The Structure and Construction of Formal Research Networks: a Policy Oriented Understanding of Stakeholder Engagement

ven the complexity of the modern research environment, funders (usually government agencies) are encouraging the formation of formal research networks (FRNs). FRNs have a predictable structure which includes primary and (whether acknowledged or not) secondary stakeholders as participants. Policy and program managers need to understand the larger structure, not just the internal operations, of the networks. We propose the use of actor-network theory to understand the strategy and construction of FRNs, and in particular to understand the specific problems surrounding FRNs for social science sand humanities research.   &nbsp

Filler siphoning theory does not predict the effect of lineup fairness on the ability to discriminate innocent from guilty suspects : reply to Smith, Wells, Smalarz, and Lampinen

Smith, Wells, Smalarz, and Lampinen (2017) claim that we (Colloff, Wade, & Strange, 2016) were wrong to conclude that fair lineups enhanced people’s ability to discriminate between innocent and guilty suspects compared to unfair lineups. They argue our results reflect differential-filler-siphoning, not diagnostic-feature-detection. But a manipulation that decreases identifications of innocent suspects more than guilty suspects (i.e., that increases filler-siphoning or conservative responding) does not necessarily increase people’s ability to discriminate between innocent and guilty suspects. Unlike diagnostic-feature-detection, fillersiphoning does not make a prediction about people’s ability to discriminate between innocent and guilty suspects. Moreover, we replicated Colloff et al.’s results in the absence of fillersiphoning (N=2,078). Finally, a model is needed to measure ability to discriminate between innocent and guilty suspects. Smith et al.’s model-based analysis contained several errors. Correcting those errors shows that our model was not faulty, and Smith et al.’s model supports our original conclusions

Universality in Systems with Power-Law Memory and Fractional Dynamics

There are a few different ways to extend regular nonlinear dynamical systems by introducing power-law memory or considering fractional differential/difference equations instead of integer ones. This extension allows the introduction of families of nonlinear dynamical systems converging to regular systems in the case of an integer power-law memory or an integer order of derivatives/differences. The examples considered in this review include the logistic family of maps (converging in the case of the first order difference to the regular logistic map), the universal family of maps, and the standard family of maps (the latter two converging, in the case of the second difference, to the regular universal and standard maps). Correspondingly, the phenomenon of transition to chaos through a period doubling cascade of bifurcations in regular nonlinear systems, known as "universality", can be extended to fractional maps, which are maps with power-/asymptotically power-law memory. The new features of universality, including cascades of bifurcations on single trajectories, which appear in fractional (with memory) nonlinear dynamical systems are the main subject of this review.Comment: 23 pages 7 Figures, to appear Oct 28 201

Drinking in pregnancy: poor guidelines or lack of evidence?

Each year Bournemouth University (BU) holds a Festival of Learning (FoL), a week-long series of events aimed at encouraging members of the public, academics and healthcare professionals to engage with BU’s current science and research projects. This year BU’s Centre for Midwifery, Maternal and Perinatal Health (CMMPH) resumed the tradition of holding a debate during the festival on a topic relevant to maternal health and childbirth. In 2016 the FoL debate took place at the end of June and focused on the motion: " Advising pregnant women to avoid drinking alcohol during pregnancy is a symptom of the Nanny State and another step towards the medicalisation of childbirth.

Boosting Long-term Memory via Wakeful Rest: Intentional Rehearsal is not Necessary, Automatic Consolidation is Sufficient.

<div><p>People perform better on tests of delayed free recall if learning is followed immediately by a short wakeful rest than by a short period of sensory stimulation. Animal and human work suggests that wakeful resting provides optimal conditions for the consolidation of recently acquired memories. However, an alternative account cannot be ruled out, namely that wakeful resting provides optimal conditions for intentional rehearsal of recently acquired memories, thus driving superior memory. Here we utilised non-recallable words to examine whether wakeful rest boosts long-term memory, even when new memories could not be rehearsed intentionally during the wakeful rest delay. The probing of non-recallable words requires a recognition paradigm. Therefore, we first established, via Experiment 1, that the rest-induced boost in memory observed via free recall can be replicated in a recognition paradigm, using concrete nouns. In Experiment 2, participants heard 30 non-recallable non-words, presented as ‘foreign names in a bridge club abroad’ and then either rested wakefully or played a visual spot-the-difference game for 10 minutes. Retention was probed via recognition at two time points, 15 minutes and 7 days after presentation. As in Experiment 1, wakeful rest boosted recognition significantly, and this boost was maintained for at least 7 days. Our results indicate that the enhancement of memory via wakeful rest is <i>not</i> dependent upon intentional rehearsal of learned material during the rest period. We thus conclude that consolidation is <i>sufficient</i> for this rest-induced memory boost to emerge. We propose that wakeful resting allows for superior memory consolidation, resulting in stronger and/or more veridical representations of experienced events which can be detected via tests of free recall and recognition.</p></div

Alcohol-induced retrograde facilitation renders witnesses of crime less suggestible to misinformation

RATIONALE: Research has shown that alcohol can have both detrimental and facilitating effects on memory: intoxication can lead to poor memory for information encoded after alcohol consumption (anterograde amnesia) and may improve memory for information encoded before consumption (retrograde facilitation). This study examined whether alcohol consumed after witnessing a crime can render individuals less vulnerable to misleading post-event information (misinformation). METHOD: Participants watched a simulated crime video. Thereafter, one third of participants expected and received alcohol (alcohol group), one third did not expect but received alcohol (reverse placebo), and one third did not expect nor receive alcohol (control). After alcohol consumption, participants were exposed to misinformation embedded in a written narrative about the crime. The following day, participants completed a cued-recall questionnaire about the event. RESULTS: Control participants were more likely to report misinformation compared to the alcohol and reverse placebo group. CONCLUSION: The findings suggest that we may oversimplify the effect alcohol has on suggestibility and that sometimes alcohol can have beneficial effects on eyewitness memory by protecting against misleading post-event information

Sparse and Distributed Coding of Episodic Memory in Neurons of the Human Hippocampus

Neurocomputational models hold that sparse distributed coding is the most efficient way for hippocampal neurons to encode episodic memories rapidly. We investigated the representation of episodic memory in hippocampal neurons of nine epilepsy patients undergoing intracranial monitoring as they discriminated between recently studied words (targets) and new words (foils) on a recognition test. On average, single units and multiunits exhibited higher spike counts in response to targets relative to foils, and the size of this effect correlated with behavioral performance. Further analyses of the spike-count distributions revealed that (i) a small percentage of recorded neurons responded to any one target and (ii ) a small percentage of targets elicited a strong response in any one neuron. These findings are consistent with the idea that in the human hippocampus episodic memory is supported by a sparse distributed neural code