Links

Read How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim (castel.dev)
A while back I an­swered a ques­tion on Quora: Can peo­ple ac­tu­al­ly keep up with note-​taking in Math­e­mat­ics lec­tures with LaTeX . There, I ex­plained…
This is awesome though I’ve also heard of cases in which students use shared Google docs to collaboratively take notes like this as well.

❤️ jmsclee tweeted I’m absolutely crying at this. Sound on. https://t.co/BibRtM10sc

Liked a tweet by Clee Clee (Twitter)
Bookmarked The Surprisingly Powerful Influence of Drawing on Memory by Myra A. Fernandes, Jeffrey D. Wammes, Melissa E. Meade ( Current Directions in Psychological Science)

The colloquialism “a picture is worth a thousand words” has reverberated through the decades, yet there is very little basic cognitive research assessing the merit of drawing as a mnemonic strategy. In our recent research, we explored whether drawing to-be-learned information enhanced memory and found it to be a reliable, replicable means of boosting performance. Specifically, we have shown this technique can be applied to enhance learning of individual words and pictures as well as textbook definitions. In delineating the mechanism of action, we have shown that gains are greater from drawing than other known mnemonic techniques, such as semantic elaboration, visualization, writing, and even tracing to-be-remembered information. We propose that drawing improves memory by promoting the integration of elaborative, pictorial, and motor codes, facilitating creation of a context-rich representation. Importantly, the simplicity of this strategy means it can be used by people with cognitive impairments to enhance memory, with preliminary findings suggesting measurable gains in performance in both normally aging individuals and patients with dementia.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721418755385

Followed Davey Moloney (daveymoloney.com)
headshot of Davey Moloney

I try to follow IndieWeb principles as much as possible on my site and use it as my central online presence and means of communication across the web. Take a look at how my website works (always a work in progress).

What I do

I work as Technology Enhanced Learning Manager in Graduate & Professional Studies at the University of Limerick, Ireland, where I’m involved in the design and production of flexible online and blended postgraduate and professional education programmes for distance and workplace learners.

My main interests lie in open and online learning, educational technology, instructional and learning experience design, the IndieWeb, web decentralisation, technology in general, and all associated literacies and competencies.

👓 Scientists rise up against statistical significance | Nature

Read Scientists rise up against statistical significance by Valentin Amrhein, Sander Greenland & Blake McShane (Nature )
Valentin Amrhein, Sander Greenland, Blake McShane and more than 800 signatories call for an end to hyped claims and the dismissal of possibly crucial effects.
Read For the record: 18 journalists on how—or whether—they use tape recorders (Columbia Journalism Review)
How journalists memorialize their interviews seems to be divided, in many ways, along generational lines, with older reporters relying more on their notebooks and younger reporters clinging to their recording devices, which were once clunky and somewhat forbidding but came into wider use around the end of the 20th century with the advent of digital technology. But it also depends on the person.

👓 Scientists Have Cracked the Code on ‘Wine Legs,’ and It Could Lead to Some Cool New Glassware | Food & Wine

Read Scientists Have Cracked the Code on ‘Wine Legs,’ and It Could Lead to Some Cool New Glassware (Food & Wine)
Some people gaze at the tears of wine; other people dedicate their life to researching them.

🔖 Forensic Investigation of a Shawl Linked to the “Jack the Ripper” Murders | Journal of Forensic Sciences

Bookmarked Forensic Investigation of a Shawl Linked to the “Jack the Ripper” Murders by Jari Louhelainen, David Miller (Journal of Forensic Sciences)
A set of historic murders, known as the “Jack the Ripper murders,” started in London in August 1888. The killer's identity has remained a mystery to date. Here, we describe the investigation of, to our knowledge, the only remaining physical evidence linked to these murders, recovered from one of the victims at the scene of the crime. We applied novel, minimally destructive techniques for sample recovery from forensically relevant stains on the evidence and separated single cells linked to the suspect, followed by phenotypic analysis. The mtDNA profiles of both the victim and the suspect matched the corresponding reference samples, fortifying the link of the evidence to the crime scene. Genomic DNA from single cells recovered from the evidence was amplified, and the phenotypic information acquired matched the only witness statement regarded as reliable. To our knowledge, this is the most advanced study to date regarding this case. https://doi.org/10.1111/1556-4029.14038

👓 Does a new genetic analysis finally reveal the identity of Jack the Ripper? | ScienceMag

Read Does a new genetic analysis finally reveal the identity of Jack the Ripper? (Science | AAAS)
Scientists claim it’s the best evidence to date, but critics are skeptical

🔖 [1903.07456] Self-Organization and Artificial Life | arXiv

Bookmarked Self-Organization and Artificial Life by Carlos Gershenson, Vito Trianni, Justin Werfel, Hiroki Sayama (arXiv.org)
Self-organization can be broadly defined as the ability of a system to display ordered spatio-temporal patterns solely as the result of the interactions among the system components. Processes of this kind characterize both living and artificial systems, making self-organization a concept that is at the basis of several disciplines, from physics to biology to engineering. Placed at the frontiers between disciplines, Artificial Life (ALife) has heavily borrowed concepts and tools from the study of self-organization, providing mechanistic interpretations of life-like phenomena as well as useful constructivist approaches to artificial system design. Despite its broad usage within ALife, the concept of self-organization has been often excessively stretched or misinterpreted, calling for a clarification that could help with tracing the borders between what can and cannot be considered self-organization. In this review, we discuss the fundamental aspects of self-organization and list the main usages within three primary ALife domains, namely "soft" (mathematical/computational modeling), "hard" (physical robots), and "wet" (chemical/biological systems) ALife. Finally, we discuss the usefulness of self-organization within ALife studies, point to perspectives for future research, and list open questions.