Dr. Michael Palenchar (advisor), my daughter Dr. Karen Freberg and Sally McMillan (Provost) all smiles at Karen's graduation!
Here are my readings for today:
Who’s better at teaching difficult physics to a class of more than 250 college students: the highly rated veteran professor using time-tested lecturing, or the inexperienced graduate students interacting with kids via devices that look like TV remotes? The answer could rattle ivy on college walls.
A study by a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, now a science adviser to President Barack Obama, suggests that how you teach is more important than who does the teaching.
“A team of researchers at the University of Arizona has brought a high-tech tool to bear on the study of a familiar and age-old emotion — guilt.”
Scientists are reporting development of three promising formulations that could be used in a vaccine to treat methamphetamine addiction — one of the most serious drug abuse problems in the U.S. The report appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
“Parents know the unparalleled joy and wonder of hearing a beloved child’s first words turn quickly into whole sentences and then babbling paragraphs. But how human children acquire language-which is so complex and has so many variations-remains largely a mystery. Fifty years ago, linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky proposed an answer: Humans are able to learn language so quickly because some knowledge of grammar is hardwired into our brains. In other words, we know some of the most fundamental things about human language unconsciously at birth, without ever being taught.”
6 Comments
corrieesmon · May 15, 2011 at 4:43 pm
The article on the way you teach is more important is very true. I had a hard class at Cuesta College, and we had daily clicker questions from our readings and our lecture. By having these clicker questions I was more involved in the class and paid very close attention to the lectures and my reading.
Dr. Freberg class is taught the same way and I have learned the right down the question and answer because it will show back up in same aspect.
Corrie
corrieesmon · May 15, 2011 at 4:52 pm
okay a Meth vaccine? I am studying psychology to hopefully become a drug and alcohol counselor and if people are willing to have the vaccine and there are no serious side effects then I am game, but there are a lot of meth users out there that really will not be ready for this instant fix of years of addiction.
I know it took years of trying to kick the meth habit and a strong reason and will power to walk away from my addiction.But would I considered a vaccine? I don’t know.
noheli20 · May 15, 2011 at 6:48 pm
Vaccine for Methamphetamine Abuse- a lot of the time medicine focuses on finding cured for diseases, cures for sickness that can not be prevented by people. But substance abuse needs a cure too, when i read the title to this article i immediately clicked on it to find more about it. I have a friend who is addicted to this drug, someone i deeply care about and i would not want to see him go through more of this drug. Its not as easy as people think to just quit, these people that are addicted go through so much pain when they try to withdraw. I really hope we see more promising news about this vaccine, and hopefully the people who are looking for a way out will look for help with this
noheli20 · May 15, 2011 at 7:07 pm
when i read the article about language being inborn, i had a lot of questions pop up in my head. How can grammar be hardwired into our brains? How can we explain the reason for some people having poor grammar, even though they did have an education, and were only taught 1 language? If grammar is hardwired is it true for all languages, if a person grew up with 4 languages consitantly around them? My little newphew is currently 4 years old, and is still trying to grasp to a language. He has been hearing tagolog (Philippines ) from his father whom he visits every 2 weeks, and spanish, english and italian in our household. for each language he understands it, and does what we ask from him, but he doesnt really form complete sentences, I don’t know if this is because we are introducing him to a lot of languages and maybe it is an overload
jwestend · May 16, 2011 at 5:22 pm
On the “cooperation or ‘act selfishly’?” article I couldn’t help but think the whole time I was reading if guilt was really the most effective way to promote cooperation. Though it is interesting to study how the brain activity looks on an fMRI in response to the emotion of guilt, I would be even more interested to see how a brain reacts to cooperation due to genuine care. I think a comparison between guilt motivated cooperation and cooperation because of a genuine desire to help would be fascinating. And maybe the technology mentioned in this article is a stepping stone to engaging in that kind of research.
mdean · May 23, 2011 at 12:14 pm
The Cooperatino or act selfishly article was definitely an experiment unlike one I had ever heard of before. I think the point they brought up at the end though about people having a different sense beliefs is a main determinant in whether the findings from the experiment will be accurate.
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