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Written by nicholas wade
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Marc Hauser, a Harvard academic who gained prominence with the publication of a book on the origin of morality, has gone on leave after an investigation by the university into problems with his research.
Dr. Hauser, whose field is the comparison of human and animal minds, is the author of “Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong.”
A Harvard press officer, Jeff Neal, at first refused to confirm that Dr. Hauser was on leave or that Harvard had conducted any investigation. But a message on Dr. Hauser’s laboratory phone says he will be on leave until the fall of 2011, and at least two scientific journals are acknowledging problems in Dr. Hauser’s articles that were brought to light by an internal Harvard inquiry.
The journal Cognition published an article by Dr. Hauser and others in 2002 saying that tamarin monkeys could learn certain rules much as human infants do. The journal is about to run a retraction saying that an internal examination by Harvard “found that the data do not support the reported findings.”
“We therefore are retracting this article,” it continues. “MH accepts responsibility for the error.” The initials M.H. refer to Dr. Hauser.
Harvard’s silence about the nature of the problem in Dr. Hauser’s laboratory has stirred concern among other researchers who fear their field will be discredited unless the full facts are made known.
“I think that Harvard has to make public what they found,” said Herbert Terrace, a professor of psychology at Columbia University. “They say they have to protect Harvard and Hauser, but how about protecting the field?”
Dr. Hauser is one of Harvard’s most visible academics, being frequently quoted in articles about language, animals’ cognitive abilities and the biological basis of morality. He is widely regarded as a star in his field.
In a widely noticed book of 2006, “Moral Minds,” he argued that a universal moral grammar is genetically wired into the human mind, similar to the universal grammar posited by Noam Chomsky to underlie the language faculty. Dr. Hauser is currently working on a book called “Evilicious: Why We Evolved a Taste for Being Bad.”
Dr. Hauser is a fluent and persuasive writer, and his undoing seems to have been his experiments, many of which depended on videotaping cotton-topped tamarin monkeys and noting their responses. It is easy for human observers to see the response they want and so to be fooled by the monkeys.
Dr. Terrace said there had been problems for some time with Dr. Hauser’s work.
“First there was arbitrary interpretation of the videotapes to suit the hypothesis,” he said. “The other was whether the data was real. There have been a number of papers using videotape, and all of them have to be reviewed to see if the data holds up.”
Dr. Terrace noted that it was easy for a researcher to see what he wanted in a videotaped animal’s reactions, and that independent observers must check every finding.
In one case, according to an article in The Boston Globe on Tuesday, Gordon G. Gallup Jr. of the State University of New York at Albany asked Dr. Hauser for videotapes of an experiment in which cotton-topped tamarins were said to recognize themselves in a mirror. When he received the videotapes, Dr. Gallup could see no evidence that this was the case. Dr. Gallup did not return a call or respond to e-mail on Wednesday.
Dr. Hauser’s 2002 article in Cognition was published with two co-authors, but he has accepted responsibility for the error. One co-author, Gary Marcus of New York University, said he saw the summary of Dr. Hauser’s experiments but not the raw data. He was informed that there was a problem with the data, but has not seen the result of the investigation.
Mr. Neal, Harvard’s press officer, declined to say when the university’s examination of Dr. Hauser’s laboratory had started, when it was completed or how many other papers besides that in Cognition were under question.
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Written by Dennis Carter
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New design techniques that can heighten a projector’s contrast without sacrificing brightness, and eco-friendly projectors that eliminate the need for costly mercury lamps, are among the many recent developments in audio-visual (AV) technologies with implications for schools and colleges.
Here’s a look at these and other new trends in the AV market for education.
Educators trust projectors for medical imaging
Officials at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine’s Department of Radiation Oncology make critical treatment decisions based partly on images showing where cancer cells are, so having a crystal-clear projector image is critical for accurate diagnoses.
Julian Rosenman, a professor at the university’s Department of Radiation Oncology, said black-and-white CT scans with shades of gray dispersed throughout could dictate a patient’s treatment. That’s why the department bought two of Canon’s REALiS SX80 Mark II D Multimedia LCOS projectors, which are mounted on the ceiling for stability and offer dual projection images so students and doctors can compare and contrast scans side by side.
The Canon projectors also let Rosenman and his colleagues teleconference with medical professionals and students worldwide, because the projectors’ images can be shared with doctors at other campuses or hospitals.
“We do a lot of tumor boards and telemedicine meetings, in which doctors view medical images to make treatment decisions,” Rosenman said. “This is why the color accuracy of projected images is so important.”
The Canon REALiS SX80 Mark II D projectors feature 3,000 lumens of brightness and a pixel resolution of 1,400 x 1,050. They use a projection technology that Canon developed, called Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCOS), to achieve ultra-sharp, high-contrast, lattice-free images without the “screen door” effect that can mute the color and detail of some LCD images.
Early LCOS projectors sacrificed compactness and brightness to achieve this degree of clarity, Canon says. But the company has developed a new optical system, called aspectual illumination system (AISYS), that solves this problem. AISYS splits beams of light into vertical and horizontal components, then uses each component to enhance brightness or contrast. The result is a system that combines the kind of sharp contrast and high degree of brightness needed to distinguish between many shades of gray.
The REALiS SX80 Mark II D features a mode that complies with Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) devices, because it offers 21 levels of grayscale gradation for more accurate diagnoses. Having a DICOM feature built into the device, medical school officials say, means universities won’t have to buy costly additional equipment designed to supplement the image projectors.
UNC officials said the Canon projectors also have helped the medical school avoid image disturbances caused by other electronic devices in the area—a common problem among some projectors.
“Image stability is also very important when you are comparing medical data. I don’t know how Canon does it, but the [projectors] reject the jitter … caused by the other electrical equipment we’ve got going,” Roseman said. “With these REALiS projectors, you don’t see rolling bars or visible beat frequencies.
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Written by Walter Hull
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For whatever the reason, we have a giant and extremely dense sphere of hydrogen in the sky called the Sun. How lucky for us this is, since the Sun is constantly undergoing Nuclear Fusion and cranking out megatons of solar energy on a regular basis.
This solar energy arrives to Earth as electromagnetic radiation, where it is absorbed and utilized in the biosphere in numerous ways. The Sun and solar energy it emits is arguably the most essential element to our existence.
Electromagnetic radiation is composed of tiny invisible energy waves, all traveling at the speed of light (3x108 meters per second). Forms of electromagnetic radiation include X-rays, gamma waves, radio waves, microwaves, infrared waves, ultra-violet waves, and the visible light spectrum. The only difference between the waves is their frequency of resonance, and they are characterized based on this.
The Sun emits solar energy in the range of infrared, visible light, and ultra-violet wave lengths. Thank goodness for this, because if the Sun emitted solar energy as X-rays or Gamma rays, we would all be toast.
Solar energy is also the primary element that forms weather patterns. The Sun warms the surface of the earth, whereby wind patterns develop. Solar energy is absorbed in the oceans, and this helps form the currents. Evaporation caused by solar energy is what fundamentally leads to clouds and thunderstorms.
And so it is no surprise that solar energy is at the root of almost all physical processes that occur on Earth. Without this valuable resource life as we know it would not exist.
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