Comparing the effects of art education and science education on creative thinking in high school students

What is the link between art and creativity? The purpose of this study was to determine the role of art education in creative thinking. A causal-comparative research design was used. Arts and science high school students (N = 162) participated. Results showed that creative thinking in visual arts students in Grade 10 with high scores differed significantly from that in music and science students; however, this difference was not found among students in Grade 11. A main reason for this result in Grade 10 students might be the non-routine problem-solving process in visual arts education, in which artwork production is an important component in creative thinking development. Considering this result, it was concluded that the effect of different education disciplines—called education department effect—on creative thinking can be significant.     

具有科研探索特色的医学细菌学综合及设计性实验的开设和实践

激发学生对医学细菌学实验课兴趣,使学生系统掌握医学细菌学研究的基本原理、基本技能和主要方法。培养学生观察能力、动手能力、综合科学思维能力和表达能力。把科研和探索性学习融入医学细菌学实验课程,开设细菌学综合及设计性实验。为培养具有创新能力和创新精神的创新型人才进行了尝试。     

Species: Beasts of burden

Ernst Mayr (1904–2005) was the twentieth century's most influential writer to wrestle with the species problem. 1 - 4 The following draws heavily on his work, albeit without presumptuously claiming to mirror his thinking or present any original ideas. As a personal meditation, I am thinking mostly of platyrrhines. Following Mayr, I adhere to what is commonly called the Biological Species Concept (BSC) as a way of thinking about a species in the real‐world biosphere as a taxon. I also hold to the idea that the Linnaean category called species has the same function as other categories: a linguistic tool for organizing and retrieving information about biodiversity while embodying evolutionary hypotheses. In other words, alpha taxonomy, the area of systematics that involves identifying, naming, and classifying species, is not purely an exercise in either biology or inventory because it involves communication as well. The burdensome work of the species category stems partly from tension created by the several purposes associated with the concept: the objective observation and examination of a fundamental biological phenomenon, the collection and interpretation of data in a selective context of relevance, and the intention to deploy scientific decisions as a form of communication within a dynamic but highly structured language system.     

His Own Synthesis: Corn, Edgar Anderson, and Evolutionary Theory in the 1940s

Tracing the contributions of Edgar Anderson (1897--1969) of the Missouri Botanical Garden to the important discussions in evolutionary biology in the 1940s, this paper argues that Anderson turned to corn research rather than play a more prominent role in what is now known as the Evolutionary Synthesis. His biosystematic studies of Iris and Tradescantia in the 1930s reflected such Synthesis concerns as the species question and population thinking. He shared the 1941 Jesup Lectures with Ernst Mayr. But rather than preparing his lectures as a potentially key text in the Synthesis, Anderson began researching Zea mays -- its taxonomy, its origin, and its agronomic role. In this study, Anderson drew on the disciplines of taxonomy, morphology, genetics, geography, anthropology, archaeology, and agronomy among others in his own creative synthesis. Though his maize research in the 1940s represented the most sustained work of his career, Anderson was also drawn in many directions during his professional life. For example, he enjoyed teaching, working with amateurs, and popular writing. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Conscious Augmentation of Creative State Enhances “Real” Creativity in Open-Ended Analogical Reasoning

Humans have an impressive ability to augment their creative state (i.e., to consciously try and succeed at thinking more creatively). Though this “thinking cap” phenomenon is commonly experienced, the range of its potential has not been fully explored by creativity research, which has often focused instead on creativity as a trait. A key question concerns the extent to which conscious augmentation of state creativity can improve creative reasoning. Although artistic creativity is also of great interest, it is creative reasoning that frequently leads to innovative advances in science and industry. Here, we studied state creativity in analogical reasoning, a form of relational reasoning that spans the conceptual divide between intelligence and creativity and is a core mechanism for creative innovation. Participants performed a novel Analogy Finding Task paradigm in which they sought valid analogical connections in a matrix of word-pairs. An explicit creativity cue elicited formation of substantially more creative analogical connections (measured via latent semantic analysis). Critically, the increase in creative analogy formation was not due to a generally more liberal criterion for analogy formation (that is, it appeared to reflect “real” creativity rather than divergence at the expense of appropriateness). The use of an online sample provided evidence that state creativity augmentation can be successfully elicited by remote cuing in an online environment. Analysis of an intelligence measure provided preliminary indication that the influential “threshold hypothesis,” which has been proposed to characterize the relationship between intelligence and trait creativity, may be extensible to the new domain of state creativity.     

NAVIGATING THE MURKY INTERSECTION BETWEEN CLINICAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL ETHICS: A HYBRID CASE TAXONOMY

Ethical challenges that arise within healthcare delivery institutions are currently categorized as either clinical or organizational, based on the type of issue. Despite this common binary issue‐based methodology, empirical study and increasing academic dialogue indicate that a clear line cannot easily be drawn between organizational and clinical ethics. Disagreement around end‐of‐life treatments, for example, often spawn value differences amongst parties at both organizational and clinical levels and requires a resolution to address both the case at hand and large‐scale underlying system‐level confounders. I refer to issues that contain elements of both clinical and organizational issues as hybrids and propose a new taxonomy to characterize hybrid cases. I contend that salient contextual features of an ethical issue, such as where it is identified, who it impacts and where it is ideally resolved in relation to its scope of impact, should inform procedure. Implementation of a Hybrid taxonomy viewing ethical issues as existing on a continuum furthers that end. The primary goals are to 1) systematize thinking about ethical issues that arise within healthcare delivery institutions and 2) allow the content of the ethical challenge to drive the process, rather than continuing to rely on the traditional binary issue‐based choice. Failure to capture the complexity of hybrid situations perpetuates incomplete information and ultimately an inchoate resolution that creates more questions than answers.     

Some ‘ant’swers: Application of a layered barcode approach to problems in ant taxonomy

DNA barcoding has emerged as a routine tool in modern taxonomy. Although straightforward, this approach faces new challenges, when applied to difficult situation such as defining cryptic biodiversity. Ants are prime examples for high degrees of cryptic biodiversity due to complex population differentiation, hybridization and speciation processes. Here, we test the DNA barcoding region, cytochrome c oxidase 1 and two supplementary markers, 28S ribosomal DNA and long‐wavelength rhodopsin, commonly used in ant taxonomy, for their potential in a layered, character‐based barcoding approach across different taxonomic levels. Furthermore, we assess performance of the character‐based barcoding approach to determine cryptic species diversity in ants. We found (i) that the barcode potential of a specific genetic marker varied widely among taxonomic levels in ants; (ii) that application of a layered, character‐based barcode for identification of specimens can be a solution to taxonomical challenging groups; (iii) that the character‐based barcoding approach allows us to differentiate specimens even within locations based on pure characters. In summary, (layered) character‐based barcoding offers a reliable alternative for problematic species identification in ants and can be used as a fast and cost‐efficient approach to estimate presence, absence or frequency of cryptic species.     

Creativity meets neuroscience: experimental tasks for the neuroscientific study of creative thinking

The psychometric assessment of different facets of creative abilities as well as the availability of experimental tasks for the neuroscientific study of creative thinking has replaced the view of creativity as an unsearchable trait. In this article we provide a brief overview of contemporary methodologies used for the operationalization of creative thinking in a neuroscientific context. Empirical studies are reported which measured brain activity (by means of EEG, fMRI, NIRS or PET) during the performance of different experimental tasks. These tasks, along with creative idea generation tasks used in our laboratory, constitute useful tools in uncovering possible brain correlates of creative thinking. Nevertheless, much more work is needed in order to establish reliable and valid measures of creative thinking, in particular measures of novelty or originality of creative insights.     

实验动物学教学内容及方法的探索与改进

实验动物学是生命科学研究的基础和支撑条件之一。在医学院校实验动物学的教学中,应以实验动物与动物实验标准化为中心,增加和完善动物模型、分子遗传、胚胎工程及转基因动物等理论内容,紧跟生命科学的发展趋势;同时注重理论教学与实验教学的相互结合,充分利用现代先进的教育技术,以基本实验、综合实验和自主设计实验培养学生的操作能力和创新思维。这些改革措施将对改进实验动物学的教学质量,提高医学院学生的科研水平有重要意义。     

Impacts of taxonomic inertia for the conservation of African ungulate diversity: an overview

We review the state of African ungulate taxonomy over the last 120 years, with an emphasis on the introduction of the polytypic species concept and the discipline's general neglect since the middle of the 20th century. We single out negative consequences of ‘orthodox’ taxonomy, highlighting numerous cases of neglect of threatened lineages, unsound translocations that led to lineage introgression, and cases of maladaptation to local conditions including parasitic infections. Additionally, several captive breeding programmes have been hampered by chromosome rearrangements caused by involuntary lineage mixing. We advocate that specimen‐based taxonomy should regain its keystone role in mammal research and conservation biology, with its scientific values augmented with genomic evidence. While integration with molecular biology, ecology and behaviour is needed for a full understanding of ungulate alpha diversity, we stress that morphological diversity has been neglected despite its tremendous practical importance for some groups of ‘utilizers’ such as trophy hunters, wildlife tourists and conservationists. We conclude that there is no evidence that purported ‘taxonomic inflation’ has adverse effects on ungulate conservation: rather, it is taxonomic inertia that has such adverse effects. We stress that sound science, founded on robust taxonomy, should underpin effective sustainable management (hunting, ranching, captive breeding and reintroduction programmes) of this unique African natural resource.     

Demystifying computer science for molecular ecologists

In this age of data‐driven science and high‐throughput biology, computational thinking is becoming an increasingly important skill for tackling both new and long‐standing biological questions. However, despite its obvious importance and conspicuous integration into many areas of biology, computer science is still viewed as an obscure field that has, thus far, permeated into only a few of the biology curricula across the nation. A national survey has shown that lack of computational literacy in environmental sciences is the norm rather than the exception [Valle & Berdanier (2012) Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, 93, 373–389]. In this article, we seek to introduce a few important concepts in computer science with the aim of providing a context‐specific introduction aimed at research biologists. Our goal was to help biologists understand some of the most important mainstream computational concepts to better appreciate bioinformatics methods and trade‐offs that are not obvious to the uninitiated.     

The rise of a microparadigm in oncology

Summary The study of the history of ideas is usually devoted to big problems and to concluded debates. We have attempted to analyze a current theory whose fate and explanatory power is still not determined. The term microparadigm is used to define a currently and widely accepted theory limited in time and in the field of application, compared to the greater problems usually investigated by historians of science. Among the characteristics defining a microparadigm we found: 1) the status of an accepted theory with creative scientific power; 2) the presence of anomalies and unproven inferences; 3) a limited field of application; 4) the peculiarity of interaction with non-scientific ideas. In this context, we discuss the rise of the current microparadigm concerning the pathogenesis and biology of lymphoid neoplasms. We show that the current view of the neoplastic lymphoid cells as populations frozen at a particular differentiative stage has been creative for the last 10 years, thus allowing the generation of a large body of data that would not have been collected within the previous view of the leukemic cell as completely anarchic. This paradigm, although containing some anomalies, has survived the impact of molecular biology in hematology and is still creative. We think that microparadigms are widely distributed in everyday science and that an analysis of them is as useful for active scientist as is the study of macroparadigms, which by themselves cannot be representative of everyday science. Finally, the study of microparadigms while they are still operative can be useful to evidence the weakness of the theory and to suggest where new data should be sought.     

Differential influence of asynchrony in early and late chronotypes on convergent thinking

Eveningness preference (late chronotype) was previously associated with different personality dimensions and thinking styles that were linked to creativity, suggesting that evening-type individuals tend to be more creative than the morning-types. Nevertheless, empirical data on the association between chronotype and creative performance is scarce and inconclusive. Moreover, cognitive processes related to creative thinking are influenced by other factors such as sleep and the time of testing. Therefore, our aim was to examine convergent and divergent thinking abilities in late and early chronotypes, taking into consideration the influence of asynchrony (optimal versus nonoptimal testing times) and sleep quality. We analyzed the data of 36 evening-type and 36 morning-type young, healthy adults who completed the Compound Remote Associates (CRAs) as a convergent and the Just suppose subtest of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking as a divergent thinking task within a time interval that did (n = 32) or did not (n = 40) overlap with their individually defined peak times. Chronotype was not directly associated with creative performance, but in case of the convergent thinking task an interaction between chronotype and asynchrony emerged. Late chronotypes who completed the test at subjectively nonoptimal times showed better performance than late chronotypes tested during their “peak” and early chronotypes tested at their peak or off-peak times. Although insomniac symptoms predicted lower scores in the convergent thinking task, the interaction between chronotype and asynchrony was independent of the effects of sleep quality or the general testing time. Divergent thinking was not predicted by chronotype, asynchrony or their interaction. Our findings indicate that asynchrony might have a beneficial influence on convergent thinking, especially in late chronotypes.     

完全学分制下微生物学教学的“破”与“立”

以提高微生物学课程教学效果为目的,从教书育人、创设情境、创新思维和强化实践等4个方面,分别阐述完全学分制下微生物学教学过程中需要破除的陈旧观念和方法,以及应该树立的良好教学习惯和风气,实践结果表明教学效果显著,符合培养新时代高素质生命科学技术人才的需求。     

A plant root system architectural taxonomy: A framework for root nomenclature

Abstract

Research into root system morphology over the last two centuries has developed a diverse set of terminologies that are difficult to apply consistently across species and research specialties. In response to a need for better communication, a workshop held by the International Society for Root Research established some nomenclature standards for root research. These standards and their justification are presented in this study. A framework for a root system architectural taxonomy is created by defining four main classes of root: the tap root, that is, the first root to emerge from the seed; lateral roots, which are branches of other roots; shoot‐borne roots, which arise from shoot tissues; and basal roots, which develop from the hypocotyl, that is, the organ which is between the base of the shoot and the base of the tap root. It is concluded that adherence to the presented taxonomy will reduce confusion and eliminate some of the current confounding of results.