Interdisciplinary Research Team Research Articles

Transforming Masculinities Through Cross-Cultural Collaboration: Reflections on Building a Community of Practice Framework

Interdisciplinary, local, regional, and cross-regional efforts are required to further men’s gender justice engagement on a global scale. There is limited understanding of how cross-regional collaborations account for intersectionality, geo-political differences among stakeholders, and the value of local strategies when designing and sharing prevention frameworks. Catalyzed by emerging and long-standing gender equity movements, our interdisciplinary research team from Canada, the Caribbean, Nepal, and Pakistan employed a community of practice (CoP) framework to share and mobilize research and experiential knowledge with the purpose of promoting regional and cross-regional strategies to involve men in gender justice efforts. Through a collective process, we co-created position statements, process dimensions, and key CoP activities to root our international collaboration. In this article, we emphasize the unique local contexts for our work and the learnings that emerged from our CoP. We propose a framework that can be used to advance collective and interdisciplinary agendas across global contexts and further the work of groups committed to transformative social change.

Supporting occupational therapists to initiate conversations about sexuality with people with intellectual disability: Co-design by deliberative dialogue.

Occupational therapists routinely report low levels of confidence in addressing needs related to sexuality and intimacy. These issues are compounded when supporting clients with intellectual disability, due to prevailing assumptions about capacity and few practical support resources. At a disciplinary level, there is ongoing discourse around how to best conceptualise and support sexual and gender identities generally, within models of human occupation. Leveraging interdisciplinarity, where sexuality overlaps as a sphere of interest, can aid the development of practical support resources. Engagement with sociology (focussed on relationality) and disability studies (focussed on embodiment) offers a generative path forward. The deliberative dialogues framework was used to develop a co-designed resource by occupational therapists for occupational therapists. Six Australian occupational therapists with experience working with clients with intellectual disability and/or sexuality were purposively recruited to participate in co-design groups. Using the eight features of deliberative dialogue, data was collected and analysed by an interdisciplinary research team to collaboratively produce a practical support resource. Participants agreed the greatest need was to develop a resource for clinicians, to support conversations with clients about sexuality. Five key themes emerged: (1) Theoretical explanations addressing why sexuality is important must be paired with practical advice; (2) make a conversational call to action from 'OTs' for 'OTs' by locating sexuality within the domain of occupational therapy; (3) make explicit that people with intellectual disability are sexual beings; (4) need for self-reflection; and (5) demonstrate how existing understandings of occupation apply to sexuality. A resource in the form of a brochure was developed, intended to be used as a conversation primer. The process used to develop the resource demonstrated the value of interdisciplinary collaboration and the utility of deliberative dialogue as a co-design method.

Applying Complex Adaptive Systems to Build Interdisciplinary Collaborations and Aid in Understanding Complicated Social Phenomena

ABSTRACT The Grand Challenges for Social Work were introduced by the American Academy for Social Work & Social Welfare in 2016, which are social problems that are interrelated and “exceedingly complex”. We discuss the relevance of complexity theory, operationalized by complex adaptive systems (CAS), to the Grand Challenges. CAS moves beyond current ecological systems approaches and is more appropriate for studying nonlinear, dynamic phenomena such as the Grand Challenges. We explore ideas for incorporating CAS into the social work curriculum at all levels. Adopting CAS into social work practice and research via changes to the curriculum will complement current practices and can facilitate interdisciplinary research teams, and thus has tremendous promise for helping social workers address the Social Work Grand Challenges.

Team principles for successful interdisciplinary research teams

Interdisciplinary research teams can be extremely beneficial when addressing difficult clinical problems. The incorporation of conceptual and methodological strategies from a variety of research disciplines and health professions yields transformative results. In this setting, the long-term goal of team science is to improve patient care, with emphasis on population health outcomes. However, team principles necessary for effective research teams are rarely taught in health professional schools. To form successful interdisciplinary research teams in cardio-oncology and beyond, guiding principles and organizational recommendations are necessary. Cardiovascular disease results in annual direct costs of $220 billion (about $680 per person in the US) and is the leading cause of death for cancer survivors, including adult survivors of childhood cancers. Optimizing cardio-oncology research in interdisciplinary research teams has the potential to aid in the investigation of strategies for saving hundreds of thousands of lives each year in the United States and mitigating the annual cost of cardiovascular disease. Despite published reports on experiences developing research teams across organizations, specialties and settings, there is no single journal article that compiles principles for cardiology or cardio-oncology research teams. In this review, recurring threads linked to working as a team, as well as optimal methods, advantages, and problems that arise when managing teams are described in the context of career development and research. The worth and hurdles of a team approach, based on practical lessons learned from establishing our multidisciplinary research team and information gleaned from relevant specialties in the development of a successful team are presented.

Can CBD help to combat COVID variants?

There is an urgent need to find new treatments that complement the use of vaccines and antiviral drugs to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Our interdisciplinary research team uncovered evidence that cannabidiol (CBD), a non-psychoactive compound produced by cannabis plants, has the potential to inhibit SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID.

Role development, implementation and evaluation of nurse practitioners in a Belgian university hospital: a mixed methods study protocol

IntroductionDue to the increased prevalence of chronic conditions, multimorbidity and an increased complexity of care, the burden on healthcare teams is high resulting in unmet needs of patients and their...

Understanding Adoption as a Reproductive Justice Issue

Adoption is frequently invoked as a universal social good—an uncomplicated win for adoptees, adoptive parents, and birth parents alike—that obviates the need for abortion. As antiabortionists weaponize adoption to attack reproductive rights, psychologists must recognize adoption as a key reproductive justice issue with significant, lifelong physical and psychological impacts, especially on adopted people and birth parents. Recognizing critical adoption studies as an application of a reproductive justice framework, we argue that psychologists must understand how adoption is both sustained by and reinforces structural inequality and global reproductive injustice. In a post- Roe reality, clinicians and researchers must critically examine adoption histories and myths in order to address the needs of the adoption triad. As an interdisciplinary team of researchers and clinicians in psychology; medicine; genetic counseling; and women's, gender, sexuality, and Asian American studies, we examine adoption's ties to settler colonialism, racism, classism, and imperialism and interrogate harmful dominant narratives about adoption. We then summarize clinical considerations for working with members of the adoption triad, future directions for research on adoption, and recommendations for both clinicians and researchers to advance adoption competence in the face of current attacks on reproductive rights in the United States.

Where is Community Involvement in Open Science? A Commentary on "(Why) Are Open Research Practices the Future for the Study of Language Learning?"

Where is Community Involvement in Open Science? A Commentary on "(Why) Are Open Research Practices the Future for the Study of Language Learning?"

Ongoing collaborative project for building a symbiotic society with dementia: the analysis of Alzheimer's pathogenic changes by 'ageing' of disease-relevant proteins.

In Japan, the ageing society correlates to a significant burden of care for elderly people with dementia. Researchers are exploring the epidemiology of the disease, as well as the social aspects. This includes understanding what a well-functioning society encompassing people with dementia looks like. Professor Naoko Utsunomiya-Tate, Laboratory Head at the Laboratory of Biomolecular Chemistry, Faculty of Pharma-Sciences, Teikyo University, Japan, is engaged in two key research strands: 'Building a symbiotic society with dementia' and 'Biophysical and structural chemical research on the racemisation of the pathogenic protein in the onset process of Alzheimer's disease'. Utsunomiya-Tate envisions a symbiotic society in which people with dementia aren't tucked away in care homes and healthcare facilities but, rather, well integrated into, and respected by, society. She and her team are working to develop diagnostic, preventative and treatment measures and anticipate possible issues in advance of implementing these in society in order to develop solutions. Utsunomiya-Tate is collaborating with Senior Assistant Professor Genta Ito and an interdisciplinary team of researchers to identify pathogenic protein variants that suppress fibrillisation and aggregate formation, to elucidate the mechanism underlying the cell-to-cell transfer of Tau aggregates, and to develop gene therapy targeting the etiological proteins of dementia. The team also aims to understand how D-isomerisation of the amino acids constituting amyloid β and Tau protein is involved in the process of their fibrillisation and aggregation.

Design and Development of a Family of Integrated Devices to Monitor Animal Movement in the Wild

Monitoring the tortoise Chelonoidis chilensis in the wild, currently in a vulnerable state of conservation in southern Argentina, is essential to gather movement information to elaborate guidelines for the species preservation. We present here the electronic circuit design as well as the associated firmware for animal monitoring that was entirely designed by our interdisciplinary research team to allow the extension of device features in the future. Our development stands out for being a family of low-cost and low-power devices, that could be easily adaptable to other species and contexts. Each device is composed of a sub 1 GHz radiofrequency IoT-compatible transceiver, a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receiver, a magnetometer, and temperature and inertial sensors. The device does not exceed 5% of the animal's weight to avoid disturbance in their behavior. The board was designed to work as a monitoring device as well as a collecting data station and a tracker, by adding only small pieces of hardware. We performed field measurements to assess the autonomy and range of the radiofrequency link, as well as the power consumption and the associated positioning error. We report those values and discuss the device's limitations and advantages. The weight of the PCB including battery and GNSS receiver is 44.9 g, its dimensions are 48.7 mm × 63.7 mm, and it has an autonomy that can vary between a week and a month, depending on the sampling rates of the sensors and the rate of the RF signal and that of the GNSS receiver. The characterization of the device parameters will favor the open use of this development by other research groups working on similar projects.

METHODS AND TECHNOLOGIES FOR INTELLECTUALIZATION OF SEARCHING FOR DESTRUCTIVE AND RADICAL CONTENT IN SOCIAL MEDIA: ANALYSIS OF THE CURRENT STATE

The purpose of this work is a comparative review of methods and technologies for intellectualizing the search for destructive and radical content in social media. The authors propose a typologization and description of the main applied tasks in this field. The analysis of the sources showed that deep learning technologies and the support vector method are the most popular in the professional environment. The authors describe the existing limitations of the intelligent technologies use in the subject area. As a general result of the conducted analytical research, we note the following. Partially formulated conclusions are characteristic not only for such a subject area as the intellectualization of the search for destructive content. In particular, close attention is paid to the problem of compiling qualitative data samples as hindering the further development of artificial intelligence technologies. As trends gaining relevance in the field of countering destructive content, it is worth highlighting, firstly, the need to form interdisciplinary scientific and technical teams, and, secondly, the shift in emphasis in the classification of content towards video and image processing. Intensive involvement of experts in the field of destructive content research – linguists, sociologists and psychologists – to automate its search and analysis will increase the overall degree of formalization of such definitions as “destructive”, “radical” and “extremist”, as well as their inherent features, which will ensure a transition to a more effective level of algorithmization. The growth trend of two directions is predicted: the development of organizational and managerial methods for the formation of interdisciplinary research teams to solve the identified applied tasks, as well as the development of content classification methods based on video and image processing against the background of a decrease in the importance of text content in social media.

A Proposal on How to Use Blockchain to Secure Communications in 5G Ecosystem

5G provides businesses with high-speed Internet access, faster bandwidth, and low latency. The use of IoT and 5G-enabled sensors provides new opportunities within networks. There are several use cases of 5G with IoT health care, agriculture, remote learning, logistics, manufacturing, government, and retail. However, some security and privacy problems must be addressed within the 5G ecosystem. There is a need to secure user and device associations and data integrity as 5G is becoming more and more popular. In this research-in-progress, we seek to solve security and privacy problems in 5G by applying Blockchain technology to secure 5G connections. The research will consist of an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Illinois State University (ISU) and non-academic-industry partners. During the study, we build a prototype that solves problems in agriculture and healthcare. A private 5G network is installed at ISU. Moisture sensors and IoT devices are installed at the university farm to monitor soil moisture. Tracking soil moisture helps to conserve water. Additionally, we also work with a local clinic and provide underserved patients with chronic illnesses with sensors and IoT devices that help them track and monitor their chronic conditions. The patients will have monitors that track blood pressure and blood sugar. The IoT devices and sensors send collected data to a database accessible by healthcare professionals at the clinic. This helps the patients receive care that helps them manage their conditions better. Blockchain will be applied during the proposed study to secure communications between the sensors at the university farm and the private 5G network. Blockchain is also be applied to secure communications between the patients and healthcare providers at the clinic. The collected results are analyzed to see if there is a significant difference in suspicious activities in agriculture and healthcare communications. The results have a broader impact, including helping underserved community members to receive good care in managing their chronic conditions. The results also help secure other use cases of 5G with IoT devices.

Assessing the influence of rocket launch and landing noise on threatened and endangered species at Vandenberg Space Force Base

Understanding how species of concern respond to anthropogenic activities is becoming increasingly important. While the ways in which anthropogenic activities affect species are many, our understanding the effects of anthropogenic noise on species is still developing. Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB) along the California Central Coast presents a unique opportunity to study the effects of anthropogenic noise on species of concern as (1) the rate of rocket launches/landings is predicted to significantly increase in the coming years compared to the last three decades and (2) there are multiple threatened and endangered species at VSFB that may be impacted by the increased launch cadence. Our interdisciplinary research team composed of wildlife biologists and acousticians will be studying the short and long-term behaviors of threatened and endangered shorebirds that nest relatively close to active VSFB launch complexes. Using previously collected and current bird counts and acoustic data from VSFB, models will be created that describe behavioral changes in species of concern. We will discuss the scope and overview of this project.

Contextual and environmental factors that influence health: A within-subjects field experiment protocol.

Despite the growing research on environment-physical activity (PA) relationships, field experimental studies are limited. Such studies offer opportunities to focus on real-world environmental exposure and related PA and health outcomes, allowing researchers to better isolate the causal effect of exposures/interventions. Focusing on the street/pedestrian environment as a routine setting for people's daily activities, this research aims to develop and test a field experiment protocol that integrates instantaneous assessments of the environment, PA, and health outcomes. The protocol involves the use of state-of-the-art environmental monitoring and biosensing techniques and focuses on physically active road users (pedestrians and bicyclists) who are more directly exposed to their surrounding environment than others such as drivers. An interdisciplinary research team first identified the target measurement domains for the health outcomes (e.g., stress, thermal comfort, PA) and the street-level environmental exposures (e.g., land use, greenery, infrastructure conditions, air quality, weather) guided by the previous literature which was primarily observational. Portable or wearable measurement instruments (e.g., GPS, accelerometer, biosensor, mini camera, smartphone app, weather station, air quality sensor) were identified, pilot tested, and selected for the identified measures. We ensured that these measures are readily linkable using the time stamp and include eye-level exposures as they impact the users' experiences more directly yet missing in most prior studies relying on secondary, aerial-level measures. A 50-min experimental route was then determined to include typical everyday environments in park and mixed-use settings and to engage participants in three common modes of transportation (walking, bicycling, and driving). Finally, a detailed staff protocol was developed, pilot-tested, and used in a 36-participant within-subject field experiment in College Station, TX. The experiment was successfully executed, showing its potential to support future field experiments that can provide more accurate real-time, real-environment, and multi-dimensional information. Our study demonstrates the feasibility of capturing the multifold health benefits/harms related to walking and bicycling in varying urban environments by combining field experiments with environmental, behavioral, and physiological sensing. Our study protocol and reflections can be helpful for a broad spectrum of research addressing the complex and multi-level pathways between the environment, behavior, and health outcomes.

Designing and evaluating a smartphone app to increase underserved communities’ data representation in transportation policy and planning

The current global focus on transportation equity, as well as a move towards smart mobility, highlights the need for more representative transportation data to inform transportation planning. In this case study, an interdisciplinary research team describes the process of refining and evaluating the utility of a transportation daily diary mobile-phone-based app. The process is framed through transportation equity and diverse key stakeholder engagement. The team custom-designed the app, MyAmble, to capture successful transportation behaviors, as well as latent demand, defined as travel not taken but desired, among underserved populations. Stakeholder focus groups with subject matter expert (n = 30) and end users (n = 19) were conducted prior to pilot testing the app, and post-pilot test focus groups (n = 18) and usability surveys (n = 76) were conducted to evaluate the app’s usability. Pre-pilot focus groups indicated that transportation planners desired more questions about safety and other transit modes. End users identified missing destinations, such as temporary housing locations. Post-pilot focus group members reported that using MyAmble required minimal training or technological assistance and that they had sustained confidence throughout usage. Further refinements include reducing length of daily use and resolving Broadband or data plan obstacles for end users. Designing transportation apps to collect data about transportation behaviors among underserved population members is critical to equitable transportation planning. Moreover, key stakeholder involvement in the design may produce more successful apps and those which include more relevant information for planners, as well as more inclusive travel behaviors.

Mapping and analysis of laws influencing built environments for walking and cycling in Australia

BackgroundPhysical inactivity is a significant public health concern, with limited signs of improvement despite a global commitment to achieving the World Health Organization’s target of 15% reduction by 2030. A systems approach is required to tackle this issue, involving the creation of environments that are conducive to physical activity. Laws represent an important tool for regulating the built environment for physical activity, are a mechanism for systems change, and have the capacity to reorient the goals and rules of a system. However, they are understudied and potentially underutilised for physical activity. Scientific legal mapping is a first step towards understanding how laws could impact the built environment to facilitate greater population physical activity.MethodWe conducted a legal assessment of state and territory laws in Australia, to systematically characterise how they address built environment considerations with specific relevance to walking and cycling. An interdisciplinary team of researchers with public health, law and urban planning expertise was formed to complete the multistage process. Key steps included a systematic search of laws using a combination of original legal research, consultation of secondary sources, and review and verification by an urban planning expert; development of a coding scheme; and completion of coding and quality control procedures.ResultsMost jurisdictions in Australia do not currently embed objectives in primary legislation that would promote physical activity and support an integrated approach to land use and transport planning that encourages active and sustainable lifestyles. Only two jurisdictions addressed the large majority of evidence-based standards that promote active living. Of the standards addressed in law, few fully met evidence-based recommendations. While most jurisdictions legislated responsibility for enforcement of planning law, few legislated obligations for monitoring implementation.ConclusionIncreasing physical activity is a systems issue, requiring actions across multiple sectors. An in-depth examination of the legal environment is an important step towards understanding and influencing the existing physical activity system, why it may not be generating desired outcomes, and potential opportunities for improvement. Our findings reveal opportunities where laws could be strengthened to promote more active environments. Updating this dataset periodically will generate longitudinal data that could be used to evaluate the impact of these laws on the built environment and physical activity behaviours.

“Will You be Our Qualitative Methodologist?” Reflections on Grant Work Responsibilities

Government funders increasingly encourage interdisciplinary mixed methods research projects that include qualitative methods. For qualitative methodologists, the opportunity to collaborate on interdisciplinary research teams may come at a cost when their expertise is marginalized relative to quantitative designs. Drawing on concepts from critical pragmatism and an ethics of care, we reflect on ethical tensions in our experiences as qualitative methodologists on government funded interdisciplinary research teams. Driven by an intersubjective and justice-oriented view of knowledge development and care as interdependence, we offer our thoughts, experiences, and guidance under four orienting concepts: collaboration, education, critique, and critical reflexivity. We culminate our reflection by offering a practical and responsible way forward for qualitative methodologists who accept grant work invitations, a way that holds promise for advancing interdisciplinary, critical, and care-based action in funded research.

Rethinking ‘responsibility’ in precision agriculture innovation: lessons from an interdisciplinary research team

ABSTRACT We examine the interactions, decisions, and evaluations of an interdisciplinary team of researchers tasked with developing an artificial intelligence-based agricultural decision support system that can provide farmers site-specific information about managing nutrients on their land. We answer the following research questions: (1) How does a relational perspective help an interdisciplinary team conceptualize ‘responsibility' in a project that develops precision agriculture (PA)? and (2) What are some lessons for a research team embarking on a similar interdisciplinary technology development project? We show that how RI is materialized in practice within an interdisciplinary research team can produce different understandings of responsibility, notions of measurement of ‘matter,’ and metrics of success. Future interdisciplinary projects should (1) create mechanisms for project members to see how power and privilege are exercised in the design of new technology and (2) harness social sciences as a bridge between natural sciences and engineering for organic and equitable collaborations.

Knowledge integration in interdisciplinary research teams: Role of social networks

Successful knowledge integration in interdisciplinary research teams is critical for solving complex problems and achieving innovation. Empirical research on knowledge integration in interdisciplinary research teams only emphasizes the role of knowledge heterogeneity but with mixed findings and ignores the impacts of team social networks where members are embedded. Based on the knowledge-based view and social network theories, we examine the effect of knowledge heterogeneity on knowledge integration in the interdisciplinary research team context and the influences of social network factors, including tie strength, structural equivalence, and betweenness centrality on the main effect. Based on a questionnaire survey of 346 members of 46 interdisciplinary research teams in a top research university in China, we find an inverted U-shaped relationship between knowledge heterogeneity and knowledge integration. Tie strength and structural equivalence positively moderate the quadratic relationship, respectively. We do not find support for the moderating role of betweenness centrality. This study extends our knowledge of the relationship between knowledge heterogeneity and knowledge integration and enriches the literature on interdisciplinary collaboration and social network theories.

Study on knowledge cooperation of interdisciplinary research team based on evolutionary game theory.

Based on knowledge sharing, a new kind of scientific research is up and coming in university interdisciplinary research teams via the current environment of organizational models. The success, however, depends on the knowledge inventory, the creative ability of the team members and their future insights. An attempt is made in this study to conceptualize a framework of an interdisciplinary research team based on game theory to analyze the dynamic propagation process of knowledge-sharing. Through simulation verification, a multi-symmetry evolution game model was built to analyze the impact of a member in selecting a decision-making strategy for the other member. The analysis reveals that the knowledge-sharing depends on mutual cooperation and trust between the researchers. Finally, reasonable suggestions are proposed in solving the problems in the process of building and developing the university interdisciplinary research team.