Core Topics Research Articles

Creation of a novel simple heat mapping method for curriculum mapping, using pathology teaching as the exemplar

BackgroundThe undergraduate five-year MBChB programme at the University of Glasgow has a high volume of pathology teaching integrated into the course. The ability to better understand what pathology is taught and when, so as to build a picture of the types and depth of pathology topics covered across the programme stages is crucial, especially in a spiral curriculum. A novel method of curriculum mapping, known as curriculum heat mapping, was developed as a way to visualise where and when topics are taught, in an easier to understand format.MethodsThis method involved comparing the Glasgow curriculum to a pre-determined standard of what should be taught. In this case, The Royal College of Pathologists’ ‘Pathology Undergraduate Curriculum’ was used as a comparison of what a graduating doctor should know about pathology.ResultsFollowing the developed template, heat maps showcasing the range of pathology topics covered, and where they are covered, were developed for local use.These heat maps provided a clear visual representation of where and when topics are taught, and how they cluster.ConclusionsHeat mapping is a novel low-cost, high-input method of curriculum mapping. It requires a person to input the data which can take a long time for large curricula. There are no other upfront financial costs. It can be used in any area with a curriculum and an external or internal comparator. Examples of gold standard external comparators include validated national or international curricula.Heat mapping can help integrated, spiral curriculum programmes to identify where core topics are taught throughout their course. The heat maps themselves successfully demonstrate the required information and are easy to interpret. The process of mapping, as well as the final heat map, can yield important information. This includes information about trends within the curriculum, areas for potential improvement in sessional design and a clearer understanding of the depth to which each topic is covered in each lecture.Overall, it is a viable novel method, which has been successful locally and is easily transferable to other areas such as pharmacology.

Knowledge Mapping of Machine Learning Approaches Applied in Agricultural Management—A Scientometric Review with CiteSpace

With the continuous development of the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, big data technology, and intelligent agriculture have become hot topics in agricultural science and technology research. Machine learning is one of the core topics in artificial intelligence, and its application has penetrated every aspect of human social life. In modern agricultural intelligent management and decision making, machine learning plays an important role in crop classification, crop disease and insect pest prediction, agricultural product price prediction, and other aspects of management and decision-making processes in agriculture. To detect and recognize the latest research developing features in a quantitative and visual way, and based on machine learning methods in agricultural management, the authors of this paper used CiteSpace bibliometric methods to analyze relevant studies on the development process and hot spots. High-value references, productive authors, country and institution distributions, journal visualizations, research topics, and emerging trends were reviewed and analyzed. According to the keyword visualization and high-value references, machine learning approaches focus on sustainable agriculture, water resources, remote sensing, and machine learning methods. The research mainly focuses on six topics: learning technology, land environment, reference evapotranspiration, decision support systems for river geography, soil management, and winter wheat, while learning technology has been the most popular in recent years.

Machine learning in finance: A topic modeling approach

AbstractWe identify the core topics of research applying machine learning to finance. We use a probabilistic topic modeling approach to make sense of this diverse body of research spanning across multiple disciplines. Through a latent Dirichlet allocation topic modeling technique, we extract 15 coherent research topics that are the focus of 5942 academic studies from 1990 to 2020. We find that these topics can be grouped into four categories: Price‐forecasting techniques, financial markets analysis, risk forecasting and financial perspectives. We first describe and structure these topics and then further show how the topic focus has evolved over the last three decades. A notable trend we find is the emergence of text‐based machine learning, for example, for sentiment analysis, in recent years. Our study thus provides a structured topography for finance researchers seeking to integrate machine learning research approaches in their exploration of finance phenomena. We also showcase the benefits to finance researchers of the method of probabilistic modeling of topics for deep comprehension of a body of literature.

Identification and analysis of core topics in educational artificial intelligence research: A Bibliometric analysis

Educational artificial intelligence (EAI) means an integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and educational science that is going to serve as an authoritative element of the education system in the future. However, limited bibliographic analysis study have been carried out with the purpose of conceptualising the advancements in this field of educational billiography This study aim is to identify and analysis the core topics using keywords. The method of study is using the Keywords and cluster analysis by conducting a bibliometric review of 8,660 articles that have been published from 2000 to 2020 with the help of CiteSpace software. The results reveal that EAI research primarily encompasses three controversial topics. There is controversy about the AI application to students, AI does not replace teachers and AI algorithms have great contribution in the development of education sector. Study concluded that, AI applications can improve the effectiveness of students’ learning, AI can replace part of the teachers’ work, the relationship between the teacher and the machine should be cooperation, not the relationship between replacement and being replaced, under the premise that teachers give full play to their initiative and innovation.
 
 Keywords: Educational artificial intelligence, core topics, Bibliometric analysis, CieSpace, Interactive learning environments

해결중심 단기치료의 코칭 적용에 관한 연구: ICF 핵심역량의 8가지 주제를 기반으로 한 코칭 질문의 다각화를 중심으로

Based on the preceding research and theoretical background of coaching and solution-based short-term counseling, this study examines the context and commonalities in the philosophy, perspective, and content of the two fields, and how coaching and solution-based short-term counseling can be practically used in the field of coaching. An exploratory study was conducted. This study constructed a core concept by exploring the core topics of coaching and solution-oriented short-term counseling. In addition, the revised ICF core competency model, which is the main basis for the philosophy and direction of coaching, were analyzed in-depth to find the point of contact between coaching and solution-oriented short-term counseling, and a model was built by integrating them dialectically. As a result of the research, it was confirmed that coaching and solution-oriented short-term counseling were derived into four key themes:'resource discovery', 'customer-centered cooperative relationship','goal-centered', and'achieve change'. In addition, the possibility of exchange and utilization of clinical evidence using coaching and solution-based short-term counseling, and the expansion of coaching for families and various communities using the philosophy of solution-based short-term counseling and a systematic review of coaching, were applied in terms of prevention and education. The study is significant in that it attempted to discuss and examine the aspects of interdisciplinary use of coaching and solution-oriented short-term counseling, and the application of questions based on models derived from the research results.

The impact of blockchain on the aviation industry: Findings from a qualitative study

The aviation industry is searching for innovative solutions to boost its business in a sector that operates on a financial knife-edge driven by fierce competition. This paper seeks to identify how blockchain, an immutable and append-only data ledger, can impact the aviation industry. This study presents the results from 18 interviews with industry experts. Text mining and a thematic data analysis were combined to investigate the likelihood of the airline industry adopting a disruptive technology that has the potential to affect various stakeholders and replace current platforms. The connection between the key terms and emergent themes is visualised and discussed in detail. The current attitude as well as the expectations and uncertainties of the aviation industry towards blockchain are systematised. The five core topics determining the adoption of blockchain by the industry are specific adoption factors, the replacement of current centralised platforms, customer loyalty, adoption barriers and a general lack of awareness. All topics are discussed in detail, and concrete propositions for future academic research are put forward.

Expansion of a Financial Education and Family Asset Protection Program for Latinos in Rural Minnesota

The University of Minnesota Extension, in partnership with the Consulate of Mexico in Saint Paul, Minnesota, expanded the Ventanilla de Asesoría Financiera -Financial Education and Family Asset Protection Program to serve families in rural areas. The financial education services were expanded to 25 rural counties in Minnesota during 2017 and 2018. Participants were primarily low-income Latino families of Mexican ancestry. The program consisted of financial literacy education workshops and one-to-one meetings to build and protect participant assets. Participants reported an increase in their confidence in five financial core topics. Conditions for the success of this program were (a) the existing trusted and respectful relationships between the educators and participants and supportive community partners; (b) a family-based educational approach; (c) a team of bilingual, bicultural educators; and (d) culturally adapted and relevant Spanish language educational resources

Uncertainty Expression and Propagation in the Risk Assessment of Uncertain Random System

Expressions and propagations of uncertainties have been the core topics in the development of risk science in last decades, whose purpose is to provide decision-makers with clear information about the uncertainty of system's risk. Uncertainty theory is an emerging theory that has great advantages in the expression of epistemic uncertainty, compared to the theories such as subjective probability, evidence theory, and possibility theory. A new framework of uncertainty expression is proposed in this article to properly express different uncertainty sources that exist in the system, where the uncertainty theory is used to express epistemic uncertainties and frequentist probability is used to express aleatory uncertainties. A general propagation method is further developed to address the joint calculations of proposed uncertainty expressions, which can be degenerated into pure probabilistic approach and pure uncertainty-based approach. A case study is conducted to show the effectiveness of proposed method, whose results indicate that the application of proposed method will lead to a result which is easier to be understood than results of theories such as evidence theory and possibility theory, and is more robust than results of Bayesian approach.

Business families in times of crises: The backbone of family firm resilience and continuity

Against the backdrop of the current Covid-19 pandemic and the related world economic crisis, we reflect on the role of the business family as a pivotal resource in family firm crisis management. We discuss how business families respond to the pandemic outbreak and how some accomplish to turn challenges into opportunities and manage to emerge from the crisis even stronger than before. Related to that, we develop a research agenda on crisis management in family firms and the specific role of the business family in this regard. We also introduce the four articles in this special issue which were initially presented at the 3rd International Family Business Research Forum (IFBRF) at WU Vienna in September 2017. All four articles tackle core topics in family business research and practice, including succession, innovation and family governance, which are core elements for building a resilient business family.

Language and the Brain: A Twofold Study of Language Production and Language Comprehension as a Separate or Integrated Set of Processes

Humans can understand their language due to the processes in the brain. It is very easy for language users to presume that language production and language comprehension are two simple phenomena. For psycholinguistics, these two processes are part of the three core topics in the study of the language and the mind. Psycholinguistics attempt to have a model that explains how language is processed in our brain. It is nearly impossible to do or think about anything without using language, whether this entails following a set of written instructions or an internal talk-through by your inner voice. Language permeates our brains and our lives like no other skill. Beforehand, psycholinguists described our comprehension and production of language in terms of the rules that were hypothesized by linguists (Fodor, Bever, & Garrett, 1974). Now, that is not the case. These linguistic rules inform rather than taking precedent in studying language and the brain. This paper aims to describe the brain regions/structures, language processes, and the intricate connections between them. The study discusses the brain as the underlying basis of the relationship between language and the brain. Moreover, this study descriptively analyses some of the recent expositive psycholinguistic research on language production and comprehension in order to understand the nature and dynamics of language. The methodology of this paper has to do with the research design, materials and concludes with descriptive analyses of the major finding from the secondary data reviewed in the paper. The linguistic approaches used for this study do not entail any sort of calculation or enumeration. It takes the form of a descriptive qualitative approach or a desktop study where research work mainly capitalizes on preexisting literature in the research domain. The study's main finding reveals that research works on language processing treat production and comprehension as quite distinct from each other. Language production processes differ fundamentally from comprehension processes in many respects. However, other researchers reject such a dichotomy. In its place, they propose that producing and understanding are tightly interwoven, and this interweaving underlies people’s ability to predict themselves and each other.

Beyond social learning.

Cultural evolution requires the social transmission of information. For this reason, scholars have emphasized social learning when explaining how and why culture evolves. Yet cultural evolution results from many mechanisms operating in concert. Here, we argue that the emphasis on social learning has distracted scholars from appreciating both the full range of mechanisms contributing to cultural evolution and how interactions among those mechanisms and other factors affect the output of cultural evolution. We examine understudied mechanisms and other factors and call for a more inclusive programme of investigation that probes multiple levels of the organization, spanning the neural, cognitive-behavioural and populational levels. To guide our discussion, we focus on factors involved in three core topics of cultural evolution: the emergence of culture, the emergence of cumulative cultural evolution and the design of cultural traits. Studying mechanisms across levels can add explanatory power while revealing gaps and misconceptions in our knowledge. This article is part of the theme issue 'Foundations of cultural evolution'.

Core Topics in Airway Management.

Core Topics in Airway Management.

A national survey on the teaching provision of undergraduate geriatric medicine in Malaysia

ABSTRACT Malaysia is becoming an aging nation, with 32 medical schools providing 5,000 graduates every year. The extent these graduates have been trained in core concepts in geriatric medicine remains unclear. This work aims to describe the current state of teaching provision on aging and geriatric medicine to the medical undergraduates in Malaysia. A survey was developed by geriatric medicine experts from the Malaysian Society of Geriatric Medicine (MSGM) to review the teaching provision based on the recommended MSGM Undergraduate Geriatric Medicine Curriculum and was sent to all medical schools across the country. The response rate was 50% (16 out of 32 medical schools). Among 16 medical schools, 10 (62.5%) delivered the learning outcomes as part of an integrated curriculum, and five via a mixed geriatric and integrated curriculum at varying degrees of completeness, ranging from 19% to 94%. One particular medical school did not deliver any of the core topics as part of its undergraduate curriculum. It has been identified that the strongest barrier to delivery was lack of expertise, followed by the fact that the topics were not included in the current curriculum. Improvement in teaching provision should be implemented through a concerted effort to adopt a geriatric medical curriculum nationwide, while future research should aim at the interventions taken to address the barriers in its provision.

The topics of Islamic economics and finance research

We provide a comprehensive structuring of research on Islamic economics and finance into the core topics of the area, for the period 1979 to 2018. This is carried out through a probabilistic topic modeling approach that allows statistical learning of the connection between research articles as well as their shared topics. This approach, which blends machine learning and natural language processing, helps provide a comprehensive structure to the literature. Our topic modeling analysis is conducted on approximately 1500 articles, and suggests the Islamic economics and finance literature can be well-described by 11 topics. These topics cover economic, finance, and morality issues. Our research can be applied to provide a clear structure for ongoing research agendas in Islamic economics and finance as well as a framework for understanding research development in this area. We also note the differences between Islamic and conventional approaches to economics and finance research in order to highlight the inherent new contributions of this maturing area of research.

Identification of Sleep Medicine and Anesthesia Core Topics for Anesthesia Residency: A Modified Delphi Technique Survey.

Sleep disorders affect up to 25% of the general population and are associated with increased risk of adverse perioperative events. The key sleep medicine topics that are most important for the practice of anesthesiology have not been well-defined. The objective of this study was to determine the high-priority sleep medicine topics that should be included in the education of anesthesia residents based on the insight of experts in the fields of anesthesia and sleep medicine. We conducted a prospective cross-sectional survey of experts in the fields of sleep medicine and anesthesia based on the Delphi technique to establish consensus on the sleep medicine topics that should be incorporated into anesthesia residency curricula. Consensus for inclusion of a topic was defined as >80% of all experts selecting "agree" or "strongly agree" on a 5-point Likert scale. Responses to the survey questions were analyzed with descriptive statistical methods and presented as percentages or weighted mean values with standard deviations (SD) for Likert scale data. The topics that were found to have 100% agreement among experts were the influence of opioids and anesthetics on control of breathing and upper airway obstruction; potential interactions of wake-promoting/hypnotic medications with anesthetic agents; effects of sleep and anesthesia on upper airway patency; and anesthetic management of sleep apnea. Less than 80% agreement was found for topics on the anesthetic implications of other sleep disorders and future pathways in sleep medicine and anesthesia. We identify key topics of sleep medicine that can be included in the future design of anesthesia residency training curricula.

Cultural heritage and disasters risk: A machine-human coupled analysis

Natural hazards represent a major threat to cultural heritage. Literature has analyzed this nexus using different approaches depending on their focus. To provide a comprehensive understanding of the core pillars structuring the field, we use a machine-human methodology that combines bibliometric and machine-learning text analysis. We focus on a sample of 565 peer-reviewed documents published between 1988 and 2020. Results prove there is increasing interest in the topic, covering different types of hazards depending on the area of interest and its most frequently associated risks. To enhance the granularity of the analysis we apply machine learning to the publications abstracts and we classify documents based on their core topics. We find that the field is highly diverse and includes conservation, restoration and management of historical sites and cultural heritage. Scholars use sophisticated tools and innovative methodologies to account for this heterogeneity. We highlight the need for stronger interdisciplinarity in the field and we call for further progresses in spatial-explicit analysis. Finally, we point towards more inclusion of humanities in the area to account for the cultural aspects of heritage protection.

Development of an Interactive Global Surgery Course for Interdisciplinary Learners.

Introduction:Global surgical care is increasingly recognized in the global health agenda and requires multidisciplinary engagement. Despite high interest among medical students, residents and other learners, many surgical faculty and health experts remain uniformed about global surgical care.Methods:We have operated an interdisciplinary graduate-level course in Global Surgical Care based on didactics and interactive group learning. Students completed a pre- and post-course survey regarding their learning experiences and results were analyzed using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test.Results:Fourteen students completed the pre-course survey, and 11 completed the post-course survey. Eleven students (79%) were enrolled in a Master’s degree program in global health, with eight students (57%) planning to attend medical school. The median ranking of surgery on the global health agenda was fifth at the beginning of the course and third at the conclusion (p = 0.11). Non-infectious disease priorities tended to stay the same or increase in rank from pre- to post-course. Infectious disease priorities tended to decrease in rank (HIV/AIDS, p = 0.07; malaria, p = 0.02; neglected infectious disease, p = 0.3). Students reported that their understanding of global health (p = 0.03), global surgery (p = 0.001) and challenges faced by the underserved (p = 0.03) improved during the course. When asked if surgery was an indispensable part of healthcare, before the course 64% of students strongly agreed, while after the course 91% of students strongly agreed (p = 0.3). Students reported that the interactive nature of the course strengthened their skills in collaborative problem-solving.Conclusions:We describe an interdisciplinary global surgery course that integrates didactics with team-based projects. Students appeared to learn core topics and held a different view of global surgery after the course. Similar courses in global surgery can educate clinicians and other stakeholders about strategies for building healthy surgical systems worldwide.

Sharing good practice in process safety teaching

The teaching of safety is one of the most important and transferrable subjects in the undergraduate chemical engineering curriculum. However, whilst different institutions have a broadly similar approach to educating students in core topics such as transport processes, approaches to safety teaching are somewhat more variable. This paper describes, analyses and reflects on our approach to safety teaching. It was found that not only are the requirements for accreditation of the degree programme by the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) met, but the majority of the IChemE Safety Centre’s (ISC) recommendations are also covered. Student feedback on the 3rd year Safety and Loss Prevention (S&LP) module showed that the course has been consistently well received by the students, pointing to good course structure and coherence being a significant factor. Analysis of the outcomes of the 2020 final examination for S&LP, using Bloom’s taxonomy, supported existing plans to change the mode of assessment of S&LP to a significant coursework project. Finally, plans for a future revision of the S&LP module are presented to serve as one exemplar of good practice in safety teaching, which not only meets the requirements of the accrediting body and industry, but is also enjoyed by students.

Review of The Theory of Quantum Information John Watrous

This is an extremely clear, carefully written book that covers the most important results in the sprawling field of quantum information. It is perfect for a reference, self-study, or a graduate course in quantum information. It makes no attempt to be broad or encyclopedic, but instead goes deep into the core topics. The definitions and theorems are all precisely worded, and (starting in Chapter 2) all results have complete proofs, making the book largely self-contained. The book focuses heavily on the mathematical results and nuts-and-bolts techniques underpinning current research, and as such gives the reader a thorough and flexible toolkit for proving new results. If you are just looking for a broad but cursory survey of the field, then this is probably not the book for you. If, however, you want a working knowledge of the core results and proof techniques of quantum information with an eye toward doing cutting-edge research in the field, then this book will be an indispensable addition to your library. The mathematical theory of quantum information studies the ultimate abilities and limits of transmitting and processing information using the laws of quantum mechanics. It owes much of its motivation to classical information theory, which was largely developed by Claude Shannon in the mid 20th century, and to quantum mechanics itself (of course). It addresses basic questions like: how much information can be transmitted through quantum channels, noisy or otherwise, and how entanglement helps. The theory informs, and is informed by, its sister disciplines of quantum computation and quantum communication (which overlap with physics and computer science), although in some sense it is more fundamental. Though he occasionally mentions applications to these other areas, Watrous seats his book squarely in the realm of pure mathematics.

Progress in electric field control of magnetism: Materials, mechanisms, and devices

Using the spin degree of freedom to realize the information storage and processing is a promising way to overcome the challenges of high chip heat loss and quantum size effect in classic semiconductor devices of nanoscale, which has developed to be a hot research area of spintronics. The manipulation of magnetism is one of the core topics in the field of spintronics. Various routes have been developed to control the magnetism, such as magnet, strain, chemical doping, current, and light. With the advantages of reversibility, low-energy consumption, and good compatibility with semiconductor industry, manipulation of magnetism using an electric field attracts increasing research interest and shows enormous potential for application. Actually, the possibility of tuning the magnetism by an electrical way was firstly proposed by the Maxwell’s equation and the thought of the electric field control of magnetism could date back to the 1960s. After the experimental realization of the electric field control of magnetism in diluted magnetic semiconductor (In,Mn)As by Ohno et al. in 2000, such a technology has been utilized to manipulate the magnetic properties of different magnetic metals, oxides, topological insulators, and two-dimensional materials. The physical mechanisms behind the electric field control of magnetism also attract a lot of attention. In this review, we summarize the recent progress of electric field control of magnetism in different materials and devices based on their mechanisms: Carrier-density, strain, exchange coupling, orbital reconstruction, and ion migration. Various magnetic properties, like Curie temperature, magnetic moment, magnetic anisotropy, coercivity, and exchange bias have been effectively modulated by the electric field. Among them, the electric field controls of magnetic anisotropy, coercivity, and exchange bias are thought to be promising routes for magnetization switching based on the pure electric field. Meanwhile, the electric field is also used to control the different magnetoresistance and spin-related transport properties. The spin transfer torque and spin orbit torque are two kinds of torques that are generated by electrical current and can be utilized to switch the magnetization. Using an electric field to control these two torques attracts more and more attention. On the other hand, a lot of efforts have been made to control spintronic devices like magnetic tunnel junction, multi-ferroic tunnel junction, and racetrack memory by the electric field for pursuing the next generation nonvolatile memory technologies with low energy consumption, high density, and high speed. A large number of researches have been done in the area of electric field control of magnetism, whereas, it is still a developing topic with a lot of open questions in the performances, mechanisms, and practical applications. More efforts need to be done in the area of electric field control of magnetism, to reveal the coupling between various mechanisms, to increase the working temperature of more and more spintronic devices to or beyond room temperature, to realize the electric field control of magnetism in low dimensional magnetic systems, magnetic nanostructures, antiferromagnet, and magnetic insulator, to switch the magnetization using much lower or even no current density with the assistance of electric field at room temperature and clarify the corresponding dynamic process, and to apply the electric field control of magnetism in neurocomputing and logical operation.