Integrated systems healing: a unified assessment and psycho-educational approach in psychological trauma treatment

This doctoral study examines the aspects of psychological trauma and investigates why singular explanatory models fail compared with a holistic approach. Part of this integrated approach includes the development of a benchmarked psychometric test, the Sherry Trauma Assessment Test [STAT]) (Copyrighted © Richard Sherry 2011). The test’s reliability was evaluated using Chronbach’s alpha (p< 0.001 levels of significance), which these findings were crosschecked with the findings from eleven other psychometric tests to standardise the results. In comparing the data sets, the STAT test project data was used to both answer fundamental questions within the field of clinical trauma psychology and confirm the reliability of the newly developed psychometric test. Furthermore, the information was collected and used to derive a principle component analysis (PCA) to help in developing a model to support current thinking within the social neuro-scientific arenas as well as to better organize clinical psychology assessment and treatment approaches. These findings have important implications on how trauma, in particular, the human neuropsychological learning process, is addressed. This psychometric foundation was then used to develop this newer model and adaptive tele-medicine platform (Zielinski et al., 2006). This multidisciplinary integration of information, expertise and models, has served to clarify the effects of maturation in relationship to traumatic response and helped to refine the understanding of how traumatic phenomena serves to fragment the integration of embedded systems, and what can be done to reverse these problematic processes in order to replace them with positive cycles of development. The STAT test findings have shown statistically significant results (p< 0.001 level), which provide quantitatively grounded evidence in support of this psychometric measure and improve clinical assessment and treatment approaches. The theoretical model of the STAT test is included in the concept of Integrated Systems Healing, which was developed independently, but has similar theoretical roots in Goetz and Caron’s (2005) bio-psychosocial model of the Systemic Healing used in the treatment of sick children. The author describes further conceptual developments within the concept of Integrated Systems Healing (Copyrighted © Richard Sherry 2011) to include the holistic systems approach, which could be used for a large-scale treatment with specific interacting components of Integration, Compassion, Developmentally scaled interventions, and Sustainability or the ICDS Model (Copyrighted © Richard Sherry 2011). This project has evolved improved strategies for integrative assessment, feedback, and holistic approaches for learning and programme development to improve people’s lives. These foundations of improved internal and external dynamic assessment connect to flexible tele-health approaches, using defined cut-off scores, elearning modules, and strategies for checking and reassessment. Further work links and integrates processes to identify and reduce vulnerability and strengthen resiliency and support

Evolution in range expansions with competition at rough boundaries.

When a biological population expands into new territory, genetic drift develops an enormous influence on evolution at the propagating front. In such range expansion processes, fluctuations in allele frequencies occur through stochastic spatial wandering of both genetic lineages and the boundaries between genetically segregated sectors. Laboratory experiments on microbial range expansions have shown that this stochastic wandering, transverse to the front, is superdiffusive due to the front's growing roughness, implying much faster loss of genetic diversity than predicted by simple flat front diffusive models. We study the evolutionary consequences of this superdiffusive wandering using two complementary numerical models of range expansions: the stepping stone model, and a new interpretation of the model of directed paths in random media, in the context of a roughening population front. Through these approaches we compute statistics for the times since common ancestry for pairs of individuals with a given spatial separation at the front, and we explore how environmental heterogeneities can locally suppress these superdiffusive fluctuations

Real-time failure control (SAFD)

The Real Time Failure Control program involves development of a failure detection algorithm, referred as System for Failure and Anomaly Detection (SAFD), for the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME). This failure detection approach is signal-based and it entails monitoring SSME measurement signals based on predetermined and computed mean values and standard deviations. Twenty four engine measurements are included in the algorithm and provisions are made to add more parameters if needed. Six major sections of research are presented: (1) SAFD algorithm development; (2) SAFD simulations; (3) Digital Transient Model failure simulation; (4) closed-loop simulation; (5) SAFD current limitations; and (6) enhancements planned for

Speckle Camera Observations for the NASA Kepler Mission Follow-up Program

We present the first results from a speckle imaging survey of stars classified as candidate exoplanet host stars discovered by the Kepler mission. We use speckle imaging to search for faint companions or closely aligned background stars that could contribute flux to the Kepler light curves of their brighter neighbors. Background stars are expected to contribute significantly to the pool of false positive candidate transiting exoplanets discovered by the Kepler mission, especially in the case that the faint neighbors are eclipsing binary stars. Here, we describe our Kepler follow-up observing program, the speckle imaging camera used, our data reduction, and astrometric and photometric performance. Kepler stars range from R = 8 to 16 and our observations attempt to provide background non-detection limits 5-6 mag fainter and binary separations of ~0.05-2.0 arcsec. We present data describing the relative brightness, separation, and position angles for secondary sources, as well as relative plate limits for non-detection of faint nearby stars around each of 156 target stars. Faint neighbors were found near 10 of the stars

A temperate river estuary is a sink for methanotrophs adapted to extremes of pH, temperature and salinity

River Tyne (UK) estuarine sediments harbour a genetically and functionally diverse community of methane-oxidizing bacteria (methanotrophs), the composition and activity of which were directly influenced by imposed environmental conditions (pH, salinity, temperature) that extended far beyond those found in situ. In aerobic sediment slurries methane oxidation rates were monitored together with the diversity of a functional gene marker for methanotrophs (pmoA). Under near in situ conditions (4-30°C, pH 6-8, 1-15gl-1 NaCl), communities were enriched by sequences affiliated with Methylobacter and Methylomonas spp. and specifically a Methylobacter psychrophilus-related species at 4-21°C. More extreme conditions, namely high temperatures ≥40°C, high ≥9 and low ≤5 pH, and high salinities ≥35gl-1 selected for putative thermophiles (Methylocaldum), acidophiles (Methylosoma) and haloalkaliphiles (Methylomicrobium). The presence of these extreme methanotrophs (unlikely to be part of the active community in situ) indicates passive dispersal from surrounding environments into the estuary