Large Multidisciplinary Project Research Articles

Pulmonary magnetic resonance-guided online adaptive radiotherapy of locally advanced non-small-cell lung cancer: the PUMA trial

BackgroundPatients with locally-advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (LA-NSCLC) are often ineligible for surgery, so that definitive chemoradiotherapy (CRT) represents the treatment of choice. Nevertheless, long-term tumor control is often not achieved. Intensification of radiotherapy (RT) to improve locoregional tumor control is limited by the detrimental effect of higher radiation exposure of thoracic organs-at-risk (OAR). This narrow therapeutic ratio may be expanded by exploiting the advantages of magnetic resonance (MR) linear accelerators, mainly the online adaptation of the treatment plan to the current anatomy based on daily acquired MR images. However, MR-guidance is both labor-intensive and increases treatment times, which raises the question of its clinical feasibility to treat LA-NSCLC. Therefore, the PUMA trial was designed as a prospective, multicenter phase I trial to demonstrate the clinical feasibility of MR-guided online adaptive RT in LA-NSCLC.MethodsThirty patients with LA-NSCLC in stage III A-C will be accrued at three German university hospitals to receive MR-guided online adaptive RT at two different MR-linac systems (MRIdian Linac®, View Ray Inc. and Elekta Unity®, Elekta AB) with concurrent chemotherapy. Conventionally fractioned RT with isotoxic dose escalation up to 70 Gy is applied. Online plan adaptation is performed once weekly or in case of major anatomical changes. Patients are followed-up by thoracic CT- and MR-imaging for 24 months after treatment. The primary endpoint is twofold: (1) successfully completed online adapted fractions, (2) on-table time. Main secondary endpoints include adaptation frequency, toxicity, local tumor control, progression-free and overall survival.DiscussionPUMA aims to demonstrate the clinical feasibility of MR-guided online adaptive RT of LA-NSCLC. If successful, PUMA will be followed by a clinical phase II trial that further investigates the clinical benefits of this approach. Moreover, PUMA is part of a large multidisciplinary project to develop MR-guidance techniques.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov: NCT05237453.

A multi-sensor dataset with annotated activities of daily living recorded in a residential setting

SPHERE is a large multidisciplinary project to research and develop a sensor network to facilitate home healthcare by activity monitoring, specifically towards activities of daily living. It aims to use the latest technologies in low powered sensors, internet of things, machine learning and automated decision making to provide benefits to patients and clinicians. This dataset comprises data collected from a SPHERE sensor network deployment during a set of experiments conducted in the ‘SPHERE House’ in Bristol, UK, during 2016, including video tracking, accelerometer and environmental sensor data obtained by volunteers undertaking both scripted and non-scripted activities of daily living in a domestic residence. Trained annotators provided ground-truth labels annotating posture, ambulation, activity and location. This dataset is a valuable resource both within and outside the machine learning community, particularly in developing and evaluating algorithms for identifying activities of daily living from multi-modal sensor data in real-world environments. A subset of this dataset was released as a machine learning competition in association with the European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML-PKDD 2016).

Applying A3 reports for early validation and optimization of stakeholder communication in development projects

AbstractWe observed in our company that there is too little communication between development groups and external stakeholders. Large organizational distances can explain some of these problems. Insufficient communication can lead to validation problems, if requirements are developed on the wrong basis. For development groups it can be hard to see real customer needs. Will the operator/customer be satisfied? How will the whole system function as a product?A3 reports emerged as a problem‐solving tool from Toyota's lean development. Toyota's success with this method led to the method spreading to other domains. This study applied the method of using A3 sheets, with modeling and text, for early validation and communication purposes.This study's goal was to create tool for early validation and communication, for system design. The study shows that by using A3 reports for early validation designers may improve communication, build a common understanding, and contribute to the early validation for a system or a system function. This research focuses on a top‐level system function, developed in a large multidisciplinary project. The function interfaced many systems and required extensive communication. By using A3 reports knowledge was collected, systemized, analyzed, shared, and incrementally improved, Participants in the study concluded that this visualization technique was supporting early validation.

An Ethnographically Informed Participatory Design of Primary Healthcare Information Technology in a Developing Country Setting.

Ethnography, with its emphasis on understanding activities where they occur, and its use of qualitative data gathering techniques rich in description, has a long tradition in Participatory Design (PD). Yet there are limited methodological insights in its application in developing countries. This paper proposes an ethnographically informed PD approach, which can be applied when designing Primary Healthcare Information Technology (PHIT). We use findings from a larger multidisciplinary project, Health Information Systems Project (HISP) to elaborate how ethnography can be used to facilitate participation of health practitioners in developing countries settings as well as indicating the importance of ethnographic approach to participatory Health Information Technology (HIT) designers. Furthermore, the paper discusses the pros and cons of using an ethnographic approach in designing HIT.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for High-Throughput Phenotyping and Agronomic Research.

Advances in automation and data science have led agriculturists to seek real-time, high-quality, high-volume crop data to accelerate crop improvement through breeding and to optimize agronomic practices. Breeders have recently gained massive data-collection capability in genome sequencing of plants. Faster phenotypic trait data collection and analysis relative to genetic data leads to faster and better selections in crop improvement. Furthermore, faster and higher-resolution crop data collection leads to greater capability for scientists and growers to improve precision-agriculture practices on increasingly larger farms; e.g., site-specific application of water and nutrients. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have recently gained traction as agricultural data collection systems. Using UAVs for agricultural remote sensing is an innovative technology that differs from traditional remote sensing in more ways than strictly higher-resolution images; it provides many new and unique possibilities, as well as new and unique challenges. Herein we report on processes and lessons learned from year 1—the summer 2015 and winter 2016 growing seasons–of a large multidisciplinary project evaluating UAV images across a range of breeding and agronomic research trials on a large research farm. Included are team and project planning, UAV and sensor selection and integration, and data collection and analysis workflow. The study involved many crops and both breeding plots and agronomic fields. The project’s goal was to develop methods for UAVs to collect high-quality, high-volume crop data with fast turnaround time to field scientists. The project included five teams: Administration, Flight Operations, Sensors, Data Management, and Field Research. Four case studies involving multiple crops in breeding and agronomic applications add practical descriptive detail. Lessons learned include critical information on sensors, air vehicles, and configuration parameters for both. As the first and most comprehensive project of its kind to date, these lessons are particularly salient to researchers embarking on agricultural research with UAVs.

Multidisciplinary research: should effort be the measure of success?

ABSTRACTEnergy demand reduction and flexible demand from dwellings will play a critical role in achieving a low-carbon future. There remain many unanswered questions around the interaction of people with their environment and the technical systems that service them and, as a result, multidisciplinary research is a principal component of research funding internationally. However, relatively little published work considers the operational issues in undertaking epistemologically diverse, academic research projects. This paper makes a contribution by quantifying the operational effort involved in data collection on a large multidisciplinary project and connecting the operational issues encountered to knowledge production. It is found that the cost of the data gathering is £46,000/home, and participants can give upwards of 217 hours of their time per house engaging with data-gathering activities. The rate of knowledge production is found to be approximately three publication/full-time equivalents (FTE) over the lifetime of the project and the risk to generating interdisciplinary insights is shown to be dependent on largely unforeseeable operational issues that compound the characteristic differences in the collection of the data utilized by social and technical research communities.

Resituating and Rebranding “Classic Rock” in the USA: An Interview with Rickey Medlocke (Lynyrd Skynyrd/Blackfoot)

“Resituating and Rebranding ‘Classic Rock’ in the USA” is a component of a larger multi-disciplinary project entitled “Culture and Conflict” which explores the historic relationship between artisti...

RehabMaLL Living Lab Community of Practice: Learning Together to Improve Social Participation for People with Disabilities

A community of practice (CoP) was developed to facilitate collaboration between stakeholders involved in a large multidisciplinary and multi-sectorial project, the Rehabilitation Living Lab in a Mall (RehabMaLL). This study aimed to evaluate the structure, process and outcomes of the RehabMaLL CoP after 20 months.

Reactive transport benchmarks for subsurface environmental simulation

Over the last 20 years, we have seen firsthand the evolution of multicomponent reactive transport modeling and the expanding range and increasing complexity of subsurface applications it is being used to address. There is a growing reliance on reactive transport modeling (RTM) to address some of the most compelling issues facing our planet: climate change, nuclear waste management, contaminant remediation, and pollution prevention. While these issues are motivating the development of new and improved capabilities for subsurface environmental modeling using RTM (e.g., biogeochemistry from cell-scale physiology to continental-scale terrestrial ecosystems, nonisothermal multiphase conditions, coupled geomechanics), there remain longstanding challenges in characterizing the natural variability of hydrological, biological, and geochemical properties in subsurface environments and limited success in transferring models between sites and across scales. An equally important trend over the last 20 years is the evolution of modeling from a service sought out after data has been collected to a multifaceted research approach that provides (1) an organizing principle for characterization and monitoring activities; (2) a systematic framework for identifying knowledge gaps, developing and integrating new knowledge; and (3) a mechanistic understanding that represents the collective wisdom of the participating scientists and engineers. There are now large multidisciplinary projects wheremore » the research approach is model-driven, and the principal product is a holistic predictive simulation capability that can be used as a test bed for alternative conceptualizations of processes, properties, and conditions. Much of the future growth and expanded role for RTM will depend on its continued ability to exploit technological advancements in the earth and environmental sciences. Advances in measurement technology, particularly in molecular biology (genomics), isotope fractionation, and high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy, have created new lines of research that can be used to inform the conceptualization of reactions and rate laws and validate mechanistic models. For example, spectroscopy has identified the oxidation states of key components and elemental distributions at increasingly smaller scales and lower concentrations; molecular biology has progressed from identifying the presence of microbes to characterization of which microbial communities are active and what they are doing (i.e., microbial function), which has led in turn to the identification of active processes under conditions beyond what analytical chemistry can discern; isotope ratios in pore water and solid phases that can be used to distinguish between biotic from abiotic processes, sorption from precipitation, and origin and age of groundwater. The other noteworthy development that is expanding the role of RTM in subsurface environmental modeling is he advance in computational technology that is enabling the simulation of more coupled processes with increasing mechanistic detail. In some cases, this involves the inclusion of more reactive species and/or microbial populations in the simulations; in other cases, the impact is through the ability to achieve high resolution of property distributions over longer simulated times. To achieve these ambitious objectives for subsurface reactive transport simulation, the subsurface science and engineering community is being driven to provide accurate assessments of engineering performance and risk for important issues with far-reaching consequences. As a result, the complexity and detail of subsurface processes, properties, and conditions that can be simulated have significantly expanded. This expansion was enabled, in part, by advances in measurement technology, computing technology, and numerical techniques.« less

Rehabilitation living lab in the mall community of practice: learning together to improve rehabilitation, participation and social inclusion for people living with disabilities.

Communities of practice (CoP) can facilitate collaboration between people who share a common interest, but do not usually work together. A CoP was initiated and developed including stakeholders from clinical, research, community and governmental backgrounds involved in a large multidisciplinary and multi-sectorial project: the Rehabilitation Living Lab in a Mall (RehabMaLL). This study aimed to evaluate the structure, process and outcomes of this CoP. A single case-study, using mixed-methods, evaluated the RehabMaLL CoP initiative after one year, based on Donabedian’s conceptual evaluation model. Forty-three participants took part in the RehabMaLL CoP with 60.5% (n = 26) participating at least once on the online platform where 234 comments were posted. Four in-person meetings were held. Members expressed satisfaction regarding the opportunity to share knowledge with people from diverse backgrounds and the usefulness of the CoP for the RehabMaLL project. Collaboration led to concrete outcomes, such as a sensitization activity and a research project. Common challenges included lack of time and difficulty finding common objectives. A CoP can be a useful strategy to facilitate knowledge sharing on disability issues. Future research is necessary to determine strategies of increasing knowledge creation between members.

Food security in a perfect storm: using the ecosystem services framework to increase understanding.

Achieving food security in a ‘perfect storm’ scenario is a grand challenge for society. Climate change and an expanding global population act in concert to make global food security even more complex and demanding. As achieving food security and the millennium development goal (MDG) to eradicate hunger influences the attainment of other MDGs, it is imperative that we offer solutions which are complementary and do not oppose one another. Sustainable intensification of agriculture has been proposed as a way to address hunger while also minimizing further environmental impact. However, the desire to raise productivity and yields has historically led to a degraded environment, reduced biodiversity and a reduction in ecosystem services (ES), with the greatest impacts affecting the poor. This paper proposes that the ES framework coupled with a policy response framework, for example Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR), can allow food security to be delivered alongside healthy ecosystems, which provide many other valuable services to humankind. Too often, agro-ecosystems have been considered as separate from other natural ecosystems and insufficient attention has been paid to the way in which services can flow to and from the agro-ecosystem to surrounding ecosystems. Highlighting recent research in a large multi-disciplinary project (ASSETS), we illustrate the ES approach to food security using a case study from the Zomba district of Malawi.

Inventory Procedures for Smallholder and Community Woodlots in the Philippines: Methods, Initial Findings and Insights

This paper details the processes and challenges involved in collecting inventory data from smallholder and community woodlots on Leyte Island, Philippines. Over the period from 2005 through to 2012, 253 woodlots at 170 sites were sampled as part of a large multidisciplinary project, resulting in a substantial timber inventory database. The inventory was undertaken to provide information for three separate but interrelated studies, namely (1) tree growth, performance and timber availability from private smallholder woodlots on Leyte Island; (2) tree growth and performance of mixed-species plantings of native species; and (3) the assessment of reforestation outcomes from various forms of reforestation. A common procedure for establishing plots within each site was developed and applied in each study, although the basis of site selection varied. A two-stage probability proportion to size sampling framework was developed to select smallholder woodlots for inclusion in the inventory. In contrast, community-based forestry woodlots were selected using stratified random sampling. Challenges encountered in undertaking the inventory were mostly associated with the need to consult widely before the commencement of the inventory and problems in identifying woodlots for inclusion. Most smallholder woodlots were only capable of producing merchantable volumes of less than 44 % of the site potential due to a lack of appropriate silviculture. There was a clear bimodal distribution of proportion that the woodlots comprised of the total smallholding area. This bimodality reflects two major motivations for smallholders to establish woodlots, namely timber production and to secure land tenure.

Noise-induced hearing loss and strategies for its prevention in the New Zealand population: The Kiwi connection

Celebrating Glenis Long’s outstanding contribution to auditory physiology and psychoacoustics, this presentation covers the New Zealand connection and particularly her involvement in our research program into the monitoring and prevention of noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) in the country. A large multidisciplinary project is being undertaken to investigate the nature of occupational hearing loss in New Zealand and establish a national approach to prevent NIHL. This includes estimates of NIHL prevalence and the design and evaluation of education and prevention programs to reduce the impact of noise. Using a modeling approach, we have estimated that NIHL contributes to 17–25% of cases of hearing impairment in New Zealand and is therefore a significant modifiable risk factor. A key component of our project is monitoring of noise injury and we have also studied distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAE) as a measure of early injury. To assess DPOAEs as a measure of injury, we recorded them using swept pure tones and extracted DPOAE components using a least-squares fit approach in noise and non-noise exposed individuals. OAE findings were compared with measures of auditory function. We found that the generator component correlated more strongly with auditory threshold and thus may be a better physiological index of noise injury. Overall, these findings have informed a national strategy involving government and community agencies to mitigate the effects of noise.

Looking Through the Crystal Ball: Do Others Know What you Expect from Research Projects?

Do all members of a research team ‘expect’ the same deliverables? Do all members of a research team know exactly what other members of the team need from the project? Over the past decade there has been an increase in the number of projects accessing ‘what works’ in policing practice. Many projects are large collaborations between different police departments, justice agencies, and universities. Whether these interagency projects will be successful is based on two fundamentals: did the research produce quality outputs; and more importantly, did the outputs match what people needed and expected. We discuss the importance of understanding what police and other industry partners expect from projects they invest in. In this article, we use a large multidisciplinary research project involving two police forces, three universities, and a forensic science industry body as illustrative of how to measure and plan for differing research direction and outcome expectations. We suggest that to avoid disappointment, police practitioners voice their expectations and make explicit what they need to achieve. As expectations are rarely static, it makes sense to revisit over the life of the project the expectations industry partners have.

Developing the Role of a Health Information Professional in a Clinical Research Setting

Objective - This paper examines the role of a health information professional in a large multidisciplinary project to improve services for head injury.
 
 Methods - An action research approach was taken, with the information professional acting as co-ordinator. Change management processes were guided by theory and evidence. The health information professional was responsible for an ongoing literature review on knowledge management (clinical and political issues), data collection and analysis (from patient records), collating and comparing data (to help develop standards), and devising appropriate dissemination strategies. 
 
 Results - Important elements of the health information management role proved to be 1) co-ordination; 2) setting up mechanisms for collaborative learning through information sharing; and 3) using the theoretical frameworks (identified from the literature review) to help guide implementation. The role that emerged here has some similarities to the informationist role that stresses domain knowledge, continuous learning and working in context (embedding). This project also emphasised the importance of co-ordination, and the ability to work across traditional library information analysis (research literature discovery and appraisal) and information analysis of patient data sets (the information management role). 
 
 Conclusion - Experience with this project indicates that health information professionals will need to be prepared to work with patient record data and synthesis of that data, design systems to co-ordinate patient data collection, as well as critically appraise external evidence.

Particle export within cyclonic Hawaiian lee eddies derived from 210Pb–210Po disequilibrium

Abstract Particle export from the upper waters of the oligotrophic ocean may play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle. Mesoscale eddies have been hypothesized to inject new nutrients into oligotrophic surface waters, thereby increasing new production and particle export in otherwise nutrient deficient regimes. The E-Flux Program was a large multidisciplinary project designed to investigate the physical, biological and biogeochemical characteristics of cold-core cyclonic eddies that form in the lee of the Hawaiian Islands. There, we investigated particle dynamics using 210Pb–210Po disequilibrium. Seawater samples for 210Pb and 210Po were collected both within (IN) and outside (OUT) of two cyclones, Noah and Opal, at different stages of their evolution as well as from the eddy generation region. Particulate carbon (PC), particulate nitrogen (PN) and biogenic silica (bSiO2) export fluxes were determined using water-column PC, PN, and bSiO2 inventories and the residence times of 210Po. PC and PN fluxes at 150 m ranged from 1.58±0.10 to 1.71±0.16 mmol C m−2 d−1 and 0.22±0.02 to 0.30±0.02 mmol N m−2 d−1 within Cyclones Opal and Noah. PC and PN fluxes at OUT stations sampled during both cruises were of similar magnitudes, 1.69±0.16 to 1.67±0.16 mmol C m−2 d−1 and 0.30±0.03 to 0.26±0.03 mmol N m−2 d−1. The bSiO2 fluxes within Cyclone Opal were 0.157±0.010 mmol Si m−2 d−1 versus 0.025±0.002 mmol Si m−2 d−1 at OUT stations. These results of minimal PC and PN export, but significant eddy-induced bSiO2 fluxes, agree very well with other studies that used a variety of direct and indirect methods. Thus, our results suggest that using elemental inventories and residence times of 210Po is another independent and robust method for determining particle export and should be investigated more fully.

The Last (Koy-Yukon) Interglaciation in the Northern Yukon: Evidence from Unit 4 at Ch’ijee’s Bluff, Bluefish Basin

The effects of predicted anthropogenic warming can be assessed in part by documenting responses to past warming events. One of the most pronounced warmings was the last interglaciation - stage 5 of the marine isotope record. A large multinational and multidisciplinary project (CELIA) was launched recently in order to gain detailed knowledge of the climate during stage 5. Several key exposures were identified by CELIA; one of them is Ch'ijee's Bluff on the Porcupine River, northern Yukon. Pollen, plant and insect macrofossils and stratigraphie evidence from Ch'ijee's Bluff show that the part of Ch'ijee's Unit 4 that is above and younger than Old Crow tephra (OCt) was deposited during an interval of climate warmer than present. When OCt was dated at 85 ka BP, the subsequent warming interval was presumed to be correlative with the early part of marine isotope stage 3. New dates on OCt show it to be 140-150 ka BP, and this means that the warm interval discussed here is more likely of stage 5 than stage 3 age. We apply the informal epithet, "Koy-Yukon interglaciation", to it and compare the Ch'ijee's Bluff Unit 4 sequence with other east Beringian sites that contain both Old Crow tephra and putative interglacial deposits.

Basic Issues in Harappan Archaeology: Some Thoughts

The identification of the Harappan Civilization in the early twentieth century was considered to be the most significant archaeological discovery in the Indian Subcontinent as it pushed the beginning of settled life by 2000 years. Contemporary to the Mesopotamian and Egyptian Civilizations it was unique in its town planning. Spread over major parts of the western and north-western subcontinent, its influence is seen to the Tajikistan border in the north and the Gulf region in the west with over two thousand sites found till date. The past eight decades of research have brought to light many important details of the culture including the cultural process involving its origin, maturity and decline but certain aspects such as the terminology, climatic influence, regional variations, script etc are still very flimsy. To gain more information the focus of research will have to shift from Mega Site Archaeology to Small Site Archaeology with large multidisciplinary research projects to acquire a more holistic picture of the Harappan culture.

COE: A collaborative ontology editor based on a peer-to-peer framework

In this paper, we present COE, a peer-to-peer collaborative ontology editor, which supports the creation, editing, sharing, and reuse of ontologies, implemented on top of a general-purpose peer-to-peer framework, COPPEER. In large multi-disciplinary design projects, ontologies can be a critical success factor. Their collaborative creation leads to better understanding and increased information sharing between participants of a project, and economy of resources among projects. A peer-to-peer approach enables new modes of collaboration, while simplifying maintenance by propagating individual updates in shared models.

Placing Archaeology at the Center of Socio-Natural Studies

Changing patterns of university and government research and training in this country and abroad force us, as archaeologists, to regularly reevaluate our disciplinary methods and goals. In the absence of careful consideration of these issues, the relative prominence of archaeology may stagnate or even diminish. From our own experience directing large multidisciplinary research projects, we believe that one particularly productive avenue for future archaeological research will be as collaborators in seeking to better understand contemporary socioenvironmental problems. We argue that current environmental research based in life, earth, and social sciences pays inadequate attention to the long time span and slow-moving processes that often underlie environmental crises. Archaeologists, as purveyors of the past, are well equipped to bring this long-term perspective to bear on contemporary issues. Moreover, we are also trained to work in multiple scales of time and space as well as with scientists from various disciplines. The primary obstacles to achieving the type of transdisciplinary research recommended here emanate from distinct vocabulary, concepts, and practices of each disciplinary tradition. We believe that the time is right and our colleagues are willing to see an enhanced role for archaeologists in the study of contemporary environmental issues.