The promises and perils of the neuroscience of creativity.

Our ability to think creatively is one of the factors that generates excitement in our lives as it introduces novelty and opens up new possibilities to our awareness which in turn lead to developments in a variety of fields from science and technology to art and culture. While research on the influence of biologically-based variables on creativity has a long history, the advent of modern techniques for investigating brain structure and function in the past two decades have resulted in an exponential increase in the number of neuroscientific studies that have explored creativity. The field of creative neurocognition is a rapidly growing area of research that can appear chaotic and inaccessible because of the heterogeneity associated with the creativity construct and the many approaches through which it can be examined. There are also significant methodological and conceptual problems that are specific to the neuroscientific study of creativity that pose considerable limitations on our capacity to make true advances in understanding the brain basis of creativity. This article explores three key issues that need to be addressed so that barriers in the way of relevant progress being made within the field can be avoided. Are creativity neuroimaging paradigms optimal enough?What makes creative cognition different from normative cognition?Do we need to distinguish between types of creativity

Telling identities: In Search of an Analytic Tool for Investigating Learning as a Culturally Shaped Activity

In this article, we make an attempt to operationalize the notion of identity so as to justify the claim about its potential as an analytic tool for investigating learning. According to our definition, identity is a set of reifying, significant, endorsable stories about a person. The subsequent analysis of the dynamics of narratives makes it clear that identities, even if individually told, are products of a collective storytelling. Our main claim is that learning may be thought of as closing the gap between actual identity and designated identity, two particular sets of reifying significant stories about the learner, endorsed by this learner. The theoretical substantiation of this assertion is accompanied by vignettes from a study in which mathematical learning practices of a group of 17 year old immigrant students from the former Soviet Union newly arrived in Israel were compared to those of native Israelis

MOOCs for language learning – opportunities and challenges: the case of the Open University Italian Beginners’ MOOCs

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are a fairly recent development in online education. Language MOOCs (LMOOCs) have recently been added to the ever-growing list of open courses offered by various providers, including FutureLearn. For learners, MOOCs offer an innovative and inexpensive alternative to formal and traditional learning. For course designers and developers, this emerging learning model raises important issues concerning the affordances of the new learning environment and the rationale for adopting a particular pedagogical approach to sustain the learning experience. The authors offer an insight into their own experiences in designing and delivering an Italian for Beginners MOOC on Future Learn. This case study explores the opportunities and challenges we met and the link with existing research

The world according to me: personal relevance and the medial prefrontal cortex.

More than a decade of neuroimaging research has established that anterior and posterior cortical midline regions are consistently recruited during self-referential thinking. These regions are engaged under conditions of directed cognition, such as during explicit self-reference tasks, as well as during spontaneous cognition, such as under conditions of rest. One of the many issues that remain to be clarified regarding the relationship between self-referential thinking and cortical midline activity is the functional specificity of these regions with regard to the nature of self-representation and processing. The functional profile associated with the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is the focus of the current article. What is specifically explored is the idea that personal relevance or personal significance is a central factor that impacts how brain activity is modulated within this cortical midline region. The proactive, imaginative, and predictive nature of function in the mPFC is examined by evaluating studies of spontaneously directed cognition, which is triggered by stimulus-associated personal relevance

INVESTIGATING INVASION IN DUCTAL CARCINOMA IN SITU WITH TOPOGRAPHICAL SINGLE CELL GENOME SEQUENCING

Synchronous Ductal Carcinoma in situ (DCIS-IDC) is an early stage breast cancer invasion in which it is possible to delineate genomic evolution during invasion because of the presence of both in situ and invasive regions within the same sample. While laser capture microdissection studies of DCIS-IDC examined the relationship between the paired in situ (DCIS) and invasive (IDC) regions, these studies were either confounded by bulk tissue or limited to a small set of genes or markers. To overcome these challenges, we developed Topographic Single Cell Sequencing (TSCS), which combines laser-catapulting with single cell DNA sequencing to measure genomic copy number profiles from single tumor cells while preserving their spatial context. We applied TSCS to sequence 1,293 single cells from 10 synchronous DCIS patients. We also applied deep-exome sequencing to the in situ, invasive and normal tissues for the DCIS-IDC patients. Previous bulk tissue studies had produced several conflicting models of tumor evolution. Our data support a multiclonal invasion model, in which genome evolution occurs within the ducts and gives rise to multiple subclones that escape the ducts into the adjacent tissues to establish the invasive carcinomas. In summary, we have developed a novel method for single cell DNA sequencing, which preserves spatial context, and applied this method to understand clonal evolution during the transition between carcinoma in situ to invasive ductal carcinoma

The impact of plant growth promoting bacteria (PGPB) on the development of phytopathogenic fungi

The main purpose of this study was to evaluate impact of plant growth promoting bacteria (PGPB) on the development of phytopathogenic fungi and correlate it with a potential effects on the growth of plants under unfavorable conditions, in order to improve the efficiency of a phytoremediation process. The conducted research focused on the antifungal properties of PGPB. In this study, 51 isolates of bacteria were obtained after diversified disinfection time from plants growing on soil after sewage sludge amendment. The results revealed that some isolated bacteria, mainly endophytic ones, inhibited the development of Fusarium oxysporum, F. culmorum and Alternaria alternata.Wyniki eksperymentu wskazują, że bakterie izolowane po czasie 2.5 i 10 minut sterylizacji, czyli głównie bakterie endofityczne, hamowały rozwój badanych grzybów - potencjalnych patogenów roślin. Badania wykazały także, że z rzodkiewnika pospolitego (Arabidopsis thaliana), znanego halofita, pozyskano najwyższą liczbę mikroorganizmów, które także wykazywały najlepsze właściwości inhibitujące wzrost grzybni wszystkich badanych patogenów

Hitting is male, giving is female. Automatic imitation and complementarity during action observation

Is somebody going to hurt us? We draw back. The present study investigates using behavioral measures the interplay between imitative and complementary actions activated while observing female/male hands performing different actions. Female and male participants were required to discriminate the gender of biologically and artificially colored hands that displayed both individual (grasping) and social (giving and punching) actions. Biological hands evoked automatic imitation, while hands of different gender activated complementary mechanisms. Furthermore, responses reflected gender stereotypes: giving actions were more associated to females, punching actions to males. Results have implications for studies on social stereotyping, and for research on action observation, showing that the mirror neuron system resonates in both an imitative and complementary fashion

Real Option Valuation of a Portfolio of Oil Projects

Various methodologies exist for valuing companies and their projects. We address the problem of valuing a portfolio of projects within companies that have infrequent, large and volatile cash flows. Examples of this type of company exist in oil exploration and development and we will use this example to illustrate our analysis throughout the thesis. The theoretical interest in this problem lies in modeling the sources of risk in the projects and their different interactions within each project. Initially we look at the advantages of real options analysis and compare this approach with more traditional valuation methods, highlighting strengths and weaknesses ofeach approach in the light ofthe thesis problem. We give the background to the stages in an oil exploration and development project and identify the main common sources of risk, for example commodity prices. We discuss the appropriate representation for oil prices; in short, do oil prices behave more like equities or more like interest rates? The appropriate representation is used to model oil price as a source ofrisk. A real option valuation model based on market uncertainty (in the form of oil price risk) and geological uncertainty (reserve volume uncertainty) is presented and tested for two different oil projects. Finally, a methodology to measure the inter-relationship between oil price and other sources of risk such as interest rates is proposed using copula methods.Imperial Users onl

Man’s Underground Best Friend: Domestic Ferrets, Unlike the Wild Forms, Show Evidence of Dog-Like Social-Cognitive Skills

Recent research has shown that dogs’ possess surprisingly sophisticated human-like social communication skills compared to wolves or chimpanzees. The effects of domestication on the emergence of socio-cognitive skills, however, are still highly debated. One way to investigate this is to compare socialized individuals from closely related domestic and wild species. In the present study we tested domestic ferrets (Mustela furo) and compared their performance to a group of wild Mustela hybrids and to domestic dogs (Canis familiaris). We found that, in contrast to wild Mustela hybrids, both domestic ferrets and dogs tolerated eye-contact for a longer time when facing their owners versus the experimenter and they showed a preference in a two-way choice task towards their owners. Furthermore, domestic ferrets, unlike the wild hybrids, were able to follow human directional gestures (sustained touching; momentary pointing) and could reach the success rate of dogs. Our study provides the first evidence that domestic ferrets, in a certain sense, are more dog-like than their wild counterparts. These findings support the hypothesis that domestic species may share basic socio-cognitive skills that enable them to engage in effectively orchestrated social interactions with humans