How does the ecological foraging behavior of desert kangaroo rats (Dipodomys deserti) relate to their behavior on radial mazes?

Experiment 1 showed that laboratory-reared desert kangaroo rats, like domestic Norway rats, efficiently search for food on a radial arm maze (RAM) by avoiding revisiting arms within a trial. By placing an RAM on the floor so the animals could approach food from any direction, Experiment 2 tested whether efficient search by kangaroo rats was based on tactics of distance minimizing, central-place foraging, trail following, or meandering. In contrast to the dominant trail-following tactic of domestic Norway rats (Hoffman, Timberlake, Leffel, & Gont, 1999), kangaroo rats tended to distance minimize, whether maze arms were present or not. Experiment 3 indicated that kangaroo rats treated a floor configuration of eight food cups as twopatches of four, based on beeline travel between patches and meandering within them. We conclude that similar performance in an elevated RAM by different species can be based on different tactics, and we suggest that a laboratory apparatus can be used to cast light on niche-related mechanisms.     

The prospects for using the Internet in collaborative design education with China

The Internet has become widely available in higher educationinstitutions all over the world offering new possibilities incommunication, collaboration and delivery. This paper examines theprospects for using the Internet in the context of collaborative designeducation with China, using the School of Design of the Hong KongPolytechnic University as a case study. The critical success factors arediscussed. These involve serious investment of resources and changes atgovernment, institutional and personal levels on both sides of thecollaborative institutions. It is important to look into theinfrastructure and policy issues, access to information technology,curriculum adaptation and instructional design as well as staff andstudent attitudes in order to achieve the collaborative objectivesthrough an Internet supported strategy. Although the Internet is a costeffective delivery mechanism, the School does not intend to deliver itsdesign course materials to China purely online. Pedagogically, theSchool believes in a dynamic interaction between real and virtuallearning environments for quality student learning. Technically, thereare many impediments to overcome before teaching staff and students arefamiliar with the use of information technology and it will take sometime before most people in China can make full access of the Internet toconnect freely to electronic education. Therefore, a hybrid approach isproposed to train design educators and practitioners in Mainland Chinaby utilising traditional face-to-face teaching method and establishedtechnologies while developing the use of the Internetgradually.     

Revisions to rationality: the translation of ‘new knowledges’ into policy under the Coalition Government

This article gives an account of the use of knowledges from emerging scientific fields in education and youth policy making under the Coalition government (2010–15) in the UK. We identify a common process of ‘translation’ and offer three illustrations of policy-making in the UK that utilise diverse knowledges produced in academic fields (neuroscience, network theory and well-being). This production of ‘new knowledges’ in policy contexts allows for the identification of sites of policy intervention. This process of translation underlies a series of diverse revisions of the rational subject of policy. Collectively, these revisions amount to a change in policy-making and the emergence of a different subject of neoliberal policy. This subject is not an excluded alterity to an included rational subject of neoliberalism, but a ‘plastic subject’ characterised by its multiplicity. The plastic subject does not contradict the rational subject as central to neoliberal policy-making, but diversifies it.     

A Meta-Analytic Review of the Benefit of Spacing out Retrieval Practice Episodes on Retention

Educational Psychology Review - Spaced retrieval practice consists of repetitions of the same retrieval event distributed through time. This learning strategy combines two “desirable...