Passage 4 (LS Nervous system)

716 words

(1)       Cognitive scientists increasingly view our “mental contents” as associative networks of information units. These knowledge structures exist in memory and may be activated by external input that somehow contacts representational units within the knowledge structure. Thus, for example, the word cat, or an outline drawing of a cat, prompts memory retrieval of a series of associations, i.e., such cat facts as, “has fur, whiskers, and a tail”; “makes a good pet, but can scratch” — all this, along with an apparently three-dimensional cat picture in the mind’s eye. Cat cues can also activate memories, such as the time while you were watching TV and the cat jumped into your lap and spilled the coffee.

(2)       However, the associative network of an emotion is different from other knowledge structures in the brain. The neural networks underlying emotion include direct connections to the brain’s primary motivational systems. These systems are neural circuits that were laid down early in our evolutionary history, in various parts of our brain. They serve to mediate—connect-- to our brains, and thus influence behaviors basic to our survival. These same neural circuits are activated by stimuli which govern our desires and fears. They determine the deployment of our reflexes and withdrawal behaviors, and they contribute to our conditioned associations.

(3)       Of particular relevance here is the fact that some stimuli and the associations they evoke prompt a state of emotional arousal: For example, an upset person may become filled with terror upon seeing — even just remembering — a snake coiled to strike. His palms sweat and muscles tense. An athlete may feel great joy when recalling a race he won. His heart beats rapidly and his face is flushed with pleasure. Cognitive scientists have not, however, generally considered emotional factors as fundamental to the mind’s work. Until very recently, few basic models of cognition even considered affective variables, despite the well-known importance of emotion in human memory. Our aim in the passage is to explicate what is special about emotional information processing in the brain— particularly, the neural foundations that underlie the experience and expression of fear.

(4)       Human emotions are, of course, highly varied in their expression. Many investigators have argued that emotion’s organization has a relatively simple structure. Pleasant emotions are associated with an “appetitive system” — the basic neural mediation including hunger, sexual, and nurturant behavior. Unpleasant emotions are caused by a “defensive system,” primarily associated with behaviors such as withdrawal, escape from pain, and defensive aggression. It is this latter system that is presumed to be active in human fear and anxiety.

(5)       Clinicians have traditionally made a distinction between fear and anxiety, and several theoretical models discriminate between these states. Fear is generally held to be a reaction to an explicit threatening stimulus, whereas anxiety is considered to be a relatively general state of distress-- more long-lasting, and prompted by less explicit or more generalized cues. For example, it has been repeatedly observed that bright light produces anxiety-like responses in the rat. Recently, some researchers found that untrained rats exposed to a bright light for an extended period (5–20 minutes) show an increase in the startle reflex, the mechanism that makes organisms twitch at sudden stimuli such loud noises.

(6)       When nocturnal species (species active at night) like rats are exposed to light, they characteristically show avoidance and other signs of stress; conversely, diurnal species (species active during the daytime) such as human beings appear to be stressed by darkness. When the lights go off, many people feel more anxious, especially if they were afraid of the dark when they were young. Recent studies have shown that humans show a significant increase of startle amplitude (an increased likelihood to be “startled”) when they are alone in the dark. Some patients reported that the darkness prompted combat memories, such as being back at their guard post in Vietnam and remembering being anxious about being hit by an incoming mortar. These thoughts might serve as specific fear cues. We cannot rule out the possibility, of course, that the anxiety could have resulted from the patients’ reaction to the novel and stressful context of psycho-physiological testing. Darkness would accentuate the effect, in this sense analogous to the sustained startle effect found in rats taken from their home cages and exposed to light.

reflex: an involuntary neuromuscular action provoked by a stimulus

anxiety: uneasiness, apprehension

startle: (noun or verb) a quick involuntary movement or start, to cause someone to have an involuntary movement

Passage 3 (PS Software engineering)

649 words

(1)       Just about every software system deployed today must defend itself from malicious adversaries. Modern society is critically dependent on a wide range of software systems. Threats from a software security breach could range from the very mild (such as the defeat of copy protection in a video game) to the disastrous (such as intrusion into a nuclear power plant control system). With the advent of the Internet, and increasing reliance on public networks for e-commerce, telecommuting, etc., the risks from malicious attacks are increasing. Software system designers today must think not only of users, but also of hackers and others who seek to penetrate security. Security concerns must inform every phase of software development, from the engineering of requirements to design, implementation, testing, and deployment.

(2)       Happily, changes in software development practices and software architectures have opened new opportunities for applying security engineering. Techniques such as cryptography and tamper-resistant hardware can be used to build trust in software tools and processes. These opportunities arise from the fact that software systems are no longer monolithic, single-vendor creations. Increasingly, systems are complex configurations made up of commercial, off-the-shelf elements. Off-the-shelf software offers great savings over custom-written software; however, the vendors, seeking to protect intellectual property, usually will sell components separately, without source code or design documentation. Software developers are thus faced with the risks of constructing systems out of unknown, “black-box” components. Fortunately, recent research has provided us with several security technologies such as tamper-resistant hardware, which can be used by the software practitioner to address security concerns.

(3)       On the negative side, in the past security software requirements have not typically received the type of careful analysis that other software functions have. In mature markets, non-security software engineers have chosen carefully from a variety of possible features, and deployed those most in demand and most likely to maximize revenue. Yet designing a “truly" secure system (i.e., defending from all credible threats) is simply too expensive. Thus, in practice, limited resources force compromises upon the security software designer, compromises made on an ad-hoc basis, mostly as an afterthought. We strongly support the view that, in the future, systems engineering must be unified with security engineering. Just as systems engineers analyze and select market-critical features, security engineers must develop viable “threat models,” and designate a robust menu of the security measures most needed for market success. Those resources can then be deployed to build the right combination of customer features and selected security measures.

(4)       Software designers involved in re-engineering projects have long recognized the need to incorporate considerations such as performance and reliability into software design processes. It is well understood that adding performance and reliability requirements into software architectures after the fact can be difficult—or even impossible. Sadly, security-oriented requirements for performance and reliability are often built in last, as an afterthought. This typically means that policy enforcement mechanisms have to be shoehorned into a preexisting design, leading to serious (and sometimes impossible) design challenges for the rest of the system. The best resolution to this problem is to refine requirements and design processes in order to bring an earlier focus on security issues.

(5)       Apart from poor planning, there are other reasons that security tends not to be considered in the initial systems design. When older, legacy systems, which have been operating for some time within secure intranets, need to be re-engineered for network applications, including those on the open Internet, there is no choice but to add security after the fact. There are several problems that arise here, resulting from architectural mismatch. For example, data incompatibilities may render it difficult for an engineer to make a system’s services available via standard protocols, such as HTTP. These problems are important and deserve our attention because the security of software-controlled systems is now critical to the functioning of our normal everyday life. Thus the timely, effective and correct construction of security systems is an ongoing challenge faced by software engineers.

copy protection: any technical measure designed to prevent duplication of information

legacy system: existing (old) computer system or program which continues to be used

Passage 2 (HA History)

698 words

(1)       “Historic” cultures, designated as such beginning with the earliest date of prolonged contact with Europeans, have been widely and systematically recorded by anthropologists in North America. These accounts usually reflect profound changes wrought by the impact of alien tools, materials, and values. Less is known about the so-called prehistoric North American cultures of earlier times, dating in some places as much as 12, 000 years ago. In fact, the finer subtleties and depths of Native American and Eskimo (or Inuit) art are often lost to an observer who is not from the native tradition.

(2)       The traditional sculpture of the Eskimo peoples, for example, is often severely economical in the handling of form, while at the same time refined, even elegant, in the placement and precision of incised designs, both geometric and representational. The carved ivory burial mask from the Ipiutak culture of about A.D. 300 is composed of nine carefully shaped parts that are interrelated, so as to produce several faces, both human and animal. It is a confident, subtle composition in shallow relief, a tribute to the artist’s imaginative control over the materials. Over the centuries Eskimos have also carved hundreds of small figures and animals, usually in ivory. They have also created highly imaginative wooden masks used by shamans. The masks were characterized by fanciful forms and odd juxtapositions of images and materials.

(3)       Native American craftspeople also excelled in working stone into a variety of utilitarian and/or ceremonial objects. The styles are markedly different. For example, there is a realistic handling of the so-called Adena pipe (1000-300B.C.)—a figural pipe bowl—provides an interesting contrast to the two-dimensional, more animated composition found at a Mississippian culture site in Tennessee, dating from about A.D.1200-1500. Most Adena and Mississippian objects come from burial and temple mounds and are thought to have been gifts to the dead to ensure safe, prosperous arrival in the land of the spirits. Other art objects found in such contexts include fine mica and embossed-copper cut-outs of hands, bodies, snakes, birds, and other presumably symbolic forms.

(4)       Engravings and paintings on rock are also found widely distributed across North America. It is supposed that these are sacred sites used for communal rituals or the recording of personal spiritual experiences, so important to Native American religions. Rock arts vary from lively naturalistic or schematic renderings of humans and animals to complex, convoluted compositions of yet-undeciphered symbols. Both the symbolic complex in black, white, and red shown in cave settings near Santa Barbara, California, and the processions of linear, geometric, human figures chiseled or hammered into rock surfaces near Dinwoody, Wyoming, have overlays suggesting successive visits were made, probably for ritual purposes.

(5)       Most Native American art forms—rock painting, pottery, architecture—span lengthy time periods. Moreover, detailed chronological sequences of pottery styles are, interestingly enough, the historian’s major tool in dating and reconstructing the cultures of the distant past, especially in the Southwest US, since there no written records were made. There are many fine specimens of Southwest ceramics, but after about A.D.1000 the pottery becomes especially fine, and its decoration most impressive.

(6)       In the later centuries of the prehistoric era, the Native Americans of the Southwest constructed many architectural complexes that reflect masterful building skills and remarkable talent in spatial organization. Of the many ruins of such complexes, Pueblo Bonito and the “Cliff Palace” at Mesa Verde are among the best known. The Cliff Palace occupies a sheltered ledge above a valley floor and has about two hundred rectangular rooms—mostly communal dwellings—in several stories of carefully laid stone or adobe and timber. Twenty larger circular underground structures were the spiritual and ceremonial centers of Pueblo life. Pueblo Bonito contains similar rooms, but contrasts with Mesa Verde because it is situated in the open and has a superbly unified plan. The whole complex is enclosed by a wall in the shape of a giant “D”. This careful planning suggests that the design was overseen by a single architect or master builder and that the construction was carried out by hundreds of workers. Modern terraced pueblos, though impressive, reflect neither such unified design nor such a massive, well-organized building effort.

Ipiutak mask, walrus ivory, National Museum Copenhagen (See Picture below)

shaman: a person who acts as a medium between the visible world and the invisible spirit world, using magic for various purposes

Pueblo Bonito: Pueblo Bonito is a famous ruin in Chaco Canyon (in what is now New Mexico, US), containing as many as 800 rooms.

Cliff Palace:  a large ruin built into an alcove in a sandstone cliff

Passage 1 (SS Psychology)

663 words

(1)       The concept of personality has been scrutinized from a variety of theoretical perspectives, and at various levels of abstraction or breadth. Each of these has made unique contributions to our understanding of individual differences in behavior and experience. However, in the past the number of personality traits, as well as the scales designed to measure them, escalated to such an extent that confusion resulted. Researchers, as well as practitioners in the field of personality assessment, were faced with a bewildering array of personality scales from which to choose. What made matters worse was that scales with the same name often measured concepts that were not the same, and scales with different names often measured concepts that were quite similar. This proliferation of different concepts and scales made it extremely difficult for researchers to interpret all the findings and to communicate clearly with each other. Personality researchers sought to devise a theoretical structure that would transform this “tower of Babel” into a professional community speaking a common language.

(2)       What personality psychology needed was a descriptive model, or taxonomy, of its subject matter. One of the central goals of scientific taxonomies was thus a model of overarching domains within which large numbers of specific instances can be understood in a simplified way. In personality psychology, taxonomy could permit researchers to study specified domains of personality characteristics, rather than examining separately the thousands of particular attributes that make human beings individual and unique. Moreover, a generally accepted taxonomy could greatly facilitate the accumulation and communication of empirical findings by offering a standard vocabulary, or nomenclature.

(3)       Some pioneering work, and the availability of a relatively short list of variables, stimulated other researchers to examine how the various factors contributed to the model of personality trait ratings. Several investigators went on to create what is now known as the “Big Five” dimensions of personality. Fiske, for example, constructed simplified descriptions from 22 personality variables. The factor structures that Fiske derived from self-ratings, ratings by peers, and ratings by psychological staff members were seen to be highly similar and led to the formation of the “Big Five.” To refine these factor structures, other scientists analyzed data in eight diverse samples of people, ranging from air force personnel with no more than a high-school education to first-year graduate students, and included ratings by peers, supervisors, teachers, or experienced clinicians in settings as diverse as military training courses and university housing. In all the analyses, the scientists found “five relatively strong and recurrent factors.” The factors were initially labeled:

(I) Extraversion (talkative, assertive, energetic)

(II) Agreeableness (good-natured, cooperative, trustful)

(III) Conscientiousness (orderly, responsible, dependable)

(IV) Emotional Stability as opposed to Neuroticism (calm, not neurotic, not easily upset)

(V) Culture (intellectual, polished, independent-minded)

(4)       These factors eventually became known as the “Big Five”-- a title chosen not to reflect their intrinsic greatness but to emphasize that each of these factors is extremely broad. Thus, the Big Five structure does not imply that personality differences can be reduced to only five traits. Rather, these five dimensions represent personality at the broadest level of abstraction, and each dimension summarizes a large number of distinct, more specific personality characteristics.

(5)       The Big Five provides a descriptive taxonomy that organizes the myriad descriptive language and scientific trait concepts into a single classificatory framework. However, like any scientific model, it has limitations. Several critics have argued that the Big Five does not provide a complete theory of personality. We agree. The Big Five taxonomy was never intended as a comprehensive personality theory; it was developed to account for the structural relations among personality traits. Thus, like most structural models it provides an account of personality that is primarily descriptive rather than explanatory, emphasizes regularities in behavior rather than inferred developmental processes, and focuses on variables rather than on individuals or types of individuals. Nonetheless, the Big Five taxonomy of trait terms provides a conceptual foundation that helps researchers delve deeper into these theoretical issues.

personality:  the patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion unique to an individual

Surviving Overseas

Princeton Plans No Tuition Hike

By CHRIS NEWMARKER

The Associated Press
Sunday, January 21, 2007; 10:01 PM

TRENTON, N.J. -- Aided by one of the nation's largest endowments, Princeton University decided Sunday to hold tuition steady, something it hasn't done in four decades.

Trustees chose to keep tuition at $33,000 for the 2007-08 school year. It's the first time since 1967-68 that annual tuition hasn't increased.

Tuition at Princeton rose 5 percent, to $31,450, in 2005-06, and it went up another 4.9 percent, to $33,000, for 2006-07.

This time, trustees chose to dip more into the private university's endowment rather than pass more costs on to students, according to Princeton spokeswoman Cass Cliatt.

As of June 2006, Princeton's endowment stood at $13 billion, with an investment return of 19.5 percent for the year. The return for the previous fiscal year was 17 percent.

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