Two Shakes Is A ‘Wonk’

The media friendly science journal ‘Current Biology’ reveals fascinating ‘cognitive parallels’ between man and his best friend the dog.

Deep Learning ‘Wonks’ currently studying the ‘Three Component Model’ might be interested to hear about parallels with our furry friends. You see dogs, like humans, observe and interpret external activity before learning to imitate a new action.

In a study of 54 dogs charged with opening a can by pulling a lever, the natural inclination was to use their mouths. One dog, however, was taught to use its paw. The others followed his example (Trigger) but only when they interpreted it as being a deliberate choice (Exploration). For example, when a ball was placed in their mouths they   believed that they had no option but to use their paws (Integration).

Like dogs the human brain is wired ‘asymmetrically’ that is the left side of the body is controlled by the right side of the brain and vice versa. Birds, by contrast, use their right eyes to search for food while watching for predators with the left. Does this leave them cross-eyed when trying to catch hares?

Know That Who You Meet You Are

Women are attracted to men who most closely resemble their fathers say researchers published in the journal ‘Evolution and Human Behaviour’.

The study could have widespread social implications and favours the influence of ‘cognitive theories’ over ‘behavioural’ ones in the learning process. Falling in love is a complex business at the best of times but the study indicates that females further complicate the process by involving their family history.

Formerly, women had been shown to prefer men for their emotional intelligence and such qualities as caring, trustworthiness and commitment. What the psychologists have now found, however, is that women are in fact basing such choices upon ‘prior learning’.

While men are known to place a high premium on visual stimuli when choosing a partner, women by contrast, show increased activity in an area of the brain called the  ‘Caudate Nucleus’. In Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans this area has been shown to be strongly associated with learning and memory.

The study may encourage certain unscrupulous individuals to try and fool   ‘Mother Nature’ by undertaking cosmetic surgery.  Changing our facial characteristics allows us to project powerful psychological   cues which appeal to potential mates.  Of course having studied ethics intensely none of our colleagues would dare resort to such an underhanded approach or would they?

Has Technology Taken Us Over?

Research published in the journal ‘Personality and Individual Differences’ has highlighted a growing   tendency to apply human qualities to machines.

Jacob A. Benfield and colleagues from Colorado State University   looked at the personality inventories of some 204 undergraduate drivers. Amazingly they found   not just a strong tendency to name (34%) and apply gender (55%) to   vehicles but also complete   unanimity   in their willingness to discuss a vehicle’s ‘personality’.

Indeed, ‘vehicle personality’ may   one   day   be employed as a tool in predicting the aggressive predisposition of certain drivers. Moreover, future legislation could be employed to create more agreeable road vehicles or to confine certain personality types to certain vehicles only. Changing cars, for example, may be a help in reducing a driver’s levels of aggression. Cars, like pets it seems, tend to take on the characteristics of their owners both for good and for ill. Prospective technical writers please take note.

Online Learning and Modernity

The latest developments in online learning are having a profound effect on the world of education. Indeed change has been so rapid that a schism has developed between two philosophical groupings namely ‘Humanists’ and ‘Scientists’. The latter advocate a rational computer driven basis to education, while the former fear the supplanting of traditional curricula with more cognitively based systems. C. P. Snow (1959) for example, warned of the dangers of such educational disparities; “it is dangerous to have two cultures which can’t or don’t communicate”, (C.E.R.I.,1986).

Keizenbaum (1976) also warned: “the computer can become part of a person and alter his way of comprehending reality” (ibid).Scientists, however, insist that educational advantages will offset any such disadvantages. Echoing the ideas of Maria Montessori they state that drill and practice will be replaced by the concept of learning as 'personal discovery'.

The startling fact today  is that children as young as eight years old today may know more about the new information technologies than their parents. This certainly marks a ‘paradigm shift’ on previous models of learning but is it a good thing?

Learning To Write On Campus

With reference to our recent assignment on distance education it is interesting to note how conventional means of improving writing skills remain dominant.

The ‘Shannon Consortium Regional Writing Centre (RWC)’ was set up in 2007 under the auspices of the ‘Centre for Teaching and Learning’, directed by Professor Sarah Moore, the associate Vice-President of the University of Limerick, and was initially funded by the Higher Education Authority’s (HEAs) Strategic Initiative Fund.

 The RWC offers group and one-to-one peer (face to face) tutoring to students of all disciplines from humanities to engineering. It takes a fun approach to the topic and this has paid dividends in terms of improving once problematic areas like grammar, style, sentence construction, vocabulary, essay, dissertation and even Ph.D work. The RWC believes that anybody can improve their writing skills by examining the strategies used to achieve  writing goals.

Behaviour Is Still Important

Despite the emergence of rival theories about how best to train people. Psychological ‘behavioural’ theories are not yet redundant. Scientists writing in ‘The Annals of Epidemiology’, for example, have linked personality to an increased   risk of contracting serious illness in later life.

The study looked at a sample of 2000 men over a 30 year period until 60 per cent had died. The deceased death certificates were matched to a psychological questionnaire they had filled out years before.

Amazingly   the shyest   respondents had a 50 per cent greater chance of dying from a heart attack or stroke. The authors hypothesized that personality may actually alter the efficient operation of our brains and create the conditions for illness to develop.

Keeping Stress Levels Down

With assignments building up in academia a timely piece of research reminds us how important it is to keep stress at bay.

Dr. Jean-Philippe Gouin and colleagues from Ohio State University were writing in the journal   ‘Brain Behaviour and Immunity’. They   looked at a sample of   98 volunteers who agreed to have a standard blister wound inserted on their forearms via a vacuum-pump.

Amazingly   the most stressed   respondents were 4.2 times more likely to take longer than the estimated four days to fully heal.

 The authors suggest that relaxation and cognitive therapy may assist with stress management by lowering levels of the hormone ‘Cortisol’ in the bloodstream. ‘Cortisol’ is a hormone that acts as a bio-marker for stress.

‘Subliminal Images’ Beware

Our love-affair with technology should come with a health warning according to a recent study.

‘Subliminal images ‘   are defined as   brief graphical displays   hidden inside conventional media products such as television programmes and films.

Like a ‘Trojan Horse’ unsuspecting viewers only ever sense their presence   subconsciously.

Hollywood films like ‘Johnny Mnemonic’ (1995)   and ‘Fight Club’ (1999) make reference to ‘subliminal   technology’. The   technology itself is not new and has been available since the 1950s. Indeed, the UK government has banned its use in advertising.

Now, ‘functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging’ (fMRI) has revealed that an area of the brain called the ‘Primary Visual Cortex’ can store such images.

The findings suggest that the human brain faced with relative inactivity will attempt to fill the void   by storing whatever   visual images it can, even if they are covert ‘subliminal messages’. In future, such images may be used by advertisers in order to convince us to buy their wares.

Freedom and Collaborative Technologies

Our recent ‘Virtual Team Project’ has shown how collaboration and the new media technologies are inseparable. Indeed, a new initiative at the University of Limerick (UL) aims to take this process a step further. The ’Rosetta Project’ was founded at UL by Reinhard Schäler in 2009 to promote information sharing and involves non-profit organisations in providing localisation and translation services to Less Developed Countries (LDCs).

The project involves 140 contributors globally. In 2009 the’ Irish World Academy’ held a concert at UL to raise funds for the venture and the remaining seed capital came from benefactors and MNCs themselves.

Mr Schäler, established the 'Localisation Resources Centre' (LRC) at University College Dublin (UCD) in 1995 before transferring it successfully to UL in 1999 where it was reconstituted as the LRC.

There are a total of 300 translators working globally on a voluntary basis for the foundation which is a worldwide community providing technical support and machine translation. The foundation is working on specific projects globally using ‘Not-for-Profit’ translation and localisation tools to improve access to information.

The ’Rosetta Project’ works with localisation, translation and technology developers, ‘Not-for-Profit’ and ‘Non-Governmental Organisations’ (NGOs) and seeks volunteer translators, project managers, donors and corporate sponsors to assist the process.

Traditional means of addressing information deficits in Less Developed Countries (LDCs) have failed and need to be replaced by more radical models. This can make the difference between prosperity and poverty, freedom and captivity, life and death for millions of people living in LDCs who speak minority languages. Currently they cannot afford to pay for the information they require-a situation which the project intends to change.

UL Backs Open Access!

A new project is being trialled at the University of Limerick (UL) as part of a joint response to support Open Access (OA) publishing by all seven Universities in the Republic of Ireland.

The new approach allows for online publishing in websites called Institutional Repositories (IRs) and became operational at UL comparatively recently.

The Irish Universities project was launched in 2006 when the very first submissions were made to the Irish University repositories. The official launch took place two years later on May 16, 2008. IRs are populated by academic research ranging from special collections like the ‘Limerick Chronicle’ to postgraduate theses for research masters degrees and Ph. Ds. Students are, however, allowed to embargo the uploading of their work. This allows them a valuable breathing space to publicise and write articles based on their own copyright.

In 2006 the EU published an independent report showing that the price of academic journals had risen by 200-300 pc in the period 1975-1995 amounting to a staggering 11 billion dollars. Libraries, face increasingly tight budgets and are, therefore, attracted to the cost reductions offered by OA technologies. Not surprisingly Green OA is very much supported by libraries and academic institutions.

Indeed, there is now considerable momentum on the side of OA enthusiasts for change. US research has indicated that 95 pc of authors would self-archive if mandated to do so by their institutions. Nearly 100 pc of authors have done so, using the arXiv server available to physicists and computer science researchers, since the 1990s.

Legislation encouraging ‘self-archiving’ exists in 37 countries worldwide and in the USA the Obama Administration plans to advance similar laws. The world’s largest funding agency, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and most Universities, fully support OA.

If adopted widely the process could also generate substantial savings for those in Less Developed Countries (LDCs) who struggle with the costs involved in purchasing elite journals.

The UL initiative, taken as part of a national commitment by Irish Universities to self-archiving, represents a valuable first-step on the road to Open Access publishing.