Mismatch in Higher Education: Neoliberal Shortcomings in Intrinsic Value in the University

This research focuses on uncovering how the neoliberal atmosphere in which we find ourselves has influenced and socialized students to view college as a transaction between a buyer and a seller. Neoliberalism promotes free trade, open markets, and consumerism. How does neoliberal ideology affect student choices (i.e. schools, classes, teachers, etc.) that support and undermine neoliberalism itself? How does the internalization of the student-as-customer model contradict or reinforce neoliberal higher education? Higher education has become a complex institution, and free-market trade may benefit or hinder students. Approximately 31 open-ended interviews were conducted with students at BSU, and I conducted a qualitative analysis of these interviews. The criteria for participation required that each subject was over the age of eighteen, was in upper division standing, and was not a current student of the supervising professors. I expect to find that students are guided into education through monetary incentives. Also, I hope to see contradictions in the goals of neoliberalism and the practice of neoliberalism in higher education. It is critical that these shifts in understanding and ideology be researched so that we can interpret the goals and expectations of students

Siu-Lan Tan, Peter Pfordresher, & Rom Harré, Psychology of music: From sound to significance. Hove, UK: Psychology Press, 2010. ISBN: 978-1-84169-868-7 (hardcover)

Siu-Lan Tan, Peter Pfordresher, & Rom Harré, Psychology of music: From sound to significance. Hove, UK: Psychology Press, 2010. ISBN: 978-1-84169-868-7 (hardcover

The effect of dopaminergic medication on beat-based auditory timing in Parkinson’s disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) adversely affects timing abilities. Beat-based timing is a mechanism that times events relative to a regular interval, such as the ‘beat’ in musical rhythm, and is impaired in PD. It is unknown if dopaminergic medication influences beat-based timing in PD. Here we tested beat-based timing over two sessions in participants with PD (OFF then ON dopaminergic medication), and unmedicated control participants. People with PD and control participants completed two tasks. The first was a discrimination task in which participants compared two rhythms and determined whether they were the same or different. Rhythms either had a beat structure (metric simple rhythms), or did not (metric complex rhythms), as in previous studies. Discrimination accuracy was analyzed to test for the effects of beat structure, as well as differences between participants with PD and controls, and effects of medication (PD group only). The second task was the Beat Alignment Test (BAT), in which participants listened to music with regular tones superimposed, and responded as to whether the tones were ‘on’ or ‘off’ the beat of the music. Accuracy was analyzed to test for differences between participants with PD and controls, and for an effect of medication in patients.Both patients and controls discriminated metric simple rhythms better than metric complex rhythms. Controls also improved at the discrimination task in the second vs. first session, whereas people with PD did not. For participants with PD, the difference in performance between metric simple and metric complex rhythms was greater (sensitivity to changes in simple rhythms increased and sensitivity to changes in complex rhythms decreased) when ON vs. OFF medication. Performance also worsened with disease severity. For the Beat Alignment Test, no group differences or effects of medication were found. Overall, these findings suggest that timing is impaired in PD, and that dopaminergic medication influences beat-based and non-beat-based timing differently. Judging the beat in music does not appear to be affected by PD or by dopaminergic medication

Measuring salivary cortisol in the behavioral neuroscience laboratory

As instructors who teach laboratory courses in biological psychology/behavioral neuroscience, we have often been at a loss to find appropriate experiments where students are able to play both the role of experimenter and subject. The difficulty arises because there are few biological parameters representing CNS activity that can ethically be examined in human participants. As a result, the go-to experiments that allow students to act as both experimenter and subject tend to be electrophysiological in nature (e.g., EEG, GSR, etc.). It was our desire to create a laboratory module that would allow students to collect and analyze a biochemical measure of human neural activity. We report here the development of an experiment module that utilizes an easily obtainable enzyme immunoassay (EIA) kit (nearly identical to the ELISA) to measure human salivary cortisol. Cortisol is a hormone of the adrenal cortex that can be used as a peripheral indicator of hypothalamic neural activity. Plasma (and salivary) cortisol levels rise due to circadian influences as well as perturbations in the organism’s environment (i.e., stressors) that make it possible to detect rather robust experimental effects. Also, there has been much debate on the role of cortisol and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis dysregulation in the pathophysiology of depression making for a clinically relevant extension to the lecture portion dealing with the “stress axis” (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal or HPA axis). Collection of salivary cortisol is simple, painless, and non-invasive and can be performed at any time the subject desires. Sample storage is convenient as the samples can be kept in a home freezer. Repeated freeze-thaws do not adversely affect the determination of cortisol levels, so the students can just bring them in on the day of the assay without need of in-transport refrigeration or instructor/student coordination. The assay can be performed successfully by anyone with access to a plate reader and a few commonly-used laboratory items. A single plate assay can be completed in two hours (two to three hours by an inexperienced group of students under supervision). With the available cortisol kit, our students have examined both circadian effects and stressor/relaxation effects on salivary cortisol levels in a laboratory class setting. The module has been employed twice and we intend to include it in each semester that the course is taught. One further impact of the module is that studen

Simple random-interval generation reveals the irresistibly periodic structure of perceived time

Whole-integer ratios in musical rhythm are culturally universal. The reliable periodicity of rhythm inspired us to determine whether time perception, which is foundational to and inherently less structured than rhythm, is subject to similar biases. We created a random-interval generation task that exploits the nonrandom tendencies in perception and action in order to uncover the structural biases underlying temporal duration perception. Participants listened to and watched an audiovisual suprasecond temporal cue and were asked to subdivide it as randomly as possible in a prescribed number of responses. The results showed that the subdivision probability distributions were distinctly nonrandom, and closely resembled multimodal distributions with a number of equally spaced, symmetrical peaks equal to the number of subdivisions required. These patterns were thus highly periodic and isochronous, despite explicit instructions to act as randomly as possible. We interpreted this bias as an organizing heuristic that divides perceived time into smaller, equal-duration chunks in order to facilitate representation

Dynamics of Electric Field Domains and Oscillations of the Photocurrent in a Simple Superlattice Model

A discrete model is introduced to account for the time-periodic oscillations of the photocurrent in a superlattice observed by Kwok et al, in an undoped 40 period AlAs/GaAs superlattice. Basic ingredients are an effective negative differential resistance due to the sequential resonant tunneling of the photoexcited carriers through the potential barriers, and a rate equation for the holes that incorporates photogeneration and recombination. The photoexciting laser acts as a damping factor ending the oscillations when its power is large enough. The model explains: (i) the known oscillatory static I-V characteristic curve through the formation of a domain wall connecting high and low electric field domains, and (ii) the photocurrent and photoluminescence time-dependent oscillations after the domain wall is formed. In our model, they arise from the combined motion of the wall and the shift of the values of the electric field at the domains. Up to a certain value of the photoexcitation, the non-uniform field profile with two domains turns out to be metastable: after the photocurrent oscillations have ceased, the field profile slowly relaxes toward the uniform stationary solution (which is reached on a much longer time scale). Multiple stability of stationary states and hysteresis are also found. An interpretation of the oscillations in the photoluminescence spectrum is also given.Comment: 34 pages, REVTeX 3.0, 10 figures upon request, MA/UC3M/07/9

Electrically tunable GHz oscillations in doped GaAs-AlAs superlattices

Tunable oscillatory modes of electric-field domains in doped semiconductor superlattices are reported. The experimental investigations demonstrate the realization of tunable, GHz frequencies in GaAs-AlAs superlattices covering the temperature region from 5 to 300 K. The orgin of the tunable oscillatory modes is determined using an analytical and a numerical modeling of the dynamics of domain formation. Three different oscillatory modes are found. Their presence depends on the actual shape of the drift velocity curve, the doping density, the boundary condition, and the length of the superlattice. For most bias regions, the self-sustained oscillations are due to the formation, motion, and recycling of the domain boundary inside the superlattice. For some biases, the strengths of the low and high field domain change periodically in time with the domain boundary being pinned within a few quantum wells. The dependency of the frequency on the coupling leads to the prediction of a new type of tunable GHz oscillator based on semiconductor superlattices.Comment: Tex file (20 pages) and 16 postscript figure