- BERG - University of Stirling Mailing Lists

Congratulations to Liz Williamson
by Hannah Buchanan-Smith 28 Sep '18

28 Sep '18

?Apologies for cross-postings I am sharing the news of Liz Williamson's Margot Marsh Biodiversity Foundation Award for Excellence in Primate Conservation. At the International Primatological Society Congress in Nairobi last month, Dr Liz Williamson, an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Division of Psychology, University of Stirling received the fifth biennial Margot Marsh Biodiversity Foundation (MMBF) Award for Excellence in Primate Conservation. Liz completed her PhD at Stirling in 1988, and has been a Research Fellow since 1992. The award was given by Dr. Russ Mittermeier in recognition of Liz's achievements in gorilla conservation. Liz was Director of the Karisoke Research Centre in Rwanda for six years and Vice Chair of the IUCN SSC Primate Specialist Group for 10 years. She remains an active member of the Primate Specialist Group's Section on Great Apes and is series editor of the IUCN Best Practice guidelines for great ape conservation (http://www.primate-sg.org/best_practices) Liz' web page: https://www.stir.ac.uk/people/256253 ? I am sure you will join me in congratulating her on this well-deserved honour. Hannah M. Buchanan-Smith Professor, Behaviour and Evolution Research Group (BERG) Psychology, Faculty of Natural Sciences University of Stirling Stirling, FK9 4LA Scotland Tel: 01786 467674 Fax: 01786 467641 E-mail: h.m.buchanan-smith(a)stir.ac.uk<mailto:h.m.buchanan-smith@stir.ac.uk> Home page: https://rms.stir.ac.uk/converis-stirling/person/11925 http://marmosetcare.com/ http://www.247animalwelfare.eu/index.html

1 0

Berg: 26th September 2018
by Gemma MacKintosh 23 Sep '18

23 Sep '18

Hi BERGers! This week (Wednesday 26th September), we have Guillermo Hidalgo Gadea? giving a talk titled "Measuring Fatigue and Comfort: An Experimental Approach"?. This talk will combine 2 exciting studies, which you can read a bit about in the abstracts below. Looking forward to seeing you all there, Gemma [Image] Abstract 1 This study aims to provide an interdisciplinary perspective on biosignal processing for driver monitoring systems. Machine learning models were trained with ECG, Pupil Diameter and Eyelid Opening data from overnight sleep deprived subjects experiencing microsleep in a supervised test track driving environment. Model performance of 0.85 accuracy and 0.96 precision indicates (a) promising results for noninvasive microsleep detection in real driving environment and (b) benefits of the presented interdisciplinary processing method for psychological research. Abstract 2 This paper presents the idea of brute force feature extraction for Electrocardiography (ECG) signals applied to discomfort detection. To build an ECG Discomfort Corpus an experimental discomfort induction was conducted. 50 subjects underwent a 2h (dis-)comfort condition in separate sessions in randomized order. ECG and subjective discomfort was recorded. 5min ECG segments were labeled with corresponding subjective discomfort ratings, and 6365 brute force features (65 low-level descriptors, rst and second order derivatives, and 47 function-als) and 11 traditional heart rate variability (HRV) parameters were extracted. Random Forest machine learning algorithm outperformed SVM and kNN approaches and achieved the best subject-dependent, 10-fold cross-validation results (r = .51). With this experiment, we are able to show that (a) brute force ECG feature sets achieved better discomfort detection than traditional HRV based ECG feature set; (b) cepstral and spectral ux based features appear to be the most promising to capture HRV phenomena.?

1 0

Berg Autumn Semester Schedule
by Gemma MacKintosh 18 Sep '18

18 Sep '18

Dear BERGers, Our first meeting of the semester is tomorrow at 5:30pm! I have attached this semester's BERG seminar schedule. As you can see, there are still available slots so if you would like to give a talk or know of someone who would, please sign up via the doodle poll --> https://doodle.com/poll/ciia3dfkctkgn34b After you sign up, please send me the title of your talk and a short blurb about it for the BERG emails/posts. It's also helpful to attach a topic/talk-related image that I can include in the posts - images look nice and they are helpful in advertising the talks. We all look forward to some great speakers (and topics) this semester. It could be you! Best, Gemma?

1 0

BERG Autumn Semester
by Gemma MacKintosh 12 Sep '18

12 Sep '18

Dear BERGers, BERG meetings will be resuming next week! On Wednesday (19th) we will be having informal introductions and a catch up in the Psychology Common Room (3A94) from 5:30pm, with drinks and nibbles provided. I am currently recruiting volunteers to give a short talk or to host a discussion this semester so please do sign up for slot at this doodle poll (and feel free to contact me with any questions): https://doodle.com/poll/ciia3dfkctkgn34b ? All are welcome to our BERG meetings, and I look forward to seeing you on Wednesday!! All the best, Gemma

1 0

BERG Autumn Semester
by Gemma MacKintosh 23 Aug '18

23 Aug '18

Dear BERGers, I am pleased to say that the Behaviour and Evolution Research Group (BERG) seminars are coming back soon. These seminars are held on Wednesdays at 5.30pm in 3A94. Meetings will start on Wednesday 19th September, so please add these Wednesday dates to your diaries, noting there will be no meeting on Wed 24th October as it is mid semester break, and we shall wind up early-mid December The first meeting is on Wednesday 19th September at 5.30pm in 3A94 (Psychology common room). We shall use this meeting for introductions, including I hope for our new students, and updates from the summer...please come prepared to share news of any grants awarded, papers published, exciting conferences attended etc. Sign up for a BERG talk on the Doodle poll below. Presenting at BERG is an excellent way to practice talks, hone your presentation skills, get feedback on grant application ideas, lead a discussion of a controversial/interesting research paper etc. You can also suggest external speakers who we might invite (local speakers only please). https://doodle.com/poll/ciia3dfkctkgn34b? If you have new students who might wish to be on the BERG mailing list, please send them this e-mail. To sign up to the BERG mailing list new folk must complete the form available here: http://lists.stir.ac.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/berg You can also use this link to unsubscribe. Many thanks, Gemma Mackintosh ?

1 0

Philosophical Transactions Evolutionary Thanatology special issue
by Christine Caldwell 19 Jul '18

19 Jul '18

Dear all, Our good friend and former colleague Jim Anderson has kindly shared a PDF version of a full collection of papers from a special issue that he edited on the topic of responses to death in animals and humans. Please find it attached. Hope you enjoy! I hope everyone is having a good summer. Feel grateful that you are in Scotland – Jim says the temperature in Kyoto has been in the high thirties! Christine.

1 0

Please help if you can - #MAEsHaveYourSay
by Hannah Buchanan-Smith 13 Jul '18

13 Jul '18

Dear BERGers #MAEsHaveYourSay Do you own, work for, know of, or have you participated with a 'mobile animal experience' (MAE)? If the answer is yes then we ask that you take 10-15 minutes to complete a questionnaire entitled 'Assessing, 'mobile animal experience' businesses, in Scotland.' The questionnaire is part of a research project being conducted by myself Kirsty-Marie Moran, a Masters student in Human-Animal Interaction at The University of Stirling. The project is in collaboration with the Scottish SPCA, the Scottish Government, and the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh. If you are interested in participating in this research please follow this link to find out more: https://stirlingpsych.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6RkEAHO0xeBPO6N Thank you Hannah M. Buchanan-Smith Professor, Behaviour and Evolution Research Group (BERG) Room 3A79, Cottrell Psychology, Faculty of Natural Sciences University of Stirling Stirling, FK9 4LA Scotland Tel: 01786 467674 Fax: 01786 467641 E-mail: h.m.buchanan-smith(a)stir.ac.uk<mailto:h.m.buchanan-smith@stir.ac.uk> Home page: https://rms.stir.ac.uk/converis-stirling/person/11925 http://marmosetcare.com/ http://www.247animalwelfare.eu/index.html Recently launched: http://refiningdogcare.com/ http://www.refiningdogcare.com/images/RDC%20Flyer.pdf

1 0

FW: COgnition Research Group In Stirling (CORGIS) Meeting - Friday June 15th
by Christine Caldwell 13 Jun '18

13 Jun '18

Dear BERGers, I would just like to draw your attention to the fact that we will have a guest seminar from a visiting researcher this Friday lunchtime (scheduled as part of the Cognition group meetings), which may be of interest to those in BERG. Sarah Koopman, from the University of Rochester in New York (http://caoslab.bcs.rochester.edu/peepnpubs.html ), will be giving a talk about “Anatomical and ecological factors related to numerical precision across a wide range of species”. The talk will be in the same room as our BERG meetings (Psychology common room), starting at 12.15pm. Hope some of you can make it along! Christine. From: Viktoria Mileva Sent: 13 June 2018 09:17 Dear all, Just a reminder that this week’s CORGIS meeting is on Friday, in room 3A94, at 12:15pm – 1:30pm. We’ll be listening to a talk by Sarah Koopman about the anatomical and ecological factors related to numerical precision across a wide range of species.

1 0

Request to participate in survey
by Hannah Buchanan-Smith 06 Jun '18

06 Jun '18

Please help Masters dissertation student Robyn Harris if you can (you need to be aged 18-30). Many thanks, Hannah Dear BERGers, My name is Robyn and I'm a postgraduate student on the Human-Animal Interaction MSc course. My dissertation project involves looking at our ability to interpret the social and emotional signals of dogs and of humans. I aim to understand whether there are any links between understanding the two different species, and how empathy is involved. I am gathering data using an online survey, aimed at students aged between 18 and 30 inclusive. If you know of any students that may be eligible and interested, I'd be very grateful if you could pass this email on to them. The survey takes approximately 20 minutes to complete, and can be found at this link: https://stirling.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/dog-and-human-social-cues-survey Thank you! Robyn Hannah M. Buchanan-Smith Professor, Behaviour and Evolution Research Group (BERG) Room 3A79, Cottrell Psychology, Faculty of Natural Sciences University of Stirling Stirling, FK9 4LA Scotland Tel: 01786 467674 Fax: 01786 467641 E-mail: h.m.buchanan-smith(a)stir.ac.uk<mailto:h.m.buchanan-smith@stir.ac.uk> Home page: https://rms.stir.ac.uk/converis-stirling/person/11925 http://marmosetcare.com/ http://www.247animalwelfare.eu/index.html Recently launched: http://refiningdogcare.com/ http://www.refiningdogcare.com/images/RDC%20Flyer.pdf

1 0

3MT Final - Tuesday 5th June
by Hannah Buchanan-Smith 30 May '18

30 May '18

Dear Bergers Our very own Sophia Daoudi has reached the final of the three minute thesis (3MT). Please sign up (via link below) and go and support her as sadly I shan't make it. I'm sure she'd appreciate your vote. Thanks! Hannah From: Stirling Graduate School Sent: 30 May 2018 09:40 Subject: 3MT Final - Tuesday 5th June Supervisors, Just a reminder that the 3MT final is taking place on the Tuesday 5th June at 2pm in the PGR Zone. We have 11 finalists this year: Faculty of Natural Sciences Shankar Mandal Ken Reid Sophia Daoudi Rebecca Skinner Stirling Management School Madalina Radu Elizabeth Lemmon Hanjin Li Faculty of Health Sciences and Sport Chris Hartley James Dugdale Faculty of Social Sciences Jordan MacLean Faculty of Arts and Humanities Cheng Chen Please come along, show your support and cast your vote. Every vote counts! Don't forget to sign-up via Eventbrite<https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/three-minute-thesis-3mt-competition-stirling…> to book your place. SGS

1 0