Review: Digital Memory Studies: Media Pasts in Transition

Book review of Digital Memory Studies: Media Pasts in Transition. Edited by Andrew Hoskins (New York: Routledge, 2018. 313 pp.). Review by Donnie Summerlin

The Truth About Lying: Does a Lie Cause Ego Depletion?

Ego depletion is defined as the loss of self-control resulting from prior acts of self-control. Several tasks cause ego depletion, including effortful cognitive tasks. I proposed that lying would create ego depletion due to the cognitive control associated with telling a lie. I further anticipated that the potential embarrassment associated with getting caught in a lie would cause additional ego depletion among participants. In the proposed study, we asked participants to lie to a confederate and either gave them the impression they would be caught in the lie or gave them a clear indication that they would not be caught in the lie. A control group was not asked to lie. I anticipated that ego depletion would be demonstrated among those asked to lie by failing to persist on a computer task relative to participants who were not asked to lie. In addition, of those asked to lie, I expected more ego depletion to result from the expectation of being caught telling a lie relative to the condition in which participants were led to believe they would not be caught. Finally, I assessed trait honesty as a potential covariate in this study. Results showed that those people who lied completed significantly fewer computer trials than those who did not lie, indicating ego depletion relative to the control condition. The act of creating a lie requires an individual to engage in cognitive effort, such as memory, improvisation, and creative thinking, and cognitive energy has been tied to deficits in self-control (i.e., ego depletion). Lack of a difference between the two lie conditions may indicate that the lie itself was highly distressing, and the added burden of being caught lying was not sufficient to overcome the ceiling effect that already existed. As an alternative explanation, all participants may have assumed they would be caught in the lie when they encountered the other student on campus after the study

Particle Acceleration at Relativistic Shocks in Extragalactic Systems

Diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) at relativistic shocks is expected to be an important acceleration mechanism in a variety of astrophysical objects including extragalactic jets in active galactic nuclei and gamma ray bursts. These sources remain strong and interesting candidate sites for the generation of ultra-high energy cosmic rays. In this paper, key predictions of DSA at relativistic shocks that are salient to the issue of cosmic ray ion and electron production are outlined. Results from a Monte Carlo simulation of such diffusive acceleration in test-particle, relativistic, oblique, MHD shocks are presented. Simulation output is described for both large angle and small angle scattering scenarios, and a variety of shock obliquities including superluminal regimes when the de Hoffman-Teller frame does not exist. The distribution function power-law indices compare favorably with results from other techniques. They are found to depend sensitively on the mean magnetic field orientation in the shock, and the nature of MHD turbulence that propagates along fields in shock environs. An interesting regime of flat spectrum generation is addressed, providing evidence for its origin being due to shock drift acceleration. The impact of these theoretical results on gamma-ray burst and blazar science is outlined. Specifically, Fermi gamma-ray observations of these cosmic sources are already providing significant constraints on important environmental quantities for relativistic shocks, namely the frequency of scattering and the level of field turbulence.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, to appear in Proc. of the 8th International Astrophysics Conference "Shock Waves in Space and Astrophysical Environments" (2010), eds. X. Ao, R. Burrows and G. P. Zank (AIP Conf. Proc., New York

The Experience of Participants Using an Online Discussion Forum in a Graduate Course

This study was designed and implemented to describe the experiences of doctoral students using an online discussion forum and determine the effectiveness of this type of instructional tool. Specifically, this study examined the students\u27 experiences with overall communication, themes of the discussion board/forum, and traits and/or skills, which were needed for this online environment, with the purpose of determining how these experiences may have enhanced or hindered their overall course experience. The specific approach used for this research was a qualitative case study methodology, which consisted of face-to-face interviews conducted with doctoral students from a small private university in the southeastern United States. Data were collected using a face-to-face semi-structured interview approach whereby open-ended interviews of the participants were conducted using a general interview guide. Using Miles and Huberman\u27s (1994) approach, participants\u27 responses were evaluated for similarities and differences and then categories of like content or themes were developed. Participants in this study described their experiences with using the online discussion forum in terms of four overall themes including: (1) learning to use the technology, (2) creating a voice for every student, (3) flexibility of the medium and, (4) frustration with online communication. Findings from this study indicate that students portray many benefits of using an online discussion forum as a supplement to a traditional face-to-face course including: flexibility of the online communication, creating a voice for all students and ease of communication. However, from the perspective of the learner, there are also many negative aspects to this type of learning environment, including, but not limited to: the lack of initial training, the lack of nonverbal communication cues in the online environment, the lack of guidelines for students as to what is expected of them in this type of online communication and the concerns of miscommunication via online discussion