Relational inquiry: Seven years practicing seven relationships.

The purpose of this study was to examine whether Socioscientific Issues (SSI) based learning environments affect university students’ epistemological understanding of scientific inquiry differently from traditional science educational contexts. We identify and compare conceptions of scientific inquiry of students participating in an interdisciplinary, SSI-focused undergraduate human biology major (SSI) and those participating in a traditional biology major (BIO). Forty-five SSI students and 50 BIO students completed an open-ended questionnaire examining their understanding of scientific inquiry. Eight general themes including approximately 60 subthemes emerged from questionnaire responses, and the numbers of students including each subtheme in their responses were statistically compared between groups. A subset of students participated in interviews, which were used to validate and triangulate questionnaire data and probe students’ understanding of scientific inquiry in relation to their majors. We found that both groups provided very similar responses, differing significantly in only five subthemes. Results indicated that both groups held generally adequate understandings of inquiry, but also a number of misconceptions. Small differences between groups supported by both questionnaires and interviews suggest that the SSI context contributed to nuanced understandings, such as a more interdisciplinary and problem-centered conception of scientific inquiry. Implications for teaching and research are discussed.

The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations: Philosophy of Science and Its Implications for the Study of World Politics. By Patrick Thaddeus Jackson. New York: Routledge, 2010. 268 pp., $42.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-415-77627-1). Patrick Jackson has written the most important methodological book in political science since King, Keohane, and Verba's Designing Social Inquiry (1994). It is fueled by palpable frustration with the current terms of methodological debate in International Relations (IR), in particular a view of “science” that sees it as “vague and general sensibility” (p. 3), typically defined as the search for law-like generalizations through formalist or quantitative methods, played as a trump card from positions of authority, rather than a clearly specified philosophical account of the form of scientific inquiry used in a given instance and a rigorous argument in its favor. Conduct of Inquiry consequently defines a broader view of science, draws out its implications for current debates like that between quantitative and qualitative approaches, and defends methodological pluralism against those that would seek methodological hegemony in its stead. Although a contribution to the philosophy of IR, the book is neither esoteric nor estranged from the concerns of the practicing scholar. Clearly written and presented, it both contributes to existing debates while reorienting them in fresh and exciting directions. It is a major achievement, one that merits the widest possible audience among scholars and students of social science in general and IR in particular. Conduct of Inquiry presents a new vocabulary for scholars to use in order to get a handle on the complex …

Three dimensional modeling and simulation software are becoming more widespread in many fields with the emphasis on engineering, military and medical applications. The main important features of these applications are fast prototyping, simulation of scientific and engineering problems under different conditions and interactive user interface. Therefore, an opportunity for a fast visual education course and understanding the physical and mathematical reasons lying under the problems is presented to engineers, military and scientific researches in the respective fields. The main requirements of these applications are high performance computer systems and user interfaces that feature an easier interaction. The fast developing computer architecture maintains the necessary architecture and enables the applications to improve. Considering above and the expectations of Dokuz Eylul University Faculty of Medicine, the development of a virtual environment software that will model the predefined medical processes with user interaction has been aimed. In this paper, the 1. section is reserved for basic concepts and field applications. The hardware and software infrastructure and algorithm development process we used are presented in the 2. section. The 3. section presents the completed stages and first results of our application. The final section which is the 4. section is reserved for the conclusion and future work.

Low-level light therapy (LLLT) using red to near-infrared light energy has gained attention in recent years as a new scientific approach with therapeutic applications in ophthalmology, neurology, and psychiatry. The ongoing therapeutic revolution spearheaded by LLLT is largely propelled by progress in the basic science fields of photobiology and bioenergetics. This paper describes the mechanisms of action of LLLT at the molecular, cellular, and nervous tissue levels. Photoneuromodulation of cytochrome oxidase activity is the most important primary mechanism of action of LLLT. Cytochrome oxidase is the primary photoacceptor of light in the red to near-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is also a key mitochondrial enzyme for cellular bioenergetics, especially for nerve cells in the retina and the brain. Evidence shows that LLLT can secondarily enhance neural metabolism by regulating mitochondrial function, intraneuronal signaling systems, and redox states. Current knowledge about LLLT dosimetry relevant for its hormetic effects on nervous tissue, including noninvasive in vivo retinal and transcranial effects, is also presented. Recent research is reviewed that supports LLLT potential benefits in retinal disease, stroke, neurotrauma, neurodegeneration, and memory and mood disorders. Since mitochondrial dysfunction plays a key role in neurodegeneration, LLLT has potential significant applications against retinal and brain damage by counteracting the consequences of mitochondrial failure. Upon transcranial delivery in vivo, LLLT induces brain metabolic and antioxidant beneficial effects, as measured by increases in cytochrome oxidase and superoxide dismutase activities. Increases in cerebral blood flow and cognitive functions induced by LLLT have also been observed in humans. Importantly, LLLT given at energy densities that exert beneficial effects does not induce adverse effects. This highlights the value of LLLT as a novel paradigm to treat visual, neurological, and psychological conditions, and supports that neuronal energy metabolism could constitute a major target for neurotherapeutics of the eye and brain.

Recent Publications on Archaeological Ceramic Analyses and their Contributions to the Study of Ancient Pottery Technology

When one reads archaeological publications on funerary remains, one might think that the deceased was sacrificed to accompany the burial of a pot [34]. One could easily blame archaeologists for this predicament, but it also has its roots in a research tradition within biological anthropology that tends to provide biological data to the archaeologist who provides the social and cultural meaning. Due to empirical divergence this approach encourages archaeologists and anthropologists tend to address parallel rather than synthetic questions. Burials are often only used to develop a notion of time-successive funerary traditions that support a chronological framework. This means that the event represented in the burial is left underdeveloped or erroneously identified as a tradition. Bioarchaeology addresses archaeological questions through a contextual approach combining the biological identity of the deceased with their cultural and archaeological context. It therefore aims to synthesise the biological and cultural aspects of the funerary record to address archaeological questions and better place burials in their cultural, social, and political context. The goal of this treatment is to introduce bioarchaeology, its origin and purpose, and to attempt to place such studies within French archaeological and anthropological scholarship.

Sorcery and its intertwining with medicine have deep roots in Indian cultural and spiritual traditions, persisting through the Mughal period (1526-1707). The Mughal rulers, who were patrons of the Unani and Ayurvedic medical systems, also indirectly acknowledged the role of sorcery in healthcare. While Unani and Ayurvedic practitioners enjoyed state support and prominence, sorcerers, operating without official endorsement, played a vital role in medieval Indian society, particularly among the rural and lower classes. Sorcerers, believed to wield supernatural powers, provided accessible and affordable healthcare, often addressing ailments thought to be caused by spiritual or supernatural forces—an area beyond the reach of conventional physicians and hakims. This study examines the dual role of sorcerers as both healers and practitioners of magic within the Mughal medical landscape. Sorcerers offered various treatments, including herbal remedies, magical spells, and rituals, sometimes involving animal or human sacrifices. Their methods, although lacking scientific validation, were perceived as effective by a populace deeply entrenched in spiritual and magical beliefs.

The standardization degree of traditional Chinese medicine clinical data in the real world is low and heterogeneous data aggregation among institutions is difficult, which leads to the difficulty of sharing clinical data and scientific research data of traditional Chinese medicine. This paper designs and implements a real world traditional Chinese medicine clinical scientific research information electronic medical record sharing system. The system consists mainly of two subsystems, namely electronic medical record collection system and electronic medical record integration system. The collection system can collect, normalize and structured storage inpatient electronic medical records, outpatient electronic medical records and cloud platform electronic medical records. The integration system can integrate heterogeneous data from different traditional Chinese medicine diagnostic and treatment institutions to realize the sharing of traditional Chinese medicine clinical and research data.

By noticing the fact that the charged leptons and quarks in the standard model are chirality-based Dirac spinors since their weak interaction violates maximally parity symmetry though they behave as Dirac fermions in electromagnetic interaction, we show that such a chirality-based Dirac spinor possesses not only electric charge gauge symmetry U(1) but also inhomogeneous spin gauge symmetry WS(1,3) = SP(1,3)$\rtimes$W$^{1,3}$, which reveals the nature of gravity and spacetime. The gravitational force and spin gauge force are governed by the gauge symmetries $W^{1,3}$ and SP(1,3), respectively, and a biframe spacetime with globally flat Minkowski spacetime as base spacetime and locally flat gravigauge spacetime as a fiber is described by the gravigauge field through emergent non-commutative geometry. The gauge-geometry duality and renormalizability in gravitational quantum field theory (GQFT) are carefully discussed. A detailed analysis and systematic investigation on gravidynamics and spinodynamics as well as electrodynamics are carried out within the framework of GQFT. A full discussion on the generalized Dirac equation and Maxwell equation as well as Einstein equation and spin gauge equation is made in biframe spacetime. New effects of gravidynamics as extension of general relativity are particularly analyzed. All dynamic equations of basic fields are demonstrated to preserve the spin gauge covariance and general coordinate covariance due to the spin gauge symmetry and emergent general linear group symmetry GL(1,3,R), so they hold naturally in any spinning reference frame and motional reference frame.

Ethical conduct of research involving humans has gained relevance and importance over the years with the expansion of research beyond boundaries of traditional medical and clinical research into a multiplicity of disciplines with human participation. Human research is regarded as research conducted on or with or about people, or their tissues or cells or data obtained from them. Historically, it is stated that the Greek Philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BCE) was probably the first to discuss principles of ethics ‘by studying and offering criteria to assess human behaviour’. It is believed that he taught a course of ethics at the Lyceum during his mature years which was based on the many treatises he wrote on the subject. Increased attention to ethics in human research started after the Second World War following the judgment of the International Military Tribunal which also included 10 principles of permissible medical experiments which have since then been referred to as the Nuremburg Code (1949). Later discussions by the World Medical Assembly of the Code led to the adoption of the Helsinki Declaration (1964) which has been revised many times since then. The Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) which in association with the World Health Organizations (WHO) undertook its work on ethics in biomedical research in late 1970s. It has published an updated version with a wider scope of coverage titled ‘International Ethical Guidelines for Health-Related Research Involving Humans’ (2016). Close cooperation with World Medical Assembly has ensured that the guidelines are closely aligned to the Helsinki Declaration. Traditionally, ethics has received much attention both in clinical practice and in health research. Faculties of Medicine were the first to establish ethics review boards and ethics review committees in Sri Lanka to undertake review of research proposals with human participation for ethical aspects and issues and granting approval. The primary aim is to safeguard the interests and right of participants of research and prevent their exploitation. There is no doubt about the value of health research and the benefits it has brought and will continue to bring to ensure health, wellbeing, safety and quality of life of people. Most research on human participants is simple, observational, descriptive and non-invasive and the ethical issues though may be minimal, still needs explicit attention and review by an ethics review board before approval. The more complex research where human participants are subject to ‘experimentation’ or ‘interventions’ has many ethical issues that need to assessed by recognized ethics review committees with experience and capability to do so. If a new drug, a new vaccine, medicinal product, device, or equipment not already in use by people is to be tested on humans before being granted approval for use in day-to-day life by the appropriate authority, the researcher should adopt recommended procedures, regulations and registration mechanism prescribed. In Sri Lanka any interventional research requires applying and obtaining approval of ethics review committees that have been gazetted under the National Medicines Regulatory Authority (NMRA) as being approved by name to undertake ethics review. The interventional research should also be registered with the Sri Lanka Clinical Trials Registry. Both these need to be submitted to the Clinical Trials Evaluation Committee of the NMRA in order to be evaluated prior to being granted approval and registration. These approvals and registrations are also requested by peer reviewed high impact journals to consider such research manuscripts for publication. There are certain values which provides the framework for principles guiding formulation of research proposals and ethics of research. These include and are not limited to respect, integrity, justice, beneficence and research merit. It is implicit in research that badly designed, conduced, analysed and reported research is unethical. Clinical Centre researchers at National Institute of Health of USA have enunciated seven principles to guide the conduct of ethical research. These are social and clinical value, scientific validity, fair subject selection, favourable risk benefit ratio, independent review, informed consent, respect for potential and enrolled subjects. Given the importance of scientific merit and integrity of research, good research practice needs much attention both by researchers and research institutions. In order to meet these needs the National Health Research Council and the Education, Training and Research Unit of the Ministry of Health have taken steps to publish, ‘The Code of Conduct on Health Research in Sri Lanka’ (2018) (available at http://www.health.gov.lk/moh_final/english/public/elfinder/files/publications/2018/TheCodeofConduct.pdf). The Code covers aspects of: formulation of research proposals; management of research data and primary materials; collaborative research; conflict of interest; supervision of research; peer review, and dissemination of research findings, publication and responsible authorship. With the expansion of research on human participation into may other sciences such as branches of engineering, computing, bio technology, genetics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, nano technology and others, the ethical issues of human research have reached a new dimension. It has to be emphasized that whatever the branch of science or discipline, if the research requires human participants, then approval of an ethics review committee is a must. Thus, it behoves on research institutes, universities, and faculties to establish ethics review committees beyond the traditional practice of having ethics review committees in medical faculties. It is necessary that members of such a committee, functions within the set terms of references, standard operating procedures, ensure confidentiality and also have appropriate training in ethics of research, approval processes and documentation. In Sri Lanka too universities have gone one step ahead to establish ethics review committees at university level to facilitate research on humans in disciplines other than health and medical practice. Time has come when universities and research institutions take steps to develop codes of conduct on research, conduct courses on such practices and ethics of research for all researchers in order to safeguard the interests and safety of both researchers and participants of research.

A new educational paradigm, ‘resilience education,’ has emerged as an effort by states and local communities to provide their constituencies with skills to cope with natural and man-made disasters. While the topic of resilience has seen an explosion in academic and policy interest, little scholarly attention has been paid to exploring the social origins of resilience training. Drawing on the research tradition in history and sociology of knowledge and theorization of practices, this article explores the gradual establishment of the practice of resilience education in Israeli schools and changing assumptions about risks, coping and aims of education informing resilience initiatives in the educational system. Based on in-depth interviews with key figures in the professional field, I indicate the main tendencies in the local history of resilience training since the 1980 s. These tendencies – the normalization of insecurity, the incorporation of new programs within existing interventions, and the creation of a particular structure of training – have interweaved the regular with the extreme, the expert with the lay, and the new with the old. I argue that such tendencies have become no less important for facilitating the establishment of resilience training than the scientific validity and practical effectiveness of this professional practice.

The current article revisits the tenuous relationship between Martin Buber’s conception of divine rule on earth (theopolitics) with Carl Schmitt’s famous notion of political theology, by underscoring their shared, though diametrically opposed interest in Gnostic ideas. Based on a reading of Buber’s heretofore unpublished lectures on Judaism and Christianity, the study outlines the nexus between the German tradition of scientific research, religious ideology and political visions, in order to show that Buber’s treatment of Gnosticism in the lectures is belied by an implicit critique of Schmitt’s dualistic distinction between friend and foe that legitimizes the subversion of liberal democracy. The Gnostic canon that Buber identifies in certain parts of the New Testament is shown to be based on the very same scientific research that fed Schmitt’s fascination with Gnostic teachings.

Unpacking the essential tension of knowledge recombination: Analyzing the impact of knowledge spanning on citation impact and disruptive innovation

Statement of the problem. In the modern conditions of cultural globalization, national identification is the object of special attention, and this also applies to all spheres of musical art. The study of national vocal traditions both in the form of national vocal schools of academic art and in the sense of manifestations of the national musical tradition is one of the urgent areas of music science. It can have socio-cultural, historical, genre-stylistic, performing dimensions. However, this field of musicology is still developing in several extensive ways, rarely combining into complex scientific investigations, on the basis of which a certain kind of methodology of musicological analysis of the phenomena of vocal art may be born. The analysis of publications on the chosen topic shows that, in addition to academic musicological works devoted to the national specificity of musical art (Draganchuk, 2008; Lyudkevych, 1999; Liashenko, 1973, 1991; Romaniuk, 2009), interdisciplinary studies combining knowledge of musicology, sociology, history, psychology, cultural studies have recently appeared (Nikolaievska, 2020: Applegate, 1998; Gottlieb, 2019; Kelly & Mantere & Scott, 2018; Knox, 2019). Studies of performing schools (Dedusenko, 2000), in particular, national vocal schools, as a rule, relate to the history of their development within the framework of academic European vocal art (Hnyd, 1997; Stakhevych, 2013; Totska, 2012; Tsebrii, 2021; Shuliar, 2010, 2012), and do not often take into account the specifics of traditional musical culture (Kornii, 2002; Lyudkevych, 1999; Applegate, 1998; Schwartz-Kates, 2002). Therefore, the study of the national vocal tradition as a complex phenomenon requires special attention of modern musicology. The above determines the scientific novelty of the presented study, which is related to the differentiation of the concepts of vocal school and national vocal tradition in the aspect of musical performance and musicology. The purpose of the scientific work is to outline the ways and perspectives of musicological research of the national vocal tradition. The methodological basis of the research is a combination of several areas: scientific investigations devoted to the specifics of national manifestations in music; research on national vocal schools; scientific works from a wide contextual range of musicological issues. The results and conclusions of the study. The national vocal tradition in today’s multi-cultural, multi-style, multi-genre conditions has various manifestations, which requires its complex scientific research. It is necessary to note the difference between the concepts of the national vocal tradition and the national vocal school – the latter is a component of the national vocal tradition, which combines traditional musical culture and academic musical art, represented both by musical compositions and their presentation, i. e. musical practice. Thus, the national vocal tradition is a complex concept that characterizes the system of artistic phenomena associated with the national origins of traditional musical culture and their manifestations at all levels of a musician’s professional activity.

Background Within the field of patient and public involvement in health service research, there is a growing movement towards not only involving patients in research but engaging them as co-producers of knowledge. We explore such a co-productive research relationship in a case study on rural perinatal mental health, with the aim of collaboratively developing knowledge based on both the relevant lived experience of a community partner, and the systemic knowledge of academic researchers.Methods Data was gathered through a community forum and subsequent interviews with social service program administrators from rural British Columbia, Canada. Interviews were analyzed separately by the community partner and academic researchers using principles of thematic analysis. Both the community partner and academic researchers were involved from project genesis to data collection, analysis, interpretation, and manuscript writing.ResultsCommon themes identified by the academic and community researchers included needs for peer support, barriers to peer support, and gaps in mental health care. Divergently, the academic researcher focused on systems-level challenges while the community partner emphasized the impact of power dynamics within health systems. Researchers generated five methodological values propositions from the process of co-production, including (a) mutual respect for all viewpoints, (b) a rejection of assumed hierarchy, (c) commitments to truth speaking, (d) attention to process, and (e) equivalence of contribution.ConclusionsCo-production highlights the value of lived experience in health research, sets it in conversation with scientific inquiry, and moves away from hierarchies of assumed knowledge often embedded in traditional health care research. Incorporating both academic researcher and community partner writing into our paper reflects a commitment to maintaining the integrity and authenticity of lived experience, an affirmation of its equal validity as a source of knowledge, and a rejection of qualifying patient voices. The exploration of this co-production research relationship lays groundwork for future research teams considering collaborative methodology. We suggest co-productive research as a means of addressing the epistemic injustice that arises in health care research from the privileging of certain forms of knowledge, and the exclusion of others, namely that derived from patient experience.