Recent initiatives to enhance retention and widen participation ensure it is crucial to understand the factors that predict students' performance during their undergraduate degree. The present research used Structural Equation Modeling to test three separate models that examined the extent to which British Psychology students' A‐level entry qualifications predicted: their performance in years 1–3 of their Psychology degree, and their overall degree performance. Students' overall A‐level entry qualifications positively predicted performance during their first year and overall degree performance, but negatively (...) predicted their performance during their third year. Additionally, and more specifically, students' A‐level entry qualifications in Psychology positively predicted performance in the first year only. Such findings have implications for admissions tutors, as well as for students who have not studied Psychology before but who are considering applying to do so at university. (shrink)

To gain an insight into how those entering the teaching profession regard cyberbullying, two focus groups were conducted with nine pre-service teachers. Thematic analytical approach revealed...

Memory should make more available things that are more likely to be needed. Across multiple environmental domains, it has been shown that such a system would match qualitatively the memory effects involving repetition, delay, and spacing (Schooler & Anderson, 2017). To obtain data of sufficient size to study how detailed patterns of past appearance predict probability of being needed again, we examined the patterns with which words appear in large two data sets: tweets from popular sources and comments on popular (...) subreddits. The two data sets show remarkably similar statistics, which are also consistent with earlier, smaller studies of environmental statistics. None of a candidate set of mathematical models of memory do well at predicting the observed patterns in these environments. A new model of human memory based on the environmental model proposed by Anderson and Milson (1989) did better at predicting the environmental data and a wide range of behavioral studies that measure memory availability by probability of recall and speed of retrieval. A critical variable in this model was range, the span of time over which an item occurs, which was discovered in mining the environmental data. These results suggest that theories of memory can be guided by mining of the statistical structure of the environment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

We studied collaborative skill acquisition in a dynamic setting with the game Co-op Space Fortress. While gaining expertise, the majority of subjects became increasingly consistent in the role they adopted without being able to communicate. Moreover, they acted in anticipation of the future task state. We constructed a collaborative skill acquisition model in the cognitive architecture ACT-R that reproduced subject skill acquisition trajectory. It modeled role adoption through reinforcement learning and predictive processes through motion extrapolation and learned relevant control parameters (...) using both a reinforcement learning procedure and a new to ACT-R supervised learning procedure. This is the first integrated cognitive model of collaborative skill acquisition and, as such, gives us valuable insights into the multiple cognitive processes that are involved in learning to collaborate. (shrink)

In a number of membrane-bound viruses, ion channels are formed by integral membrane proteins. These channel proteins include M2 from influenza A, NB from influenza B, and, possibly, Vpu from HIV-1. M2 is important in facilitating uncoating of the influenza A viral genome and is the target of amantadine, an anti-influenza drug. The biological roles of NB and Vpu are less certain. In all cases, the protein contains a single transmembrane α-helix close to its N-terminus. Channels can be formed by (...) homo-oligomerization of these proteins, yielding bundles of transmembrane helices that span the membrane and surround a central ion-permeable pore. Molecular modeling may be used to integrate and interpret available experimental data concerning the structure of such transmembrane pores. This has proved successful for the M2 channel domain, where two independently derived models are in agreement with one another, and with solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) data. Simulations based on channel models may yield insights into possible ion conduction and selectivity mechanisms. BioEssays 20:992–1000, 1998. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Children tend to view equal resource distributions as more fair than unequal ones, but will sometimes view even unequal distributions as fair. However, less is known about how children form judgments about inequality when different procedures are used. In the present study, we investigated children’s consideration of procedures, outcomes, and emotions when judging the fairness of unequal resource distributions. Participants were introduced to a Fair Coin and an Unfair Coin. In two between-subjects conditions, they watched a researcher flip either the (...) Fair or Unfair Coin in order to distribute resources unequally between two child recipients. Participants then rated the fairness of this event, provided verbal justifications for their ratings, and rated the emotional state of each recipient. Results revealed that participants rated the event as more fair in the Fair Coin than the Unfair Coin condition. References to the outcome in children’s justifications predicted lower fairness ratings, while references to the procedure only predicted lower ratings in the Unfair Coin condition. Greater Emotion Difference Scores predicted lower fairness ratings, and this effect increased with age. Together, these results show that children consider procedures, outcomes, and emotions when judging the fairness of inequality. Moreover, results suggest age-related increases in consideration of recipients’ emotions makes inequality seem less fair, even when fair procedures are used. Implications for the development of fairness are discussed. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Both the general structure of Nozick's entitlement theory of justice and the particular arguments he directs against Rawls presuppose a conception of the person. The essay argues that this initial conception of the person is flawed and that Nozick must amend it. However, those amendments lead either to an equally flawed conception or to a conception which is substantially similar to that which Rawls invokes. On either possibility the entitlement theory is weakened. The argument has two steps. First, the (...) initial conception of the person which emerges from Anarchy, State and Utopia is stated. Second, the problems with that initial conception lead to the elucidation of subsequent conceptions, only the last of which is capable of avoiding those problems. The cost of avoidance is, however, a high one for Nozick's arguments against Rawls, in particular, and the entitlement theory in general. (shrink)

Learning to solve a class of problems can be characterized as a search through a space of hypotheses about the rules for solving these problems. A series of four experiments studied how different learning conditions affected the search among hypotheses about the solution rule for a simple computational problem. Experiment 1 showed that a problem property such as computational difficulty of the rules biased the search process and so affected learning. Experiment 2 examined the impact of examples as instructional tools (...) and found that their effectiveness was determined by whether they uniquely pointed to the correct rule. Experiment 3 compared verbal directions with examples and found that both could guide search. The final experiment tried to improve learning by using more explicit verbal directions or by adding scaffolding to the example. While both manipulations improved learning, learning still took the form of a search through a hypothesis space of possible rules. We describe a model that embodies two assumptions: the instruction can bias the rules participants hypothesize rather than directly be encoded into a rule; participants do not have memory for past wrong hypotheses and are likely to retry them. These assumptions are realized in a Markov model that fits all the data by estimating two sets of probabilities. First, the learning condition induced one set of Start probabilities of trying various rules. Second, should this first hypothesis prove wrong, the learning condition induced a second set of Choice probabilities of considering various rules. These findings broaden our understanding of effective instruction and provide implications for instructional design. (shrink)

Using a parallel mixed-methods design, the current study examined university students’ perceptions of academic cheating through collecting and analyzing both the quantitative and qualitative data. Our quantitative findings corroborate previous research that male students have engaged more in academic cheating than females based on students’ self-reports, and that undergraduate students are less willing to discuss issues on academic cheating as compared with their graduate counterparts. Five themes emerged from the thematic analysis of the qualitative data: flexible definitions for cheating, environmental (...) promotion of cheating, the moral transgression of cheating, cheating as an ambiguous justification, and cheating as a conscious decision making process. The mixed-methods findings indicate that there is no relationship between students’ gender or classification and their endorsements of the qualitative themes. However, non-White students are more likely to endorse the theme “cheating as an ambiguous justification.” Implications for reducing and preventing academic cheating at the university level are discussed. (shrink)

This paper responds to the commentaries from Stacy Carter and Alan Cribb. We pick up on two main themes in our response. First, we reflect on how the process of setting standards for empirical bioethics research entails drawing boundaries around what research counts as empirical bioethics research, and we discuss whether the standards agreed in the consensus process draw these boundaries correctly. Second, we expand on the discussion in the original paper of the role and significance of the concept of (...) ‘integrating’ empirical methods and ethical argument as a standard for research practice within empirical bioethics. (shrink)

Strong evidence shows that exposure and engagement with the natural world not only improve human wellbeing but can also help promote environmentally friendly behaviors. Human-nature relationships are at the heart of global agendas promoted by international organizations including the World Health Organization’s “One Health” and the United Nations “Ocean Decade.” These agendas demand collaborative multisector interdisciplinary efforts at local, national, and global levels. However, while global agendas highlight global goals for a sustainable world, developing science that directly addresses these agendas (...) from design through to delivery and outputs does not come without its challenges. In this article, we present the outcomes of international meetings between researchers, stakeholders, and policymakers from the United Kingdom and Brazil. We propose a model for interdisciplinary work under such global agendas, particularly the interface between One Health and the UN Ocean Decade and identify three priority research areas closely linked to each other: human-nature connection, conservation-human behavior, and implementation strategies. We also discuss a number of recommendations for moving forward. (shrink)

Cet article traite de la mise en place de l’organisation par projet dans une unité de R & D du secteur de l’énergie. Il montre que l’un des principaux effets de cette politique de « modernisation » est d’avoir transformé les contraintes temporelles qui pèsent sur le travail des chercheurs et ce, à au moins trois niveaux. D’abord, la composante administrative du travail de recherche s’est accrue au détriment du temps consacré à la production scientifique. Ensuite, le projet d’intensification du (...) travail auquel renvoie l’instauration du multiprojets génère des « coûts de coordination » et un phénomène de dispersion dans le travail, peu propices à la concentration intellectuelle que nécessitent les activités de recherche, au point que certaines tâches, comme la lecture ou l’écriture, sont réalisées à contretemps, dans la sphère hors travail et sur des temps de récupération. Quant à l’ajustement des activités aux demandes des clients, il donne lieu à une sorte d’ingénieurisation de la recherche. Tandis que les projets les plus éloignés des préoccupations des directions opérationnelles souffrent d’un manque de crédit, au double sens du terme, ceux commandités par les directions les plus proches du marché et du consommateur final, eux, s’apparentent de plus en plus à des études, court-termistes et directement opératoires. (shrink)

This paper will take as its starting point the premise that developing translational bioethics is a worthwhile endeavour. I will develop an account of translational bioethics and discuss what implications this would have for the wider discipline of bioethics and argue that this would be a useful development for bioethics. The paper will conduct a form of ‘translational meta‐bioethics analysis’, in the words of Bærøe. I will argue that if we are serious about instituting translational bioethics, then it will need (...) to look and be organised in a very different way from current bioethics research, this will be a radically different form of bioethics from what we currently have. In this paper I will sketch what translational bioethics might look like. My proposal here is not that translational bioethics should supplant existing ways of doing bioethics, but rather that it should be an addition to it, another subdiscipline of bioethics. (shrink)

Dès les premières lignes, Rachmi Diyah Larasati plonge le lecteur dans le sujet de son étude à travers ses propres souvenirs d’enfance, dans l’ambiance des soirées passées dans la cour de la maison familiale, petit monde féminin où elle a appris la danse avec sa grand-mère. Cette entrée en matière n’est pas anodine, puisque les travaux de R.D. Larasati ont pour première source sa propre expérience, complétée par les témoignages de plusieurs autres danseuses indonésiennes. À la fois danseuse f...

'There is nothing outside the text.' Possibly no single statement has caused such a storm in critical theory as this famous observation by the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida. While it is often misunderstood as meaning that nothing is real and that political actions are therefore pointless, Debating Derrida demonstrates that Derrida's philosophy does not lack political conviction. Niall Lucy examines three key terms - text, writing and differance - as they are used in three famous debates: Derrida's disputes over (...) speech-acts with John R. Searle, over discourse with Michel Foucault and over apartheid. Lucy also takes up the issue of Derrida's relationship to postmodernism and questions the 'political imperative' of the need to justify philosophy and the humanities in general according to a notion of their 'usefulness'. Debating Derrida decisively shows that instead of disagreeing with Derrida, we should rather be defending him. (shrink)

© 2015 Elsevier Inc.Toxoplasma gondii is a protozoan pathogen in the phylum Apicomplexa that resides within an intracellular parasitophorous vacuole that is selectively permeable to small molecules through unidentified mechanisms. We have identified GRA17 as a Toxoplasma-secreted protein that localizes to the parasitophorous vacuole membrane and mediates passive transport of small molecules across the PVM. GRA17 is related to the putative Plasmodium translocon protein EXP2 and conserved across PV-residing Apicomplexa. The PVs of GRA17-deficient parasites have aberrant morphology, reduced permeability to (...) small molecules, and structural instability. GRA17-deficient parasites proliferate slowly and are avirulent in mice. These GRA17-deficient phenotypes are rescued by complementation with Plasmodium EXP2. GRA17 functions synergistically with a related protein, GRA23. Exogenous expression of GRA17 or GRA23 alters the membrane conductance properties of Xenopus oocytes in a manner consistent with a large non-selective pore. Thus, GRA17 and GRA23 provide a molecular basis for PVM permeability and nutrient access. (shrink)

Lucy Allais’s Manifest Reality offers an attractive new interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism. Kantian appearances are known through essentially manifest properties, but those properties are construed as belonging ultimately to things in themselves with intrinsic natures. This position can offer a nice account of the sense in which appearances and things in themselves are identical and a metaphysically plausible way to construe appearances as strictly partially mind-dependent. The position is less convincing when it comes to explaining the sense in (...) which appearances and things in themselves remain non-identical. I argue that such a non-identity thesis was in fact crucial to Kant’s use of idealism to explain the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge, to his account of the apriority of the representation of space, and to his anti-Leibnizian point that our mathematical and scientific cognition provides not confused representation of underlying things in themselves, but perfectly exact and strictly true cognition of something else. In closing, I suggest that the hylomorphic nature of Kant’s idealism points toward an alternative conception of the partial mind-dependence of appearances. (shrink)

Lucy O'Brien has argued that defenders of the object-dependence of singular thought should attend to mental agency. A recent trend in action theory, towards what John Maier calls ‘agentive modality’, suggests that we conceive agency in terms of the exercise of abilities, and this is how I propose to approach O'Brien's challenge. For Gareth Evans, an early defender of object-dependence, maintained that thinking is the exercise of a complex of abilities. The debate about object-dependence gives way to the question (...) whether we have what I call dedicated singular mental abilities. In arguing that we do, I defend the thesis of object-dependence. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, "to be learning something is the greatest of pleasures not only to the philosopher but also to the rest of mankind," (Poetics 1448b). But even as he affirms the unbounded human capacity for integrating new experience with existing knowledge, he alludes to a significant exception: "The sight of certain things gives us pain, but we enjoy looking at the most exact images of them, whether the forms of animals which we greatly despise or of corpses." Our capacity (...) for learning is happily engaged in viewing representations of painful objects, but not, it seems, in viewing the objects themselves. When an experience is intensely painful, what then is a rational animal to do? We can neither disable our learning process, nor erase its traces. In the face of intense pain, horror, or terror, learning and remembrance cause no pleasure but rather persistent psychological pain and disruption. The memorious mind reverberates with trauma. (shrink)

British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Volume 19, Issue 3, Page 573-579, May 2011.

Review of Bett, R. (2019). How to Be a Pyrrhonist: The Practice and Significance of Pyrrhonian Skepticism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

What is the value of Pyrrhonizing skepticism today? As an epistemologist, I am sympathetic to skepticism, but as a feminist, I am concerned by it. In this short paper, I’ll interrogate the troubled relationship between skepticism and feminism. More specifically, I’ll ask: Can feminists be skeptics? In the first half of the paper, I’ll articulate one feminist objection to skepticism. In the second half, I’ll suggest a pathway forward by which feminists can harness the power of the skeptical method to (...) antiskeptical ends. Part 1 of my analysis engages Brian Ribeiro’s recent book Pyrrhonizers (2021), and Part 2 engages Jennifer Saul’s “Skepticism and Implicit Bias” (2013). (shrink)