facility:simon fraser university

C’est à partir de 24 ans que se dégradent les performances motrices et cognitives. La preuve par #Starcraft…

Study says we’re over the hill at 24 - Public Affairs and Media Relations - Simon Fraser University
▻http://www.sfu.ca/pamr/media-releases/2014/study-says-we_re-over-the-hill-at-24.html

It’s a hard pill to swallow, but if you’re over 24 years of age you’ve already reached your peak in terms of your cognitive motor performance, according to a new Simon Fraser University study.

SFU’s Joe Thompson, a psychology doctoral student, associate professor Mark Blair, Thompson’s thesis supervisor, and Andrew Henrey, a statistics and actuarial science doctoral student, deliver the news in a just-published PLOS ONE Journal paper.

In one of the first social science experiments to rest on big data, the trio investigates when we start to experience an age-related decline in our cognitive motor skills and how we compensate for that.

The researchers analyzed the digital performance records of 3,305 StarCraft 2 players, aged 16 to 44. StarCraft 2 is a ruthless competitive intergalactic computer war game that players often undertake to win serious money.

Their performance records, which can be readily replayed, constitute big data because they represent 870 hours worth of strategic real-time cognitive-based moves performed at varied skill levels.

Using complex statistical modeling, the researchers distilled meaning from this colossal compilation of information about how players responded to their opponents and more importantly, how long they took to react.

La publication originale est accessible ici ▻http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0094215

3305 joueurs (dont 29 de sexe féminin)

Avec incertitude, l’intervalle de confiance pour la dégradation de performance est entre 20 et 30 ans.

Le déclin (inexorable…) ne dépend pas du niveau du joueur.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0094215.g005/largerimage#.jpg

(soit, en calculant, de 10 ms de latence en plus par année au delà de 24 ans pour les meilleurs (400 ms, au top) à 25 ms par an pour les moins bons (1000 ms, au top)

Néanmoins, les « vieux » conservent leur niveau global. Il est donc émis l’hypothèse qu’ils compensent la dégradation de performance, sans doute en « diminuant leur charge cognitive » .

Experience nevertheless allows one to compensate for these declines indirectly. In our study, older players appear to hold their own despite their declines, perhaps by decreasing their cognitive load through the use of simplified strategies or improved use of the game interface.

Les données individuelles (par niveau/ligue)

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0094215.g003/largerimage#.jpg

Géographie critique : The Post-Crisis Geography of Risk Production

J’ai pas tout compris, mais c’est quand même super bien.

–---

Call for Papers: Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting 2014, Tampa, Florida, April 8-12th
Organized by Ben Teresa (Rutgers) and Mark Kear (Simon Fraser University)

The Post-Crisis Geography of Risk Production

“Rather than a problem of transferring assets from outside to inside the boundary, rearrangement of power, inequality, and poverty are at stake” (Mitchell, 2007, p. 260).

Orthodox economic explanations treat risk as an object originating outside of financial markets. Indeed, the function of finance is purportedly to bring externally generated risks “inside” to be rationalized, repackaged, managed, spread and reallocated to those best able to bear them (Dymski, 1998; Ashton, 2011). The financial crisis of 2008 demonstrates that products designed to rationalize risk (e.g. CDOs and CDSs) can become sources of new, endogenously produced, forms of risk. This means that risk is not only an input to the financialization process, but an output to be (re)internalized and (re)rationalized by the financial system. Post-crisis manifestations of such endogenously produced risks—foreclosed homes, overmortgaged homeowners, high unemployment, and public debt crises at multiple scales—are being reworked into new platforms for speculation and sources of value.

The reworking of endogenously produced risks is an improvisational, contingent and variegated process that has received little attention from geographers. This session seeks papers that explore this process, both theoretically and empirically, addressing the production and reinscription of risk through processes of financialization in post-crisis geographies. In other words, how are the new forms and manifestations of risk produced during the financial crisis being reconceptualized, reworked and repackaged, and how are such processes transforming, deepening or challenging extant processes of financialization, spatially and otherwise? Answering this question will provide an opportunity to reflect on exactly what kind of crisis this was for capital (Mann, 2010).

Potential topics include:

• Credit repair and financial subject formation
• Anglo-American ‘poverty capital’
• REO to Rental
• Municipal bankruptcy
• Underwater mortgages and eminent domain
• Tax increment financing

Submissions need not be limited to these suggestions; we welcome abstracts with expansive interpretations of these topics and themes.

Please send proposed titles and abstracts of up to 250 words to Mark Kear (mkear@email.arizona.edu) and Ben Teresa (beteresa@rutgers.edu) by October 11th, 2012. Selected abstracts will be accepted by October 18th in order to allow participants to meet the earlybird registration deadline (October 23rd).

References

Ashton, P. (2011). The financial exception and the reconfiguration of credit risk in US mortgage markets. Environment and Planning-Part A, 43(8), 1796-1811.

Dymski, G. (1998). Disembodied risk or the social construction of creditworthiness?. New Keynesian Economics/Post Keynesian Alternatives. New York: Routledge.

Mann, G. (2010). Value after Lehman. Historical Materialism, 18(4), 172-188.

Mitchell, T. (2007). The properties of markets. In D. A. MacKenzie, F. Muniesa & L. Siu (Eds.), Do Economists Make Markets? (pp. 244-275). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

#géographie_critique #géographie_radicale

Daily chart: Vital ingredients | The Economist

▻http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/06/daily-chart-3?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/dc/vitalingredients

Vital ingredients
Jun 7th 2013, 13:35 by Economist.com

The price of commodities “in the ground” have boomed while resources that can be grown have trended downwards

http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/2013/06/blogs/graphic-detail/20130608_gdc741_0.png

IN HIS 1968 book “The Population Bomb”, Paul Ehrlich, a biologist, argued that rising populations would inevitably exhaust natural resources, sending prices soaring and condemning people to hunger. In a new paper David Jacks, an economist at Simon Fraser University, assembles figures on inflation-adjusted prices for 30 commodities over 160 years. It turns out Mr Ehrlich was not entirely off the mark. Over the very long run commodity prices display a marked upward trend, having risen by 192% since 1950, and by 252% since 1900. But that upward trend has clearly not translated into global famine, and not all commodities are alike. Long-run rises have been most pronounced for commodities that are “in the ground”, like minerals and natural gas. Energy commodities especially have boomed, soaring by roughly 300% since 1950. In contrast, prices for resources that can be grown have fallen. The inflation-adjusted prices of rice, corn and wheat are lower now than they were in 1950. Although the global population is 2.8 times above its 1950 level, world grain production is 3.6 times higher.

#matières_premières #spéculation