A Comparative Study of Male and Female Long-Term Westerners (LTW) Living in Japan.

This paper steps away from other papers in this series which discuss hybrid identities of long-term Western foreign residents (LTW) to report significant data gathered from a questionnaire (n=306) which was originally used to perform a Pearson r correlation (OʼKeefe 2016). Certain items starting with basic statistical information such as nationality, marital status, age, and education level and proceeding to a self-rated language skill score are also included in this report. Life-satisfaction results along with other significant data are also shown here in their original form. The results of items that asked respondents their opinion on certain subjects are displayed here to act as a debate for future work. Items inquire about subjects like dual citizenship, the right to vote in all elections and opinions on the Japanese school system. Respondents were also asked what their plans are for the future. Items such as this seek out the feeling of permanence rather than living a temporary life in Japan. Finally, the main focus of this data is to report on the variance recorded in female/male responses to certain items through simple cross tabulation. Significant has been designated, for the purpose of this study, at greater than an 8% variance. The data indicates that gender roles are affected by the expectations of male and female roles within the Japanese construct. The variances are broken down into two groups: personal and professional environments

Visual Sociology: Transforming the classroom environment by applying project based and active learning

This paper attempts to explain one way to implement visual sociology in a 3rd year seminar course through the usage of video production. Both Project based learning (PBL) and active learning techniques are used to support this course. The task at hand is specifically that the students create a short documentary over the year on a theme they have chosen. The benefit to the students is to understand what it is like to work on a long-term group project from beginning to end while observing how their work as an individual has or has not assisted in its completion. Working with a group challenges students to create their own identity within the tasks they are presented. During the course, students learn both qualitative and quantitative research techniques as well as how to record their online research findings. The choice to attempt such a class also presents several challenges for the teacher as well. Students are graded throughout the semester with a series of rubrics which are shared with them periodically during the project. While the specialty of the instructor is being taught, in this case, a variety of sociological frameworks applied to themes generated from international cooperation and intercultural communication are needed, the instructor must also have knowledge of video and audio production to assist the students when necessary in a timely fashion. This unique combination allows students to experience a class they feel a part of and can easily visualize their work at the end of the full year course. This paper does not infer a conclusion but rather hopes to start a discussion of the process

Twitter’s Fake News Discourses Around Climate Change and Global Warming

In this empirical study, we collected about 6.8 million tweets that mentioned “fake news”, and we extracted references to climate change and/or global warming to understand the public discourses around these two issues. Using a mixed method, the study’s findings show that there is a clear politically polarized discussion on climate change. We found that the majority of tweets focus on the United States context though references to other Western coutnries are often made. The anti-Liberal or anti-Democratic online community was more active on Twitter than the anti-conservative or anti-Republican community. Also, more than half the examined most retweeted posts contained claims about climate change being a natural cycle or even denying it exists, while about a third of these tweets stated that climate change was anthropogenic. The implications of the study are discussed, we argue that fake news as a term has a hollow meaning as it is used as a buzzword to discredit opponents and further the political agenda of different parties not only in the United States but also in other Western countries like Australia

Spike-Based Bayesian-Hebbian Learning of Temporal Sequences

Many cognitive and motor functions are enabled by the temporal representation and processing of stimuli, but it remains an open issue how neocortical microcircuits can reliably encode and replay such sequences of information. To better understand this, a modular attractor memory network is proposed in which meta-stable sequential attractor transitions are learned through changes to synaptic weights and intrinsic excitabilities via the spike-based Bayesian Confidence Propagation Neural Network (BCPNN) learning rule. We find that the formation of distributed memories, embodied by increased periods of firing in pools of excitatory neurons, together with asymmetrical associations between these distinct network states, can be acquired through plasticity. The model's feasibility is demonstrated using simulations of adaptive exponential integrate-and-fire model neurons (AdEx). We show that the learning and speed of sequence replay depends on a confluence of biophysically relevant parameters including stimulus duration, level of background noise, ratio of synaptic currents, and strengths of short-term depression and adaptation. Moreover, sequence elements are shown to flexibly participate multiple times in the sequence, suggesting that spiking attractor networks of this type can support an efficient combinatorial code. The model provides a principled approach towards understanding how multiple interacting plasticity mechanisms can coordinate hetero-associative learning in unison