Homicides in Higher Education: Some Reflections on the Moral Mission of the University

This essay on the ethical mission of the university explores extremes of anti-social behavior, visiting numerous crime scenes before concluding that contemporary higher education has lost the capacity—and even the language—for taking character development seriously. In his attempt to determine whether coincidently traditional-liberationist-diversiphilic-apathetic colleges can morally improve their charges, Peter Wood collects a wrenching compendium of violent academic mayhem.

Skirting the Sketch: An Analysis of Sketch Inhibition within Contemporary Design Higher Education

Sketch inhibition is regularly alluded to by educators within design higher education and one with increasingly marked effects on industry. Over the past thirty years, students have been observed to engage less with the manual processes of design development process in favour of other activities perceived as more attractive, to the detriment of their development as effective designers. This article offers an evaluation of literature which supports the importance of sketching to the design process across a variety of disciplines, its anatomy and functions and demonstrates its role in cognitive support, as a language, a means of reflection, communication and storage of information and the micro‐processes it embodies. Initial findings regarding the symptoms of sketch inhibition are presented: from avoidance of studio sessions and minimal design development, to an overreliance on digital tools. It considers causes, ranging from lacking skill‐sets, psycho‐social, to technological, and although further investigation is recommended to establish depth and enable development of an appropriate pedagogical framework for its management within HE, various methods are offered at this stage for use by educators: these include fine art exercises, a rigorous pursuit of quantity and even paper type.     

Links between socio-emotional skills,behavior, mathematics and literacy performance of preschool children in Serbia

European Journal of Psychology of Education - Young children’s socio-emotional skills are important for understanding their own and others’ behaviors and interactions. No study in...     

The directional links between students’ academic motivation and social integration during the first year of higher education

European Journal of Psychology of Education - Previous theoretical research proposed a link between students’ academic motivation and students’ experiences of social integration, but...     

Further investigation of the correlations among the WISC-R,PIAT, and DAM

The authors replicated a study (White, 1979) in which high correlations were obtained among the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R), the Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT), and the Goodenough-Harris Draw-A-Man (DAM), and conclusions were drawn that all these instruments might not be necessary in the same test battery. The present study involved a larger sample (360 children). Much lower correlations among the instruments were obtained, although the pattern of correlation was similar. It was concluded that results of the White study may have overestimated the relationships between the variables because of factors unique to the sample. Test specificity appeared using the larger, normally distributed sample, suggesting a legitimate use of all three tests in a single battery.     

A Geohistorical Study of ‘The Rise of Modern Science’: Mapping Scientific Practice Through Urban Networks, 1500–1900

Using data on the ‘career’ paths of one thousand ‘leading scientists’ from 1450 to 1900, what is conventionally called the ‘rise of modern science’ is mapped as a changing geography of scientific practice in urban networks. Four distinctive networks of scientific practice are identified. A primate network centred on Padua and central and northern Italy in the sixteenth century expands across the Alps to become a polycentric network in the seventeenth century, which in turn dissipates into a weak polycentric network in the eighteenth century. The nineteenth century marks a huge change of scale as a primate network centred on Berlin and dominated by German-speaking universities. These geographies are interpreted as core-producing processes in Wallerstein’s modern world-system; the rise of modern scientific practice is central to the development of structures of knowledge that relate to, but do not mirror, material changes in the system.

Nutritional strategies to optimize training and racing in middle-distance athletes

Middle-distance athletes implement a dynamic continuum in training volume, duration, and intensity that utilizes all energy-producing pathways and muscle fibre types. At the centre of this periodized training regimen should be a periodized nutritional approach that takes into account acute and seasonal nutritional needs induced by specific training and competition loads. The majority of a middle-distance athlete's training and racing is dependant upon carbohydrate-derived energy provision. Thus, to support this training and racing intensity, a high carbohydrate intake should be targeted. The required energy expenditure throughout each training phase varies significantly, and thus the total energy intake should also vary accordingly to better maintain an ideal body composition. Optimizing acute recovery is highly dependant upon the immediate consumption of carbohydrate to maximize glycogen resynthesis rates. To optimize longer-term recovery, protein in conjunction with carbohydrate should be consumed. Supplementation of beta-alanine or sodium bicarbonate has been shown to augment intra- and extracellular buffering capacities, which may lead to a small performance increase. Future studies should aim to alter specific exercise (resistance vs. endurance) and/or nutrition stimuli and measure downstream effects at multiple levels that include gene and molecular signalling pathways, leading to muscle protein synthesis, that result in optimized phenotypic adaptation and performance.