Examining counselor interventions and client progress in the context of the therapeutic alliance.

Counselor and client statements from 21 sessions with counselors were used to examine the relationship of counselor response modes to categories of client good moments at different alliance levels. The Working Alliance Inventory, Hill Counselor Verbal Response Category System-Revised, and the Category System of Client good moments were used to categorize moments of in-session progress. Loglinear modeling procedures indicate that the alliance was present in all best-fitting models of the data. Exploratory examination of the models revealed that client good moments did not necessarily increase in frequency as the alliance increased. Further, different categories of interventions were associated with client good moments of provision of significant information at different alliance levels. These findings suggest that qualitatively different therapeutic processes are in operation at different alliance levels. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Scientometric impact assessment of a research policy instrument: the case of rating researchers on scientific outputs in South Africa

The influence of the National Research Foundation’s (NRF) rating system on the productivity of the South African social science researchers is investigated scientometrically for the period from 1981 to 2006. Their output performance is mainly indicated by their research publications. Following international best practice in scientometrics as well as the behavioural reinforcement theory, we employed the “before/after control impact (BACI) method”, as well as the well known econometric breakpoint test as proposed by Chow. We use as control group the publications in the field of clinical medicine. The field is not supported by NRF and hence clinical medicine researchers are not affected by the evaluation and rating system. The findings show a positive impact of the NRF programme on the research outputs of social sciences researchers and the implementation of the programme has increased the relevant population of research articles by an average of 24.5% (during the first 5 years) over the expected number of publication without the programme. The results confirm the scientometric findings of other studies (e.g. that of Nederhof) that ratings promulgate research productivity.     

Changes in expression of NR-1 and c-jun mRNA in rat lumbar spinal cord after neonatal common peroneal nerve crush

We have examined the expression of the NR-1 subunit of the glutamate NMDA receptor and the immediate early gene c-jun in lumbar spinal cord following neonatal common peroneal nerve crush. The expression of these two genes was studied up to 12 days post-injury (crush occurring at neonatal day P2). The levels of both NR-1 and c-jun mRNA were increased in spinal cord ipsilateral to the site of crush, the induction of mRNA was shown to occur in a time-dependent manner, peaking at 5 days post-injury. The level of NR-1 mRNA showed the most substantial change following nerve crush, increasing 5 times from 4 h to 5 days post-crush. An increase in expression of NR-1 was also observed in spinal cord contralateral to the injury, although quantitatively this was a smaller effect. These results indicate that early postnatal injury causes a significant increase in the expression of NR-1 mRNA which is most marked at 5 days after injury. This period coincides with that of maximum cell death and indicates that the selective induction of NR-1 could underlie the mechanism of this cell death.     

Identification of structural systems by neural networks

A method based on the use of neural networks is developed for the identification of systems encountered in the field of structural dynamics. The methodology is applied to the identification of linear and nonlinear dynamic systems such as the damped Duffing oscillator and the Van der Pol equation. The “generalization” ability of the neural networks is used to predict the response of the identified systems under deterministic and stochastic excitations. It is shown that neural networks provide high fidelity models of unknown structural dynamic systems, which are used in applications such as structural control, health monitoring of structures, earthquake engineering, etc.     

Thermodynamic bounds and selection of technologies in the petrochemical industry

Thermodynamic availability is briefly reviewed, emphasizing its application to steady state flow systems undergoing physical or chemical changes. While thermodynamic availability provides an upper fixed bound for the energy performance of an industry, the creation of entropy provides a lower evolutionary one. These concepts are applied to the petrochemical industry, a representative large interactive system. The objectives: maximization of availability change, minimization of entropy creation, are formulated as large linear programming problems, whose solutions provide two bounding structures for the sector.     

A scientometric assessment of the Southern Africa Development Community: science in the tip of Africa

This article reports the results of a scientometric assessment of the Southern Africa Development Community countries. The National Science Indicators database of Thomson-Reuters and the online ISI Web of Knowledge are utilized in order to identify the number of publications of the 15 countries over a period of 15 years; the activity and relative impact indicators of 22 scientific disciplines for each country and their collaborative patterns. It is identified that South Africa with 19% of the population in the region is responsible for 60% of the regional GDP and 79% of the regions publications. All countries tend to have the same focus in their disciplinary priorities and underemphasize disciplines such as engineering, materials science and molecular biology. It is expressed concern that the current research infrastructures are inadequate to assist in reaching the objectives developed in the Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan of the Community.     

Scientometric research in South Africa and successful policy instruments

This document provides an analysis of scientometric research in South Africa and it discusses sources of growth in the country’s research literature in general. South Africa is identified to have limited expertise in the field revealed mainly during the last decade. However, the country is ranked 21st in the world among the countries publishing in the journal Scientometrics and it is the only African country with such a standing in the field. Identification of the forces affecting positively the growth in the number of research publications in the country indicates that the primary incentive fuelling the recent growth is the new funding formula in the country which subsidizes the universities by more than R100 000 for each publication that their staff produces. The increase in the number of journals indexed in the ISI Thomson Reuters database and the incorporation of social sciences at the NRF have also affected the growth of research publications, but to a lesser extent.     

An assessment of the impact and visibility of South African journals

Summary Recognizing the critical role played by science and technology in the development of fuel cells, this article aims to characterize the evolution of the S&T knowledge bases of fuel cells over the nineties, using data on patents and scientific publications. The field of fuel cells is particularly heterogeneous. It covers diverse sub-fields that are marked by idiosyncratic characteristics (e.g. actors, demand, and input) and different historical developments. Although this heterogeneity of the field of fuel cells is reflected in the dynamics of S&T knowledge generation within and across its sub-fields too, this article shows that it does not entail the absence of cognitive interrelations between their S&T knowledge bases. For that purpose, the article uses “simultaneous mapping' approach of their S&T knowledge bases by means of textual analysis.     

Positive emotions as generators of therapeutic change.

The purpose of this article is to highlight commonalities and facilitate links between the domains of psychotherapy and positive psychology. The authors describe the Broaden-and-Build theory and suggest that it has heuristic value for understanding psychotherapeutic processes. The authors propose that broadening represents a common factor in intrapersonal therapy that contributes to many helpful change events across different psychotherapies. The upward spiral in which positive emotions and broadening feed one another enlarges current psychotherapeutic conceptualizations by suggesting that positive emotions are not just indicators but also generators of change. The positive emotion-broadening spiral offers new avenues for research and ways to understand existing research, an alternative avenue to therapeutic change, and a method to tailor therapeutic work to individual clients. It also bridges researcher, clinician, and client points of view about key change events. Links between different viewpoints enhance therapeutic work. Links across lines of theorizing and research foster interdisciplinary ties that fertilize both fields. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)