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Posts Tagged ‘study’

The digital pedagogy in my course titled “Bio-aerial Locomotion” stands on a tripod. One leg is class presentation, recording and online dissemination. The second leg is a course blog, with student assignments publicly available online. The third leg is a program of distinguished invited speakers participating in the course via Skype. The course is one of a set of ten modules in the College of Engineering’s offerings under the Introduction to Engineering umbrella. All incoming freshmen choose two modules, with topics varying from mechanical design, photonics, biomedical engineering environments, among others. This module is aimed at motivating the subject of bio-inspired engineering through the study of the way animals move in the air by either falling, gliding, or flying. Read more in: http://barbagroup.bu.edu/Barba_group/News/Entries/2011/12/11_Digital_pedagogy_in_three_parts.html

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Digital Pedagogy in Three Parts – Prof Barba at the BU CEIT Instructional Innovation Conference

Wesley J. Wildman, a School of Theology associate professor of theology and ethics, discusses the science-based methods and the practical and intellectual purposes of studying religious and spiritual experiences in the first lecture in the six-part series Religious Experiences: From the Mundane to the Anomalous. Hosted by Center for the Study of Religion and Psychology at Boston University’s Danielsen Institute on September 17, 2007.

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What Do We Think We Are Doing? Interpreting Religious Behavior, Belief, and Experience

The Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies and Civilizations presents Daud Rahbar presenting for the 2007 Cultural Lecture Series. Filmed: November 14, 2007

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An Evening with Daud Rahbar

Forked Fungus Beetles Maybe they are your younger brother’s gang. Maybe they are the guys you hung out with in high school before you had your growth spurt and went off to college. Regardless of how you know them, chances are you can name a group of guys who live their lives like perpetual middle-schoolers, hanging out with each other but rarely dating and never really establishing long-term romantic relationships. A new study by evolutionary biologists from the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences takes a closer look at these males who live on the fringes of the social world in order to determine how social interactions shape and are shaped by natural selection. Like many other insects, forked fungus beetles live in complex societies. While most of them live highly engaged social lives, a surprising minority have a lot in common with the former members of your old garage band. You know; the ones who are always trying to get you to ditch the wife and kids and come hang out like you used to back in the good old days. These beetles spend most of their time in small groups composed solely of males. The biologists, led by Vince Formica and Butch Broody, could not help noticing what your wife remarked on from day one: The males in these groups were less likely to have encounters with females that lead to mating and reproduction. Formica and Brodie are interested in what happens in beetle societies because social interactions are inextricably intertwined with natural selection, which is Darwin’s term for the natural process that occurs when members of a species possess characteristics that help them survive and pass those beneficial characteristics on to their offspring. The flip side of the evolutionary coin is that characteristics that tend to get members of a species killed at an early age or that make them less likely to mate often die along with the childless individuals who possess them. Formica and Brodie, both from the University of Virginia’s College of Arts & Sciences, conducted their research on the evolution of social behavior by studying the society-in-miniature that is the milieu of the forked fungus beetle. Specifically, their team wondered whether a beetle’s social role had any connection to its chances of producing offspring. The results of their investigation were published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology . Forked fungus beetles were chosen as subjects because in addition to their rich social life, they were readily available for the researchers to study in the wild and they can easily be captured, tagged and observed. Once the beetles were tagged for easy tracking, the researchers were able to observe and map their social activities. The research team noticed that the beetles with the most active social lives had large social circles and had a lot of sexual encounters, leading to a lot of reproduction on their part. The males with small social circles made up of just a few males rarely had social encounters with females and had little opportunity to pass their genes on to a new generation. According to Formica, learning how social networks operate is crucial to understanding the evolution of societies. “We’ve shown that the trait of sociability is under natural selection, but we don’t know yet if it’s heritable,” he said. “This is one of only a few studies that have shown that position in a social network is a trait that can experience natural selection and therefore has the potential to evolve. It is clear in this study that being central in a large social network is key to high reproductive success. If a trait – such as an individual’s position in a network – is related to reproductive success, you can say it is experiencing natural selection and has the potential to evolve.” Related posts: Social Network Analysis and the Dynamics of Web-Based Networking [Study]

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Want More Sex? Widen Your Social Network, Beetle Research Says

You often hear about “the little people,” even when actual height is not discussed. Often times, it is people who converse with upcoming celebrities, telling them not to forget “the little people.” A research study from the authors of a new paper published in Psychological Science , a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, found that there is some psychological truth to these kinds of statements. Though non-celebrities are often normal heights, they may actually feel smaller then what they are when compared to a celebrity. The study suggests that people who feel powerful overestimate their size. Alternatively, people who feel weak, usually in a work setting, tend to feel physically smaller than what they actually are. One of the paper’s co-writers, Jack A. Goncalo of Cornell University, stated that there is physical experience that goes along with the study. He also went on to state that people who feel less powerful may actually see objects and other people larger than what they actually are. Alternatively, people who feel powerful may see things smaller than what they are. Of course, there is plenty of prior research that proves taller people generally make more money, are more likely to be promoted, and are viewed as more attractive, but this paper’s research proves the reverse to be true, that power makes people feel tall. One experiment had people come into the lab in pairs. Their height measurements were taken, and then they were given a leadership aptitude test. They were told that, based on their feedback, they would either be assigned to play the role of a manager or employee. The feedback the participants received was fake, and then they were assigned their roles. After they received their roles, they were asked to fill out a personal questionnaire, answering questions that involved their height, eye color, and other physical attributes. The participants who were given roles of manager, having complete power over crucial decision, stated that they were taller than the actual measurement. Alternatively, people who were given the role of employee answered that their height was either the same or less than the taken measurement. This could explain the psychology of people who wear high-heels to feel powerful or bosses who work in the top-floor office. Related posts: Breaking Rules of Social Behavior Makes You Appear Powerful Study shows why people read magazines featuring envy-inspiring models People Over 50 Prefer Negative Stories About Young People

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Powerful People Are Shorter Than They Think [Study]

“Math is hard!” cries Teen Talk Barbie. Those words made Matel revamp the doll so that she did not say she found math hard after protesters insisted that it was degrading to women. It turns out that they were right according to a study researched at the University of Missouri. According to the study titled, “Can stereotype threat explain the sex gap in mathematics performance and achievement?” there is no gender difference when it comes to math skills. Many people believe that women are worse at quantitative reasoning then men. In fact, it has become a theory so widely accepted that even a toy company felt compelled to agree and the stereotype has plagued women around the world. But, the research at the University of Missouri disproves the theory partly due to no evidence on the contrary. This stereotype has been fueled because there are typically more men in the higher tiers of in fields requiring math. And, previous studies on the subject have been conducted using wrongly projected statistics and no actual scientific base. The birth of this idea was thanks to an article found in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology printed in 1999. The idea was that due to a stereotype threat, women are doomed to be less superior than men in math. In turn, this makes women without confidence quantitative reasoning and less willing to develop math skills. The research found is going to be published in the Review of General Psychology as it explains the lack of fundamental controls in previous experiments. This was the basis of the study as researchers discovered past studies lacked proper statistics because males were not subjected to the same experiment varieties and controls as women. However, as a result of these finding, people accepted that women were worse off in math. As this theory persisted, many researchers dedicated their resources to fixing a problem that didn’t need fixing. Researchers have found that when a subject is told that they will not perform well on a difficult test, then the subject performs below average regardless of their sex. This recent study proves that there is no basis for the stereotype that men are better at math. Individual results in math are based solely on a person’s ability to work through a problem and not whether they are male or female. Understandably, the lead research physiologist, David Geary, is concerned with how the stereotype is affecting women, [There are a] “disproportionate number of men in top levels of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. We need more women to succeed in these fields for our economy and for our future.” Hopefully, this study will help spread the wrongness of this stereotype and women will gain momentum in these fields. Related posts: Modesty Important for Women, But Not for Men [Study] Evidence Says Women Are Better Multitaskers Than Men [Study] Social Connections in the Workplace Do Not Benefit Women [Study]

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Stereotype Busted! Women Are Not Worse At Math Than Men [Study]