Changing children’s understanding of the brain: a longitudinal study of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures as a measure of public engagement

Demonstrating the impact of public engagement is an increasingly important activity for today’s academics and researchers. The difficulty is that many areas of interest do not lend themselves well to evaluation because the impact of each single intervention can be hard to trace and take time to become manifest. With this in mind, we evaluated a lecture based around the 2011 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, ”Meet Your Brain,” delivered to school children from low performing schools. We compared knowledge about four neuroscience facts one week before, one week after and six weeks after the lecture. Analysis revealed significant knowledge transfer one week after the lecture that was retained five weeks later. We conclude that public engagement through tailored lectures can have significant impact in the moderate term with the potential to leave a lasting impression over a longer period

How to achieve synergy between medical education and cognitive neuroscience? An exercise on prior knowledge in understanding

A major challenge in contemporary research is how to connect medical education and cognitive neuroscience and achieve synergy between these domains. Based on this starting point we discuss how this may result in a common language about learning, more educationally focused scientific inquiry, and multidisciplinary research projects. As the topic of prior knowledge in understanding plays a strategic role in both medical education and cognitive neuroscience it is used as a central element in our discussion. A critical condition for the acquisition of new knowledge is the existence of prior knowledge, which can be built in a mental model or schema. Formation of schemas is a central event in student-centered active learning, by which mental models are constructed and reconstructed. These theoretical considerations from cognitive psychology foster scientific discussions that may lead to salient issues and questions for research with cognitive neuroscience. Cognitive neuroscience attempts to understand how knowledge, insight and experience are established in the brain and to clarify their neural correlates. Recently, evidence has been obtained that new information processed by the hippocampus can be consolidated into a stable, neocortical network more rapidly if this new information fits readily into a schema. Opportunities for medical education and medical education research can be created in a fruitful dialogue within an educational multidisciplinary platform. In this synergetic setting many questions can be raised by educational scholars interested in evidence-based education that may be highly relevant for integrative research and the further development of medical education

Nurses' perceptions of aids and obstacles to the provision of optimal end of life care in ICU

Contains fulltext : 172380.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access

I problem nella diagnosi della dislessa e il mercato che circonda la sua valutazione: un’intervista a Julian Elliott = The problems in diagnosing dyslexia and the market surrounding its assessment: An Interview with Julian Elliott

Julian Elliott è Preside del Collingwood College e Professore di Pedagogia all'Università di Durham. Recentemente, insieme a Elena Grigorenko, ha pubblicato uno stimolante libro, per Cambridge Press, intitolato The Dyslexia Debate (Ndr – Il dibattito sulla dislessia). Sostiene che è difficile distinguere tra dislessia e molte altre cause di problemi di lettura; ritiene quindi che questa etichetta sia obsoleta e non necessaria. Questa sua posizione ha, comprensibilmente, fatto storcere il naso a molti insegnanti, educatori specializzati e, in generale, a quei professionisti che vendono prodotti oppure offrono consulenze sostenendo che servono a migliorare la diagnosi di questi problemi. Il professor Elliott ha accettato di parlare con noi di questo dibattito

Micromechanical modelling of rainsplash erosion in unsaturated soils by Discrete Element Method

International audienc

Micromechanical modelling of rainsplash erosion in unsaturated soils by Discrete Element Method

International audienc

Veto Players and Interest Groups in Lawmaking. A Comparative Analysis of Judicial Reforms in Italy, Belgium, and France

The question of how to explain policy change has led to important academic debate over the past two decades. This article challenges explanations regarding veto players (VPs), arguing that interest groups (IGs) sometimes play a more decisive role than VPs —depending on the degree of organization and mobilization of such groups. The comparative analysis of judicial reforms in Italy, Belgium, and France shows the conditions under which IGs—understood here as legal professions—matter in the lawmaking process. Ceteris paribus, the more cohesive and legitimate an IG, the more likely it is to influence lawmaking regardless of the VP configuration. Analyses of legislative and policy change should therefore consider not only institutional and partisan actors but also the role of social group and IG in this process