Welcome & Keynote Address by Dr. Kevin P. Reilly

Our keynote speaker for the event is Dr. Kevin P. Reilly, President Emeritus and Regent Professor with the 26-campus University of Wisconsin System, having served as President from 2004-2013.Dr. Reilly will address what society is asking of higher education in the 21st century, and will stimulate a discussion on global issues, evolving higher education delivery formats, and the ongoing conversations on utility and utopia as Provost Andrews published in her blog. His experience leading the Wisconsin University System and perspective on current issues in Wisconsin higher education, work on the Higher Education Working Group on Global Issues for the Council of Foreign Relations, and initiation of a competency-based degree program that required evolving higher education delivery formats will set the tone for a lively event and day of discussion. We hope you will participate in this important discussion

Effects of compassion training on brain responses to suffering others

Compassion meditation (CM) is a promising intervention for enhancing compassion, although its active ingredients and neurobiological mechanisms are not well-understood. To investigate these, we conducted a three-armed placebo-controlled randomized trial (N = 57) with longitudinal functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We compared a 4-week CM program delivered by smartphone application with (i) a placebo condition, presented to participants as the compassion-enhancing hormone oxytocin, and (ii) a condition designed to control for increased familiarity with suffering others, an element of CM which may promote compassion. At pre- and post-intervention, participants listened to compassion-eliciting narratives describing suffering others during fMRI. CM increased brain responses to suffering others in the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) relative to the familiarity condition, p \u3c 0.05 family-wise error rate corrected. Among CM participants, individual differences in increased mOFC responses positively correlated with increased compassion-related feelings and attributions, r = 0.50, p = 0.04. Relative to placebo, the CM group exhibited a similar increase in mOFC activity at an uncorrected threshold of P \u3c 0.001 and 10 contiguous voxels. We conclude that the mOFC, a region closely related to affiliative affect and motivation, is an important brain mechanism of CM. Effects of CM on mOFC function are not explained by familiarity effects and are partly explained by placebo effects

Production of He-4 and (4) in Pb-Pb collisions at root(NN)-N-S=2.76 TeV at the LHC

Results on the production of He-4 and (4) nuclei in Pb-Pb collisions at root(NN)-N-S = 2.76 TeV in the rapidity range vertical bar y vertical bar <1, using the ALICE detector, are presented in this paper. The rapidity densities corresponding to 0-10% central events are found to be dN/dy4(He) = (0.8 +/- 0.4 (stat) +/- 0.3 (syst)) x 10(-6) and dN/dy4 = (1.1 +/- 0.4 (stat) +/- 0.2 (syst)) x 10(-6), respectively. This is in agreement with the statistical thermal model expectation assuming the same chemical freeze-out temperature (T-chem = 156 MeV) as for light hadrons. The measured ratio of (4)/He-4 is 1.4 +/- 0.8 (stat) +/- 0.5 (syst). (C) 2018 Published by Elsevier B.V.Peer reviewe

How Faculty Can Help Reduce Student Costs

The blog post covers the efforts made to reduce the cost of course materials at Portland State University

Creating Interactive Media on CD-ROM

The Department of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is developing a research oriented, visual database of North American Indian maps on a CD-ROM. This project is funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Research Programs. The CD-ROM will contain maps, extensive descriptions, and catalog information about the maps. The digital maps and text will be linked through a hypermedia interface. This archival database is intended to function as a research tool for scholars studying the cartography, landscape perception, cognition, art, and history of Native Americans. This paper presents an overview of the project, a brief discussion of the technology used, sample images and dat

Creating Interactive Media on CD-ROM

The Department of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is developing a research oriented, visual database of North American Indian maps on a CD-ROM. This project is funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Research Programs. The CD-ROM will contain maps, extensive descriptions, and catalog information about the maps. The digital maps and text will be linked through a hypermedia interface. This archival database is intended to function as a research tool for scholars studying the cartography, landscape perception, cognition, art, and history of Native Americans. This paper presents an overview of the project, a brief discussion of the technology used, sample images and dat