Book review: Singapore and Switzerland: secrets to small states success edited by Yvonne Guo and Jun Jie Woo

What makes a small state succeed? In Singapore and Switzerland: Secrets to Small State Success, editors Yvonne Guo and Jun Jie Woo explore this question through two cases that have shown similar economic performance by balancing international forces and domestic demands. This is a far-reaching overview of the mechanisms that have shaped the successes – and some failures – of Singapore and Switzerland that will be of use to students and researchers of business studies, public policy and comparative politics, finds Michele Fenzl

Book review: Uninformed: why people know so little about politics and what we can do about it by Arthur Lupia

Are citizens fundamentally uninformed – or even misinformed – when it comes to questions of politics and government? In Uninformed: Why People Knows So Little About Politics and What We Can Do About It, Arthur Lupia tackles the issue of political ignorance by arguing that rather than simply seeking to provide greater information to the public on political issues, the more pressing concern for those positioning themselves in the role of ‘civic educators’ is how to communicate effectively. Michele Fenzl finds this one of the best scholarly engagements with the question of political ignorance, offering practical strategies that will not only be of use to political ‘instructors’, but to anyone interested in education and effective communication

Book review: social advantage and disadvantage edited by Hartley Dean and Lucinda Platt

Social Advantage and Disadvantage, edited by Hartley Dean and Lucinda Platt, explores these two concepts as necessarily relational terms, whereby any attempt to conceptualise disadvantage must be interwoven with an understanding of how relative advantage is constructed. Examining advantage and disadvantage across the life course as it relates to family, education, work, old age and income with particular focus on the UK, this book guides the reader through complex structures of inequality, making it a key read for students, scholars and policymakers, writes Michele Fenzl

Emergence and Self-Organization of Complex Systems: the role of energy flows and information a philosophical approach

How order emerges from noise? How higher complexity arises from lower complexity? For what reason a certain number of open systems start interacting in a coherent way, producing new structures, building up cohesion and new structural boundaries? To answer these questions we need to precise the concepts we use to describe open and complex systems and the basic driving forces of self-organization.   We assume that self-organization processes are related to the flow and throughput of Energy and Matter and the production of system-specific Information. These two processes are intimately linked together: Energy and Material flows are the fundamental carriers of signs, which are processed by the internal structure of the system to produce system-specific structural Information (Is). So far, the present theoretical reflections are focused on the emergence of open systems and on the role of Energy Flows and Information in a self-organizing process. Based on the assumption that Energy, Mass and Information are intrinsically linked together and are fundamental aspects of the Universe, we discuss how they might be related to each other and how they are able to produce the emergence of new structures and systems.

Echolocation calls and communication calls are controlled differentially in the brainstem of the bat Phyllostomus discolor

BACKGROUND: Echolocating bats emit vocalizations that can be classified either as echolocation calls or communication calls. Neural control of both types of calls must govern the same pool of motoneurons responsible for vocalizations. Electrical microstimulation in the periaqueductal gray matter (PAG) elicits both communication and echolocation calls, whereas stimulation of the paralemniscal area (PLA) induces only echolocation calls. In both the PAG and the PLA, the current thresholds for triggering natural vocalizations do not habituate to stimuli and remain low even for long stimulation periods, indicating that these structures have relative direct access to the final common pathway for vocalization. This study intended to clarify whether echolocation calls and communication calls are controlled differentially below the level of the PAG via separate vocal pathways before converging on the motoneurons used in vocalization. RESULTS: Both structures were probed simultaneously in a single experimental approach. Two stimulation electrodes were chronically implanted within the PAG in order to elicit either echolocation or communication calls. Blockade of the ipsilateral PLA site with iontophoretically application of the glutamate antagonist kynurenic acid did not impede either echolocation or communication calls elicited from the PAG. However, blockade of the contralateral PLA suppresses PAG-elicited echolocation calls but not communication calls. In both cases the blockade was reversible. CONCLUSION: The neural control of echolocation and communication calls seems to be differentially organized below the level of the PAG. The PLA is an essential functional unit for echolocation call control before the descending pathways share again the final common pathway for vocalization

Students Computer Literacy: Covariate For Assessing The Efficacy Of Computer Assisted Learning Tools

The purpose of this paper is to focus attention on the need to more rigorously measure computer-specific student characteristics when assessing the efficacy of computer assisted learning tools and benchmarking a curriculum's impact. It accomplishes this by first modeling learning outcomes assessment, identifying appropriate instruments, and discussing the absence of such measures in accounting education research. Then, the measurement process employed by the authors is discussed. The unsurprising results reveal statistically significant differences in computer anxiety and perceptions of computer skills across the student population. The significant implication is that heterogeneity must be controlled for when assessing resource-intensive computer assisted learning methods: Failure to do so will impair educators ability to determine the efficacy of computer assisted learning and the curriculum's contribution to students development