Informing students using virtual microscopes and their impact on students' approach to learning

This research is an exploratory study of students ’ approaches to studying histology and pathology. With the introduction of virtual microscopes in Health Science at Murdoch University, Australia, in 2006, it was crucial to investigate how this new technology impacted on students ’ approaches to learning. The ASSIST survey was implemented at the beginning and end of the semester to identify any changes. Results indicate that, when the technology was integrated into the curriculum with appropriate learning activities, students using virtual microscopes moved more towards a strategic approach to learning but expressed a preference for a deep approach to teaching

Technology shocks and the business cycle

Technology ; Business cycles

Why has home ownership fallen among the young?

We document that home ownership of households with 'heads' aged 25-44 years fell substantially between 1980 and 2000 and recovered only partially during the 2001-2005 housing boom. The 1980-2000 decline in young home ownership occurred as improvements in mortgage opportunities made it easier to purchase a home. This paper uses an equilibrium life-cycle model calibrated to micro and macro evidence to understand why young home ownership fell over a period when it became easier to own a home. Our findings indicate that a trend toward marrying later and the increase in household earnings risk that occurred after 1980 account for 3/5 to 4/5 of the decline in young home ownership.Housing, home ownership, tenure choice, first-time home-buyers, marriage, income risk

Why has home ownership fallen among the young?

We document that home ownership of households with "heads" aged 25 - 44 years fell substantially between 1980 and 2000 and recovered only partially during the 2001-2005 housing boom. The 1980-2000 decline in young home ownership occurred as improvements in mortgage opportunities made it easier to purchase a home. This paper uses an equilibrium life-cycle model calibrated to micro and macro evidence to understand why young home ownership fell over a period when it became easier to own a home. Our findings indicate that a trend toward marrying later and the increase in household earnings risk that occurred after 1980 account for 3/5 to 4/5 of the decline in young home ownership.Home ownership ; Marriage

Dicke-type phase transition in a multimode optomechanical system

We consider the "membrane in the middle" optomechanical model consisting of a laser pumped cavity which is divided in two by a flexible membrane that is partially transmissive to light and subject to radiation pressure. Steady state solutions at the mean-field level reveal that there is a critical strength of the light-membrane coupling above which there is a symmetry breaking bifurcation where the membrane spontaneously acquires a displacement either to the left or the right. This bifurcation bears many of the signatures of a second order phase transition and we compare and contrast it with that found in the Dicke model. In particular, by studying limiting cases and deriving dynamical critical exponents using the fidelity susceptibility method, we argue that the two models share very similar critical behaviour. For example, the obtained critical exponents indicate that they fall within the same universality class. Away from the critical regime we identify, however, some discrepancies between the two models. Our results are discussed in terms of experimentally relevant parameters and we evaluate the prospects for realizing Dicke-type physics in these systems.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figure

Impurity in a bosonic Josephson junction: swallowtail loops, chaos, self-trapping and the poor man's Dicke model

We study a model describing $N$ identical bosonic atoms trapped in a double-well potential together with a single impurity atom, comparing and contrasting it throughout with the Dicke model. As the boson-impurity coupling strength is varied, there is a symmetry-breaking pitchfork bifurcation which is analogous to the quantum phase transition occurring in the Dicke model. Through stability analysis around the bifurcation point, we show that the critical value of the coupling strength has the same dependence on the parameters as the critical coupling value in the Dicke model. We also show that, like the Dicke model, the mean-field dynamics go from being regular to chaotic above the bifurcation and macroscopic excitations of the bosons are observed. Overall, the boson-impurity system behaves like a poor man's version of the Dicke model.Comment: 17 pages, 16 figure

Right Temporoparietal Junction Involvement in Autonomic Responses to the Suffering of Others: A Preliminary Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study.

Functional neuroimaging studies have emphasized distinct networks for social cognition and affective aspects of empathy. However, studies have not considered whether substrates of social cognition, such as the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ), play a role in affective responses to complex empathy-related stimuli. Here, we used repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to test whether the right TPJ contributes to psychophysiological responses to another person's emotional suffering. We used a theory of mind functional localizer and image-guided TMS to target the sub-region of the right TPJ implicated in social cognition, and measured autonomic and subjective responses to an empathy induction video. We found evidence that TMS applied at 1 Hz over the right TPJ increased withdrawal of parasympathetic nervous system activity during the empathy induction (n = 32), but did not affect sympathetic nervous system activity (n = 27). Participants who received TMS over the right TPJ also reported feeling more irritation and annoyance, and were less likely to report feeling compassion over and above empathic sadness, than participants who received TMS over the vertex (N = 34). This study provides preliminary evidence for the role of right TPJ functioning in empathy-related psychophysiological and affective responding, potentially blurring the distinction between neural regions specific to social cognition vs. affective aspects of empathy

In search of a robust inflation forecast

It is difficult to consistently improve upon forecasts of inflation based solely on the most recent data on inflation. In this article, we show how to do so. Our main finding is that the most robust forecasts combine information from several different forecasting models, each of which incorporates the information in the available inflation indicators in different ways.Inflation (Finance)