Higher degree research by numbers: beyond the critiques of neo-liberalism

© 2017 HERDSA. This article argues that strong theories of neo-liberalism do not provide an adequate frame for understanding the ways that measurement practices come to be embedded in the life-worlds of those working in higher education. We argue that neo-liberal metrics need to be understood from the viewpoint of their social usage, alongside other practices of qualification and quantification. In particular, this article maps the specific variables attending measurement in higher degree research programmes, as the key sites that familiarize students with measurement practices around research and teaching. With regard to the incremental reframing of doctoral study as a utilitarian pursuit, we suggest a need to better identify the singular and immeasurable features of long-term research projects, and argue for a revitalized notion of failure. In this context, this article suggests that many critiques of neo-liberalism do not sufficiently advance alternative ways to think about the purposes and limitations of higher education

Primitive Shape Imagery Classification from Electroencephalography

Introduction: Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) augment traditional interfaces for human-computer interaction and provide alternative communication devices to enable the physically impaired to work. Imagined object/shape classification from electroencephalography (EEG) may lead, for example, to enhanced tools for fields such as engineering, design, and the visual arts. Evidence to support such a proposition from non-invasive neuroimaging techniques to date has mainly involved functional magnetic resonance tomography (fMRI) [1] indicating that visual perception and mental imagery show similar brain activity patterns [2] and, although the primary visual cortex has an important role in mental imagery and perception, the occipitotemporal cortex also encodes sensory, semantic and emotional properties during shape imagery [3]. Here we investigate if five imagined primitive shapes (sphere, cone, pyramid, cylinder, cube) can be classified from EEG using filter bank common spatial patterns (FBCSP) [4]. Material, Methods, and Results: Ten healthy volunteers (8 males and 2 females, aged 26-44) participated in a single session study (three runs, four blocks/run, 30 trials/block (i.e., six repetitions of five primitive shapes in random order)). Trials lasted 7s as shown in Fig. 1 and ended with an auditory tone. Thirty EEG channels were recorded with a g.BSamp EEG system using active electrodes (g.tec, Austria). EEG channels with high-level noise were removed. Signals were band-pass filtered in six non-overlapped, 4Hz width bands covering the 4-40Hz frequency range. Filter bank common spatial pattern (FBCSP) based feature extraction and mutual information (MI) based feature selection methods provided input features for 2-class classification using linear discriminant analysis (LDA) for target shape versus the rest, separately. The final 5-class classification was decided by assessing the signed distance in the 2-class discriminant hyperplane for each of the five binary classifiers as shown in Fig. 1. Classifiers were trained on two runs and tested on the one unseen run (i.e., 3 fold cross-validation). A Wilcoxon non-parametric test was used to validate the difference of DA at end of the resting period (-1s) and at the maximal peak accuracy occurring during the shape imagery task (0-3s) is significant (p<0.001). Fig. 1 shows the between-subject average time-varying classification accuracies with standard deviation (shaded area). Discussion: The results indicate that there is separability provided by the shape imagery and there is significantly higher accuracy compared to the ~20% chance level prior the display period with maximum accuracy reaching 34%. In [5] classification of five imagined primitive and complex shapes with 44% accuracy is reported using a 14 channel Emotiv headset. Differences in performance reported may be influenced by EEG recording (EEG in [5] appears to have different dynamics (significant mean shifts)), the study had more sessions/trials, applied ICA for noise removal and the participants had designer experience whilst our study did not. Improvement of our methods is required to achieve higher accuracy rate. It is unclear if an online feedback to shape imagery training and learning will an impact performance – a multisession online study with feedback is the next step in this research. Significance: To best of our knowledge this is only the second study of shape imagery classification from EEG

A novel systematic approach for analysing exploratory design ideation

Two kinds of design ideation process may be distinguished in terms of the problems addressed: (i) solution-focused, i.e. generating solutions to address a fixed problem specifying a desired output; and (ii) exploratory, i.e. considering different interpretations of an open-ended problem and generating associated solutions. Existing systematic analysis approaches focus on the former; the literature is lacking such an approach for the latter. In this paper, we provide a means to systematically analyse exploratory ideation for the first time through a new approach: Analysis of Exploratory Design Ideation (AEDI). AEDI involves: (1) open-ended ideation tasks; (2) coding of explored problems and solutions from sketches; and (3) evaluating ideation performance based on coding. We applied AEDI to 812 concept sketches from 19 open-ended tasks completed during a neuroimaging study of 30 professional product design engineers. Results demonstrate that the approach provides: (i) consistent tasks that stimulate problem exploration; (ii) a reliable means of coding explored problems and solutions; and (iii) an appropriate way to rank/compare designers’ performance. AEDI enables the benefits of systematic analysis (e.g. greater comparability, replicability, and efficiency) to be realised in exploratory ideation research, and studies using open-ended problems more generally. Future improvements include increasing coding validity and reliability

DNA metabarcoding for diet analysis and biodiversity: A case study using the endangered Australian sea lion (Neophoca cinerea)

The analysis of apex predator diet has the ability to deliver valuable insights into ecosystem health, and the potential impacts a predator might have on commercially relevant species. The Australian sea lion (Neophoca cinerea) is an endemic apex predator and one of the world’s most endangered pinnipeds. Given that prey availability is vital to the survival of top predators, this study set out to understand what dietary information DNA metabarcoding could yield from 36 sea lion scats collected across 1,500 km of its distribution in southwest Western Australia. A combination of PCR assays were designed to target a variety of potential sea lion prey, including mammals, fish, crustaceans, cephalopods, and birds. Over 1.2 million metabarcodes identified six classes from three phyla, together representing over 80 taxa. The results confirm that the Australian sea lion is a wide- ranging opportunistic predator that consumes an array of mainly demersal fauna. Further, the important commercial species Sepioteuthis australis (southern calamari squid) and Panulirus cygnus (western rock lobster) were detected, but were present in <25% of samples. Some of the taxa identified, such as fish, sharks and rays, clarify previous knowledge of sea lion prey, and some, such as eel taxa and two gastropod species, represent new dietary insights. Even with modest sample sizes, a spatial analysis of taxa and operational taxonomic units found within the scat shows significant differences in diet between many of the sample locations and identifies the primary taxa that are driving this variance. This study provides new insights into the diet of this endangered predator and confirms the efficacy of DNA metabarcoding of scat as a noninvasive tool to more broadly define regional biodiversity

Subsistence practices, past biodiversity, and anthropogenic impacts revealed by New Zealand-wide ancient DNA survey

New Zealand's geographic isolation, lack of native terrestrial mammals, and Gondwanan origins make it an ideal location to study evolutionary processes. However, since the archipelago was first settled by humans 750 y ago, its unique biodiversity has been under pressure, and today an estimated 49% of the terrestrial avifauna is extinct. Current efforts to conserve the remaining fauna rely on a better understanding of the composition of past ecosystems, as well as the causes and timing of past extinctions. The exact temporal and spatial dynamics of New Zealand's extinct fauna, however, can be difficult to interpret, as only a small proportion of animals are preserved as morphologically identifiable fossils. Here, we conduct a large-scale genetic survey of subfossil bone assemblages to elucidate the impact of humans on the environment in New Zealand. By genetically identifying more than 5,000 nondiagnostic bone fragments from archaeological and paleontological sites, we reconstruct a rich faunal record of 110 species of birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and marine mammals. We report evidence of five whale species rarely reported from New Zealand archaeological middens and characterize extinct lineages of leiopelmatid frog (Leiopelma sp.) and kakapo (Strigops habroptilus) haplotypes lost from the gene pool. Taken together, this molecular audit of New Zealand's subfossil record not only contributes to our understanding of past biodiversity and precontact Maori subsistence practices but also provides a more nuanced snapshot of anthropogenic impacts on native fauna after first human arrival

Insights into design concept similarity judgements

Similarity has been shown to influence various measures of outcome creativity in combinatorial design tasks, but the role of similarity during the combination of design concepts is unknown. As an initial step towards understanding design concept similarity we review prominent models of similarity processing, highlight challenges with adoption in a design context, and carry out an exploratory experimental investigation of design concept similarity perception. Similarity may be the result of structural alignment processing and similarity ratings appear to vary with the number of commonalities

Is There Such a Thing as Psychological Pain? and Why It Matters

Medicine regards pain as a signal of physical injury to the body despite evidence contradicting the linkage and despite the exclusion of vast numbers of sufferers who experience psychological pain. By broadening our concept of pain and making it more inclusive, we would not only better accommodate the basic science of pain but also would recognize what is already appreciated by the layperson—that pain from diverse sources, physical and psychological, share an underlying felt structure

Rapid range shifts and megafaunal extinctions associated with late Pleistocene climate change

Large-scale changes in global climate at the end of the Pleistocene significantly impacted ecosystems across North America. However, the pace and scale of biotic turnover in response to both the Younger Dryas cold period and subsequent Holocene rapid warming have been challenging to assess because of the scarcity of well dated fossil and pollen records that covers this period. Here we present an ancient DNA record from Hall's Cave, Texas, that documents 100 vertebrate and 45 plant taxa from bulk fossils and sediment. We show that local plant and animal diversity dropped markedly during Younger Dryas cooling, but while plant diversity recovered in the early Holocene, animal diversity did not. Instead, five extant and nine extinct large bodied animals disappeared from the region at the end of the Pleistocene. Our findings suggest that climate change affected the local ecosystem in Texas over the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary, but climate change on its own may not explain the disappearance of the megafauna at the end of the Pleistocene.This study was supported by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project DP160104473, Forrest Research Foundation (to F.V.S.); field work in 2016 was funded by Stafford Research LLC