iSchools in Central and South Europe: Developments and Challenges of Cooperation

The countries of Central and South Europe entered the 2000s with plans to restructure their higher education systems based on Bologna recommendations and some other EU supported guidelines. The Humboldt tradition at the universities in the region, necessity to introduce new academic profiles as well as the use of ICT in higher education, is leading the way towards the restructuring of existing programs or designing new curricula and to cooperation between the LIS and IS departments in the region. This panel will address the special concerns for restructuring curricula in the wider information sciences field (Library and Information Science - LIS, Information Science ??? IS, Records Management ??? RM, education for digital services etc) Panelists will address three questions with respect to i-schools developments and trends in their respective countries: ??? What are the basic concerns in developing new curricula in their respective countries? ??? How do the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary issues influence curricula design in IS? ??? What are the future steps, particularly in regard to regional cooperation? After each of the panelists will have presented his position concerning these three questions, they will discuss especially the issues on inter-/multidisciplinarity and on future regional cooperation. The audience of the panel discussion is invited to join this discussion

Early development of gaze following into distant space in juvenile Greylag geese ( Anser anser )

Visual co-orientation with another's gaze direction (gaze following) may provide important information about the location of food, social interactions or predators. Gaze following has been shown in a variety of mammals, but only in few bird species, and has not been tested in precocial birds at all. It has been suggested that gaze following is an anti-predator behaviour, and in Common ravens (Corvus corax) and rooks (C. frugilegus), it emerges shortly after fledging, at a time when young birds leave the predator-safe nest. However, if gaze following is adaptive, the developmental pattern should differ between altricial and precocial birds. Greylag geese (Anser anser) are highly social birds with a precocial development. Goslings move and feed independently within 24h post-hatching, and they are highly vulnerable to aerial predators. We therefore predicted that greylag geese are capable of gaze following and that they develop this skill already pre-fledging. We experimentally tested 19 hand-raised greylag goslings for their ability to follow a conspecific's gaze when they were between 10days and 6weeks old. In line with our predictions, first responses were already detectable in 10-day-old goslings. Our results therefore not only demonstrate that greylag geese follow the gaze of conspecifics into distant space, but that they also develop this ability much earlier than altricial bird

Grey parrots use inferential reasoning based on acoustic cues alone.

Our ability to make logical inferences is considered as one of the cornerstones of human intelligence, fuelling investigations of reasoning abilities in non-human animals. Yet, the evidence to date is equivocal, with apes as the prime candidates to possess these skills. For instance, in a two-choice task, apes can identify the location of hidden food if it is indicated by a rattling noise caused by the shaking of a baited container. More importantly, they also use the absence of noise during the shaking of the empty container to infer that this container is not baited. However, since the inaugural report of apes solving this task, to the best of our knowledge, no comparable evidence could be found in any other tested species such as monkeys and dogs. Here, we report the first successful and instantaneous solution of the shaking task through logical inference by a non-ape species, the African grey parrot. Surprisingly, the performance of the birds was sensitive to the shaking movement: they were successful with containers shaken horizontally, but not with vertical shaking resembling parrot head-bobbing. Thus, grey parrots seem to possess ape-like cross-modal reasoning skills, but their reliance on these abilities is influenced by low-level interferences

Is caching the key to exclusion in corvids? The case of carrion crows (Corvus corone corone)

Recently, two corvid species, food-caching ravens and non-caching jackdaws, have been tested in an exclusion performance (EP) task. While the ravens chose by exclusion, the jackdaws did not. Thus, foraging behaviour may affect EP abilities. To investigate this possibility, another food-caching corvid species, the carrion crow (Corvus corone corone), was tested in the same exclusion task. We hid food under one of two cups and subsequently lifted either both cups, or the baited or the un-baited cup. The crows were significantly above chance when both cups were lifted or when only the baited cup was lifted. When the empty cup was lifted, we found considerable inter-individual variation, with some birds having a significant preference for the un-baited but manipulated cup. In a follow-up task, we always provided the birds with the full information about the food location, but manipulated in which order they saw the hiding or the removal of food. Interestingly, they strongly preferred the cup which was manipulated last, even if it did not contain any food. Therefore, we repeated the first experiment but controlled for the movement of the cups. In this case, more crows found the food reliably in the un-baited condition. We conclude that carrion crows are able to choose by exclusion, but local enhancement has a strong influence on their performance and may overshadow potential inferential abilities. However, these findings support the hypothesis that caching might be a key to exclusion in corvids

Exclusion Performance in Dwarf Goats (Capra aegagrus hircus) and Sheep (Ovis orientalis aries)

Using a comparative approach, we investigated the ability of dwarf goats and sheep to use direct and indirect information about the location of a food reward in an object-choice task. Subjects had to choose between two cups with only one covering a reward. Before making a choice, subjects received information about the baited (direct information) or non-baited cup (indirect information). Both goats and sheep were able to use direct information (presence of food) in the object choice task. After controlling for local enhancement, we found that goats rather than sheep were able to use indirect information (i.e., the absence of food) to find a reward. The actual test setup could not clarify whether individual goats were able to inferentially reason about the content of the baited cup when only shown the content of the non-baited cup or if they simply avoided the empty cup in that situation. As browsing species, feral and wild goats exhibit highly selective feeding behaviour compared to the rather unselective grazing sheep. The potential influence of this species-specific foraging flexibility of goats and sheep for using direct and indirect information to find a food reward is discussed in relation to a higher aversion to losses in food acquisition in goats compared to sheep

What You See Is What You Get? Exclusion Performances in Ravens and Keas

BACKGROUND:Among birds, corvids and parrots are prime candidates for advanced cognitive abilities. Still, hardly anything is known about cognitive similarities and dissimilarities between them. Recently, exclusion has gained increasing interest in comparative cognition. To select the correct option in an exclusion task, one option has to be rejected (or excluded) and the correct option may be inferred, which raises the possibility that causal understanding is involved. However, little is yet known about its evolutionary history, as only few species, and mainly mammals, have been studied. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:We tested ravens and keas in a choice task requiring the search for food in two differently shaped tubes. We provided the birds with partial information about the content of one of the two tubes and asked whether they could use this information to infer the location of the hidden food and adjust their searching behaviour accordingly. Additionally, this setup allowed us to investigate whether the birds would appreciate the impact of the shape of the tubes on the visibility of food. The keas chose the baited tube more often than the ravens. However, the ravens applied the more efficient strategy, choosing by exclusion more frequently than the keas. An additional experiment confirmed this, indicating that ravens and keas either differ in their cognitive skills or that they apply them differently. CONCLUSION:To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate that corvids and parrots may perform differently in cognitive tasks, highlighting the potential impact of different selection pressures on the cognitive evolution of these large-brained birds

A bibliometric analysis of pharmacology and pharmacy journals : Scopus versus Web of Science

Our study aims at examining the suitability of Scopus for bibliometric analyses in comparison with the Web of Science (WOS). In particular we want to explore if the outcome of bibliometric analyses differs between Scopus and WOS and, if yes, in which aspects. In doing so we focus on the following questions: To which extent are high impact JCR (Journal Citation Reports) journals covered by Scopus? Are the impact factor and the immediacy index usually lower for a JCR journal than the corresponding indicators computed in Scopus? Are there high impact journals not covered by the JCR? And, finally, how reliable are the data in these two databases? Since journal indicators like the impact factor and the immediacy index differ among disciplines, we analysed only journals from the subject pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences. Focussing on one subject category offers furthermore the possibility to go into more detail when comparing the databases. The findings of our study can be summarized as follows: • Each top-100 JCR pharmacy journal was covered by Scopus. • The impact factor was higher for 82 and the immediacy index greater for 78 journals in Scopus in 2005. Pharmacy journals with a high impact factor in the JCR usually have a high impact factor in Scopus. • Several high but no top-impact journal could be identified in Scopus which were not reported in JCR. • The two databases differed in the number of articles within a tolerable margin of deviation for most journals

Information Science in Europe

International audienceThis panel aims at giving an overview on the situation of information science in a few selected European countries/ regions (Scandinavia, France and former Yugoslavian countries). At the beginning the panelists will give an out- line on the discipline in their country. In particular the following questions will be addressed: * What is the state-of-the-art of information science with regard to academic education and research in your country? * How do you see the development in information science as a discipline in your country in the next five years? After the panelists have presented their opinion on the present and future situation on information science (see the following sections) they will continue with the discussion of the following topics: Is there anything like a European approach/identity on information science? If yes, what differentiations are there between Anglo- Saxon and European information science? With regard to the last two topics it is intended to engage the audience into the discussion as much as possible

Impact and relevance of LIS journals: a scientometric analysis of international and German-language LIS journals – citation analysis versus reader survey

The goal of the scientometric analysis presented in this article was to investigate international and regional (i.e., German-language) periodicals in the field of library and information science (LIS). This was done by means of a citation analysis and a reader survey. For the citation analysis, impact factor, citing half-life, number of references per article, and the rate of self-references of a periodical were used as indicators. In addition, the leading LIS periodicals were mapped. For the 40 international periodicals, data were collected from ISI’s Social Sciences Citation Index Journal Citation Reports (JCR); the citations of the 10 German-language journals were counted manually (overall 1,494 source articles with 10,520 citations). Altogether, the empirical base of the citation analysis consisted of nearly 90,000 citations in 6,203 source articles that were published between 1997 and 2000. The expert survey investigated reading frequency, applicability of the journals to the job of the reader, publication frequency, and publication preference both for all respondents and for different groups among them (practitioners vs. scientists, librarians vs. documentalists vs. LIS scholars, public sector vs. information industry vs. other private company employees). The study was conducted in spring 2002. A total of 257 questionnaires were returned by information specialist

Northern bald ibises follow others’ gaze into distant space but not behind barriers

Gaze following is the ability to use the visual orientation of others as a trigger to look in the same direction. Thereby, animals may either align their head and eye orientation with others (gaze following into distant space) or may even reposition themselves to look behind barriers impairing their perception (geometrical gaze following). It has been proposed that these two different modes are functionally and cognitively distinct, but experimental evidence for this claim is lacking. We here, to our knowledge, demonstrate for the first time, that adult animals may be capable of following gaze into distant space, but not geometrically around barriers. We tested Northern bald ibises (Geronticus eremita) for their ability to follow a conspecific's gaze in two standard tasks. The birds readily looked up after seeing a model bird looking up; however, when seeing a model looking behind a barrier, they responded by looking at the barrier instead of walking around. These findings are in stark contrast to results obtained with great apes and corvids and provide the first experimental evidence, to our knowledge, for cognitive differences in gaze following tasks