Student Experiences of the Adolescent Diversion Project: A Community-Based Exemplar in the Pedagogy of Service-Learning

Service-learning partnerships between universities and surrounding communities striving to create systems-level change must consider an emphasis in critical community service; a community centered paradigm where students are taught to work with communities to better understand contexts surrounding a social problem, as opposed to merely volunteering to provide a service to a community. The Adolescent Diversion Project (ADP), which has been operating for over 30 years, demonstrates critical community service through the type of relationship built between students and the local community. This article describes: a qualitative study with ADP students, the historical context of ADP, what and how students learned through their involvement in ADP, and reframes the work of this project as a form of service-learning pedagogy. Inductive content analysis was employed to identify underlying themes across participants related to their personal experiences of ADP and its impact in their lives. Findings were compared with service-learning outcomes and other quantitative studies conducted with past ADP cohorts from the literature. Consistent with past studies, ADP students become more negative toward social systems involved with their youth. This finding may explain an increase in feelings of political commitment following involvement in ADP. Consistent with service-learning outcomes, results demonstrate that ADP should be further documented as not only an effective community-based program but also as an exemplar in the pedagogy of service-learning. This study highlights why service-learning opportunities for students are not just one way to teach students, they are opportunities to bridge relationships within communities, bring life to theoretical concepts, and build the foundations necessary for educated citizens that will one day take lead roles in our society.     

齐秦两国军事制度之比较

齐亡秦兴的历史命运虽由诸多因素促成,但不可否认,军事实力的差异是造成两国命运迥异的最直接原因。军事力量强弱与军事制度密不可分,军事制度是否健全、能否适应时代发展要求就成为决定一国军事实力强弱的关键,正是军事制度的差异对齐秦两国一亡一兴的最终命运产生了重要影响。     

Emotions in action through the looking glass1

Abstract: The paper aims at highlighting how our primary understanding of others’ actions is rooted in the mirror mechanism. To this end, the anatomical architecture of the mirror neuron system for action will be outlined as well as its role in grasping goals and intentions in others’ motor behaviour. One further step through the looking glass of social cognition will be referring to the ubiquitous emotional colouring of actions and considering its links with the motor domain. This will allow a clearer perspective on the mechanism underlying our abilities for emotional understanding and on cases in which these abilities are amiss, as in autistic spectrum disorders.     

Embodied cognition and health persuasion: Facilitating intention-behavior consistency via motor manipulations

The present research examines health persuasion from an embodied cognition perspective by proposing that engaging the motor system during health persuasion will lead individuals to engage in healthier behavior and have greater consistency between their intentions and behavior. In two studies, participants watched a health video while either imaging themselves performing the behavior or imaging themselves performing the behavior while also engaging their motor systems with minimal, relevant behaviors. In Study 1, after watching a flossing video, females (but not males) flossed more times in the following week after touching a floss and in Study 2, all participants (males and females) exercised more in the week after watching an exercise video while walking in place. In both experiments, participants who engaged the motor system had stronger intention-behavior consistency than those who merely imagined themselves performing the health behavior. Implications of the findings are discussed for theories of embodied cognition, intention-behavior consistency, and health persuasion.     

努力提高多中心临床研究的伦理审查质量

多中心临床合作研究是现代生物医学发展的必然要求,各方利益冲突,双重标准,缺乏独立性,人员素质不高,跟踪监督欠缺等导致的伦理审查质量参差不齐已成为一个重要的制约因素,建议采取切实的多方面的措施,保证科学性和伦理合理性,明确职责,协调发展,努力提高多中心临床研究的伦理审查质量。     

生物学和生物医学科学中的复杂性

自牛顿时代以来,经典力学和还原论一直是科学研究的基石。然而,还原论和决定论无法分析和恰当地解释复杂系统特征性的突现性质。以认识论的观点看,还原论和整体论结合起来才能综合评估复杂生物系统。突现,非线性和自组织等复杂性理论的概念正改变和塑造着生物医学研究范式。还阐述了理解生物系统复杂性的重要价值。     

High‐Stakes Decision‐Making Within Complex Social Environments: A Computational Model of Belief Systems in the Arab Spring

People experiencing similar conditions may make different decisions, and their belief systems provide insight about these differences. An example of high‐stakes decision‐making within a complex social context is the Arab Spring, in which large numbers of people decided to protest and even larger numbers decided to stay at home. This study uses qualitative analyses of interview narratives and social media addressing individual decisions to develop a computational model tracing the cognitive decision‐making process. The model builds on work by Abelson and Carroll (1965), Schank and Abelson (1977), and Axelrod (1976) to systematically trace the inferences connecting beliefs to decisions. The findings show that protest decisions were often based on positive emotions such as pride, hope, courage, and solidarity, triggered by beliefs about successful protest and self‐sacrifice. By contrast, decisions to stay at home were triggered by beliefs about safety, state approval, and living conditions. As one participant said, “When I heard about the revolution in Tunisia, my heart was filled with solidarity for the people.” In the words of a non‐participant: “When people are killed, we must be careful. There are more important things than protest: safety and stability.” This study of individual explanations about events identifies the role of emotions in high‐stakes decision‐making within complex social environments.     

The dynamic mechanism of a novel stochastic neural firing pattern observed in a real biological system

In the experimental neural pacemaker of a rat, a novel firing pattern has been discovered. This pattern was generated between the period 2 firing pattern and the period 3 firing pattern during the periodic adding bifurcation and inverse periodic adding bifurcation. The pattern was observed and analyzed in the present investigation. The composition of this novel firing pattern could be regarded as a transition between a string of period 2 burst and a string of period 3 burst without single period 2 or period 3 burst, which was different from those chaotic and stochastic neural firing patterns in previous reports. It was identified to be stochastic by the inter-event intervals (IEIs) analysis, although it exhibited chaos-like characteristics with the results of the inter-spike intervals (ISIs) analysis. The numerical simulation suggested that the new pattern observed in the real biological system could be simulated in the stochastic Chay model but not in the deterministic model. With the signal to noise ratio (SNR) analysis and bifurcation analysis, this novel firing pattern was considered to be generated by stochastic resonance under the influence of noise near the periodic adding (inverse) bifurcation point. The probability analysis of transformed binary chain further confirmed that the origin of stochastic and chaos (deterministic)-like characteristics of this novel firing pattern.     

MetrIntMeas a novel metric for measuring the intelligence of a swarm of cooperating agents

We propose a novel metric called MetrIntMeas (Metric for the Intelligence Measuring) for an accurate and robust measurement of the difficult problem-solving intelligence of a swarm system. The metric allows the classification if a swarm system belongs to the same class with the systems which have a specific reference intelligence value. For proving the efficiency of the proposed metric we realized a case study on a swarm system specialized in solving a NP-hard problem. As an application of the proposed metric, we present the measurement of the swarm systems’ evolution in intelligence. We gave a new definition to the intelligent evolving systems. The evolution of intelligent systems can be verified using the proposed MetrIntMeas metric.