Exploring creative thinking in graphically mediated synchronous dialogues

publication-status: Publishedtypes: ArticleThis paper reports on an aspect of the EC funded Argunaut project which researched and developed awareness tools for moderators of online dialogues. In this study we report on an investigation into the nature of creative thinking in online dialogues and whether or not this creative thinking can be coded for and recognized automatically such that moderators can be alerted when creative thinking is occurring or when it has not occurred after a period of time. We outline a dialogic theory of creativity, as the emergence of new perspectives from the interplay of voices, and the testing of this theory using a range of methods including a coding scheme which combined coding for creative thinking with more established codes for critical thinking, artificial intelligence pattern-matching techniques to see if our codes could be read automatically from maps and ‘key event recall’ interviews to explore the experience of participants. Our findings are that: (1) the emergence of new perspectives in a graphical dialogue map can be recognized by our coding scheme supported by a machine pattern-matching algorithm in a way that can be used to provide awareness indicators for moderators; (2) that the trigger events leading to the emergence of new perspectives in the online dialogues studied were most commonly disagreements and (3) the spatial representation of messages in a graphically mediated synchronous dialogue environment such as Digalo may offer more affordance for creativity than the much more common scrolling text chat environments. All these findings support the usefulness of our new account of creativity in online dialogues based on dialogic theory and demonstrate that this account can be operationalised through machine coding in a way that can be turned into alerts for moderators

Association between hypertensive disorders of pregnancy and later risk of cardiovascular outcomes

Funder: Homerton College, University of Cambridge (GB)BACKGROUND: Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy are common pregnancy complications that are associated with greater cardiovascular disease risk for mothers. However, risk of cardiovascular disease subtypes associated with gestational hypertension or pre-eclampsia is unclear. The present study aims to compare the risk of cardiovascular disease outcomes for women with and without a history of gestational hypertension and pre-eclampsia using national hospital admissions data. METHODS: This was a retrospective cohort study of national medical records from all national health service hospitals in England. Women who had one or more singleton live births in England between 1997 and 2015 were included in the analysis. Risk of total cardiovascular disease and 19 pre-specified cardiovascular disease subtypes, including stroke, coronary heart disease, cardiomyopathy and peripheral arterial disease was calculated separately for women with a history of gestational hypertension and pre-eclampsia compared to normotensive pregnancies. RESULTS: Amongst 2,359,386 first live births there were 85,277 and 74,542 hospital admissions with a diagnosis of gestational hypertension and pre-eclampsia, respectively. During 18 years (16,309,386 person-years) of follow-up, the number and incidence of total CVD for normotensive women, women with prior gestational hypertension and women with prior pre-eclampsia were: n=8668, 57.1 (95% CI:55.9-58.3) per 100,000 person-years; n=521, 85.8 (78.6-93.5) per 100,000 person-years and n=518, 99.3 (90.9-108.2) per 100,000 person-years, respectively. Adjusted HRs (aHR) for total CVD were: aHR (95% CI) = 1.45 (1.33-1.59) for women with prior gestational hypertension and, aHR=1.62 (1.48-1.78) for women with prior pre-eclampsia. Gestational hypertension was strongly associated with dilated cardiomyopathy, aHR=2.85 (1.67-4.86), and unstable angina, aHR=1.92 (1.33-2.77). Pre-eclampsia was strongly associated with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, aHR=3.27 (1.49-7.19), and acute myocardial infarction, aHR=2.46 (1.72-3.53). Associations were broadly homogenous across cardiovascular disease subtypes and increased with a greater number of affected pregnancies. CONCLUSIONS: Women with either previous gestational hypertension or pre-eclampsia are at greater risk of a range of cardiovascular outcomes. These women may benefit from clinical risk assessment or early interventions to mitigate their greater risk of various cardiovascular outcomes.Cambridge BHF Centre of Research Excellence (RE/13/6/30180

岡山とギザにおける太陽エネルギーの所要量と推定

Egypt as a developed country still has no electricity in many villages but at the same time has enough natural energy such as solar energy. Solar radiation data is not always available in many areas of the world and they have to be estimated using some sort of empirical model. The results of this prediction are compared for the measured data of two different countries: Japan (Okayama City) and Egypt (Giza City). The comparison shows an acceptable level of prediction between both of them. On a June day, actual accumulated insolation through one day was 18.88 MJ/m2 in Okayama and 22.79 MJ/m2 in Giza. On the other hand on a January day, actual accumulated insolation through one day was 4.93 MJ/m2 in Okayama and 5.49 MJ/m2 in Giza. We can see also that in January the worst solar month, solar water heaters still provide 35.25% of the energy for Okayama and 40.37% for Giza, That was because in Okayama the number of sunny days was only 6 but there were 19 in Giza.太陽エネルギーを農業に有効利用する目的で、岡山とエジプト・ギザを観測地点として、獲得できるエネルギーの量を観測し、2地点での比較を行った。岡山とギザでは緯度が、34°39'と30°02'と異なるために集めることができる太陽エネルギーの量に差が生じ、その量はギザの方が多くなり農業への有効利用の可能性が大である

The meaning of materiality: reconsidering the materiality of Gramscian IR

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Adult Hippocampal Neurogenesis and Plasticity in the Infrapyramidal Bundle of the Mossy Fiber Projection: I. Co-Regulation by Activity

Besides the massive plasticity at the level of synapses, we find in the hippocampus of adult mice and rats two systems with very strong macroscopic structural plasticity: adult neurogenesis, that is the lifelong generation of new granule cells, and dynamic changes in the mossy fibers linking the dentate gyrus to area CA3. In particular the anatomy of the infrapyramidal mossy fiber tract (IMF) changes in response to a variety of extrinsic and intrinsic stimuli. Because mossy fibers are the axons of granule cells, the question arises whether these two types of plasticity are linked. Using immunohistochemistry for markers associated with axonal growth and pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC)–GFP mice to visualize the post-mitotic maturation phase of adult hippocampal neurogenesis, we found that newly generated mossy fibers preferentially but not exclusively contribute to the IMF. The neurogenic stimulus of an enriched environment increased the volume of the IMF. In addition, the IMF grew with a time course consistent with axonal outgrowth from the newborn neurons after the induction of neurogenic seizures using kainate. These results indicate that two aspects of plasticity in the adult hippocampus, mossy fiber size and neurogenesis, are related and may share underlying mechanisms. In a second part of this study, published separately (Krebs et al., 2011) we have addressed the question of whether there is a shared genetics underlying both traits

Reflecting on loss in Papua New Guinea

This article takes up the conundrum of conducting anthropological fieldwork with people who claim that they have 'lost their culture,' as is the case with Suau people in the Massim region of Papua New Guinea. But rather than claiming culture loss as a process of dispossession, Suau claim it as a consequence of their own attempts to engage with colonial interests. Suau appear to have responded to missionization and their close proximity to the colonial-era capital by jettisoning many of the practices characteristic of Massim societies, now identified as 'kastom.' The rejection of kastom in order to facilitate their relations with Europeans during colonialism, followed by the mourning for kastom after independence, both invite consideration of a kind of reflexivity that requires action based on the presumed perspective of another