Language, Culture and Spatial Cognition: Bringing anthropology to the table

Languages vary in their semantic partitioning of the world. This has led to speculation that language might shape basic cognitive processes. Spatial cognition has been an area of research in which linguistic relativity – the effect of language on thought – has both been proposed and rejected. Prior studies have been inconclusive, lacking experimental rigor or appropriate research design. Lacking detailed ethnographic knowledge as well as failing to pay attention to intralanguage variations, these studies often fall short of defining an appropriate concept of language, culture, and cognition. Our study constitutes the first research exploring (1) individuals speaking different languages yet living (for generations) in the same immediate environment and (2) systematic intralanguage variation. Results show that language does not shape spatial cognition and plays at best the secondary role of foregrounding alternative possibilities for encoding spatial arrangements

Chemical ecology and olfactory behaviour of an aphid parasitoid and a lacewing predator

Female parasitoid (Aphidius colemani) olfactory preference was consistently biased in olfactometer experiments towards the Brassica cultivar on which it was reared when offered other Brassica cultivars as alternatives using either whole plants or detached leaves. Using gas chromatography, differences could be detected in the volatile composition of whole plants and detached leaves of five Brassica cultivars and the volatiles responsible for the fine distinctions the wasps are capable of making between plant cultivars are suggested. By subjecting female wasps to olfactory conditioning protocols, studies were carried out to understand the learning process for individual green leaf volatiles (6-carbon molecules), known to elicit behavioural responses in many insect species. Wasps were exposed to primary alcohols with differing carbon chain lengths in conjunction with aphids in an attempt to condition the wasps to the alcohols. When tested for learning, wasps changed their responses towards alcohols with molecules consisting of between 5 and 6 carbon atoms. The effect of cold temperature on olfactory preference was also investigated. After treating females at 0 °C for 0.5 h or longer, preference for the odour of the Brassica cultivar on which they were reared was lost for one hour after the cold treatment had finished, after which, the preference returned. However, when Brassica or unencountered plant odours were presented with clean air as the alternative choice, females could discern plant odour even immediately after the cold treatment. This suggests that the olfactory and locomotive systems were not altered by cold, whereas responses arising from learning-produced memories appear to have been inhibited temporarily and revealing underlying innate responses. The results indicate that temperature treatments could offer the possibility of dissecting innate and learnt behaviours in these parasitic wasps. The importance of controlling humidity arising from odour choices in olfactometers is also observed. In addition to assessing the parasitoid’s behaviour, various aspects of the role that neomatatabiol, a chemical compound closely related to aphid sex pheromone was investigated in relation to its role in the chemical ecology of the green lacewing Peyerimhoffina gracilis

Deep Predictive Models for Collision Risk Assessment in Autonomous Driving

In this paper, we investigate a predictive approach for collision risk assessment in autonomous and assisted driving. A deep predictive model is trained to anticipate imminent accidents from traditional video streams. In particular, the model learns to identify cues in RGB images that are predictive of hazardous upcoming situations. In contrast to previous work, our approach incorporates (a) temporal information during decision making, (b) multi-modal information about the environment, as well as the proprioceptive state and steering actions of the controlled vehicle, and (c) information about the uncertainty inherent to the task. To this end, we discuss Deep Predictive Models and present an implementation using a Bayesian Convolutional LSTM. Experiments in a simple simulation environment show that the approach can learn to predict impending accidents with reasonable accuracy, especially when multiple cameras are used as input sources.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Perchance to Read: Developing an Augmented Reality Game to Increase Student Engagement with Hamlet

Hamlet (and similar texts) can be difficult for students to follow initially. Often when students read, they may gloss over the text, missing key contexts. These problems lead to a lack of engagement in the literature classroom. The use of videos can help, but this often deters reading. This dilemma prompted the development of an Augmented Reality (AR) application to enhance Hamlet. By ‘zooming in’ on specific elements of Hamlet—Act I Scenes IV and V (the ghost scenes)— students explore and gain valuable information on the context behind these scenes. Students discover their perspective on a key question in the play; is the ghost real, or is it coinage from Hamlet’s brain? Students can arrive at a more concrete understanding of their own thoughts and take away a better grasp of both the context of the scene and the character of Hamlet through their active participation in the application.   Primarily, this article will highlight the dramatic effect student experience, both real and perceived, had on the development and execution of the application. The goal is to convey the pedagogical questions addressed when conceptualizing the application: the desired learning outcomes, the perceived student audience, and the need to connect game actions to the text of the play. It is one thing to speculate what students may want/need in such an environment from an instructor’s perspective. It’s another to analyze student and instructor feedback to help highlight critical areas more effectively. Students not only learn through their actions in the app; they help create the design of the application through their feedback. The article will detail the development of the application through this user input and the impact of praxis on its iteration

Something Rotten: Space, Place, and the Nation in Hamlet and As You Like It

Ecocriticism has been defined as literature that concretely concerns the environment, which can be obviously applied to those of Shakespeare’s that directly depict natural disaster. This creates a prototype of a Shakespearean Ecocritical canon. My thesis addresses the limitation of this initial definition, and applies ecocritical theory to other works by Shakespeare. Ecocriticism is no longer confined to only the natural as critics expand the field through examinations of built environments and urban interaction with the natural. This widening of the field encourages the addition of further Ecocritical Shakespeare. How can audiences see the unnatural as natural, and conversely the natural as unnatural through competing plays? To answer this question, I propose a comparison of two plays from Shakespeare written in 1601 – Hamlet and As You Like It. My thesis is particularly interested in defining the ecocritical in Hamlet, a play generally not approached for its depictions of nature, and using the pastoral As You Like It as a point of comparison. Hamlet does not have the critical theory associated with pastoralism like As You Like It, but reading Hamlet with an ecocritical lens combines the move towards examining built environments and the urban with the history of pastoral criticism applied to plays like As You Like It

Rethinking Theatrical Documents in Shakespeare’s England

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. Rethinking Theatrical Documents brings together fifteen major scholars to analyse and theorise the documents, lost and found, that produced a play in Shakespeare’s England. Showing how the playhouse frantically generated paratexts, it explores a rich variety of entangled documents, some known and some unknown: from before the play (drafts, casting lists, actors’ parts); during the play (prologues, epilogues, title-boards); and after the play (playbooks, commonplace snippets, ballads) – though ‘before’, ‘during’ and ‘after’ intertwine in fascinating ways. By using collective intervention to rethink both theatre history and book history, it provides new ways of understanding plays critically, interpretatively, editorially, practically and textually

Psychophysical Nature

There are two quite distinct ways in which events that we normally think of as “physical” relate in an intimate way to events that we normally think of as “psychological”. One intimate relation occurs in exteroception at the point where events in the world become events as-perceived. The other intimate relationship occurs at the interface of conscious experience with its neural correlates in the brain. The chapter examines each of these relationships and positions them within a dual-aspect, reflexive model of how consciousness relates to the brain and external world. The chapter goes on to provide grounds for viewing mind and nature as fundamentally psychophysical, and examines similar views as well as differences in previously unpublished writings of Wolfgang Pauli, one of the founders of quantum mechanics