New Discipline (new + discipline)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Educational Neuroscience: Defining a New Discipline for the Study of Mental Representations

MIND, BRAIN, AND EDUCATION, Issue 3 2007
Dénes Sz
ABSTRACT, Is educational neuroscience a "bridge too far"? Here, we argue against this negative assessment. We suggest that one major reason for skepticism within the educational community has been the inadequate definition of the potential role and use of neuroscience research in education. Here, we offer a provisional definition for the emerging discipline of educational neuroscience as the study of the development of mental representations. We define mental representations in terms of neural activity in the brain. We argue that there is a fundamental difference between doing educational neuroscience and using neuroscience research results to inform education. While current neuroscience research results do not translate into direct classroom applications, educational neuroscience can expand our knowledge about learning, for example, by tracking the normative development of mental representations. We illustrate this briefly via mathematical educational neuroscience. Current capabilities and limitations of neuroscience research methods are also considered. [source]


On Imagination: Reconciling Knowledge and Life, or What Does "Gregory Bateson" Stand for?

FAMILY PROCESS, Issue 4 2004
Marcelo Pakman
This article presents a reading of Gregory Bateson's oeuvre, focusing on his interest in the representational gap between map and territory, and its importance in the development of his redefinition of the concept of "mind," his new discipline called "ecology of ideas," and a methodology congruent to it based on the logics of metaphor. Inquiries on three initial stories from different domains allow the use of homologies between form and content in the article. This reading of Bateson's oeuvre stresses his questioning (like Derrida's) of the metaphysics of presence on which Western philosophy has been mostly based, and of the central role of imagination as a balancing factor for a family therapy that he both contributed to and saw with reservations. [source]


Emulation vs. indigenization in the reception of western psychology in Republican China: An analysis of the content of Chinese psychology journals (1922,1937)

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES, Issue 1 2009
Geoffrey Blowers
The present study examines the practice of empirical psychology in China during the Republican period using a content analysis of its journals. By seeking answers to questions of what kinds of psychology from the West first attracted the Chinese; whether they found a way of developing a psychology more in tune to their own cultural assumptions of selfhood; and to what uses they felt the new discipline could be put, it shows the extent to which its journal content adopted a Western or an indigenous orientation. It thus contributes to the recent debate about indigenization of psychology globally and situates the origins of these issues in China much earlier than has been envisaged by contemporary Chinese indigenous psychologists. Throughout this period, indigenous concerns informed the research agenda, the dominant practice being psychometrics. But because of a lack of social support, they remained largely confined to the pages of psychology journals. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]


UV-induced Immunosuppression in the Balance,

PHOTOCHEMISTRY & PHOTOBIOLOGY, Issue 1 2008
Frank R. De Gruijl
Around 1980, experiments with hairless mice showed us that UV-induced actinic keratoses (AK) and ensuing skin carcinomas did not arise independently: the rate of occurrence in one skin area was increased considerably if AKs had already been induced separately in another distant skin area, i.e. a systemic effect. The ground laying work of Margaret Kripke in the 1970s provided a fitting explanation: UV-induced immunosuppression and tolerance toward the UV-induced tumors. From Kripke's work a new discipline arose: "Photoimmunology." Enormous strides were made in exploring and expanding the effects from UV carcinogenesis to infectious diseases, and in elucidating the mechanisms involved. Stemming from concerns about a depletion of the ozone layer and the general impact of ambient UV radiation, the groups I worked in and closely collaborated with explored the anticipated adverse effects of UV-induced immunosuppression on healthy individuals. An important turning point was brought about in 1992 when the group of Kevin Cooper reported that immunosuppression could be induced by UV exposure in virtually all human subjects tested, suggesting that this is a normal and sound physiological reaction to UV exposure. This reaction could actually protect us from illicit immune responses against our UV-exposed skin, such as observed in idiopathic polymorphic light eruption. This premise has fruitfully rekindled the research on this common "sun allergy," affecting to widely varying degrees about one in five Europeans with indoor professions. [source]


Proteomics of human cerebrospinal fluid , the good, the bad, and the ugly

PROTEOMICS - CLINICAL APPLICATIONS, Issue 8 2007
Jing Zhang ProfessorArticle first published online: 13 JUL 200
Abstract The development of MALDI ESI in the late 1980s has revolutionized the biological sciences and facilitated the emergence of a new discipline called proteomics. Application of proteomics to human cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) has greatly hastened the advancement of characterizing the CSF proteome as well as revealing novel protein biomarkers that are diagnostic of various neurological diseases. While impressive progressions have been made in this field, it has become increasingly clear that proteomics results generated by various laboratories are highly variable. The underlying issues are vast, including limitations and complications with heterogeneity of patients/testing subjects, experimental design, sample processing, as well as current proteomics technology. Accordingly, this review not only summarizes the current status of characterization of the human CSF proteome and biomarker discovery for major neurodegenerative disorders, i.e., Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, but also addresses a few essential caveats involved in several steps of CSF proteomics that may contribute to the variable/contradicting results reported by different laboratories. The potential future directions of CSF proteomics are also discussed with this analysis. [source]


Fundamental physics: a new discipline

ASTRONOMY & GEOPHYSICS, Issue 3 2000
Tim Sumner
Tim Sumner of Imperial College summarizes the community report on fundamental physics in Britain prepared for PPARC. Click HERE to view the article. [source]


Technoreview: Focusing light on infection in four dimensions

CELLULAR MICROBIOLOGY, Issue 4 2004
Pascal Roux
Summary The fusion of cell biology with microbiology has bred a new discipline, cellular microbiology, in which the primary aim is to understand host,pathogen interactions at a tissue, cellular and molecular level. In this context, we require techniques allowing us to probe infection in situ and extrapolate quantitative information on its spatiotemporal dynamics. To these ends, fluorescent light-based imaging techniques offer a powerful tool, and the state-of-the-art is defined by paradigms using so-called multidimensional (multi-D) imaging microscopy. Multi-D imaging aims to visualize and quantify biological events through time and space and, more specifically, refers to combinations of: three (3D, volume), four (4D, time) and five (5D, multiwavelength)-dimensional recordings. Successful multi-D imaging depends upon understanding the available technologies and their limitations. This is especially true in the field of microbiology where visualization of infectious/pathogenic activities inside living host systems presents particular technical challenges. Thus, as multi-D imaging rapidly becomes a common bench tool to the cellular microbiologist, this review provides the new user with some of the necessary technical insight required to get the best from these methods. [source]


Australia's place in the global restoration challenge: Interview with Richard Hobbs

ECOLOGICAL MANAGEMENT & RESTORATION, Issue 3 2007
Richard Hobbs
Summary This interview with Professor Richard Hobbs, a prominent Australian researcher, professor and journal editor, traces his involvement in ecology and the relatively new disciplines of landscape ecology and restoration ecology. Born and educated as a plant ecologist in Scotland, Richard undertook postdoctoral research in the USA before taking up a series of research positions in Australia that steered him towards landscape ecology and restoration ecology. Having maintained an interest and involvement in international organizations, Richard provides comment in this interview on the progress of ecological restoration practice in Australasia compared to North America and comments on the need for ensuring research in these disciplines is strongly linked to management, is as broadly relevant as possible, and, is carried out at appropriate scales. [source]


Preparing undergraduates to participate in the post-genome era: A capstone laboratory experience in proteomics,

BIOCHEMISTRY AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY EDUCATION, Issue 6 2003
Eric S. Eberhardt
Abstract Proteomics is one of the important new disciplines to emerge from the genome sequencing projects of the last decade. In order to introduce our students to the techniques and promise of this emerging field, a capstone laboratory experience has been developed. The exercise involves multiple aspects of proteomics research including microbial culturing methods, two-dimensional gel electrophoresis techniques, matrix-assisted laser desorption-ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry, and database mining. Over a 12-week semester, students design their own experiments and apply a proteomic approach to investigate the heat shock response in Escherichia coli. In the trial presented in this article, students successfully identified several major heat shock proteins. The laboratory outlined here can be readily adapted to explore a wide variety of responses in metabolic pathways or responses resulting from other environmental insults or stresses. Additionally, the laboratory can be modified to explore the proteomes of organelles, tissues, and other model organisms. [source]