Evaluating EReaders for Academic Libraries

Academic libraries are currently questioning whether or not to invest in mobile EBook readers to increase access to electronic books (EBooks). While academic libraries decide how to increase access to EBooks, and where to build EBook collections, the focus on “convenience” often overrides a deeper conversation on how a fast, large-scale replacement of paper books with EBooks may affect student reading comprehension or retention of information. Although adding EBooks and EReaders would address diverse reading styles, some libraries are considering fully electronic collections without a notion of how this will affect their patrons or basic library processes. This poster session will address the strengths and weaknesses of the major EReaders on the market (Kindle, Sony EReader, Nook, and iTouch) as well as preliminary data from a study examining differences in the reading comprehension of students and anonymous individuals on their experience reading from EReaders as compared to traditional print books

Ebooks and reading comprehension: Perspectives of Librarians and Educators

Academic libraries are currently questioning whether or not to invest in Kindles (or other mobile EBook readers, in this paper referred as “ereaders”) to increase access to electronic books (EBooks). The decision making process is influenced by monthly subscription costs, limited resources for academic libraries, maintenance costs, and license agreements—as well as demand for online reference books and textbooks. While academic libraries decide how to increase access to EBooks, and where to build EBook collections, the focus on “convenience” often overrides a deeper conversation on how a fast, large-scale replacement of paper books with EBooks may affect student reading comprehension or retention of information. In addition, similarly to academic librarians’ consideration of taking “diversity” into account when building subject collections, it is also necessary to take the “diversity” of reading styles and user behaviors into account when developing collections. This paper will present a bibliographical overview of the literature on EBooks and short historical overview of EBooks. Therefore, the authors of the paper, an educator, a librarian and information specialist, intend to establish the foundation for a future research on the importance of EBooks for education, reading comprehension in particular

Cross-modal correspondences in non-human mammal communication

For both humans and other animals, the ability to combine information obtained through different senses is fundamental to the perception of the environment. It is well established that humans form systematic cross-modal correspondences between stimulus features that can facilitate the accurate combination of sensory percepts. However, the evolutionary origins of the perceptual and cognitive mechanisms involved in these cross-modal associations remain surprisingly underexplored. In this review we outline recent comparative studies investigating how non-human mammals naturally combine information encoded in different sensory modalities during communication. The results of these behavioural studies demonstrate that various mammalian species are able to combine signals from different sensory channels when they are perceived to share the same basic features, either be- cause they can be redundantly sensed and/or because they are processed in the same way. Moreover, evidence that a wide range of mammals form complex cognitive representations about signallers, both within and across species, suggests that animals also learn to associate different sensory features which regularly co-occur. Further research is now necessary to determine how multisensory representations are formed in individual animals, including the relative importance of low level feature-related correspondences. Such investigations will generate important insights into how animals perceive and categorise their environment, as well as provide an essential basis for understanding the evolution of multisensory perception in humans

Induction and interaction in the evolution of language and conceptual structure

Languages evolve in response to various pressures, and this thesis adopts the view that two pressures are especially important. Firstly, the process of learning a language functions as a pressure for greater simplicity due to a domain-general cognitive preference for simple structure. Secondly, the process of using a language in communicative scenarios functions as a pressure for greater informativeness because ultimately languages are only useful to the extent that they allow their users to express – or indeed represent – nuanced meaning distinctions. These two fundamental properties of language – simplicity and informativeness – are often, but not always, in conflict with each other. In general, a simple language cannot be informative and an informative language cannot be simple, resulting in the simplicity–informativeness tradeoff. Typological studies in several domains, including colour, kinship, and spatial relations, have demonstrated that languages find optimal solutions to this tradeoff – optimal solutions to the problem of balancing, on the one hand, the need for simplicity, and on the other, the need for informativeness. More specifically, the thesis explores how inductive reasoning and communicative interaction contribute to simple and informative structure respectively, with a particular emphasis on how a continuous space of meanings, such as the colour spectrum, may be divided into discrete labelled categories. The thesis first describes information-theoretic perspectives on learning and communication and highlights the fact that one of the hallmark feature of conceptual structure – which I term compactness – is not subject to the simplicity–informativeness tradeoff, since it confers advantages on both learning and use. This means it is unclear whether compact structure derives from a learning pressure or from a communicative pressure. To complicate matters further, some researchers view learning as a pressure for simplicity, as outlined above, while others have argued that learning might function as a pressure for informativeness in the sense that learners might have an a-priori expectation that languages ought to be informative. The thesis attempts to resolve this by formalizing these different perspectives in a model of an idealized Bayesian learner, and this model is used to make specific predictions about how these perspectives will play out during individual concept induction and also during the evolution of conceptual structure over time. Experimental testing of these predictions reveals overwhelming support for the simplicity account: Learners have a preference for simplicity, and over generational time, this preference becomes amplified, ultimately resulting in maximally simple, but nevertheless compact, conceptual structure. This emergent compact structure remains limited, however, because it only permits the expression of a small number of meaning distinctions – the emergent systems become degenerate. This issue is addressed in the second part of the thesis, which compares the outcomes of three experiments. The first replicates the finding above – compact categorical structure emerges from learning; the second and third experiments compare artificial and genuine pressures for expressivity, and they show that it is only in the presence of a live communicative task that higher level structure – a kind of statistical compositionality – can emerge. Working together, the low-level compact categorical structure, derived from learning, and the high-level compositional structure, derived from communicative interaction, provide a solution to the simplicity–informativeness tradeoff, expanding on and lending support to various claims in the literature

Technique for Improved Patient Care: Initial Experience with the GEM-6

(J. Extra-Corpor. Technol. 20[1]: p. 46–51 Spring 1988) In our institution, a “stat” lab is not available in close proximity to the OR. The problem of receiving lab results quickly (within 5-8 minutes) while on cardiopulmonary bypass was a persistent problem. Therefore, the decision was made to evaluate the GEM-6, a relatively new on-line blood gas, electrolyte, and hematocrit monitor for the heart-lung machine. for the first 30 days of use, simultaneous results were obtained from the GEM-6 and the hospital lab. Our lag time receiving results was greatly reduced and the lab values compared favorably with the hospital lab. The least reliable value with the original cartridge and software was the hematocrit levels. Hematocrits measured by the GEM-6 consistently were 2-5% higher than the hospital lab results. This problem appears to be proportionately related to the patient’s serum sodium level. Due to decreased work load on OR personnel, reliability, quickly obtainable results, and multiple parameters available with the GEM-6, we instituted use of the GEM-6 in January 1987. Through the use of Quality Assurance monitors and comparative Recovery Room first blood gases as QA monitors on open heart patients, documentation of improved patient care through the use of this on-line instrument is provided. Lab values readily available to the perfusionist can indeed result in the “fine tuning” of the pump run with improved patient care