Clever Ideas Research Articles

THE ROLE OF DIVERGENT THINKING IN INTERPERSONAL TRUST DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: CREATIVE ASPECTS

Interpersonal trust relies on positive expectations about other people. Social psychology distinguishes ingroup (individuals share social identity, e.g., family) from outgroup trust (individuals do not share social identity, e.g., strangers). We conducted an experimental study to test if divergent thinking, which relies on an inclusive processing mode, differently affected ingroup and outgroup trust during the lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A sample of 114 healthy college students, with no prior or current COVID-19 infection (mean age = 23.66, sd = 2.53, 89% women) was recruited. Interpersonal trust was measured by three ingroup and three outgroup trust items. Divergent thinking was measured by the alternative uses task, which asked to find alternative uses for common objects. Divergent thinking was scored by two independent raters in terms of fluency and quality of ideas. To control for generalized anxiety and mood states, the generalized anxiety disorder scale and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule were administered, respectively. To control for the inclusiveness of divergent thinking performance, the alternative uses task was administered using three types of instructions. Thus, the sample was divided in three groups of 38 participants according to the divergent thinking task instructions: “be-fluent: find as many different uses for the objects”, “be-creative: find creative uses for the objects”, and “be fluent and creative: find as many different and creative uses of the objects”. The hierarchical regression analyses showed that the quality, but not the quantity of divergent thinking positively predicted only outgroup trust, whereas the mood positively predicted ingroup trust. Divergent thinking task instructions did not affect interpersonal trust. Thus, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the quality of divergent thinking supports only outgroup trust based on the inclusive processing mode, meaning that people showing high ability to produce uncommon, remote and clever ideas are more inclusive and by consequence more prone to trust strangers. Limitations and implications are discussed.

"Waiting for Gabriel": A Review of Epiphany, a One-Act play by Brian Watkins, the American Premiere at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, Lincoln Center, New York, 26 May-24 July 2022

"Waiting for Gabriel":A Review of Epiphany, a One-Act play by Brian Watkins, the American Premiere at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, Lincoln Center, New York, 26 May-24 July 2022 Richard J. Gerber Samuel Beckett might have been pleased. But Joyce … well, not so much. Like Godot in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Gabriel Conroy is a no-show in Brian Watkins's one-act play Epiphany, a riff on Joyce's short story "The Dead," which had its American premiere at Lincoln Center in New York this past summer. The world premiere was presented by the Druid Theatre Company of Galway, Ireland, back in 2019. As long as Gabriel was not appearing, however, the producers might have spared American audiences this play, as well as the trip across the Atlantic. While Gabriel's non-appearance is one of several clever and intriguing ideas in the play, it is not the only thing missing from this re-visioning of "The Dead." There is no mention of Joyce's story in the publicity or the playbill for Epiphany. And, while the acting is generally adequate, aside from the AWOL Gabriel and a tepid Freddy Malins, none of the characters in this play carry the names, recite the lines, nor retain other attributes of the figures we are all so familiar with in "The Dead." Aunt Kate, for instance, is renamed just "Morkan," and she is the central figure here. None of this matters since audiences are blissfully unaware of Epiphany's connections with "The Dead" anyway; Joyce would probably have been happy with that. The dialogue that has been substituted in this play for his elegiac language can only, ironically, be described in one word: deadly. Most of the conversation in Epiphany consists of solipsistic philosophizing, sophomoric psychologizing, and handwringing blather, especially by Morkan. That all said, it is relevant to recall that "The Dead" has served as inspiration for multiple reputable versions, ranging from a movie to a musical, and even an opera and more. Each of these has had its strong points and points that were less strong. So a brief account of some of the more interesting aspects of Epiphany that are related to "The Dead"—not the story line itself, really, nor the dialogue—might best serve readers of this review. The almost-in-the-round Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater affords the entire audience an opportunity easily to view all the actors as they make their way in and out and around the stage. Many of the characters' lines are spoken simultaneously, however, so, while they can always be seen, they cannot always be heard over one another. The set [End Page 573] is dramatic; a tri-level staircase dominates. Watkins has spoken about the staircase's importance to his play, alluding to heaven and hell as the characters ascend and descend. Snow is falling continuously throughout the play, cast against a black backdrop seen through two large windows at the rear. The snow looked real, so I found myself periodically wondering how much of it was piling up backstage during the course of the show; but it could have been a very good screen. Like Joyce's story, Epiphany has three theatrical movements, although, unlike "The Dead," they all occur during the dinner party; there is no travel to the Gresham Hotel and no final scene there. The opening third of the play has eight guests arriving sequentially, in singles and pairs, with each speculating about the purpose of the gathering and the meaning of "epiphany" as they enter. Morkan has each of the guests surrender his or her cell phone to a lockbox as soon as they arrive; the phones ring on and off, simultaneously, during the show, tempting the guests to retrieve them. Two of the guests are gay black men. One weepy woman is a sort of combined Lily and Mary Jane, welcoming guests and assisting with the service of food and drink. Another particularly annoying and talkative guest is a female journalist, perhaps a stand-in for Molly Ivors; she proceeds to get drunk before dinner is served. Several of the other guests drink too much as well, thereby...

Linguistic well-being as tantamount to educational welfare

Students that do not engage linguistically in classroom activities – for whatever reasons - do not benefit from their education as much as they could. They miss out on numerous developmental opportunities, which frequently occurs at the cost of other students and also teachers themselves, too, since, as a result of such reticent students’ silence, numerous clever ideas and thoughts are lost. The COVID-19 pandemic has been the time during which the aftermath of students’ verbal absence has been experienced on a global scale. It has clearly shown that students lacking in linguistic well-being and remaining consistently speechless throughout their classes and lectures, being hidden behind their deactivated cameras, practically disappear and, subsequently, become likely to fall out f education altogether. In those situations when teachers managed to keep their students linguistically engaged (which tends to imply the latter’s emotional involvement, too), language has served as a kind of glue securing students’ contact with their school settings. However, in all these circumstances where the “glue” in question was missing, students have become passive listeners often preoccupied with other online activities, in the light of which they gradually changed into passive outsiders, taking “advantage” of the fact that they could not be seen. Hence, at the end of the line lack of language and linguistic well-being have meant lack of education altogether. This heavy reliance of education on language and linguistic well-being has caused teachers to ponder pedagogical phenomena and to reflect on affective and axiological issues much more than they normally do, with the typical focus being on the cognitive and psychomotor aspects of language. From this perspective it can be argued that the pandemic has had its “silver lining” in that it has the potential to mark something of a Copernican turn in how most teachers see the educational role of language and in what facets of language use teachers have come to emphasize in their attempts to maximize their students’ linguistic well-being

The Ciliary Propulsion of An Electrically Conducting Johnson-Segalman Physiological Fluid Through A Porous Medium in An Inclined Symmetric A Channel with Slip

The bionic systems are distinguished by electromagnetic pumping, which offers important advantages over the well-known traditional designs, whose clever ideas are inspired by the vital characteristics of many channels in living organisms. The complex features and characteristics that we observe in the mechanism of fluid transport in channels for the bodies of living organisms and the presence of cilia in the moving of these fluids and simulate this in the design of channels for non-Newtonian fluids. In our paper, we discussed this simulation in a mathematical model of the movement of a viscous, flexible, electrically conductive fluid in an inclined channel contains cilia in which a porous medium under the influence of a magnetic field. The fluidity conduct of the fluid is emulation through the Johnson-Segalman constituent model which allows interior wall slip. The coordinated and uniform motion of the ciliated brinks (which line an interior wall of the channel) is exemplified by a converging wave motion which generates a 2-dimensional velocity of the fluid. The system of partial differential equations obtained from this mathematical model with exists boundary value conditions through long wavelength and Reynolds number concepts is solved using a perturbation method.

Enhancing the Academic Innovation Culture by Incorporation of Customer-Centric Practices

The traditional siloed academic environment and its attendant flow of information from "experts" to "novices" hinder the development of students' and faculty's asking and listening skills, which are an important part of turning ideas into impactful innovations. This manuscript describes the National Science Foundation/American Society for Engineering Education Innovation Corps for Learning (I-Corps® L) program and its associated evidence-based entrepreneurship methodology, which includes listening, asking, and updating valuation of a specific idea in response to learning the customer needs and pains. We provide a case study of our experience in the I-Corps L program and connect lessons learned to the proposed use of "customers" as a means to transform the academic environment. This customer-centric approach could shift how engineering students are taught about design and the pursuit of intellectual property (IP). For example, training would be redirected from focusing solely on the technical steps of writing a patent to emphasizing the process needed to protect an idea as part of creating impactful business activities. Students would obtain a "real-world relevant" understanding of IP by identifying who would use an idea and in what form, i.e., who will pay for the idea in a specific embodiment. Similarly, researchers are traditionally taught to defend ideas and question challenges rather than humbly learning the value of an idea by asking the potential customers. Asking and questioning are different skills, and asking without biasing the response with preconceived answers is necessary to understand the translational landscape of an idea. By making the customer the center of our teaching and research, we can all benefit from the use of evidence-based entrepreneurship to translate our clever ideas into impactful innovations.

Guest Editorial: On the Potential Role of Psi in an Expanded Science of the Physical, Experiential, and Spiritual

Guest Editorial: On the Potential Role of Psi in an Expanded Science of the Physical, Experiential, and Spiritual

Super Power, Spoony Bards, and Silverware: The Super Nintendo Entertainment System by Dominic Arsenault

Reviewed by: Super Power, Spoony Bards, and Silverware: The Super Nintendo Entertainment System by Dominic Arsenault Dal Yong Jin (bio) Super Power, Spoony Bards, and Silverware: The Super Nintendo Entertainment System. By Dominic Arsenault. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017. Pp. 240. Hardcover $29.95. Once upon a time, Nintendo reigned supreme in the global video game markets. With the newly launched Nintendo Switch in 2017, Nintendo dreams of the golden age it enjoyed between 1985 and 1990. Dominic Arsenault's Super Power, Spoony Bards, and Silverware: The Super Nintendo Entertainment System was published right before the introduction of Nintendo Switch and provides rich data and discussions on the rise and fall of Nintendo in the global console market. This book has several strengths, and three clever ideas (presaged in the title) make the book valuable. Unlike several other books that have focused on the celebratory and upbeat tones of successful game companies and video games, Arsenault emphasizes the failures of Nintendo in his analysis of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). Based on his exhaustive research, which draws on trade journals, manuals, and advertisements from the 1980s and the 1990s, he clearly identifies key technological discourses and business models that formed what he calls Nintendo's Super Power—one that all too quickly encountered market kryptonite, though for a time enabled the company's short-term dominance over the console game sector. While they helped produce a period of ascendance, Arsenault argues that these same business models were the major reasons why Nintendo eventually lost its market share to other Japanese console companies, namely Sega and Sony. Arsenault examines the historical evolution of the SNES from diverse, but connected perspectives. After discussing the different meanings of a video game platform, from an early emphasis only on hardware architecture to the marketing forces and cultural spheres that later developed, he discusses the ways in which Nintendo has faced its dark age. Arsenault identifies a few key technological shifts that happened during the SNES's lifetime, and he contends that Nintendo refused to admit that such technological [End Page 652] shifts had implications for the future of certain traditionally strong game genres. He also argues that the company pursued inflexible business models and maps out the cultural changes in the game world that wore away users' fondness for the SNES. What Arsenault discusses are some of the most significant reasons for the fall of Nintendo, even if that fall is not permanent, and his arguments provide a good lesson not only to game companies but also to other digital media and platform corporations that emphasize innovation as one of the most significant virtues. Throughout, Arsenault uses the three key concepts alluded to in the tantalizing title. "Super Power," as noted above, encompasses marketing and strategy in a broad sense; in Nintendo's case, this meant conceiving, developing, and marketing the Super Nintendo as the super version of the original Nintendo, not as something markedly new. "Silverware" refers to a particular approach to technology via the analogy of using shinier utensils to make a meal fancier without improving the quality of the food. Finally, "Spoony Bards," refers to a particular culture, specifically that of people who would sing the praises of the Super Nintendo without acknowledging its deficiencies and downfalls. Arsenault dexterously structures his argument by combining the extended notions of platform and three metaphors from the title in detailing the reasons why Nintendo has lost its supreme power in the console market. Chapters two and three explore the video game market, explain the context in which the Super NES was conceived and marketed, and articulate the critical steps in the process of launching a video game console. Chapters four and five discuss the technology of the Super NES, describing its limited processing and memory units, audio system, controller, and hardware design while exploring the larger technological revolution that video games went through during the SNES's lifespan. Chapters six and seven address the cultural images and identity of Nintendo as a corporation and the trials and tribulations it faced during the SNES's life. Arsenault eventually chronicles the fall of the SNES by emphasizing its failure to adopt a CD-ROM player...

Wandering thoughts about consciousness, the brain, and the commentary system of Larry Weiskrantz

Larry Weiskrantz has always pursued a keen interest in consciousness in humans and other animals by performing clever experiments and proposing clever ideas. In this rather idiosyncratic essay I selectively review some old and new evidence on real and apparent losses of consciousness in humans, new means that allow the human brain to expose its conscious awareness directly, and experiments on animals that may bridge their consciousness with that of humans.

Engineering wonders

Engineering wonders

What a great idea! Someone should evaluate that...

How often, as clinicians, do we see a really clever idea implemented in the workplace? In rural health in particular, creative work-around solutions are relatively commonplace. However, the evaluation and promotion of these ideas is less so, and this leads to lost opportunities for perpetuating these clever ideas. This paper explores one rural clinician's experience of what can happen if, instead of appreciating and complementing a great idea, that step of evaluating the great idea is taken. A reflective narrative was created, beginning with a corridor conversation ('What a great idea! Someone should evaluate that...'), continuing through a formal research project and ending with the impact of that project and the way its findings were communicated and implemented. The narrative outlines the effect of evaluating one great idea at the individual, workplace, organisational, state and national levels. Clinicians are well placed to identify great ideas in practice. Making the decision to evaluate these ideas can lead to personal growth, professional discovery and organisational benefits. With motivation and organisational support, who knows where evaluation may lead?

New Structures for Transparent Roofs

Transparency of glazed roofs does not depend on glass as material, which enables an admission of daylight to the interior, but it depends on the share of the glazed part of the canopy and their structural part. Spaces of glazed atria and courtyards of historical buildings are covered with very difficult shape of glazed canopies, which are supported by various types of load-bearing structures. In contemporary architecture glazed atria are used for the reason of saving energy and lighting up the inner spaces. New types of structures and using glass in load-bearing function in glass canopies are important thanks to their structural subtlety, where the structure covers slight part of glazed canopy. The result of clever ideas and modern technology are lightweight structures of bold forms and spans. In this context transparency became a new expression element of architecture.

Vacation from work: A ‘ticket to creativity’?: The effects of recreational travel on cognitive flexibility and originality

Recreational travel may increase creativity by relieving workers from stress, providing diversifying experiences and increasing positive emotions. Consequently, vacations may boost creativity, apparent in a greater variety (flexibility) and originality of ideas after work resumption.In our longitudinal field study, creativity (measured by Guilford's Alternative Uses Task; independently scored by three raters) was assessed in 46 workers before and after vacation. Potential precursors for creativity changes (i.e. work load, vacation hassles, vacation destination and positive affect) were also explored.Cognitive flexibility increased whereas originality remained the same after vacation. None of the precursors explained variance in creativity changes.Although vacations seem to increase chances on creative insights by raising the amount of available cognitive elements (flexibility), they do not necessarily lead to higher levels of originality (uncommon, remote and clever ideas). Research in larger samples is required to further explore mechanisms that may explain why travel seems to enhance creativity.

Online Only - Ready for the Change!

This time last year we announced that Macromolecular Bioscience (along with Macromolecular Theory & Simulations and Macromolecular Reaction Engineering) would be published online only starting with the first issue of 2013. Almost one year later, we can sum up that this change has been a positive experience through and through. From board members and authors we have received solely positive feedback. Our authors especially appreciate the free color figures in their published articles. In 2013, submissions to the journal increased by almost 20% compared to the previous year. The community was obviously ready for the change. But how about us editors? Certainly it was unfamiliar in the beginning to go to a conference without some printed copies of the journal in your hands. Luckily, our colleagues from the marketing department had some clever ideas on how to present our content in the digital world. QR codes are incorporated into promotional flyers to highlight outstanding publications. Times are changing: while I as an active researcher liked to read through journal copies at conferences a couple of years ago, nowadays people can be seen scanning the QR codes in those flyers and enjoying the free access to selected contributions. On top of that, we draw additional attention to carefully selected articles that we promote on MaterialsViews and MaterialsViewsChina (see Figure 1). There is no doubt that Macromolecular Bioscience is getting more attention than ever before. This is confirmed when looking at the number of full text downloads, which have gone up significantly. In the first 9 months of 2013, we observed a nearly 20% growth (compared to the same period in 2012). The papers with the highest numbers of downloads between November 2012 and October 2013 are given in Table 1. Many of these contributions deal with polymeric scaffolds and tissue engineering, but also topics such as biosensors, bioadhesion, drug delivery, and vaccines are covered. Regionally, a wide diversity can be seen. Many of these top papers come from the USA and Canada, but also contributions from China, Germany, and the Netherlands made it to the top list. I would like to thank the authors of these outstanding papers as well as our other authors from around the world for their trust, our critical reviewers and board members for their feedback, and you, our readers, for your ongoing interest in our journal. Together we are looking forward to an exciting 2014! Kirsten Severing Editor

Authorship and Shaw's Shakes Versus Shav

Authorship and Shaw's <i>Shakes Versus Shav</i>

́Éric Méchoulan D’où nous viennent nos idées? Métaphysique et intermédialité

Eric Mechoulan D'ou nous viennent nos idees? Metaphysique et intermedialite. Montreal : vlb editeur, 2010. 288pp. As director of the Centre de recherche sur l'intermedialite, at the Universite de Montreal, Eric Mechoulan is fully aware that a fashionable buzzword like intermedialty runs the risk of quickly becoming a trendy piece of pseudo-academic jargon emptied of any significance through overuse and misuse by facile scholars and sophomoric students. He says so himself, early in his book D'oU nous viennent nos idees? Metaphysique et intermedialite (35). The fear of vulgarization implicitly underlies Mechoulan's project. On the surface, the purpose of this study is to show that ideas are not merely conveyed by various media (oral language, the written word, the printed press, etc.); rather, they are in fact engendered and shaped by the media that perform these epistemological transmissions (29-31). Five pages into the introduction Mechoulan states the obvious: One should not think that the institutional materiality and form of these transmissions has no effect on ideas and discourses (17, my translation). However, beneath this assertion, which would not surprise anyone who has read McLuhan (as Mechoulan obviously has: 43), what the author really wants to present is a thorough demonstration that intermediality is anything but a facile, trendy, sophomoric concept. Over the 245 pages of this rich and sometimes engaging book, Mechoulan goes out of his way to nuance the notion of intermediality and affirm that it is worthy of the kind of profound metaphysical contemplations that would have made Socrates and Descartes proud. It does not require well over 200 pages to convince anyone that the clever ideas a 16-year-old might text to a BFF in 2012 are likely to be formally and substantially different from the clever ideas that a 16-year-old Descartes might have penned in 1612. What does take almost 250 pages, however, is the weaving of an intricate tapestry of erudite citations and rarefied classical references that bestow upon the topic at hand an aura of philosophical respectability. Arguing that ancient Greek sophist Protagoras relies on intermediality to discuss the pedagogy of virtue by intersecting the two distinct rhetorical modes of explicative Socratic dialogism and gracious epic mythos certainly helps to elevate the term to the rank of learned concept (192-193). Of course, there is nothing wrong with trying to enhance the metaphysical capital of intermediality. As director of CRI, Mechoulan probably counts among his administrative responsibilities the task of convincing funding agencies that the whole enterprise is not entirely trivial. And in fact, he is quite successful in his attempt to demonstrate that intermediality provides a crucial heuristic tool to explain the ontological formation of western epistemology. For instance, the author convincingly articulates a genealogy of human intelligence through the intermediality of instinct and intuition (69). Discussing Bergson's philosophy of intuition, which cultivates new concepts from the experiential fringes of memory, the author represents intermediality as a wide net able to harvest the sea of nonsymbolic debris of meaning that traditional philosophy ignores and leaves behind. …

Wanted! Creative Quantum Physicists Around the Age of Thirty

The expressions” genius”, “skill” and “God-given creativity” are generally taken to be synonymous. “Creative thought” is an expression we use to mean producing new, original, ingenious, and clever ideas which nobody has thought of before. A creative person or individual is one who works in new fields, makes new observations, and who makes new predictions and inferences.

Electrochemical drive system is a winner

Students at Esslingen University of Applied Sciences have put their ideas on electromobilityinto practice on the basis of a Smart. The result was an electric Smart with a fuel cell as a range extender. But the car went far beyond clever ideas. The fact that it won several categories in this year’s Michelin Challenge Bibendum also proved its practical road capability.

A Stirling idea [Stirling engine-based combined heat and power

Reducing carbon emissions and cutting energy costs is driving a mini-renaissance in many areas of engineering, with new tools and technologies being developed for domestic, commercial and industrial consumers. But a clever idea can only become a great one if it has the potential to be used on a significant scale. So when British company Disenco acquired the technology for a Stirling engine-based combined heat and power (CHP) appliance from its Scandinavian developers, the main challenge seemed to be that it lacked the skills needed to turn it into a saleable product. Fortunately, the availability of subcontractors of all sorts means that manufacturers who have a bright idea, but don't have all the necessary skills and tools, can pull in the rest from outside. Disenco's focus therefore shifted to managing its interaction with the partners who were supplying it with the capabilities it lacked to build its HomePowerPlant (HPP). However, where the HPP project stumbled although fortunately it managed to stay on its feet was instead the finance that Disenco needed to turn its clever ideas into a tried and tested, viable commercial product.

Computerized practitioner order entry over the last decade: progress and unsolved problems

Over the last decade, CPOE has become more common but remains limited to a minority of U.S. hospitals and clinics. Most organisations with CPOE now are using commercially developed CPOE systems, using vendors with more experience with larger numbers of customer sites. The software itself is more mature, no longer regarded as experimental, and is often accompanied by commercial offerings for order set content, development tools, and content maintenance contracts. Physicians no longer regard CPOE as unusual, particularly those who have recently completed training in an academic medical centre. CPOE user interfaces are remarkably similar between vendors, and have not dramatically departed from metaphors and screen designs used in early CPOE systems. They require hours or days of training before practitioners begin using them for patient care, and differ sufficiently between vendor so that practitioners must sometimes be trained separately on several systems if they practice in several hospitals. We know surprisingly little about how to best use the CPOE tool to modify practitioner behaviour using decision support tools. CPOE then, is no longer new, but in need of renewal. Clever ideas and breakthroughs are overdue. Clinical, safety, and financial benefits can be achieved with CPOE (despite evidence they can also harm), but it is likely that much more benefit awaits us in the decade to come.

Count the days to Christmas!

Kick start your Christmas preparations with these clever Advent ideas. Just add excited children for a fun-filled craft session to get them in the festive spirit