THE "UNAWARE WOUNDED HEALER": HOW AFFECTIVE AND SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS WITH PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES CAN "HEAL" THE HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS THAT WORK ON THEM

We know that every therapist becomes a "wounded healer" the moment he goes through his own personal therapy journey and is able to activate his own recovery process. Beyond all the techniques that the therapist can use to "heal" a patient, one\u27s own personal life path also significantly and unconsciously influences the healing process. The question I ask is therefore the following, w hy can\u27t a person who has in some way a "woundness", and who has activated without therapy a process of recovery (e.g. through family resilience patterns) be a wounded healer? From this perspective, even a person with a complex disability, placed in a positive context, can turn into an "unaware wounded healer"

Lyapunov Exponents from Node-Counting Arguments

A conjecture connecting Lyapunov exponents of coupled map lattices and the node theorem is presented. It is based on the analogy between the linear stability analysis of extended chaotic states and the Schr\"odinger problem for a particle in a disordered potential. As a consequence, we propose an alternative method to compute the Lyapunov spectrum. The implications on the foundation of the recently proposed ``chronotopic approach'' are also discussed.Comment: Latex, 8 pages, 4 Figs - Contribution to the Conference "Disorder and Chaos" held in memory of Giovanni Paladin (Sept. 1997 - Rome) - submitted to J. de Physiqu

Anomalous transmission and drifts in one-dimensional Levy structures

We study the transmission of random walkers through a finite-size inhomogeneous material with a quenched, long-range correlated distribution of scatterers. We focus on a finite one-dimensional structure where walkers undergo random collisions with a subset of sites distributed on deterministic (Cantor-like) or random positions, with L\'evy spaced distances. Using scaling arguments, we consider stationary and time-dependent transmission and we provide predictions on the scaling behaviour of particle current as a function of the sample size. We show that, even in absence of bias, for each single realization a non-zero drift can be present, due to the intrinsic asymmetry of each specific arrangement of the scattering sites. For finite systems, this average drift is particularly important for characterizing the transmission properties of individual samples. The predictions are tested against the numerical solution of the associated master equation. A comparison of different boundary conditions is given.Comment: Submitted to Chaos, Solitons and Fractal

Entropy potential and Lyapunov exponents

According to a previous conjecture, spatial and temporal Lyapunov exponents of chaotic extended systems can be obtained from derivatives of a suitable function: the entropy potential. The validity and the consequences of this hypothesis are explored in detail. The numerical investigation of a continuous-time model provides a further confirmation to the existence of the entropy potential. Furthermore, it is shown that the knowledge of the entropy potential allows determining also Lyapunov spectra in general reference frames where the time-like and space-like axes point along generic directions in the space-time plane. Finally, the existence of an entropy potential implies that the integrated density of positive exponents (Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy) is independent of the chosen reference frame.Comment: 20 pages, latex, 8 figures, submitted to CHAO

Scattering lengths and universality in superdiffusive L\'evy materials

We study the effects of scattering lengths on L\'evy walks in quenched one-dimensional random and fractal quasi-lattices, with scatterers spaced according to a long-tailed distribution. By analyzing the scaling properties of the random-walk probability distribution, we show that the effect of the varying scattering length can be reabsorbed in the multiplicative coefficient of the scaling length. This leads to a superscaling behavior, where the dynamical exponents and also the scaling functions do not depend on the value of the scattering length. Within the scaling framework, we obtain an exact expression for the multiplicative coefficient as a function of the scattering length both in the annealed and in the quenched random and fractal cases. Our analytic results are compared with numerical simulations, with excellent agreement, and are supposed to hold also in higher dimensionsComment: 6 pages, 8 figure

A new counterintuitive training for adult amblyopia

International audienceObjectives: The aim of this study was to investigate whether short-term inverse occlusion, combined with moderate physical exercise, could promote the recovery of visual acuity and stereopsis in a group of adult anisometropic amblyopes. Methods: Ten adult anisometropic patients underwent six brief (2 h) training sessions over a period of 4 weeks. Each training session consisted in the occlu-sion of the amblyopic eye combined with physical exercise (intermittent cycling on a stationary bike). Visual acuity (measured with ETDRS charts), stereoacuity (measured with the TNO test), and sensory eye dominance (measured with binocular rivalry) were tested before and after each training session, as well as in follow-up visits performed 1 month, 3 months, and 1 year after the end of the training. Results: After six brief (2 h) training sessions, visual acuity improved in all 10 patients (0.15 AE 0.02 LogMar), and six of them also recovered stereopsis. The improvement was preserved for up to 1 year after training. A pilot experiment suggested that physical activity might play an important role for the recovery of visual acuity and stereopsis. Conclusions: Our results suggest a noninvasive training strategy for adult human amblyopia based on an inverse-occlusion procedure combined with physical exercise