August 19, 2008

Psychological Research About Students Who Cheat Could Help Anti-Cheating Campaigns

Professors who use detection programs like Turnitin in the hope of dissuading students from cheating may be on the wrong track. New research by psychologists at Ohio State University at Newark focuses instead on profiling the students who are least likely to cheat, and the findings could help identify a target audience for anti-cheating campaigns, one of the researchers said in a news release from the university.

The research is based on two studies that together involved more than 450 undergraduates at the Newark campus. The studies found, not too surprisingly, that students who said they had not cheated in the past month or year and had no plans to cheat in the future also scored highest on tests measuring qualities like courage, empathy, and honesty. Non-cheaters were also less likely to believe that their peers had cheated, the studies found. By contrast, students who scored lower on measurements of courage, empathy, and honesty were more likely to report having cheated, and to believe that other students cheated more often than they themselves did, thus rationalizing their behavior.

Honest students “have a more positive view of others,” explained Sarah Staats, a professor of psychology and a co-author of the study, who presented the findings this past weekend at the annual conference of the American Psychological Association, in Boston. The findings, she said, have implications for identifying both “academic heroes” (non-cheaters) and effective target audiences for anti-cheating campaigns.

When researchers asked students if they planned to cheat in the future, 47 percent said they did not, while 24 percent agreed or strongly agreed that they would. Anti-cheating campaigns, said Ms. Staats, may be able to sway the undecided 29 percent through messages rooted in positive psychology. “Our results suggest that interventions may have a real opportunity to influence at least a quarter of the student population,” she said. —Paula Wasley

Fewer University-Based Researchers Appear on 2008 List of Young Innovators

The proportion of inventors and researchers who are at universities in the annual “Young Innovators Under 35” list, compiled by Technology Review, has shrunk, from 22 out of 35 in 2007 to 17 out of 35 this year.

Every year since 1999, the editors of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology magazine create this list to praise young innovators whose inventions and research the editors find “most exciting” in fields such as medicine, electronics, and nanotechnology, among others.

The institution with the most researchers on the 2008 list is Harvard University, with four (plus a joint representative with MIT). The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of California at Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology have two each. Researchers at three foreign universities, in Britain, Canada, and Israel, also appear on the list.

Some of the university-based projects that caught the attention of the editors at Technology Review include a quest to design microbes to make fuels and drugs, a miniature robotic fly, and an electronic nose that can diagnose cancer by sniffing the patient’s breath. —Maria José Viñas

August 18, 2008

Interrogation Debate Heats Up at Psychologists' Conclave

Roughly 100 anti-torture activists demonstrated outside the American Psychological Association’s convention this weekend, The Boston Globe reports.

As The Chronicle described last week, the association’s members are voting on a resolution that would toughen the group’s restrictions on psychologists’ participation in interrogations at the Guantánamo Bay detention center and similar sites. The vote is being conducted by mail; ballots are due September 15.

The resolution’s proponents argue that in “settings that fail to meet basic standards of international law, it is unrealistic to rely on psychologists to challenge their superiors, report on violations, and protect abused detainees.” Opponents say that the resolution is too ambiguous about which types of facilities would fall under the ban, and that the association’s existing anti-torture rules are sufficient.

Last week, a military psychologist who served at Guantánamo Bay invoked her right to remain silent and declined to testify at a military tribunal related to Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan citizen who has been held at the facility since 2003. That development, and the broader interrogation debate, were explored this weekend by The New York Times and The New York Sun. —David Glenn

Kafka Papers Are Trapped in 'Kafkaesque' Web

The heir to Franz Kafka’s papers says she is under “Kafkaesque” pressure to release them, The New York Times reported this morning. Hava Hoffe, a 74-year-old resident of Tel Aviv, is the daughter of Esther Hoffe, who worked as the secretary for Max Brod, Kafka’s friend and literary executor.

In 1939, Brod fled Prague and the Nazis with a suitcase full of Kafka’s papers, having failed to honor his late friend’s orders to burn them. When Brod died, in 1968, he left his literary estate to his secretary, who later sold the manuscript for The Trial for $2-million. The Hoffe family also owns what is likely to be a significant cache of Brod’s papers.

Researchers are eager to find out what lies inside the Hoffe apartment, and what condition it’s in. “For nearly 40 years, the secretary, Esther Hoffe, held the world of Kafka scholarship on tenterhooks, keeping the documents in her ground-floor apartment on Spinoza Street, some of them piled high on her desk (it was originally Mr. Brod’s), where she typed all day and took her meals,” the Times reported. “As her mother did, Hava Hoffe is keeping scholars and archivists up at night wondering about the condition of what they believe are letters, diaries, photographs, and perhaps unpublished works of the two authors.”

There’s also a debate about whether the papers should remain in Israel. The Times reporter managed to corner Ms. Hoffe on the street in Tel Aviv for a brief conversation. “Implying that the valuable documents had been stored somewhere safe, Ms. Hoffe then described a sense of being pressured from all directions, especially the state of Israel, to yield the papers or come to a decision on their future,” the article says. “She felt under siege, caught in a web, she added. Her blue eyes yielding no hint of irony, she said, ‘It is truly Kafkaesque.’” —Jennifer Howard

August 16, 2008

Scientists Work to Develop Mind-Reading Technology

Four million dollars for your thoughts? With the help of that much in U.S. Army funds, a team of university scientists are trying to develop a gadget that could read people’s minds, the Associated Press reports.

Led by researchers at the University of California at Irvine, the team is using electroencephalography, or EEG, to analyze the brain activity produced when volunteers think of certain words. The idea is that, in the future, thought-recognition software would allow soldiers to transmit messages even if they had brain injuries that prevented them from speaking.

The Associated Press raises the specter of the military’s using such mind-reading technology to interrogate the enemy. But a news release from the university describes only the potential benefits for paralysis and stroke victims.

Michael D’Zmura, chair of Irvine’s department of cognitive sciences, told the AP that the technology, once developed, could never force out thoughts from uncooperative subjects. —Jennifer Ruark

Malaysia Bans Book on Muslim Women

The government of Malaysia has banned a collection of academic research papers written about the challenges facing Muslim women, the Star Online reported.

According to the Web-based newspaper, Malaysia’s Ministry of Home Affairs said on Thursday that the volume, Muslim Women and the Challenge of Islamic Extremism, could cause confusion and undermine the religion.

The announcement baffled Sisters in Islam, an activist group that published the papers in 2005. A representative from the organization said the book, written by scholars, examined the impact of religious extremism on women living in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Edited by Norani Othman, a professor of sociology at the National University of Malaysia, the book grew out of a 2003 academic conference on women and Islam.

The ban was condemned by groups trying to reform laws that give the Muslim-majority government the power to censor books and the media. The Writer’s Alliance for Media Independence and the Centre for Independent Journalism called the ban “the height of cowardice for the intellectually inferior.” They urged Malaysians to sign an online petition calling for an end to the government’s power to determine what is published.

Malaysian censors routinely review books that may contain sensitive material regarding religion or sex. It was unclear which passages the ministry objected to. Those who produce or print prohibited material can face at least three years in prison. —Martha Ann Overland

August 14, 2008

Ethical Problems Plague Stem-Cell Study

Researchers at the Medical Institute of Innsbruck, in Austria, flouted ethical and scientific procedures in a clinical trial testing the use of stem cells to treat urinary incontinence, according to an article in the journal Nature. The Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety investigated the researchers and found that they had not obtained appropriate approvals for their experiment and may have forged documents. In a report last year in The Lancet, the researchers contended that the procedure had proved effective in treating women suffering from incontinence. —Richard Monastersky

August 13, 2008

UC-Santa Cruz to Close Widely Praised Science-Illustration Program

Five years after state budget cuts moved the University of California at Santa Cruz’s prestigious program in science illustration to the extension school, the program will close next spring, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported today.

The graduate program’s students, many of whom majored in science, must learn to tell stories through art, while maintaining accuracy. The program is highly regarded among illustrators.

But after two and a half decades of producing graduates who make drawings and paintings for museums, magazines, and field guides, the program fell victim to further budget cuts and will close its doors, along with the extension school’s English-language international program. —Lila Guterman

Boxing Archive a Knockout at Brooklyn College

A cavernous collection of boxing memorabilia has completed the journey from a Florida garage to the brick-and-ivy campus of the City University of New York’s Brooklyn College, according to a New York Times article published today. The college acquired the collection, appraised at $2.94-million, from Hank Kaplan, a former boxing journalist who kept thousands of newspaper clippings, photographs, boxing gloves, and champion belts in his house and two-car garage until his death last year at 88.

The archive, which features the heavy bag Cassius Clay punched before renaming himself Muhammad Ali and a gold cigarette case that the heavyweight Max Baer gave his trainer, will now share space with Robert Frost first editions and the correspondence of local civic leaders at the Brooklyn College Library.

The collection, currently housed in a 10-foot-high chamber in the Brooklyn College archives with a small, public display in the library itself, is not yet available to researchers. But Anthony M. Cucchiara, a professor of archival management at Brooklyn College who is also an amateur boxer and who met with Mr. Kaplan before his death, is trying to raise $200,000 to house it in acid-free storage, to study and catalog it. He said that the history of boxing, with its fierce ethnic rivalries and close-knit neighborhood gyms, illuminates the history of America in general and New York specifically.

“I suppose some people would turn their noses up at a boxing collection,” said Mr. Cucchiara. “But the story of America is in this archive.” —Ingrid Norton

August 12, 2008

UMass-Boston Will Be Home to New Kennedy Institute

The University of Massachusetts at Boston will house a new Edward M. Kennedy Institute devoted to the U.S. Senate, The Boston Globe reported today. The institute will be built on land that the university owns next to the John F. Kennedy Library, and it will use the long-serving U.S. senator as a “case study” for research and education about the Senate.

“The United States Senate is one of our forefathers’ most brilliant democratic inventions,” Senator Kennedy told the newspaper in a written statement. “To preserve our vibrant democracy for future generations, I believe it is critical to have a place where citizens can go to learn firsthand about the Senate’s important role in our system of government.”

The news is a coup for the university, which beat out other interested institutions — including Mr. Kennedy’s alma mater, Harvard — for the honor. “The center, expected to have closer links to UMass-Boston than the presidential library, will help boost the stature of a campus that has long sought to establish a distinct identity, apart from its reputation as a commuter school,” the Globe noted.

Senator Kennedy and his backers have accelerated planning and fund raising for the institute because of his recent diagnosis of brain cancer. Construction may begin as early as next spring. —Jennifer Howard