Exemplary Case Research Articles

Theory-based Evaluation of Lesson Study Professional Development: Challenges, Opportunities, and Lessons Learned

“Lesson study” has garnered considerable attention from educational researchers and practitioners as a promising method for improving instruction. At its core, lesson study reflects a collaborative inquiry process, grounded in cycles of planning, enacting, and reflecting, that promotes teacher learning through active engagement in lesson refinement. In this article, we leverage lesson study as an exemplar case to foreground an examination and application of theory-based evaluation. We overview a novel evaluation framework contextualized to this multidimensional instructional program and draw out the contributions of theory-based evaluation to the study of program effects. To ground the description of this framework, we summarize representative findings from our ongoing evaluation of a lesson study-based instructional program and discuss processes for selecting, using, and managing evidence sources as well as determining causal strands supporting program outcomes. We conclude by discussing lessons learned and implications for theory-based evaluation of complex programs.

Digital reproducibility in locative media: Atatürk, his mother and women’s rights monument, İzmir

This research delves into the digital reproductions of a specific monument in locative media employing Walter Benjamin’s conceptual framework presented in ‘The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility’. The monument in question, namely, the recently reconstructed and rescaled Atatürk, His Mother and Women’s Right Monument in İzmir, Turkey serves as an exemplary case for examining the reproducibility of monuments within both physical and digital environments. Its significance lies not only in the ongoing political and scholarly debate revolving around the decision of local municipality to undertake its reconstruction, but also in its growing popularity in social media as a consequence of this debate. The analyses of digital reproductions of the monument in the paper are twofold: The first gives insights into the effects of digital reproductions on the aura and authenticity of the monument in locative media. The second focuses on how the local municipality and individual users instrumentalize these productions to perform official and mundane rituals and aestheticize not only their own political agendas but also their everyday life.

Characterizing heterogenous microstructures of fiber-reinforced composite materials using an advanced image processing-based approach through optical microscopic images

The microstructures of heterogeneous fiber-reinforced composite materials exhibit high variations, which may affect the localized material mechanical properties, create the material machinability issue, and further cause severe surface integrity issues during machining processes. Most existing approaches to studying the heterogenous microstructure of composite usually require mechanical testing and extensive post-material characterizations. Even worse, experimental testing can damage material permanently, and offline characterizations (e.g., SEMs) are expensive and time-consuming. Therefore, creating a noncontact, fast, accurate, and affordable material characterization tool can help analyze heterogenous microstructures of composite materials and boost their industrial applications. This study presents an image process-based analytic approach to characterizing microstructural features. This approach performs well in extracting microstructures from blurred and translucent optical microscopic images. The further generated features, including fiber volume fraction and other physical descriptors, capture the microstructural features and quantify the material's heterogeneity. An exemplary case study using a two-dimension spatial pattern and an experimental case study show that the presented approach allows rapid and accurate characterizations of fiber-reinforced composites with anomaly detections on the local microstructural heterogeneity.

Mental health service, training, promotion, and research during typhoons: Climate change experiences from the Philippines.

Climate change poses a significant threat to mental health, potentially increasing the rates of mental health adversities and disorders. Therefore, mental health professionals, including psychiatrists, play a crucial role in addressing and mitigating these consequences. The Philippines, as a highly climate-vulnerable nation, serves as an exemplary case highlighting the roles these professionals can undertake in the climate change response, including providing services, engaging in education and training, promoting mental well-being, and conducting surveillance and research, such as studies exploring the causal relationship between mental health outcomes and climate change.

The minimally invasive transventricular endoscopic approach to third ventricular lesions in pediatric patients—all-rounder with limitations?

IntroductionThe surgical management of third ventricular lesions poses unique challenges, requiring careful consideration of various approaches and techniques. This study focuses on the transventricular transforaminal endoscopic approach and aims to provide insights into its indications, limitations, technical nuances, and potential complications in pediatric patients.MethodsA retrospective analysis was conducted using data from a 13-year period on pediatric patients who were subjected to transforaminal endoscopic surgery for third ventricular lesions. The study utilized a prospectively maintained internal database, extracting demographic data, preoperative assessment, surgical details, and postoperative follow-up information. The surgical technique is presented in detail, and exemplary case reports highlight relevant surgical considerations.ResultsOut of 578 endoscopic transforaminal procedures, 24 surgeries were performed on pediatric patients with third ventricular lesions. Performed procedures consisted of cyst resection (13 cases), solid tumor resection (4 cases), and tumor biopsies with CSF pathway restoration (7 cases). The mean age at the time of surgery was 7.6 years. Postoperatively, 14 patients showed transient nausea and vomiting (58.3%); 10 patients showed pneumocephalus on postoperative MRI (41.7%). No emergency postoperative re-interventions nor perioperative mortality were observed.ConclusionThe endoscopic transventricular transforaminal approach is a safe approach for lesion resection, CSF pathway restoration, and tumor biopsy in pediatric patients with third ventricle lesions. The author’s results support the use of this minimally invasive technique as an alternative to more extensive approaches, particularly to the interforniceal interhemispheric approach. However, surgical success is highly dependent to the individual surgeon’s experience and moreover to a suitable indication setting. Careful preoperative planning and knowledge of the approaches’ pro and cons is mandatory for successful application of this approach.

Second Harmonic Generation in Janus Transition Metal Chalcogenide Oxide Monolayers: A First-Principles Investigation.

Due to the unique optical responses induced by vertical atomic asymmetry inside a monolayer, two-dimensional Janus structures have been conceived as promising building blocks for nanoscale optical devices. In this paper, second harmonic generation (SHG) in Janus transition metal chalcogenide oxide monolayers is systematically investigated by the first-principles calculations. Second-order nonlinear susceptibilities are theoretically determined for Janus MXO (M = Mo/W, X = S/Se/Te) monolayers. The calculated values are comparable in magnitude with Janus MoSSe monolayer. X-M-O symmetry breaking leads to non-zero components in vertical direction, compared with the non-Janus structure. Focusing on the SHG induced by incident light at 1064 nm, polarization-dependent responses of six Janus MXO monolayers are demonstrated. The symmetry of p-polarization changes from six-fold to three-fold with acute incidence angle. Moreover, the effects of biaxial strain on band structures and SHG are further investigated, taking MoSO as an exemplary case. We expect these results to bring in recipes for designing nonlinear optical devices based on Janus transition metal chalcogenide oxide monolayers.

Preferential aggregation areas of Seriola dumerili: Estimation of environmental influences and insights towards sustainable exploitation

A key aspect of the sustainable management of commercially important coastal pelagic fish stocks is the identification of the spatio-temporal dynamics of aggregation behaviour. An exemplary case species is the greater amberjack, Seriola dumerili. This top-predator is an important commercial resource exploited by recreational and commercial fisheries worldwide. Greater amberjack is known to form aggregations during important stages of its life-history, making it highly vulnerable to overfishing with potential consequences to its conservation. To improve the limited knowledge on the spatio-temporal aggregation areas of this important resource, this study combined fishing fleet dynamics (Vessel Monitoring System records), environmental and landing data into a species distribution model to predict such vulnerable events in space and time around the Balearic Islands. Our results indicated that S. dumerili aggregations were generally encountered in coastal areas at shallow depths (<100 m), low salinities, low chlorophyll concentrations, and weak meridional and zonal current velocities around the Balearic Islands. The preference for these environmental variables and processes is probably related to searching for an optimal scenario that maximises the success of larval development and survival of its offspring. Moreover, the distribution model suggested the possibility of a longer spawning period than previously predicted. This research demonstrates the use of a perceptive statistical tool that efficiently combines fisheries-dependent data and environmental data to highlight essential factors that influence the aggregation behaviour of S. dumerili and thus provides essential information for the conservation and sustainable exploitation not only of the greater amberjack, but also for other gregarious species highly-vulnerable to fishing by their aggregation behaviour.

THE INDIGENOUS SUBJECT IN LAW: AT THE INTERSECTION OF THE CARTESIAN SUBJECTIVITY AND THE RULE

This paper addresses a key question raised by the tension between the subject of normative law and indigenous, collective systems. Within the framework of the Lacanian psychoanalysis, the author explores Cartesian specificity of a legal subject. He argues that structural nature of that legal construct not only affects an individual ontologically but also reorients the dialectics inherent in legal dogmatism. Following Baudrillardian thought, it is assumed in the paper that the total opposition to normative law is not the absence of law but rather the Rule. The Rule is a concept engaging the individual into dialectics of a game and at the same time ruling out any sense of inherently legal transgression. However, the context of indigenous systems based on the Rule, besides amplifying an alienating effect of the individualization of responsibility, also explains the incongruity of normative law in some cultural contexts. The failure to integrate indigenous, traditional and local legal systems into the post-colonial normative discourse is just one of many illustrations of this. As an exemplary case, the author evokes injustice (in the Lyotardian sense) resulting from litigation simultaneously based both on Brahmanical marriage rules and the Hindu Code Bill. In its final part, the text summarises the impasses of the legal dialogue with indigenous rules and the ways of emancipation for an individual imbedded in the Cartesian subjectivity, which are inspired by transcultural encounters.

In-vivo assessment of vascular injury for the prediction of in-stent restenosis

BackgroundDespite optimizations of coronary stenting technology, a residual risk of in-stent restenosis (ISR) remains. Vessel wall injury has important impact on the development of ISR. While injury can be assessed in histology, there is no injury score available to be used in clinical practice. MethodsSeven rats underwent abdominal aorta stent implantation. At 4 weeks after implantation, animals were euthanized, and strut indentation, defined as the impression of the strut into the vessel wall, as well as neointimal growth were assessed. Established histological injury scores were assessed to confirm associations between indentation and vessel wall injury. In addition, stent strut indentation was assessed by optical coherence tomography (OCT) in an exemplary clinical case. ResultsStent strut indentation was associated with vessel wall injury in histology. Furthermore, indentation was positively correlated with neointimal thickness, both in the per-strut analysis (r = 0.5579) and in the per-section analysis (r = 0.8620; both p ≤ 0.001). In a clinical case, indentation quantification in OCT was feasible, enabling assessment of injury in vivo. ConclusionAssessing stent strut indentation enables periprocedural assessment of stent-induced damage in vivo and therefore allows for optimization of stent implantation. The assessment of stent strut indentation might become a valuable tool in clinical practice.

The kindergarten of Crosara by Sergio Los: reassessing a pioneering thermally efficient building

ABSTRACT Given the environmental and energy crises, European directives are targeting building energy efficiency. Architects must improve the thermal performance of their designs to approach Nearly-Zero Energy Building (NZEB) standards. Energy-efficient experimental buildings from the 1970s are often held up as inspiring examples of energy-conscious architectural design. However, the lack of quantitative data about their thermal performance, measured using current evaluation standards and units, makes their legacy difficult to interpret today. This study aims to verify the relevance of 1970s energy-efficient architecture by quantifying the thermal performance of an exemplary case: the kindergarten designed by Sergio Los in Crosara (Italy). The thermal performance of the building in its original configuration is re-assessed using energy simulation software and discussed relative to past and present standards, including carbon emissions. The results quantify the contributions of different energy-conscious strategies and show that the building’s pioneering performance results primarily from the architect’s bioclimatic design decisions. The study demonstrates how architects reduced building energy demands in the 1970s and explores the impact of their strategies relative to contemporary efficiency priorities.

A hybrid artificial intelligence solution approach to aftercare for cancer patients

This publication presents a solution approach to oncological aftercare for cancer patients by means of artificial intelligence (AI) methods. This approach shall support patients in overcoming the after-effects of therapy effectively with suitable supportive actions and health-care professionals in goal-oriented planning of these actions. Different AI methods are used for analyzing patients’ needs for supportive actions depending on the available health data and for a monitoring of these actions. Decision support methods are used for effective planning of actions based on the AI results of analysis. The solution approach is realized in the form of a web application for health-care professionals, which allows for data analysis and planning of actions, and a mobile application for patients, which facilitates documentation and monitoring of supportive actions. In combination, they facilitate a closed-loop workflow for the effective cooperation of health-care professionals and cancer patients. The solution approach is illustrated for an exemplary case scenario of colorectal cancer.

Homestay Accommodation for Refugees (in Europe). A Literature Review

In the aftermath of the rapidly increasing number of refugees arriving in Europe following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, nonprofit organizations, private companies, and also public institutions have promoted homestay initiatives: That is, local households hosting refugees. In order to reflect on the political issues that homestay accommodation for refugees raises, the article charts and synthesizes the available research on homestay produced in 75 works written in English, French, German, and Italian, and with a particular focus on the European context. Most of those texts were published in the second half of the 2010s and focused on the homestay initiatives that developed in the context of the so-called 2015 “refugee crisis.” We analyzed this material by focusing on three different levels: First, hospitality as an inter-individual relationship within the domestic sphere (micro level); second, refugee homestay as diverse accommodation arrangements, implemented by informal groups, nonprofit organizations, and public institutions (meso level); and, third, the (non-) contentious dimension of homestay accommodation (macrolevel). The review also identifies theoretical, methodological, and empirical perspectives for future studies on homestay. We call for more attention to be given to the intersectional inequalities and power relations between hosts and guests; to the life trajectories of refugees; and to the interplay between homestay initiatives and political contexts. We argue that homestay is an exemplary case to reflect on the ongoing evolution of refugee support towards solidarity practices that ambivalently interact with border regimes.

The Institute for Exemplary Cases as a Procedural Tool to Ensure the Unity of Judicial Practice

The presented research is devoted to the theoretically and practically relevant issue of consideration of exemplary cases by the Supreme Court as a separate procedural tool for ensuring the unity of judicial practice. The purpose of the article is to develop the existing doctrinal views on the problems of functioning of the outlined institute and search for ways to improve the relevant procedures within the national procedural system. Achieving the set goal became possible thanks to the use of a complex of scientific research methods, in particular, dialectical, analysis and synthesis, structural-functional, formal-legal, formal-logical, comparative-legal, etc. Along with the analysis of the legislative categories "typical case" and "exemplary case", the features of such cases, a thorough description of the procedure for consideration of exemplary cases within the special administrative proceedings. The following stages of exemplary proceedings are distinguished as: submission of the case as exemplary; opening proceedings in a exemplary case and publication of a relevant announcement; consideration of the case and adoption of a exemplary decision; review of a exemplary decision. It is argued that the Supreme Court's decision in an exemplary case is the primary goal of ensuring predictability, consistency and uniformity of judicial enforcement in disputes of the same type. In addition, the need to distinguish between the legal opinions of the Supreme Court, formulated in the exemplary decisions and the legal opinions of the Supreme Court, formulated in the decisions on the results of cassation review of court cases, as having a different nature. Special attention is paid to the discussion of the possibility of implementing the institution of exemplary cases in other procedural orders, in particular, civil and economic proceedings. Based on the results of the research, the opinion is supported that despite the existing skepticism among scientists and the fundamental differences in the mechanism of legal regulation of public and private relations, the specificity of some types of private relations, which are characterized by mass, and disputes within the boundaries of which become the subject of judicial proceedings, allows to single out specific typological features of the relevant cases, and therefore, there is a possibility of their exemplary consideration according to the rules of civil procedure. This primarily concerns disputes in the field of consumer protection and tort disputes. In the aspect of the latter, as one of the catalysts for the introduction of the institute under study in civil proceedings, it may be necessary to address the issue of operational protection of civil rights of victims of Russian armed aggression against Ukraine.

Governance and trust in sustainability-based agri-food value chains. A comparative analysis of five cases in Germany

Value chains that generate an increased willingness to pay among consumers by offering enhanced levels of sustainability are widely discussed as an important strategy for creating new business opportunities and fostering food system transformation. Previous research has highlighted the importance of governance arrangements to secure the trust necessary for the establishment of sustainability-based value chains. However, how different coordination designs by private and public actors along the value chain affect trust formation is not well understood. To address this question, this paper combines the concepts of hybrid governance and multidimensional trust to guide a comparative analysis of five sustainability-based agri-food value chains in Germany as exemplary case studies. The findings show that different types of governance activities are necessary to build the capacity to address four different sources of trust: dispositional, affinitive, rational and procedural trust. Building trust capacities facilitates coordination of activities along the value chain and reliable delivery of sustainability-related value propositions. In all five cases, governance arrangements and building of trust capacities were geared towards increasing willingness to pay. Sustainability-based agri-food value chains have therefore limited potential to internalize the agri-food sector’s substantial negative externalities.

A systematic approach towards missing lab data in electronic health records: A case study in non-small cell lung cancer and multiple myeloma.

Real-world data derived from electronic health records often exhibit high levels of missingness in variables, such as laboratory results, presenting a challenge for statistical analyses. We developed a systematic workflow for gathering evidence of different missingness mechanisms and performing subsequent statistical analyses. We quantify evidence for missing completely at random (MCAR) or missing at random (MAR), mechanisms using Hotelling's multivariate t-test, and random forest classifiers, respectively. We further illustrate how to apply sensitivity analyses using the not at random fully conditional specification procedure to examine changes in parameter estimates under missing not at random (MNAR) mechanisms. In simulation studies, we validated these diagnostics and compared analytic bias under different mechanisms. To demonstrate the application of this workflow, we applied it to two exemplary case studies with an advanced non-small cell lung cancer and a multiple myeloma cohort derived from a real-world oncology database. Here, we found strong evidence against MCAR, and some evidence of MAR, implying that imputation approaches that attempt to predict missing values by fitting a model to observed data may be suitable for use. Sensitivity analyses did not suggest meaningful departures of our analytic results under potential MNAR mechanisms; these results were also in line with results reported in clinical trials.

Managing power grids through topology actions: A comparative study between advanced rule-based and reinforcement learning agents

The operation of electricity grids has become increasingly complex due to the current upheaval and the increase in renewable energy production. As a consequence, active grid management is reaching its limits with conventional approaches. In the context of the Learning to Run a Power Network (L2RPN) challenge, it has been shown that Reinforcement Learning (RL) is an efficient and reliable approach with considerable potential for automatic grid operation. In this article, we analyse the submitted agent from Binbinchen and provide novel strategies to improve the agent, both for the RL and the rule-based approach. The main improvement is a N-1 strategy, where we consider topology actions that keep the grid stable, even if one line is disconnected. More, we also propose a topology reversion to the original grid, which proved to be beneficial. The improvements are tested against reference approaches on the challenge test sets and are able to increase the performance of the rule-based agent by 27%. In direct comparison between rule-based and RL agent we find similar performance. However, the RL agent has a clear computational advantage. We also analyse the behaviour in an exemplary case in more detail to provide additional insights. Here, we observe that through the N-1 strategy, the actions of both the rule-based and the RL agent become more diversified.

Feminist social movements and whistleblowing disclosures: Ireland's Women of Honour

AbstractFeminist social movements based on workers disclosing sexual harassment and sexual violence have had a dramatic impact on workplaces worldwide. But what are the specific dynamics shaping organizations founded on acts of disclosure? Organizational whistleblowing research has overlooked this topic, while literature on feminist social movements has not, to date, focused on whistleblowing disclosure as a shared experience prompting collective action. In this article I address these lacunae. I isolate disclosure‐based feminist movements (DFMs) as a specific, and important, organizational form, and I draw on relevant insights from whistleblowing theory to shed light on the dynamics therein. I find that first, DFMs are founded on a distinct kind of whistleblowing where members speak out about personally‐experienced embodied violence. Second, movements are galvanized through affective connections formed through the sharing of such experiences, and third, the perceived credibility of individual disclosures are uniquely enhanced through the salience emerging from collective speaking. Extant whistleblowing theory—and literature on feminist social movements—fails to account for organizations based upon embodied and collective experiences of disclosure. In this article a novel theoretical framing based on feminist theory is developed, emphasizing embodied, affective forms of parrhesia involving collective salience that counters whistleblower reprisal. Ideas are illustrated throughout with insights from an exemplar case within the worldwide military #MeToo movement: Ireland's Women of Honour. Contributions for scholarship on feminist social movements and organizational whistleblowing conclude the article alongside insights for practice.

Antibiotic-Free Helicobacter Pylori Eradication – Case Reports and Review of The Literature

Background: Standard Helicobacter pylori eradication therapy is based on proton pump inhibitors and antibiotics. There are, however, important limitations: increasing antibiotic resistance of Helicobacter pylori, medical contraindications, and an increasing unwillingness among patients to use antibiotics. Case presentations: We present three exemplary case reports of successful antibiotic-free Helicobacter pylori eradication therapies, one for each of these limiting categories: a 61-year-old female Caucasian patient refractory to prior eradication therapy, an 80-year-old female Caucasian patient with contraindication to antibiotics, and a 41-year-old male Caucasian patient refusing antibiotics. A review of the literature attempts to provide a scientific rationale for proton pump inhibitor-based and probiotics-supported Helicobacter pylori eradication. Conclusion: Antibiotics-free Helicobacter pylori eradication may offer a therapeutic option for patients in whom classical eradication therapy cannot be conducted or who are refractory to antibiotics. Clinical trials are needed to scientifically evaluate the concept presented here.

Concept for a critical-angle transmission grating spectrometer for the AXIS probe

The Advanced X-ray Imaging Satellite (AXIS) is a probe-class mission concept with a large collecting area with a point-spread-function of order 1 to 2 arcsec. We describe a possible X-ray grating spectrometer (XGS) that could be added to AXIS with minimal design changes to the telescope itself and costs a small fraction of the total mission budget. The XGS would be based on critical-angle transmission (CAT) gratings, a technology already matured for Arcus and Lynx. Using detailed ray-tracing, we investigate several options for subaperturing that provide a trade-off between effective area and spectral resolving power. Depending on how much of the full aperture is covered with gratings (e.g., 17% to 100%), we find a high spectral resolving power up to λ / Δλ = 4000 can be achieved with effective area of 1500 cm2 in the 1.2 to 2.8 nm range or λ / Δλ = 6000 with effective area 500 cm2. An important benefit of CAT gratings is that they are mostly transparent at high energies, and thus hard x-rays can still be used for simultaneous imaging spectroscopy. We study different grating sizes and other enhancements, but even in the basic configuration an XGS can be added to AXIS to provide high-resolution spectral capabilities, opening a range of new science investigations. Our ray-tracing shows that this concept is mature and can be added to AXIS with minimal impact on other instruments. We discuss one exemplary science case that would be enabled by the XGS.

Recognizing political influences in participatory social-ecological systems modeling

Stakeholder participation in social-ecological systems (SES) modeling is increasingly considered a desirable way to elicit diverse sources of knowledge about SES behavior and to promote inclusive decision-making in SES. Understanding how participatory modeling processes function in the context of long-term adaptive management of SES may allow for better design of participatory processes to achieve the intended outcomes of inclusionary knowledge, representativeness, and social learning, while avoiding unintended outcomes. Long-term adaptive management contexts often include political influences -- attempts to shift or preserve power structures and authority, and efforts to represent the political and economic interests of stakeholders -- in the computer models that are used to shape policy making and implementation. In this research, we examine a period that included a major transition in the watershed model used for management of the Chesapeake Bay in the United States. The Chesapeake Bay watershed model has been in development since the 1980s, and is considered by many to be an exemplary case of participatory modeling. We use documentary analysis and interviews with participants involved in the model application and development transition to reveal a variety of ways in which participatory modeling may be subject to different kinds of political influences, some of which resulted in unintended outcomes, including: perceptions of difficulty updating the model in substantive ways, “gaming” of the model/participatory process by stakeholders, and increasing resistance against considering uncertainty in the system not captured by the model. This research suggests unintended or negative outcomes may be associated with both participatory decision-making and stakeholder learning even though they are so often touted as the benefits of participatory modeling. We end with a hypothesis that further development of a theory of computer model governance to bridge model impact and broader theories of environmental governance at the science-policy interface may result in improved SES modeling outcomes.