Routescore: Punching the Ticket to More Efficient Materials Development.

Self-driving laboratories, in the form of automated experimentation platforms guided by machine learning algorithms, have emerged as a potential solution to the need for accelerated science. While new tools for automated analysis and characterization are being developed at a steady rate, automated synthesis remains the bottleneck in the chemical space accessible to self-driving laboratories. Combining automated and manual synthesis efforts immediately significantly expands the explorable chemical space.

The Magic School Bus dilemma: How fantasy affects children's learning from stories.

Although children's books often include fantasy, research suggests that children do not learn as well from fantastical stories as from realistic ones. The current studies investigated whether the type of fantasy matters, in effect testing two possible mechanisms for fantasy's interference. Across two studies, 110 5-year-olds were read different types of fantastical stories containing a problem and then were asked to solve an analogous problem in a real lab setting.

Investigating the effectiveness of fantasy stories for teaching scientific principles.

Educational media often contain fantastical information. Although some prior research suggests that this information interferes with children's learning, other work shows that fantasy benefits learning under certain circumstances. To investigate this issue and to clarify how different types of fantastical events might affect children's learning, we presented preschoolers (N = 99 in Study 1; N = 101 in Study 2) with stories that contained events that violated real-world physical laws, violated real-world biological laws, or did not violate any real-world laws.

Does expertise moderate the seductive allure of reductive explanations?

Non-experts are unduly attracted to explanations of scientific phenomena that contain irrelevant reductive language (e.g., explanations of biological phenomena that mention chemistry; Hopkins, Weisberg, & Taylor, 2016).

People's explanatory preferences for scientific phenomena.

Previous work has found that people are drawn to explanations of psychological phenomena when these explanations contain neuroscience information, even when that information is irrelevant. This preference may be due to a general preference for reductive explanations; however, prior work has not investigated whether people indeed prefer such explanations or whether this preference varies by scientific discipline. The current study asked 82 participants to choose which methods would be most appropriate for investigating topics in six scientific fields.

Accessing the Inaccessible: Redefining Play as a Spectrum.

Defining play has plagued researchers and philosophers for years. From describing play as an inaccessible concept due to its complexity, to providing checklists of features, the field has struggled with how to conceptualize and operationalize "play." This theoretical piece reviews the literature about both play and learning and suggests that by viewing play as a spectrum - that ranges from free play (no guidance or support) to guided play and games (including purposeful adult support while maintaining playful elements), we better capture the true essence of play and explain its relationship to learning.

The seductive allure is a reductive allure: People prefer scientific explanations that contain logically irrelevant reductive information.

Previous work has found that people feel significantly more satisfied with explanations of psychological phenomena when those explanations contain neuroscience information-even when this information is entirely irrelevant to the logic of the explanations. This seductive allure effect was first demonstrated by Weisberg, Keil, Goodstein, Rawson, and Gray (2008), and has since been replicated several times (Fernandez-Duque, Evans, Christian, & Hodges, 2015; Minahan & Siedlecki, 2016; Rhodes, Rodriguez, & Shah, 2014; Weisberg, Taylor, & Hopkins, 2015). However, these studies only examined psychological phenomena.

Ba3 v2 s4 o3 : a mott insulating frustrated quasi-one-dimensional s=1 magnet.

Through a solid-state reaction, a practically phase pure powder of Ba3 V2 S4 O3 was obtained. The crystal structure was confirmed by X-ray single-crystal and synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction (P63 , a=10.1620(2), c=5.

Do children learn from pretense?

Pretend play presents an interesting puzzle. Children generally must keep pretense separate from reality or else pretend would confuse their real-world representations. Children spend a great deal of time pretending, and so failing to take any information from pretend scenarios would present a lost opportunity; however, little research has investigated whether it is possible or efficient for children to learn new information they encounter during pretend play.

Concepts and theories, methods and reasons: Why do the children (pretend) play? Reply to Weisberg, Hirsh-Pasek, and Golinkoff (2013); Bergen (2013); and Walker and Gopnik (2013).

We greatly appreciate the astute comments on Lillard et al. (2013) and the opportunity to reply. Here we point out the importance of keeping conceptual distinctions clear regarding play, pretend play, and exploration.

The impact of pretend play on children's development: a review of the evidence.

Pretend play has been claimed to be crucial to children's healthy development. Here we examine evidence for this position versus 2 alternatives: Pretend play is 1 of many routes to positive developments (equifinality), and pretend play is an epiphenomenon of other factors that drive development. Evidence from several domains is considered.