Neural Correlates of Self and Its Interaction With Memory in Healthy Adolescents

Adolescence is marked by the development of personal identity and is associated with structural and functional changes in brain regions associated with Self processing. Yet, little is known about the neural correlates of self‐reference processing and self‐reference effect in adolescents. This functional magnetic resonance imaging study consists of a self‐reference paradigm followed by a recognition test proposed to 30 healthy adolescents aged 13–18 years old. Results showed that the rostral anterior cingulate cortex is specifically involved in self‐reference processing and that this specialization develops gradually from 13 to 18 years old. The self‐reference effect is associated with increased brain activation changes during encoding, suggesting that the beneficial effect of Self on memory may occur at encoding of self‐referential information, rather than at retrieval.     

African American students’ college choice processes in a post 209 era

Abstract

High-achieving African American students in California are not attending University of California (UC) campuses. Due to hyper-implementations of Proposition 209, which limited UC campuses’ ability to use race as a significant admission criteria, the UC system and individual UC campus policies have scaled back their efforts to recruit high-achieving African American students from California. This article presents findings from the qualitative portion (n?=?74) of a convergent mixed-method study of over 700 African American college-going students. Findings convey the critical role that access, outreach, diversity, and climate plays in the college choice process of African American high achievers. Drawing upon higher education and critical race literature, the findings further reveal the challenges and opportunities for states and elite universities in retaining its brightest students from diverse backgrounds. This research also conveys the potential of research to inform state, systemic, and institutional policies to increase access to selective public universities.     

The contribution of (not so) public research to commercial innovations in the field of combinatorial chemistry

This paper examines the roles that publicly funded research play in the process of combinatorial drug discovery. It is shown that firms rely heavily on public research knowledge and, even more so, on education in organic chemistry, genomics and biochemistry. Publicly funded research also led to the creation of dozens of chemical-based companies, provided firms with an access to a larger network of innovators and generated important instruments and methods that are being used throughout the value chain of combinatorial drug discovery. The effects of public research, however, often look different depending on whether one sees them through the prism of larger or smaller firms, EU15 countries or the US, universities or other PROs.     

An Assessment of Peer Review Evaluation of Academic Programmes in Mexico

From early 1992 until the end of 2000, over 1,000 academic programmes in public universities in Mexico were externally evaluated by Peer Review Teams. The evaluating organisation decided, in 2001, to invite an independent group to study this exercise in order to assess the state of Mexican Higher Education. As a consequence of such revision, an analysis of the review process itself was also possible. This paper describes the main findings relating to this second aspect.