as bond. Although attachment in adults has been shown to have a strong relationship to working alliance, there is not complete convergence between the two concepts (Reis & Grenyer, 2004). It was expected that client perceptions of the therapy process itself may have a strong influence on working alliance as well, and may explain elements of the working alliance not accounted for by attachment. The relative weight of adult attachment and perceptions of therapy process were explored in regard to therapy outcome. In particular, supportive and confrontational behaviors by therapists are presumed to have relevance to both adult attachment patterns, measured using the Adult Attachment Questionnaire (ASQ; Feeney, Noller, & Hanrahan, 1994) and working alliance, measured using the Working Alliance Inventory-Short Form (WAI-S; Tracey & Kokotovic, 1989). To measure such a relationship, a scale of therapist support and confrontation was developed using principal components analysis, the Therapist Behavior Items (TBI), based on the therapist intentions work of Hill and O\u27Grady (1985). An established measure of session quality, the Session Evaluation Questionnaire (SEQ; Stiles, 1980; Stiles & Snow, 1984) was used for convergent validation of the concepts in the new scale. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that therapist behaviors of support were significant predictors of working alliance when controlling for demographics and other therapy variables, and that client reports of adult attachment security also predicted working alliance

Concentrated contact simulator

Issued as Memorandum [nos. 1-3], and Final report, Project E-25-L0

Density Scaling Based Detection of thermodynamic Regions of complex intermolecular interactions characterizing Supramolecular Structures

In this paper, applying the density scaling idea to an associated liquid 4-methyl-2-pentanol used as an example, we identify different pressure-volume-temperature ranges within which molecular dynamics is dominated by either complex H-bonded networks most probably leading to supramolecular structures or non-specific intermolecular interactions like van der Waals forces. In this way, we show that the density scaling law for molecular dynamics near the glass transition provides a sensitive tool to detect thermodynamic regions characterized by intermolecular interactions of different type and complexity for a given material in the wide pressure-volume-temperature domain even if its typical form with constant scaling exponent is not obeyed. Moreover, we quantify the observed decoupling between dielectric and mechanical relaxations of the material in the density scaling regime. The suggested methods of analyses and their interpretations open new prospects for formulating models based on proper effective intermolecular potentials describing physicochemical phenomena near the glass transition

Characterization of Acoustic Emission Waveforms from Fracture Events

The separation of crack growth signals from other extraneous sources is of fundamental importance for the advancement of acoustic emission techniques. As a step in that direction, this research seeks to quantitatively determine and characterize the waveform characteristics of acoustic emission signals from fracture sources. These fracture sources include fatigue crack growth events (Mode I, II and mixed mode) as well as other sources of micro damage. The experimental portion of this work uses a four channel data acquisition system that captures and digitizes the entire acoustic emission waveform. Laboratory specimens examined include a notched tension specimen as well as a circular torsion fatigue specimen. The measured acoustic emission waveform characteristics (such as amplitude and frequency spectrum) are correlated with the observed crack growth

The Embryonic Transcriptome Of The Red-Eared Slider Turtle (Trachemys Scripta)

The bony shell of the turtle is an evolutionary novelty not found in any other group of animals, however, research into its formation has suggested that it has evolved through modification of conserved developmental mechanisms. Although these mechanisms have been extensively characterized in model organisms, the tools for characterizing them in non-model organisms such as turtles have been limited by a lack of genomic resources. We have used a next generation sequencing approach to generate and assemble a transcriptome from stage 14 and 17 Trachemys scripta embryos, stages during which important events in shell development are known to take place. The transcriptome consists of 231,876 sequences with an N-50 of 1,166 bp. GO terms and EC codes were assigned to the 61,643 unique predicted proteins identified in the transcriptome sequences. All major GO categories and metabolic pathways are represented in the transcriptome. Transcriptome sequences were used to amplify several cDNA fragments designed for use as RNA in situ probes. One of these, BMP5, was hybridized to a T. scripta embryo and exhibits both conserved and novel expression patterns. The transcriptome sequences should be of broad use for understanding the evolution and development of the turtle shell and for annotating any future T. scripta genome sequences