External Comments Research Articles

Framing Science in the Media: Case Study of News on Bolshaya Udina Volcano

The article considers the process of transformation of framing of science from a researcher (6 letters, 5 versions of the text with corrections) through the news in corporate mass media (press release, 1 text) to other mass media (8 texts in English, 1 text in German, 59 texts in Russian). Three frames were identified in the original text: “narrative of the progress of the study”, “catastrophizing the results of the study”, and “the need for additional observations for more accurate research results”. The media exploited the “catastrophizing” frame most actively: 6 texts in English, 1 text in German, 42 texts in Russian. Also, journalists implemented one more frame – “verification of results by external experts” (1 time in English and 1 time in Russian). In the texts in Russian has appeared another source of information – a press-release by the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, which can be singled out in a separate frame “refutation of the results obtained by external experts” (15 texts). There has been a convergence of the format of news and a press release about scientific results since journalists used texts prepared by press services without verification and external comments. As a result, the frames of the original text are duplicated in mass media. If the frame is based on sensation, the emphasis on sensation increases in further replication when information about the research (its methodology, problems, and development) decreases.

Welfare services in Sweden – with New Zealand comments

Two countries on the opposite side of the globe – Sweden and New Zealand– similarities and differences! This article is an introduction to the following articles about aspects of social services in Sweden. These articles, written from a Swedish perspectives and context, give some pictures of the welfare sector in the areas of elderly care, psychiatric care and disability care which hopefully will be of interest especially for New Zealand readers. To build the understanding of the Swedish model this introductory article starts with a theoretical approach to welfare systems. To understand the context in which services are delivered, it is necessary to both give some basic facts about the countries and about services – regulation, conditions, or- ganisations and implementation, including how services have developed historically and influenced the current situation – and to include comments and reflections from a New Zealand perspective. These external comments and reflections are also a way to broaden the interest and value for New Zealand readers as well as for international readers in general and, not least, Swedish readers.

SP0055 Licensing New Drugs in SLE: The EMA Draft Guideline

The European Medicines Agency has released the draft Guideline on clinical investigation of medicinal products for the treatment of systemic lupus erythematosus, cutaneous lupus and lupus nephritis. A request for...

The impact of producers’ comments and musicians’ self-evaluation on perceived recording quality

The choice of recording technologies always transforms musicians’ perception of their performance when playing in the studio. In many cases, during recording sessions, musicians repeat the same musical composition over and over again without the presence of an audience. We hypothesize that comments from an external record producer and/or self-evaluation after listening to the takes in the control room address the challenges of studio recording by helping musicians improve from one recorded take to another. We conduct a field experiment with 25 jazz players, grouped into five ensembles, participating in recording sessions with four record producers. The musicians are invited to record four compositions, one in each of four experimental conditions. To create these conditions, we independently manipulate two types of feedback between takes: with or without comments from the record producer and with or without musicians’ self-evaluation (after listening to the takes in the control room). Our results show that both external comments and self-evaluation provide objectivity by giving the ensemble a common ground. Specifically, listening to the first take enhances creativity while external comments positively impact a takes’ evolution throughout the session

Virtual Astronaut for Scientific Visualization—A Prototype for Santa Maria Crater on Mars

To support scientific visualization of multiple-mission data from Mars, the Virtual Astronaut (VA) creates an interactive virtual 3D environment built on the Unity3D Game Engine. A prototype study was conducted based on orbital and Opportunity Rover data covering Santa Maria Crater in Meridiani Planum on Mars. The VA at Santa Maria provides dynamic visual representations of the imaging, compositional, and mineralogical information. The VA lets one navigate through the scene and provides geomorphic and geologic contexts for the rover operations. User interactions include in-situ observations visualization, feature measurement, and an animation control of rover drives. This paper covers our approach and implementation of the VA system. A brief summary of the prototype system functions and user feedback is also covered. Based on external review and comments by the science community, the prototype at Santa Maria has proven the VA to be an effective tool for virtual geovisual analysis.

Internal and External Comments on Course Evaluations and Their Relationship to Course Grades

The validity of student evaluations of courses and the relationship between evaluations and course outcomes has frequently been examined. Since many course evaluations give students an opportunity to provide answers to open-ended questions in addition to giving Likert scale ratings, it is important to understand the relationship between these responses and course outcomes. This study examined the relationship between student responses to open ended questions (specifically whether they attributed their achievement to factors within their control or factors not within their control) and their outcomes in the course. The results of the study indicate that students that identified external factors (e.g. the professor) as responsible for their success in the course had significantly higher course outcomes than students that identified external factors as responsible for their failure in the course. No differences were detected in course outcomes for students that made external comments on their course evaluations versus those that made internal comments.

Developing WHO guidelines with pragmatic, structured, evidence-based processes: A case study

Many guidelines, including those produced by the World Health Organisation (WHO), have failed to adhere to rigorous methodological standards. Operational examples of guideline development processes may provide important lessons learned to improve the rigour and quality of future guidelines. To this end, this paper describes the process of developing WHO guidelines on prevention and care interventions for adults and adolescents living with HIV. Using a pragmatic, structured, evidence-based approach, we created an organising committee, identified topics, conducted systematic reviews, identified experts and distributed evidence summaries. Subsequently, 55 global HIV experts drafted and anonymously submitted guideline statements at the beginning of a conference. During the conference, participants voted on statements using scales evaluating appropriateness of the statements, strength of recommendation and level of evidence. After review of voting results, open discussion, re-voting and refinement of statements, a draft version of the guidelines was completed. A post-conference writing team refined the guidelines based on pre-determined guideline writing principles and incorporated external comments into a final document. Successes and challenges of the guideline development process were identified and are used to highlight current issues and debates in developing guidelines with a focus on implications for future guideline development at WHO.

Information architecture: IA and RIAs — You know more than you think you do

Information architecture: IA and RIAs — You know more than you think you do

Contemporary debates on the nature of mathematics

Kolmogorov's article "Contemporary Debates on the Nature of Mathematics" was published in 1929 in Nauchnoe slovo journal (no. 6, pp. 41---54) and has not been republished since then. At the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century, abstractions of a very high order appeared and were rooted in mathematics, so that their correlation with reality became a crucial question. A number of great mathematicians of the time were interested in this question, and Kolmogorov's article was quite up to date. The goal of the republication of this article, which is currently difficult to access, is not only to acquaint the reader with a scarcely known article of the great scientist but to invite him to observe the process of scientific progress. It should be noted that, only a year after the publication of the article, some astonishing results of Godel appeared that gave answers to a number of questions in Kolmogorov's article and brought mathematical strictness in the very formulation of these questions. Therefore, the article is accompanied by external comments in order to give an insight into the current state of the art. In the text the comments are indicated by numbers in brackets, from [1] to [21].1 As for the rest, Kolmogorov's text is published in the same way as it was published in Nauchnoe slovo, without any alterations of the sense. Accompanying comments given to the article by the editors of Nauchnoe slovo (footnotes and introduction to the article) are omitted.