Art Making to Inform Dialogue Across Spiritual Otherness in the Therapeutic Space

This research was a preliminary pilot study meant to encourage further exploration on the intersection of art therapy, art making, spirituality, and dialogue. This study topic is an important area of investigation due to the long-standing challenges of interfaith dialogue, both historically and currently. An abundance of reviewed literature linking interfaith dialogue and dialogue through art making guided the research hypothesis, which states that the act of viewing and being viewed by the spiritual other through art making could deepen one’s own spiritual practice, increase empathy, foster dialogue, and inform clinical work as psychotherapists. To explore this, the researchers held an explorative arts-based workshop, encouraging participants to use the art individually and in pairs to further reflect on their spiritual beliefs and experiences. In addition, the workshop allowed a space for participants and pairs to share and discuss their reflective art and personal spirituality, then create a dyadic art piece together. The qualitative findings revealed similarities for all eleven participants in both the art and written experiences, with universal themes and shared visual elements emerging. The analyzed data connected the universal themes with the participants’ stated spiritual identity and evidenced experiences of connection in dyadic pairs. As future therapists, and art therapists, the researchers intended this preliminary pilot study to be a basis for further research and inspire wider exploration

Variation in Stream Chemistry Across the Kansas Precipitation Gradient

How do stream order, land use, and stream position within the precipitation gradient across Kansas affect stream chemistry? Land use will drive changes in stream chemistry that are biologically driven (e.g., DOC, NO3-), whereas stream order or position in the precipitation gradient will have a greater affect on conservative (e.g., Cl- or Na+). Take home message is stream order was the most consistent factor for explaining variation in stream chemistry. Land use never explained the highest amount of variation in stream chemistry. Stream chemistry did not vary between Central and Eastern Kansas streams

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Laying Groundwork for the use of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Constructs to Enhance the Identity Development of Counselors-in-training: An Exploratory Quantitative Analysis

Counselor educators aid counselors-in-training (CITs) in the process of professional identity development, which has its own challenges, such as managing anxiety and increasing self-awareness. One way proposed to enhance these therapeutic challenges is mindfulness. However, most research examining mindfulness in counselor education to-date lacks a standard theoretical framework, which may cause counselors to diminish the value of mindfulness in counselor training. One theory-driven concept of mindfulness comes from ACT, an empirically validated approach to counseling. It is possible that ACT could serve as a common language for educators to use when implementing mindfulness into counselor training, and thus, there is need for more support for the use of ACT tenets within counselor education. Being present, defusion, and emotional acceptance are constructs that feed into the ACT overall goal of psychological flexibility. Explicitly, these elements of ACT – which focus on opening up the individual – could be helpful in progressing CIT development. A needed first step is to determine whether or not the enactment of ACT principles differ in CITs who have a mindfulness practice versus those who do not. Additionally, this quantitative study assessed how the ACT principles of present moment awareness, cognitive defusion, and acceptance contribute to psychological flexibility. First, it was determined there is no difference between mindfulness practitioners and nonpractitioners on ACT constructs except for mindfulness. Overall, CITs demonstrated high levels of mindfulness. Second, a correlational analysis identified that there was a significant relationship between mindfulness, cognitive fusion, emotion regulation, and psychological flexibility, all in the predicted directions. Third, a standard multiple regression identified mindfulness, cognitive fusion, and emotion regulation as predictor variables of psychological flexibility. Discussion includes findings, implications for education, clinical practice and future research