Research Blogging - All Topics - English

Ask Not What You Can Do For Educational Technology, But What Educational Technology Can Do For You

2012-05-25T00:46:54Z

It’s irritating that people talk about educational technology in terms of iPads in the classroom when the real impact will come from pinpoint differentiation, instant student assessment, and a third thing that nobody talks about – improved simulations in speciality learning. For example, medical students who use virtual patients — an “interactive computer simulation of real-life [...]...

Consorti, F., Mancuso, R., Nocioni, M., & Piccolo, A. (2012) Efficacy of virtual patients in medical education: A meta-analysis of randomized studies. Computers , 59(3), 1001-1008. DOI: 10.1016/j.compedu.2012.04.017

UK vs. US in Media Reporting on Eating Disorders: Who Does it Better?

2012-05-24T23:50:19Z

Given the popularity of my post on how the media portrays eating disorders, I thought I’d do a follow-up post about a more recent and comprehensive study on media reporting of eating disorders. Shepherd & Seale (2010) wanted to build up on the findings of O’Hara & Clegg-Smith, but focusing on UK newspapers. In particular, they: compared UK and US media reporting of EDs tracked changes of in ED coverage over a 17-year period studied the differences between newspapers with different target audiences Shepherd & Seale reiterate much of what O’Hara & Clegg-Smith wrote: ED specialists and researchers understand that EDs are complex, multi-factorial diseases with complex genetic and environmental underpinnings, that they are often associated with many medical complications …...

Shepherd, E., & Seale, C. (2010) Eating disorders in the media: The changing nature of UK newspaper reports. European Eating Disorders Review, 18(6), 486-495. DOI: 10.1002/erv.1006

Hearing radio frequencies

2012-05-24T17:36:10Z

I was reading the Wikipedia article on tinnitus, and came across this pearl of a sentence: A common and often misdiagnosed condition that mimics tinnitus is Radio Frequency (RF) Hearing in which subjects have been tested and found to hear high-pitched transmission frequencies that sound similar to tinnitus. Hmm, what? Yes, humans, under special circumstances, [...]...

Elder, J., & Chou, C. (2003) Auditory response to pulsed radiofrequency energy. Bioelectromagnetics, 24(S6). DOI: 10.1002/bem.10163

Validation of the Dime

2012-05-24T14:35:00Z

The current Annals of Emergency Medicine has a pair of editorials on the article I wrote about[1] in This is the Way to Bad Medicine back in January. Dr. Radecki also was critical of this paper.[2] There is another study that refers to the same question published in this issue, but I will write about that paper later. "These data raise the real question, Do such findings matter? By admitting more patients and ordering more CTs, do we improve outcomes? Or do we simply find more things that have little clinical importance? Indeed, in Menditto’s sample,8 only 1 patient needed craniotomy. In Kaen’s,14 none did.[3]"...

Menditto, V., Lucci, M., Polonara, S., Pomponio, G., & Gabrielli, A. (2012) Management of Minor Head Injury in Patients Receiving Oral Anticoagulant Therapy: A Prospective Study of a 24-Hour Observation Protocol. Annals of Emergency Medicine. DOI: 10.1016/j.annemergmed.2011.12.003

Paving the road with nanoclay

2012-05-24T14:18:04Z

Summer time means BBQ season but it’s also the start of road construction. Road construction usually leads to traffic jams and slowdowns, so it makes sense to avoid construction in [...]...

You, Z., Mills-Beale, J., Foley, J., Roy, S., Odegard, G., Dai, Q., & Goh, S. (2011) Nanoclay-modified asphalt materials: Preparation and characterization. Construction and Building Materials, 25(2), 1072-1078. DOI: 10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2010.06.070

Discovering underneath a “MudPit”

2012-05-24T12:17:36Z

What is referred to as “MudPit” here is not “a pit of mud” but a technique in the mass spectrometry field which stands for “multi-dimensional protein identification technology”, a very powerful approach that has been widely used since the … Continue reading →...

Washburn, M., Wolters, D., & Yates, J. (2001) Large-scale analysis of the yeast proteome via multidimensional protein identification technology. Nature Biotechnology, 19(3), 242-247. DOI: 10.1038/85686

Yang, F., Shen, Y., Camp, D., & Smith, R. (2012) High-pH reversed-phase chromatography with fraction concatenation for 2D proteomic analysis. Expert Review of Proteomics, 9(2), 129-134. DOI: 10.1586/epr.12.15

Tran, J., Zamdborg, L., Ahlf, D., Lee, J., Catherman, A., Durbin, K., Tipton, J., Vellaichamy, A., Kellie, J., Li, M.... (2011) Mapping intact protein isoforms in discovery mode using top-down proteomics. Nature, 480(7376), 254-258. DOI: 10.1038/nature10575

Embarrassing Conditions: The Living Dead

2012-05-24T11:49:15Z

Imagine how horrific life would be when you are convinced to be dead, while you are still alive. This delusional belief of non-existence characterizes sufferers of the rare mental disorder Cotard Delusion. Slight variations include those that believe they are rotting or have lost their blood or internal organs....

Debruyne H, Portzky M, Van den Eynde F, & Audenaert K. (2009) Cotard's syndrome: a review. Current psychiatry reports, 11(3), 197-202. PMID: 19470281

Robotics & Mechanical Limbs

2012-05-24T08:55:02Z

As people continue to struggle with problems involving organ donation, a few robotic engineers continue to push the boundaries between humanity and machinery. A recent report in Nature (cited below) showed that two patients were able to overcome some aspects of their paralysis by way of an implant. Reaching and grabbing motions were possible by way [...]...

Hochberg, L., Bacher, D., Jarosiewicz, B., Masse, N., Simeral, J., Vogel, J., Haddadin, S., Liu, J., Cash, S., van der Smagt, P.... (2012) Reach and grasp by people with tetraplegia using a neurally controlled robotic arm. Nature, 485(7398), 372-375. DOI: 10.1038/nature11076

Winning at hide and seek in the mesopelagic

2012-05-24T08:34:00Z

A paper published a few months ago in Current Biology serves to highlight just how amazing cephalopods (squid, cuttlefish, octopus and their kin) are. The paper concerns how two species of cephalopods (Japetella heathi an octopus and Onychoteuthis banksii a squid) have evolved to avoid predators in the dynamic light environment of the mesopelagic layer of the open ocean.The mesopelagic layer of the ocean extends from 200 meters to 1000 meters deep. Sunlight in this zone transitions from present, but too dim for photosynthesis at the top, to totally absent at the bottom. This light transition poses a tricky problem for animals living there that want to avoid being eaten.In the shallower parts of the mesopelagic, predators are able to detect the shadows of prey swimming overhead. Here, the best strategy for small animals to reduce the risk of being eaten is for them to be translucent. Tissues that allow light to pass through cast a weaker shadow, which means that predators have to get closer to their prey in order to see them.In the deep dark depths, translucence is not such a good strategy. There's not enough sunlight for predators to hunt for shadows. Some predators, though, bring their own light in the form of light organs near their eyes. In the directed light of bioluminescence small imperfections in light transmission cause the light to be scattered making translucent animals much brighter than the background and easy prey.Where some predators, like the headlight fish (Diaphus effulgens), hunt by producing their own light, it pays to be a colour that absorbs light at the same wavelengths. The vast majority of bioluminescent organisms produce light in the blue wavelengths, which is best absorbed by reds and blacks. Unsurprisingly then, most animals that occur where sunlight is absent are red or black to reduce the risk that predators will find them using biologically produced light.But, some animals, like our two species of cephalopod, range over most of the mesopelagic and encounter a wide variety of light environments. High on the wish list for such animals would be the ability to become translucent in diffuse sunlight and red in directed bioluminescent light. And it turns out that this is exactly what J. heathi and O. banksii can do.Like most cephalopods, J. heathi and O. banksii have pigment containing cells in their epidermis, known as chromatophores. Cephalopods are able to rapidly change colour by expanding the size of the chromatophores. When muscles attached to a chromatophore contract, the pigment containing sac inside stretches out into a flat disc, which increases the visible area of pigment by about 50 times.A diagram showing the structure of a cephalopod chromatophore and the arrangement of the associated muscle and nerve cells (image: Richard Young)Most of the time J. heathi and O. banksii are translucent, but when they are exposed to blue light, like that produced by bioluminescent organs, they rapidly change colour to red. Neither strategy is complete; the chromatophores reduce translucence even when contracted and they are not numerous enough to allow them to become totally red. Thus, I would guess that these cephalopods are at a disadvantage relative to organisms that specialize in being red or translucent. But, in contrast to the these cephalopods, such specialists would be limited in the light environments that they could use.The translucent and red forms of J. heathi (left) and O. banksii (right). Note that neither the translucent nor the red strategy are complete (image constructed from figures in the paper)Interestingly, the images seem to suggest that J. heathi, which has the deeper distribution, is more able to produce the red colouration that is advantageous where predators hunt using bioluminescence. The authors, however, do not test or discuss this possibility. In the article they do briefly mention that older J. heathi are more common at deeper depths and have greater chromatophore coverage. So, the apparent difference in chromatophore coverage between the two species could be a consequence of either age or depth distribution differences, or perhaps both.Zylinski, S., & Johnsen, S. (2011). Mesopelagic cephalopods switch between transparency and pigmentation to optimize camouflage in the deep Current Biology, 21 (22), 1937-1941 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2011.10.014...

Zylinski, S., & Johnsen, S. (2011) Mesopelagic cephalopods switch between transparency and pigmentation to optimize camouflage in the deep. Current Biology, 21(22), 1937-1941. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2011.10.014

ADHD Summer Camp

2012-05-24T06:40:03Z

For harassed doctors and stressed-out parents, it can be tempting to treat a challenging child with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) with pills and leave it at that. After all, early results from the one of the largest trials of its kind in the United States - the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA) - showed that behavioural outcomes were better for children given the psychostimulant Ritalin, than for those given psychological treatment. However, follow-up data over several years has shown that the advantages of drug treatment aren't sustained over the longer term. The position of the UK's independent health advisory body, NICE, is that drug treatments for ADHD should only ever be part of a broader treatment package, including psycho-educational sessions for parents (pdf). The hunt continues for the most effective treatment or mix of treatments. It's in this context that a team of German psychologists, led by Wolf-Dieter Gerber at the University of Kiel, has published a new report looking at the benefits of combining drug treatment for ADHD with an intensive Summer Camp. Eighteen children with an ADHD diagnosis (aged 9 to 17 years), all on medication, spent 12 days at one such camp, which included social skills training conducted in a playful manner, attention training and sports. Crucially, the camp also incorporated "response cost token-based behaviour training" - that is, the children earned or lost tokens according to whether they followed or broke the camp rules. They were encouraged to compare their token totals each evening and a winner was declared for each day following an "Olympics style" format. At the end of the camp, the tokens could be exchanged for prizes. A control group of 19 age-matched children with ADHD, also on medication, didn't go to camp, but their parents received a one-and-a-half hour-long psycho-educational session in which they were taught, amongst other things, about using a token strategy in the home. Six months later, the children from both groups were tested on a range of neuropsychological measures and their outcomes compared with their pre-intervention test performance. The key finding is that only the Summer Camp kids showed a reduction in the variability of their reaction times. This is significant because highly sporadic reaction times are a hallmark of ADHD, indicative of reduced self control. Moreover, only the Summer Camp group showed significant improvements in selective and sustained attention and the capacity to integrate information. It's likely these cognitive changes were clinically significant. Only those children who received higher ratings from their teachers (in terms of improved impulsivity, hyperactivity and inattention) showed positive changes in the variability of their reaction time scores on the neuropsych tests. "We believe this study has merit" the researchers said, "as the ADHD Summer Camp can be regarded as a novelty in ADHD treatment. We could find no comparable intervention programmes that included stringent ... [token reward and punishment] techniques." _________________________________ Gerber, W., Gerber-von Müller, G., Andrasik, F., Niederberger, U., Siniatchkin, M., Kowalski, J., Petermann, U., and Petermann, F. (2012). The impact of a multimodal Summer Camp Training on neuropsychological functioning in children and adolescents with ADHD: An exploratory study. Child Neuropsychology, 18 (3), 242-255 DOI: 10.1080/09297049.2011.599115 Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest....

Gerber, W., Gerber-von Müller, G., Andrasik, F., Niederberger, U., Siniatchkin, M., Kowalski, J., Petermann, U., & Petermann, F. (2012) The impact of a multimodal Summer Camp Training on neuropsychological functioning in children and adolescents with ADHD: An exploratory study. Child Neuropsychology, 18(3), 242-255. DOI: 10.1080/09297049.2011.599115