Cross-disciplinary Methods Research Articles

The foundation for the microbiology laboratory's essential role in diagnostic stewardship: an ASM Laboratory Practices Subcommittee report.

Diagnostic stewardship (DxS) has gained traction in recent years as a cross-disciplinary method to improve the quality of patient care while appropriately managing resources within the healthcare system. Clinical microbiology laboratorians have been highly engaged in DxS efforts to guide best practices with conventional microbiology tests and more recently with molecular infectious disease diagnostics. Laboratories can experience resistance to their role in DxS, especially when the clinical benefits, motivations for interventions, and underlying regulatory requirements are not clearly conveyed to stakeholders. Clinical laboratories must not only ensure ethical practices but also meet obligatory requirements to steward tests responsibly. In this review, we aim to support clinical microbiology laboratorians by providing the background and resources that demonstrate the laboratory's essential role in DxS. The heart of this review is to collate regulatory and accreditation requirements that, in essence, mandate DxS practices as a long-standing, core element of high-quality laboratory testing to deliver the best possible patient care. While examples of the clinical impact of DxS are plentiful in the literature, here, we focus on the operational and regulatory justification for the laboratory's role in stewardship activities.

Reexploring the conception of heat-health risk: From the perspectives of dimensionality and spatiality.

Extreme heat events are more frequent and intense as a result of global climate change, thus posing tremendous threats to public health. However, extant literature exploring the multidimensional features of heat-health risks from a spatial perspective is limited. This study revisits extreme heat-health risk and decomposes this concept by integrating multi-sourced datasets, identifying compositional features, examining spatial patterns, and comparing classified characteristics based on local conditions. Using Maryland as the focal point, we found that the components of heat-health risk are different from traditional risk dimensions (i.e., vulnerability, hazards, and exposure). Through a local-level clustering analysis, heat-health risks were compared with areas having similar features, and among those with different features. The findings suggest a new perspective for understanding the socio-environmental and socio-spatial features of heat-health risks. They also offer an apt example of applying cross-disciplinary methods and tools for investigating an ever-changing phenomenon. Moreover, the spatial classification mechanism provides insights about the underlying causes of heat-health risk disparities and offers reference points for decision-makers regarding identification of vulnerable areas, resource allocation, and causal inferences when planning for and managing extreme heat disasters.

Social group identities and semantic domains in the ancient Near East

Abstract Digital Humanities has an increasing need for widely applicable and easy-to-use methods across disciplinary boundaries. We believe that the cross-disciplinary methods we have developed for the study of the ancient Near East are useful for the study of other research questions outside the field of “Digital Assyriology”. The article presents an overview of automated language processing for lexical-semantic analysis, social network analysis, and content analysis. We draw on the work in our research group, which aims to address how changing empires affect social group identities and lifeways in the first millennium BCE in Mesopotamia. The article places the methods our research team has developed into the larger methodological context of Digital Humanities (DH). The article presents an overview of the tools our research group has found useful in our study of ancient social groups. Sections 1 and 2 give the necessary background for the reader to understand the particular challenges related to the study of ancient Mesopotamia and how we have overcome them. The concrete case studies presented in Sections 3 and 4, however, are kept as general as possible, to facilitate similar approaches in adjacent fields of study. Our methodology and approaches are well documented and openly available, and in our view can be used on similar text materials, by other groups interested in DH approaches.

Human-centred engineering design: a cross-disciplinary product innovation practice

AbstractThis article introduces a Human-centred Engineering Design (HcED) practice, which values human aspects. This practice engages deeply into (1) human geometry and motion for specific tasks, (2) product and manufacturing complexities through rapid prototyping, and (3) the broader human task context. This cross-disciplinary method combines ergonomics, AM, sensor applications, and multiple design practices. The framework provides concrete tasks to drive innovative designs in engineering. The study, grounded in design research case studies, led to five new Paralympic Rowing world records.

Innovating Cross-Disciplinary Methods for Performance Voice: My Journey Applying Massage Therapy to Actor Training

Innovating Cross-Disciplinary Methods for Performance Voice: My Journey Applying Massage Therapy to Actor Training

CROWDFUNDING: AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO ISLAMIC FUNDING

This study aimed to explore deeper conceptually about crowdfunding as alternative funding according to Islamic principles. There are still limitations to looking for similar research, so this research will be fundamental to study, especially for business actors or investors who want to take part in a halal business and have a high social value. Based on published studies and indexed by Scopus, this research is based on bibliometric research to see the conceptual development of Islamic crowdfunding. The bibliometric approach to reviews has gained popularity due to several factors, including the introduction of software, cross-disciplinary methods, and increased ability to handle large volumes of data. The results showed that the development of literature on Islam Crowdfunding as alternative Islamic funding had made rapid progress in recent years. The existence of public awareness of social values and welfare is one of the factors that support the success of Islamic crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is beneficial for funding companies. It dramatically facilitates investors in getting access to information related to the distribution of funds that must be done as well as from the side of the return of funds.

Cross-disciplinary method development for assessing dog welfare in canine-assisted pedagogical work: a pilot study

ABSTRACT Research on so-called social service dogs’ welfare in schools is scarce and tends to suffer from positive bias; i.e., lacking critical approaches to claimed welfare benefits for dogs. To contribute method development for studying effects on dogs in pedagogical work, we applied and evaluated a combination of four data collection methods: Ethogram, Qualitative Behaviour Assessment (QBA), ethnographic observations, and interviews with dog-handling pedagogues. We followed pedagogues (n = 5) and their dogs (n = 8) in their daily work, observing 16 canine-assisted sessions in total at five different schools. Follow-up semi-structured interviews were carried out with all pedagogues. Our findings suggest combining either ethogram or QBA with ethnographic data that gives contextual information on the events causing the dog’s behavior. The method choice will, ultimately, depend on study design, but the specific premises of QBA seem to work particularly well with ethnography. We further suggest a shift from simultaneous (parallel) to synchronous (connected) documentation of data. To minimize anthropocentric bias and power arrangements involved in animal welfare research, it is necessary to critically scrutinize accepted conventions regarding social service dogs and their work situation.

Unraveling Amazon tree community assembly using Maximum Information Entropy: a quantitative analysis of tropical forest ecology

In a time of rapid global change, the question of what determines patterns in species abundance distribution remains a priority for understanding the complex dynamics of ecosystems. The constrained maximization of information entropy provides a framework for the understanding of such complex systems dynamics by a quantitative analysis of important constraints via predictions using least biased probability distributions. We apply it to over two thousand hectares of Amazonian tree inventories across seven forest types and thirteen functional traits, representing major global axes of plant strategies. Results show that constraints formed by regional relative abundances of genera explain eight times more of local relative abundances than constraints based on directional selection for specific functional traits, although the latter does show clear signals of environmental dependency. These results provide a quantitative insight by inference from large-scale data using cross-disciplinary methods, furthering our understanding of ecological dynamics.

Use of a Socio-Ecological Framework and MFA to Assess the Resilience of Local Food Chain Systems

This paper proposes the basic procedures to examine the biodiversity of food chain systems using cross-disciplinary methods based on social, ecological, and material dimensions. The application of SES and MFA methods to track internal and external disturbances in the food chain highlights some of the flaws and gaps in this decision support system approach. In contrast to the single method, this SES-MFA overlapping approach contributes more information, including the literature on local food governance. Furthermore, the SES-MFA method would offer recommendations to researchers and policy practitioners to manage changes in the food chain system to attain uninterrupted biodiversity sustainability.

International Environmental Law: Conceptual Constants and Cognitive Dominants

The research is aimed at defining the main concepts of international environmental law which reflect the most urgent environmental problems at different stages of the development of this area of law. Using several cross-disciplinary methods to analyse the texts of three international environmental agreements, the authors aim at proving the hypothesis that the development of international environmental law can be characterized by transformation from specific to universal problems. The authors believe that the problems addressed in a chronologically earlier document are relatively specific, while later documents focus on more general issues. Such change of priorities is supported by the results of linguo-cognitive analysis of the texts under study. Various conceptual constants are typical of different stages of development of international environmental law. The constants found in the documents of different periods of time accumulate to shape the cognitive dominants of the discourse of international environmental law, which makes it possible to trace the evolution of environmental ideas at a global scale.

Color in motion: Generating 3-dimensional multispectral models to study dynamic visual signals in animals

Analyzing color and pattern in the context of motion is a central and ongoing challenge in the quantification of animal coloration. Many animal signals are spatially and temporally variable, but traditional methods fail to capture this dynamism because they use stationary animals in fixed positions. To investigate dynamic visual displays and to understand the evolutionary forces that shape dynamic colorful signals, we require cross-disciplinary methods that combine measurements of color, pattern, 3-dimensional (3D) shape, and motion. Here, we outline a workflow for producing digital 3D models with objective color information from museum specimens with diffuse colors. The workflow combines multispectral imaging with photogrammetry to produce digital 3D models that contain calibrated ultraviolet (UV) and human-visible (VIS) color information and incorporate pattern and 3D shape. These “3D multispectral models” can subsequently be animated to incorporate both signaler and receiver movement and analyzed in silico using a variety of receiver-specific visual models. This approach—which can be flexibly integrated with other tools and methods—represents a key first step toward analyzing visual signals in motion. We describe several timely applications of this workflow and next steps for multispectral 3D photogrammetry and animation techniques.

Policy seduction and governance resistance? Examining public funding agencies and academic institutions on decarbonisation research

AbstractPublic research funding is a critical instrument in technology and social innovation. This paper explores the emerging themes and topical trends that commonly influence interdisciplinary research within a sample of global research projects, including reviewing a recent study of 1,000 projects used in the selection of expert interview participants (n = 15). It examines the extent to which research funding agencies and academic institutions are shifting research priorities in the energy and climate change domain. It asks: What challenges does interdisciplinary research raise? The study reveals how cross-disciplinary research funding focuses on or fails to address the themes of sustainable development goals. In addition, it emphasises policy seduction and difficulty (resistance) in understanding cross-disciplinary methods in research and how research collaborations promote (or fail to promote) global South institutions and topics. Finally, the paper recommends that research funding needs involve a broader array of stakeholders in industrial decarbonisation research, including policymakers, industries, and citizens.

Mapping the gaps between cooling benefits of urban greenspace and population heat vulnerability

We provide a novel method to assess the heat mitigation impacts of greenspace though studying the mechanisms of ecosystems responsible for benefits and connecting them to heat exposure metrics. We demonstrate how the ecosystem services framework can be integrated into current practices of environmental health research using supply/demand state-of-the-art methods of ecological modeling of urban greenspace. We compared the supply of cooling ecosystem services in Boston measured through an indicator of high resolution evapotranspiration modeling, with the demand for benefits from cooling measured as a heat exposure risk score based on exposure, hazard and population characteristics. The resulting evapotranspiration indicator follows a pattern similar to conventional greenspace indicators based on vegetation abundance, except in warmer areas such as those with higher levels of impervious surface. We identified demand-supply mismatch areas across the city of Boston, some coinciding with affordable housing complexes and long term care facilities. This novel ES-framework provides cross-disciplinary methods to prioritize urban areas where greenspace interventions can have the most impact based on heat-related demand.

Water-Energy-Food Nexus Review for Biofuels Assessment

The appropriate use of limited natural resources for generating basic human needs such as energy, food, and water, is essential to help the society function efficiently. Hence, a new approach called nexus is being considered to resolve the effects of intrinsic trade-offs between the essential needs. A review of different methods and frameworks of the water-energy-food nexus was done in this article to give a detailed repository of information on existing approaches and advocate the development of a more holistic quantitative nexus method. Assessing biofuels under the water-energy-food nexus perspective, this review addresses the sustainability of bioenergy production. The results show the countries that can sustainably produce first-generation biofuels. Only a few methods have varied interdisciplinary procedures to analyse the nexus, and more analytical software and data on resource availability/use are needed to address trade-offs between these interacting resource sectors constituting the nexus. Also, “land” is suggested as an additional sector to consider in future studies using both the nexus index and life cycle assessment methodology. The review reveals that to tackle composite challenges related to resource management, cross-disciplinary methods are essential to integrate environmental, socio-political facets of water, energy, and food; employ collaborative frameworks; and seek the engagement of decision-makers.

Research Methodologies for Auto/biography Studies ed. by Kate Douglas and Ashley Barnwell

Reviewed by: Research Methodologies for Auto/biography Studies ed. by Kate Douglas and Ashley Barnwell Desirée Henderson (bio) Research Methodologies for Auto/biography Studies Edited by Kate Douglas and Ashley Barnwell Routledge 2019, xvii + 258 pp. ISBN 9780367255688, $170.00 hardcover; ISBN 9781032092119, $48.95 paperback. Auto/biography studies has often taken pride in its status as an upstart disciplinary field that developed relatively recently and despite skepticism about the legitimacy of its subject matter. Yet, it is clear that auto/biography studies has now moved into a more mature phase with many establishment markers including subject-specific journals, conferences, organizations, listservs, and so forth. Among such indicators of a field's cohesion are anthologies and essay collections that define the field, highlight its most influential voices, establish a canon of scholarly materials, and lay a foundation for future developments or trends. To such field-defining works, we can now add Kate Douglas and Ashley Barnwell's marvelous collection of essays, Research Methodologies for Auto/biography Studies. This volume takes method as its central focus, with the promise that the question of how to do lifewriting research encompasses numerous other pressing questions within auto/biography studies such as those regarding the digital turn, praxis, and ethics. The thirty essays are divided into two sections, "Forms" and "Frameworks," but a more salient distinction could be drawn between essays that show (offering brief samples of auto/biographical research or writing) and essays that tell (describing auto/biographical research or writing projects previously completed). The good news is that the volume offers a rich selection of each. Whether showing or telling, certain recurring themes cut across the collection, the most prominent of which is interdisciplinarity. Douglas and Barnwell state in their introduction that although auto/biography studies grew out of English literary studies, the field now embraces a much more diverse and cross-disciplinary set of methods (1). However, there are instructive differences in how the call to interdisciplinarity gets represented within the essays themselves. Some essayists contend that auto/biography studies must embrace interdisciplinarity because literary analysis methods are simply inadequate, particularly when working with unconventional or "unliterary" texts. Julie Rak is the contributor who makes this argument most vehemently in her discussion of the place of big data within auto/biography scholarship, stating that "the study of big data poses [End Page 91] special problems that most life writing methods cannot yet address" (116). Sarah Brophy shares Rak's concern regarding the challenges that digital life content presents to conventional reading methods, recognizing that access to and facility with specialized software for computational analysis may not be possible for literary studies scholars. These essays ask vital questions about whether auto/biography studies is capable of diversifying its methods fast enough to keep up with the proliferation of digital or other life narrative forms that resist being read as literary texts. Other essays in the collection show what is possible when specialists with alternate backgrounds take up life narrative, such as Signe Ravn's description of using creative visuals such as life charts or maps to organize the results of qualitative sociological interviews, or Meg Jensen and Siobhan Campbell's account of their impressive Expressive Life Writing Project, which studies the real-life benefits of storytelling for women who are refugees from conflict zones. Most essays in the volume advocate for a hybrid approach, employing research methods that derive from other disciplines but which pair well with literary criticism. Aimée Morrison describes this as a "mixed methods process" that, in the case of her work on social media, combines genre theory from literary studies, descriptive methods from anthropology and ethnography, and software and hardware analysis methods from new media studies (43). Another notable example of the productive mixing of literary studies and cross-disciplinary methods can be found in Ally Day's account of organizing reading groups to discuss HIV memoirs, a text-focused approach that takes on new significance when the reading groups are composed of women living with HIV, or of AIDS service providers. From these essays, it would appear that the literary studies methods that characterize auto/ biography studies still have merit, but particularly when they are...

Student and pre-registration pharmacist performance in a UK Prescribing Assessment.

Student and pre-registration pharmacist performance in a UK Prescribing Assessment': room for improvement and need for curricular change Background Increasingly the global policy direction is for patient-facing pharmacist prescribers. The 'UK Prescribing Safety Assessment' (PSA) was developed for medical graduates to demonstrate prescribing competencies in relation to the safe and effective use of medicines. Objectives To determine PSA performance of final year undergraduate student pharmacists (year 4) and pre-registration pharmacy graduates (year 5) and explore their opinions on its suitability. Setting Scotland, UK Methods Final year undergraduates (n = 238) and pre-registration pharmacists (n = 167) were briefed and undertook the PSA. PSA questions were mapped to specific thematic areas with 30 questions over 60min. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics. A questionnaire was completed to gauge opinions on appropriateness of the PSA. Main Outcome Measure PSA scores Results Mean total PSA score for pre-registration pharmacists (64.4, SD 10) was significantly higher than for undergraduates (51.2, SD 12.0,) (p < 0.001). Pre-registration pharmacists performed significantly better across all question areas (all p < 0.001 other than 'adverse drug reactions', p < 0.01). Hospital pre-registration pharmacists performed statistically significantly better than community with higher overall scores (67.4, SD 9.8 v 63.2, SD 9.8, p < 0.05). Positive views on the appropriateness of the approach and the usability of the online interface were obtained from participants. Conclusion Hospital pre-registration pharmacists performed better than the undergraduates, but there is a need to improve prescribing skills in all, most notably in diagnostic skills. The PSA is acceptable to the participants. These results will help inform pharmacy curricula development and provides a cross-disciplinary method of assessment of prescribing competence.

Energy inequality in the Eurasian Economic Union

This paper aims at assessing energy inequality, which is at the center of SDG7, in the Eurasian Economic Union – a recently created international organization with arguably the closest integration in the energy sphere for all member states: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia. The research was performed with the use of cross-disciplinary methods, including literature review, analysis of policy documents (applied policy analysis), and two quantitative tools widely used for energy policy analysis – the decomposition of energy consumption based on the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index and the inequality estimation by using the Theil index. The study identified contribution of three types of factors to energy consumption of the entire Eurasian Economic Union: economic growth − the increase of GDP, the relative structural changes in the economy, and energy intensity shifts. Theil index allowed determining the level of inequality in the region's energy consumption. The quantitative analyses demonstrated that in 2000–2017 the increase of GDP and energy intensity in the region were the main reasons that had determined the growing energy consumption. Theil index analysis showed that inequality of GDP-related energy consumption is decreasing, whereas the population-related inequality is increasing. Additionally, policy implications for inclusive and sustainable energy integration in the region are discussed. The required policy changes range from introducing amendments to the Eurasian Economic Union Treaty and structural changes to very precise science and technology policy tools.

Global warming city planning studies: A transdisciplinary approach to sustainable cities

This paper describes the shift in urban planning strategies toward more sustainable cities. The United Nations General Assembly's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) span from poverty eradication to education improvements to the preservation of global assets such as seas and climates. Achieving these broad objectives requires comprehensive and cross-disciplinary methods. Because the SDGs are inextricably linked to urban activities, urban planning is one of the most effective strategies for achieving them. In this article, we first outline a conceptual framework for the interplay of urbanization and climate change, and then predict the future trajectory of increasing worldwide urbanization in this century, as well as the resulting sustainability issues. Then, as sustainable science, we examine the path of urban planning analysis to address sustainability issues, and we suggest the cross-assessment method for vision-led urban planning. The cross-assessment method seeks to investigate synergistic solutions integrating various value systems by evaluating the effects of measures pursuing each value component on a variety of outcome indicators. The case studies for the cross-examination are drawn from Japanese public transportation policy. Finally, we examine the effects of socioeconomic changes and technical development on urban growth, particularly in the areas of transportation, building, and communication.

Transformation of education as a metatrend of the digital economy

Subject. The study focuses on the impact of the digital economy determinants of the education transformation. Objectives. The article provides our own approach treating the education capital as a specific asset of the digital economy, which has an acceleration effect and sets up new trends in education through integrative networks. Methods. The study is based on principles of the systems integration, cross-disciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches. Results. The socio-economic progress was found to be determined with properties of human capital, which are solely specific to the digital economy. In new circumstances, it gets more important for actors of global, national, corporate and social networks to more actively cooperate within distributed networks in order to train high professionals, who would have skills in information networks. Thus, they would raise a new form of human capital – the capital of network education (network-based education capital). We describe positive externalities that arise when the educational sector joins communication processes. We illustrate how educational forms evolves, which are typical of a certain phase of the socio-economic development. The education capital was discovered to grow into a specific asset generating the quasi-rent and working as a social ladder only provided more actors are involved into the network. Conclusions and Relevance. Studying the evolution of educational forms through the cross-disciplinary method, we discovered the need for a system approach, which would help substantiate its transformation in the time of the digital economy, and the emergence of network-based education. These are technologies and tools of the digital economy that become unique factors generating the acceleration effect of the educational capital and ensuring the use of diverse network effects for the formation of intellectual capital and their social transformation.

20.D. Skills building seminar: Design for mental health integration through built environment interventions

Abstract Mental illness is associated with social exclusion and stigma more than most other health issues. This affects psychiatric facility provision (Chrysikou et al 2017), prevention and early treatment interventions. The planning and design of services both conceptually (service procedures, experience designs, campaigns and physically (e.g. buildings, products, interiors) could help change that. New approaches could build resilience by increasing access to and acceptance of mental health services and enable recovery as a constant process (Slade et al 2008). This intense skill- building workshop will use a role-game approach with cross-disciplinary methods from experience design and design thinking to foster innovative spatial concepts in a co-creative manner. This helps to build capacity and knowledge on exploring and developing innovative and disruptive concepts for public urban mental health. Focus is on spatial configuration, architectural and design aspects for services and mental health systems. The highly interactive seminar-workshop starts with two 5' presentations to set the theoretical multi-disciplinary stage. A third 5' presentation addresses issues addressed to the participants and presents the locus of the role play, i.e. Crete, chosen for its unique socio-spatial and systemic characteristics. A 5' presentation explains the scenario and stakeholder roles. The group session comprises a 50' long structured series of ideation and analysis methods based on a role-play-like schedule in which delegates act as service provider for a municipal client (Crete) that request an innovative mental health care solution for a specific urban context. Then 10' will be the closing session on the process by mapping the reflections of the process on a collective SWOT diagram. Chrysikou, E., Kostopoulou, E., Savvopoulou, E., Fatah gen. Schieck, A., 2017. Medical Architecture on the Social Valorisation of Psychiatric Patients: Employing transdisciplinary approaches between architecture, physical and mental well-being disciplines. Proceedings of the AAE 2017 Conference, Architecture Connects, 6th -9th September 2017. Oxford Brookes University, UK Slade, Mike; Amering, Michaela; Oades, Lindsay (2008): Recovery: an international perspective. In: Epidemiologia e psichiatria sociale 17 (2), S. 128-137. Key messages Participants will explore participatory design methodologies to help them consider and use building infrastructure as resource for public health and healthcare actions in relation to mental health. Participants will cross disciplinary boundaries exposed to eco- and psychosocial frameworks, i.e, build and social infrastructure, to co-create healthy, vibrant, resilient and equitable communities.