Interdisciplinary Challenges Research Articles

Emerging questions in exposure, regulation, and remediation of PFAS

My research is highly interdisciplinary and includes exposure and risk analysis. Many of our colleagues have diverse backgrounds and work together to address the interdisciplinary challenges associated with PFAS contamination …I think one of the largest gaps right now is understanding the importance of different exposure pathways for the general population.Given the tremendous physical and mental toll affected communities have experienced due to their exposure to PFAS, there is an unusually strong connection between citizens and scientists, and I hope that bond will strengthen over time.

Tactile co-design tools for complex interdisciplinary problem exploration in healthcare settings

We explore the role of tactile co-design tools to enable interdisciplinary collaboration in complex healthcare settings. We present the Tactile Tools method and discuss our comparative case study of five healthcare settings then demonstrate how affordances of tactile co-design tools can support equality in decision-making, improve literacy within teams and challenge established power structures. We show how re-usability and the affordance of “sliding” help to manage complexity and circumnavigate traditional hierarchies. Design diagrams are investigated as a way to capture the exploration space and support better problem understanding in interdisciplinary teams. We argue that the Tactile Tools method enables participants to collaboratively explore complex interdisciplinary (healthcare) challenges and helps teams to empathize with the lived experience of health seekers.

Training competences in smart cities: an online program for higher education students

Purpose This paper aims to explain the development of an online training curriculum to enable students to acquire the transversal competences needed to work on smart cities projects. In this curriculum, a modern approach to the teaching-learning process was applied, suitable for the interdisciplinary and multinational learning challenges that smart cities impose, but within the framework of a university-industry European partnership. Design/methodology/approach To develop the curriculum, the competences needed for smart cities, common to all disciplines and fields, had to be researched. In addition, real smart cities projects also had to be selected for work following a project-based learning methodology. For both, this study applied the Delphi method, selecting the most relevant ones based on the data obtained by performing a multi-criteria decision analysis. Findings The procedure followed for the identification of transversal competences in a field, the design of an innovative online training program and the results of the first edition of the program are discussed. Research limitations/implications The processes that were developed, both to detect the most relevant transversal competences and to design the online training program, could be extrapolated to other areas. Moreover, it is very likely that the competences detected in this work could also be extrapolated, for the most part, to interdisciplinary teams. Originality/value To date, there is no European initiative addressing the challenges of smart cities that requires a major adjustment in higher education, in the relationship between universities and all the mechanisms of lifelong learning with the industry related to smart cities. This work is a pioneer in this regard.

Educating the energy informatics specialist: opportunities and challenges in light of research and industrial trends

Contemporary energy research is becoming more interdisciplinary through the involvement of technical, economic, and social aspects that must be addressed simultaneously. Within such interdisciplinary energy research, the novel domain of energy informatics plays an important role, as it involves different disciplines addressing the socio-techno-economic challenges of sustainable energy and power systems in a holistic manner. The objective of this paper is to draw an overview of the novel domain of energy informatics by addressing the educational opportunities as well as related challenges in light of current trends and the future direction of research and industrial innovation. In this study we discuss the energy informatics domain in a way that goes beyond a purely scientific research perspective. This paper widens the analyses by including reflections on current and future didactic approaches with industrial innovation and research as a background. This paper provides key recommendations for the content of a foundational introductory energy informatics course, as well as suggestions on distinguishing features to be addressed through more specialized courses in the field. The importance of this work is based on the need for better guidelines for a more appropriate education of a new generation of experts who can take on the novel interdisciplinary challenges present in future integrated, sustainable energy systems.Article highlightsDidactic approaches in the energy informatics domain are discussed based on research and industrial trends.Research trends and industrial innovation driven by energy informatics are investigated.A fundamental framework for an energy informatics course is defined together with specialized distinguishing features.

Some challenges of interdisciplinarity

Abstract This piece explores dialogue analysis inside a particular ongoing collective work, a regional adaptation to climate change research-action project in the southern part of Québec province, the Memphrémagog MRC. First, some precision is given to better understand what it means to work in interdisciplinary contexts such as this one, continuing the development of a terminology to be able to better identify collaboration between and with different professionals. These problems are then expressed in two case studies of dialogues as they have been documented in the research project.

Making headway with the mysteries of life’s origins

In 1863, Charles Darwin opined in a letter to a friend that contemplating the origin of life was “mere rubbish thinking” and that “one might as well think of [the] origin of matter.” Many researchers today would agree with Darwin. And yet, whereas cosmologists know how particles, elements, and many molecules formed after the big bang, biologists still struggle to explain how inorganic molecules turned into the stuff of life. Natural lakes with relatively high concentrations of phosphorous compounds, such as Mono Lake in California, may have been commonplace in the prebiotic Earth, providing the phosphorus-rich environments for biology and life to take hold. Image credit: Shutterstock/Radoslaw Lecyk. While seeking signs of fossilized microbial life in Mars’ Jezero crater, once home to a river delta, NASA’s Perseverance rover could uncover evidence of ferrocyanide derivatives, which would favor a hypothesis about how life started—one in which hydrogen cyanide reacts with the abundant iron dissolved in the waters of a lake, forming ferrocyanide, and causing cyanide salts to accumulate and react with flowing water. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. That’s partly because no one researcher or laboratory can tackle all aspects of the problem. But recent experiments and simulations—studying planetary habitability, the conditions needed to produce biomolecules in the ratios and concentrations for self-sustaining metabolism, and the ways in which the precursors to DNA and RNA might have assembled and replicated—are beginning to answer some fundamental questions about the origin of life. Multiple labs are tackling these interdisciplinary challenges with myriad approaches. At least one team believes they might be on track to learn how life got a start on our planet. “For years, people working on the origin of life had many ideas but nothing that fell into place as a single working pathway,” says astronomer Dimitar Sasselov of Harvard University in Cambridge, …

Benefits and Challenges of Interdisciplinarity in CSCL Research: A View From the Literature.

Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) has a history of being interdisciplinary from its conception. Its beginnings have included computer scientists, psychologists, cognitive scientists, and educational researchers. These collaborations have been fruitful but have also posed challenges (Suthers et al., 2013). This article builds on the authors’ extensive review of the CSCL literature to examine the nature of interdisciplinary collaboration in CSCL research as well as an interdisciplinary CSCL workshop. Using a corpus of more than 700 CSCL articles, we reported an updated analysis for the theories and methods used in CSCL research. In addition, bibliometric analyses examined journals that publish CSCL research and are cited by CSCL research. CSCL research is published in journals that are aligned with interdisciplinary research with large contributions from educational research followed by technology related fields and social sciences. The contributions from domain knowledge journals are relatively weak. These analyses revealed disciplinary influences and uptakes of CSCL research and how they might differ across CSCL research clusters. Lastly, we provide a case example of a CSCL workshop to further demonstrate the interdisciplinary nature of the field. Through these analyses we aim to characterize the benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration in CSCL research. Interdisciplinarity has helped CSCL research to adopt multiple theories and methods to understand CSCL. While cultivating diversity, we also need to be mindful that research outcomes are exchanged and appropriated actively across participating disciplines so that our understanding of CSCL rises above individual disciplines.

Mother and child with osteogenesis imperfecta type III. Pregnancy management, delivery, and outcome

AbstractObjectivesThanks to the advances of modern medicine it has become possible to reach a fertile age even in the case of serious illnesses, enabling those patients to realize their desire to have children. This is also the case with the extremely heterogeneous, often autosomal dominantly inherited osteogenesis imperfecta. Due to a disruption in collagen synthesis those patients are faced with multiple fractures, spinal deformities and a decrease in pulmonary capacity throughout the course of their lives, depending on the subtype and severity of the disease. Obstetricians as well as anesthetists face major interdisciplinary challenges in the case of a pregnancy in those patients because of pregnancy-associated risks like uterine rupture, preterm birth and postpartum hemorrhage as well as risks associated with the nature of osteogenesis imperfecta itself, like bone fractures, spinal deformities and decreased mobility in the course of the progressing pregnancy. Mode of delivery should be planned individually in order to minimize maternal morbidity and mortality. In cases in which the fetus is as well affected by the disease, this aspect must be taken into consideration when it comes to supervision of pregnancy and planning of the birth mode.Case presentationWe report the case of a woman with osteogenesis imperfecta type III who spontaneously conceived a pregnancy with a fetus who was also affected by the genetic disease. This constellation has up to now been reported by only few sources and requires supervision by an experienced perinatal center.ConclusionsOsteogenesis imperfecta is not an exclusion diagnosis for family planning and a successful delivery. Nevertheless, depending on the form of the disease, mother and child can be severely affected by the disturbed collagen synthesis. Each patient has to be individually advised and cared for with the specific risks due to the type of Osteogenesis imperfecta. In the case of type III, due to extreme scoliosis, pelvic deformity and small growth, only a primary cesarean section can be performed.

A Survey of Energy and Spectrum Harvesting Technologies and Protocols for Next Generation Wireless Networks

Energy harvesting (EH) and spectrum harvesting (SH) are two promising and useful green communication and networking mechanisms for the next-generation wireless networks. While the former techniques exploit ambient energy sources to scavenge energy, the latter exploit the unused or moderately used electromagnetic spectrum. With the advent of cyber-physical systems and the Internet-of-Things (IoT), the presence of tens of billions of low power sensor devices would soon be a reality. These small sensing devices would be present in many systems around us, such as home appliances, telecommunication devices, medical electronics, transport systems, etc. These miniaturized, low-power consuming devices may exploit EH and SH techniques for energy storage and communication. These EH-SH-enabled sensors or low-power nodes need to consume very little energy for sensing and communicating opportunistically. However, several theoretical problems and practical challenges exist in EH-SH communications. In this comprehensive survey paper, we first present the historical background of EH, and SH techniques, and their development over several decades. Specifically, we focus on EH-SH communication technologies and protocols for a wide range of systems and networks. We present a detailed survey of the various harvesting techniques and protocols from recent literature. Finally, we describe exciting open, intra-disciplinary, and inter-disciplinary challenges for further research on EH-SH communication technologies.

PPE for your mind: a peer support initiative for health care workers.

PPE for your mind: a peer support initiative for health care workers.

Frontiers in hybrid and interfacial materials chemistry research

Abstract

The Role of Interdisciplinarity in Bringing PBL to traditional Universities: Opportunities and Challenges on the Organizational, Team and Individual Level


 
 
 Problem-based learning (PBL) has emerged as a suitable approach to shift from teacher-centered to learner-centered educa-tion. However, higher education institutions (HEIs) experience obstacles stemming from lecturers’ and students’ reservations as well as organizational challenges. Following action research, the author reflects on her implementation of interdisciplinary PBL within one exemplar case study to explore opportunities and challenges of interdisciplinarity in the transition toward a PBL curriculum in a traditional HEI. At the organizational level, interdisciplinarity facilitates collective knowledge creation about PBL by providing interdisciplinary learning spaces and in-house training. At the team level, lecturers as well as students can collectively learn about PBL. At the individual level, interdisciplinary student-to-student and lecturer-to-lecturer learning can enhance personal knowledge about PBL. Monodisciplinary structures, discipline-based differences in teaching and knowledge traditions, as well as individual prejudices are sources of challenges associated with interdisciplinarity in organizational learning.
 
 

A conceptual framework for process‐oriented employee appraisals and rewards

This study aims to translate generic human resource management (HRM) appraisals and rewards toward an organization's business processes for better aligning organizational practices to a process orientation and for a successful business process management (BPM) adoption. We conducted an interdisciplinary study with three phases. Firstly, we conducted a literature study to obtain a list of typical business process characteristics that can be relevant for HRM appraisals and rewards. Secondly, we used an expert panel to validate and refine this list. Finally, we integrated those concepts into generic theories and frameworks on HRM appraisals and rewards through a translation study. We provide a conceptual framework of process‐oriented HRM appraisals and rewards that integrates HRM and BPM concepts. The framework presents process‐specific characteristics to supplement generic HRM appraisals and rewards frameworks. Given the challenges of aligning function‐based appraisals and rewards to a business process orientation, the framework can help tackle interdisciplinary challenges and brings a high‐level understanding of what to focus on during this alignment.

Symmetric Free Form Building Structures Arranged Regularly on Smooth Surfaces with Polyhedral Nets

The article is an original insight into interdisciplinary challenges of shaping innovative unconventional complex free form buildings roofed with multi-segment shell structures arranged with using novel parametric regular networks. The roof structures are made up of nominally plane thin-walled folded steel sheets transformed elastically and rationally into spatial shapes. A method is presented for creating such symmetric structures based on the regular spatial polyhedral networks created as a result of a composition of many complete reference tetrahedrons by their common flat sides and straight side edges arranged regularly and symmetrically in the three-dimensional Euclidean space. The use of the regularity and symmetry in the process of shaping different forms of (a) single tetrahedral meshes and whole consistent polyhedral structures, (b) individual plane walls and complex elevations, (c) single transformed folds, entire corrugated shell roofs, and their structures allow a creative search for attractive rational parametric solutions using a few author’s parametric algorithms and their implementation as built-in commands of the AutoCAD visual editor or applications of the Rhino/Grasshopper program.

Interdisciplinary challenges for elucidating human olfactory attractiveness.

Many species use chemicals to communicate. In humans, there is increasing evidence that chemicals conveyed by the body are extremely important in interpersonal relationships. However, many aspects of chemical communication remain to be explored to fully understand this function in humans. The aim of this article is to identify relevant challenges in this field, with a focus on human attractiveness in the context of reproduction, and to put forward roadmaps for future studies that will hopefully extend to a wider range of social interactions. The first challenge consists in not being limited to body (mal)odours from the axilla. Preliminary data on how the odour of the face and head is perceived are presented. Second, there is a crucial need to increase our knowledge of the chemical bases of human chemical communication. Third, cross-cultural approaches must not be overlooked, because they have a major input in understanding the universal and culture-specific aspects of chemical communication. Fourth, the influence of specific cultural practices such as contraceptive and fragrance use is likely to be prominent and, therefore, needs to be well described. The fifth and last challenge for research projects in this field is the integration of different disciplines such as behavioural sciences, social sciences, neurosciences and microbiology. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Olfactory communication in humans'.

Collection of requirements for teaching in the area of Smart Textiles

The textile and clothing industries are facing new challenges. Smart Textiles are a huge topic with a high market potential, however there are only few approaches in teaching this interdisciplinary field. Moreover, individuals are expected to continuously adapt to the new requirements by following the concept of lifelong learning. We propose a new concept that will integrate a smart textiles kit. This application-oriented construction kit should help to extend the frontiers of knowledge, stimulate creativity, and give students the ability to solve real-world problems. As added benefit it will accelerate the understanding of innovation and interdisciplinary challenges. The blended learning concept aims to prepare students to think interdisciplinary, broadly, deeply, and last but not least critically. Students will be ready to contribute to the development of new products and face the challenges of structural change along their working life.

Plasma Catalysis: A Review of the Interdisciplinary Challenges Faced

The work presented here introduces the topic of plasma catalysis through selected work in scientific literature and commercial applications, as well as identifying some of the key challenges faced when attempting to utilise non-thermal atmospheric plasma catalysis across multidisciplinary boundaries including those of physics, chemistry and electrical engineering. Plasma can be generated by different methods at many energy levels and can initiate chemical reactions; the main challenges are to selectively initiate desirable reactions either within a process stream or at the surface of a material. The material, which may have intrinsic catalytic properties, the nature of the process gas and the geometry of the reactor will influence the products formed. Previous work has shown that the mechanism for plasma-initiated reactions can be different to that occurring from more traditional thermally stimulated reactions, which opens up possibilities of using different catalytic materials to optimise the reaction rate and product speciation. In addition, the influence of a plasma at the surface of a material and the effects that can be introduced will be discussed.

Correction: Lewandowski, J., et al. Groundwater–Surface Water Interactions: Recent Advances and Interdisciplinary Challenges. Water 2020, 12, 296

The authors wish to make the following correction to this paper [...]

Automotive battery pack manufacturing – a review of battery to tab joining

Automotive battery packs used for electromobility applications consist of a large number of individual battery cells that are interconnected. Interconnection of the battery cells creates an electrical and mechanical connection, which can be realised by means of different joining technologies. The adaption of different joining technologies greatly influences the central characteristics of the battery pack in terms of battery performance, capacity and lifetime. Selection of a suitable joining technology, therefore, involves several considerations regarding electrical and mechanical properties and an assessment of production and operational conditions. Particularly, during the operation of an electric vehicle, challenges and mutual dependencies of the electrical and mechanical system emerge. The present work provides an overview of interdisciplinary challenges occurring at joints which are exposed to electrical current with a strong focus on interconnecting batteries for electric cars. It summarizes common quality criteria for the joining technologies and recombines those with criteria deduced from an electrical engineering point of view. Scientific literature concerning different joining technologies in the field of battery manufacturing is discussed based on those criteria. The most common joining techniques are ultrasonic welding, wire bonding, force fitting, soldering, laser beam welding, and resistance welding. Besides those, friction stir welding, tungsten inert gas welding, joining by forming and adhesive bonding are presented.

Groundwater–Surface Water Interactions: Recent Advances and Interdisciplinary Challenges

The interactions of groundwater with surface waters such as streams, lakes, wetlands, or oceans are relevant for a wide range of reasons—for example, drinking water resources may rely on hydrologic fluxes between groundwater and surface water. However, nutrients and pollutants can also be transported across the interface and experience transformation, enrichment, or retention along the flow paths and cause impacts on the interconnected receptor systems. To maintain drinking water resources and ecosystem health, a mechanistic understanding of the underlying processes controlling the spatial patterns and temporal dynamics of groundwater–surface water interactions is crucial. This Special Issue provides an overview of current research advances and innovative approaches in the broad field of groundwater–surface water interactions. The 20 research articles and 1 communication of this Special Issue cover a wide range of thematic scopes, scales, and experimental and modelling methods across different disciplines (hydrology, aquatic ecology, biogeochemistry, environmental pollution) collaborating in research on groundwater–surface water interactions. The collection of research papers in this Special Issue also allows the identification of current knowledge gaps and reveals the challenges in establishing standardized measurement, observation, and assessment approaches. With regards to its relevance for environmental and water management and protection, the impact of groundwater–surface water interactions is still not fully understood and is often underestimated, which is not only due to a lack of awareness but also a lack of knowledge and experience regarding appropriate measurement and analysis approaches. This lack of knowledge exchange from research into management practice suggests that more efforts are needed to disseminate scientific results and methods to practitioners and policy makers.