Practising-as-inquiry: developing self-as-practitioner

My first-person inquiry is into my professional practice and my development as a practitioner. It is an inductive inquiry, from which I draw universal conclusions from my unique reflections on my sense-of-self and my experiences of my practice. Through practising-as-inquiry I interpret, discover and make the value, benefits and impact of my practice to me and others, and thereby resource and harvest the ethos, praxis and autopoiesis with which I further develop my capacity to intervene in my own and my clients’ systems. My inquiry considers how I have worked with my data as a bricolage of action research approaches to practising-as-inquiry and their congruence with my philosophy and its actionable knowledge. The form of the bricolage has also been reflected in the practice data I have chosen to present – an inquiry in collaboration with 15 others into our association in common, a heuristic inquiry into relationships in my families of origin and procreation as containers of personal transformation and flourishing, and a facilitated inquiry into my capacity to intervene and scaffold the development of my clients within their own systems. The bricolage is also apparent in the pragmatic use of whatever practices and tools – constellations, conversations, create-and curate processes, ethnodrama, fridge-magnet poetry, iPhone videos, iterative writing, origami fortune-tellers, photographs, reflective practice, relational supervision, self-dialogue, storytelling – were immediately to hand for the improvisation of my experiments in the moment, as well as in the qualitative research methods – autoethnography, grounded theory, reflections-in- and -on-action, self-dialogue, storytelling – that I have used to interpret my experiences and make my world more visible in this inquiry. The pragmatic usefulness of this inquiry is in working towards transformation through practising-as-inquiry and developing self-as-practitioner. It is this self-made quality of practice as the outcome of practising that is my unique, universal contribution

Further Evidence for Seed Size Variation in the Genus Zostera: Exploratory Studies with Z. japonica and Z. asiatica

Recent studies found seed size variation within the seagrass Zostera marina, one of nine species in the genus Zostera. The objectives of this study were to determine if variation also exists in the seeds of two other species Zostera japonica and Zostera asiatica within this genus. Results indicate that: (1) length and weight varied between two populations (one indigenous population from Akkeshi-Ko, Japan, and one exotic population from Willapa Bay, Washington, USA) of the small-bodied intertidal seagrass species Z. japonica, and (2) seed-size classes were discernable. Preliminary investigations were also initiated with a Japanese population of Z. asiatica, a large-bodied subtidal seagrass species. Z. japonica seeds from the exotic population were significantly (P \u3c 0.00 1) longer and heavier when compared to those from the indigenous population, a finding which may help explain both the process of the earlier introduction and the recent expansion of this exotic in the northeastern Pacific. Also, preliminary results indicate that Z. asiatica seeds are heavier than both those of Z. marina and Z. japonica, which suggests that larger seeds may be associated with large-bodied plants in this genus, an observation that should direct future seed ecology studies within the genus. These findings demonstrate that, similar to the study of terrestrial angiosperms, investigations designed to describe the comparative ecology of marine seed-bearing plants should include an evaluation of seed size

Density operators that extremize Tsallis entropy and thermal stability effects

Quite general, analytical (both exact and approximate) forms for discrete probability distributions (PD's) that maximize Tsallis entropy for a fixed variance are here investigated. They apply, for instance, in a wide variety of scenarios in which the system is characterized by a series of discrete eigenstates of the Hamiltonian. Using these discrete PD's as "weights" leads to density operators of a rather general character. The present study allows one to vividly exhibit the effects of non-extensivity. Varying Tsallis' non-extensivity index $q$ one is seen to pass from unstable to stable systems and even to unphysical situations of infinite energy.Comment: 22 page

Apoptosis: A Basic Biological Phenomenon with Wide-ranging Implications in Tissue Kinetics

The term apoptosis is proposed for a hitherto little recognized mechanism of controlled cell deletion, which appears to play a complementary but opposite role to mitosis in the regulation of animal cell populations. Its morphological features suggest that it is an active, inherently programmed phenomenon, and it has been shown that it can be initiated or inhibited by a variety of environmental stimuli, both physiological and pathological