Can Web-Browsing Keep Your Brain Young?

Studies at UCLA show some evidence that Internet searching activates more areas of the brain than ordinary text reading. There may be a link between increased brain activity of this kind and the reduction of brain decline through aging. At least it's a good excuse to keep surfing.

Friends, Romans, Fire Up Your Google Earth

Here's a neat overlay for Google Earth. It is Ancient Rome as it appeared around 320 AD at the height of its grandeur and when it had a population of one million. 7,000 buildings are represented including all the famous public structures.
To access it, navigate to Rome, then in Galleries check the Ancient Rome box. The CCVI network machines can handle the heavy duty computing required, but it works better with a faster computer.
See this story about the background of the project.

Are You Biased?

The U.S. election has highlighted issues of racial and minority biases. There is research evidence we may be unconsciously biased towards members of minorities. It is possible there are both evolutionary and cultural reasons for this. Read the background article and then take a test from Harvard to see whether you could be subconsciously biased.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Atlantic writer Nicholas Carr worries that the Internet is changing how we read at a deep psycho-neural level. There seems to be evidence that the brain modifies itself to create thinking patterns that are implicit in the type of reading we do. The author takes this as a bad thing, and feels that "deep reading" abilities will suffer.
However all may not be lost. There is research suggesting that Web surfing , especially in older individuals, enhances decision-making and complex reasoning.
You pay your money and take your choice.

NoodleTools on Steroids

Noodletools has added Notecards, a powerful Web 2.0 feature that make it an excellent organizational tool for writing essays as well as citing them.
Key Features:

• Access from any computer via a Web browser
• Capture any digital information (e.g., quotes, images, diagrams, tables) from the Web
• Link your notes to your sources to avoid accidental plagiarism
• Create notes of your own ideas not linked to any source
• Label notecards with multiple “tags” so you can identify concepts or facts
• Search tags to view and organize notes in multiple ways
• Use your browser’s search mechanism to locate notecards by keyword
• View, arrange and organize notecards quickly and easily

• Drag individual cards into clusters to develop a main idea
• Order cards within clusters to develop a logical argument
• Share notecards with classmates or instructors

Full instructions are available from Noodletools Help or Library staff

Students and Multitasking

Students who can perform multiple tasks, particularly on a computer, are a relatively recent phenomenon. Some recent research indicates multitasking is detrimental to intellectual performance. Check out this review article from National Public Radio (U.S.)

Delicious bookmarks

Delicious is a "social bookmarking web service" After signing up, you can save your bookmarks to the Delicious server where they are accessible from any Web accessible computer. The bookmarks can be "tagged" with "freely chosen keywords". Your list of bookmarks can be shared with friends or colleagues or distributed by RSS blog technology.See this link for more details on how it works.