Transdisciplinary Understanding Research Articles

Yemen's Cholera Epidemic Is a One Health Issue.

Yemen has been faced with the worst cholera epidemic of modern times, with more than 1 million suspected cases and 3000 deaths at the time of writing. This problem is largely due to the longstanding civil war between pro-government forces and the Houthi armed movement, which has severely damaged already vulnerable sanitation and healthcare facilities and systems in the country. It is further compounded by a dire lack of basic amenities, chronic malnutrition, and unfavourable weather conditions. Another contributory component may be aerial transfer by cholera-infected chironomid insects. To contain the spread of cholera in Yemen, a nation-wide armistice should be negotiated, and national and local committees must be convened to coordinate efforts on the ground. Community isolation facilities with proper sanitation, reliable disposal systems, and a clean water supply should be set up to isolate and treat sick patients. The continuity of vaccination programmes should be ensured. Public health campaigns to educate local communities about good hygiene practices and nutrition are also necessary. The One Health paradigm emphasizes a multi-sectoral and transdisciplinary understanding and approach to prevent and mitigate the threat of communicable diseases. This paradigm is highly applicable to the ongoing cholera crisis in Yemen, as it demands a holistic and whole-of-society approach at the local, regional, and national levels. The key stakeholders and warring parties in Yemen must work towards a lasting ceasefire during these trying times, especially given the extra burden from the mounting severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) outbreak worldwide.

A Concept Analysis of the Properties and Conditions of Transformation

Transformation is ceaselessly transpiring within and all around us. Despite its pervasive presence, the complex phenomenon remains fundamentally enigmatic. Previous work by this author indicates that existing literature about transformation tends to address its processes, antecedent conditions, catalyst, and/or outcomes. What is lacking is transdisciplinary understanding of the composition of transformation; that which causes transformation to exist. The purpose of this study is to draw upon literature across ten disciplines to discern properties and conditions integral to transformation. The method selected to achieve this aim is called concept analysis, which constitutes an empirical examination of a phenomenon described in literature, where a concept---transformation in this case---is the research object. The outcomes suggest a classification that indicates transformation is comprised of seven properties with five subproperties, three temporal conditions, and two contextual conditions. These findings constitute a unique contribution to social science research by identifying core aspects of transformation that transcend ethos typically applied in social sciences. Results offer opportunities to further establish a common language so that diverse disciplines can more precisely examine transformation, recognize and apply its processes towards individual and societal growth, and build upon existing theory.

НАЙБІЛЬШІ ВИКЛИКИ, ЗАГРОЗИ ТА НЕБЕЗПЕКИ ДЛЯ СУЧАСНОГО УКРАЇНСТВА

The article is devoted to the study of the biggest challenges, threats and dangers for modern Ukrainianness. The issue of challenges, threats and dangers facing Ukraine and Ukrainianness since 1991 is very relevant today. Scientists who work in the field of crisisology distinguish the concepts of «challenges», «threats», «dangers», «crises», «risks», «catastrophes», «collapse», «wreck», etc. The theoretical and methodological basis of our study is a combination of scientific potential of crisisology, conflictology and Ukrainian studies. Crisisology, conflictology and Ukrainian studies face the task of transdisciplinary understanding of the essence and severity of these challenges, threats and dangers, which are relevant in many areas such as military-defense, geopolitical, demographic, state-building, spiritual worldview, ecological, economics, energy, information, cultural and artistic, linguistic, moral and ethical, scientific, nation-building, educational, political and legal, social, territorial, technological, financial, etc. To these are added threats and dangers: 1) large-scale war with Russia; 2) total spread of COVID-19 in Ukraine; 3) the implementation of a new geostrategic course in Russia (called «geopolitical revenge»); 4) spreading the ideology of the «Russian world», intensifying new attempts by the Russian Federation to dismember Ukraine, supporting separatization and federalization of Ukraine; 5) possible escalation of the Russian-Ukrainian and Armenian-Azerbaijani conflicts, which could lead to a new global confrontation and even a world war; 6) ineffective fight against corruption in Ukraine; 7) the lack of a proper response from the authorities to the need to immediately end Russia’s information and psychological war against Ukraine; 8) destruction of small and medium business and further financial and economic stratification of Ukrainian society; 9) procrastination with the solution of the poverty problem (in conditions when about 60% of Ukrainians are below the poverty line); 10) possible man-made disasters in Ukraine; 11) possible transformation of Ukraine from a subject into an object of international relations; 12) possible rejection of European integration; 13) discrediting the Orange Revolution and the Revolution of Dignity, in order to spread Russian narratives about the coup in Ukraine; 14) intensification of interfaith conflicts in Ukraine; 15) inadequate decision-making by incompetent authorities (threat of economic decline and large-scale financial crisis in Ukraine, possible change in Ukraine’s vector of development, threat of capitulation, refusal of the authorities to resolve the «Ukrainian crisis» (which began after Russia’s aggression and has become a factor influencing the security of Europe and the world) from the standpoint of Ukraine as a subject, not an object); 16) refusal to solve the problems of internally displaced persons; 17) possible «freezing» of the Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict in order to further destabilize Ukraine; 18) strengthening of geopolitical and geoeconomic instability, intensification of intercivilizational and geopolitical confrontation in the world; 19) possible decline of democracy and rise of authoritarianism in Ukraine; 20) expansion of the border with Russia (in case of its absorption of Belarus); 21) possible disintegration of Ukrainian society and world Ukrainiannes; 22) further violation of international law by the Russian Federation; 23) exacerbation of the economic and migration crisis in Europe; 24) radicalization of part of the Islamic world; 25) due to the collapse of the USSR. The challenges, threats and dangers facing Ukrainians can unfold at the global, continental and national levels. Ukrainians must find adequate answers to modern challenges and mechanisms to minimize threats and dangers; ensure stable economic growth; to create a powerful system of national security, army and defense-industrial complex; find ways to ensure national interests in the current crisis; to develop optimal models for resolving the Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict, reintegrating the population of the occupied territories and restoring the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

Biophysical Psychiatry-How Computational Neuroscience Can Help to Understand the Complex Mechanisms of Mental Disorders.

The brain is the most complex of human organs, and the pathophysiology underlying abnormal brain function in psychiatric disorders is largely unknown. Despite the rapid development of diagnostic tools and treatments in most areas of medicine, our understanding of mental disorders and their treatment has made limited progress during the last decades. While recent advances in genetics and neuroscience have a large potential, the complexity and multidimensionality of the brain processes hinder the discovery of disease mechanisms that would link genetic findings to clinical symptoms and behavior. This applies also to schizophrenia, for which genome-wide association studies have identified a large number of genetic risk loci, spanning hundreds of genes with diverse functionalities. Importantly, the multitude of the associated variants and their prevalence in the healthy population limit the potential of a reductionist functional genetics approach as a stand-alone solution to discover the disease pathology. In this review, we outline the key concepts of a “biophysical psychiatry,” an approach that employs large-scale mechanistic, biophysics-founded computational modelling to increase transdisciplinary understanding of the pathophysiology and strive toward robust predictions. We discuss recent scientific advances that allow a synthesis of previously disparate fields of psychiatry, neurophysiology, functional genomics, and computational modelling to tackle open questions regarding the pathophysiology of heritable mental disorders. We argue that the complexity of the increasing amount of genetic data exceeds the capabilities of classical experimental assays and requires computational approaches. Biophysical psychiatry, based on modelling diseased brain networks using existing and future knowledge of basic genetic, biochemical, and functional properties on a single neuron to a microcircuit level, may allow a leap forward in deriving interpretable biomarkers and move the field toward novel treatment options.

Moving from the terminology debate to a transdisciplinary understanding of the problem.

This commentary considers a recent debate paper which presents and counters 10 work addiction myths. I reflect upon the proposal to move the field forward by distinguishing between, work addiction, which denotes a clinical phenomenon; and workaholism, a term used by the occupational psychology literature with little agreement about its defining dimensions beyond working compulsively. Rather than choosing between these two terms, I argue that addiction experts should lead a transdisciplinary integration of findings from studies where participants report both working compulsively and experiencing significant conflict. I also stress the importance of understanding the macro factors underlying this particular addiction.

Needed: consensus and classification for terms used in cognitive, forensic and clinical bias discussions

All evolving disciplines have long grappled with nomenclature inconsistencies. Precise terminology facilitates communication among individuals, clinicians, academics and researchers. To arrive at definitions, the concepts underlying basic scientific vocabularies must be universally acceptable to all users. This is not always easy. Tarachow cautioned in 1965 about how contractions and abbreviations, “…eliminated practically all the associations connected with the original title and did not at all have the evocative impact of the complete word or title”[1] (Tarachow, 1965). Clinical medicine has designed and used with some success disease-diagnosis based classification systems. Forensic science, as does clinical medicine, relies on cognitive processes for its mission to achieve expert accuracy. Both fields are vulnerable to biases and errors in cognition, more so when no terminology standards exist. It is time to develop a nomenclature system in the field of cognitive bias and cognitive errors. This system should build transdisciplinary understanding, at least during expertise-based undertakings in forensic and clinical sciences.

Usefulness of Watson's Caring Science for Online Educational Practices in Disciplines Outside of Nursing.

Human caring has long been considered the primary domain of nurses and the primary function of nursing practice. Results related to the study of a Caring Science, Mindful Practice Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), suggest that Watson's Caring Science tenets are meaningful and useful for professionals who work in disciplines outside of nursing. Further study was needed to explore the degree to which Caring Science might be useful and applicable to the practices of non-nurse professionals. The study that is the focus of this article explored perceived usefulness of Watson's Caring Science for professionals from a wide array of disciplines who teach and work in online settings. Results confirm applicability and usefulness across disciplines and in diverse settings. Results also suggest that nurse-mediated Caring Science education and training may help establish common ground upon which further interprofessional and transdisciplinary understanding and collaboration may be built.

P157 - Assessment of Students' Transdisciplinary Attitudes and Behaviors From the Beginning to Midway Through Doctoral Training

Objective: To assess development of transdisciplinary (TD) knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors during students' doctoral training in a childhood obesity prevention program. Target Audience: Higher education department heads and administrators as well as faculty and students interested in TD. Theory, Prior Research, Rationale: The Six-Cs model for contributors to childhood obesity is a theoretical framework that emphasizes six levels of social ecology (cell to culture) that need to be considered when researching and intervening in the childhood obesity epidemic from a TD perspective. Description: Eleven doctoral students were enrolled in a federally-funded joint MPH/PhD program 2011–2013. Data were collected at enrollment and midway through the program to assess TD knowledge of obesity determinants at six levels using the Six-Cs model and TD attitudes and behaviors. The following assessments were used: kinetic drawings with verbal explanations, survey short answers, and two validated indices (Behavior Change Collaborative Activities Index [BCCAI] and Interdisciplinary Perspectives Index [IPI]). Evaluation: Using a mixed methods design, data were analyzed using thematic coding or t-test. When analyzing the individual students' change in TD understanding, two students increased on all three measures of six dimensions of TD, five students increased on two measures, three students increased on one measure; one student decreased on two of the measures. In addition, as a group, the mean score on the measure of collaboration (the BCCAI) was significantly higher midway through the program compared to the beginning (5.0 vs. 3.6, P = .021), while there was no change on the attitude toward interdisciplinarity scores (the IPI) (4.2 vs. 4.2, P = .941). Conclusions and Implications: These preliminary findings suggest that a TD doctoral program can increase students' collaborative TD behavior and knowledge of TD contributors to obesity midway through the program. Funding: USDA.

Defining Extreme Events: A Cross‐Disciplinary Review

AbstractExtreme events are of interest worldwide given their potential for substantial impacts on social, ecological, and technical systems. Many climate‐related extreme events are increasing in frequency and/or magnitude due to anthropogenic climate change, and there is increased potential for impacts due to the location of urbanization and the expansion of urban centers and infrastructures. Many disciplines are engaged in research and management of these events. However, a lack of coherence exists in what constitutes and defines an extreme event across these fields, which impedes our ability to holistically understand and manage these events. Here, we review 10 years of academic literature and use text analysis to elucidate how six major disciplines—climatology, earth sciences, ecology, engineering, hydrology, and social sciences—define and communicate extreme events. Our results highlight critical disciplinary differences in the language used to communicate extreme events. Additionally, we found a wide range in definitions and thresholds, with more than half of examined papers not providing an explicit definition, and disagreement over whether impacts are included in the definition. We urge distinction between extreme events and their impacts, so that we can better assess when responses to extreme events have actually enhanced resilience. Additionally, we suggest that all researchers and managers of extreme events be more explicit in their definition of such events as well as be more cognizant of how they are communicating extreme events. We believe clearer and more consistent definitions and communication can support transdisciplinary understanding and management of extreme events.

Advancing the Science of Behavioral Self-Management of Chronic Disease: The Arc of a Research Trajectory.

This article describes advances in the behavioral self-management of chronic disease from the perspective of a 25-year trajectory of National Institute of Health-funded research in arthritis and cardiopulmonary diseases that has sought to develop a transdisciplinary understanding of how applied behavioral science can be used to improve health behaviors, functional status, and health outcomes. The article traces the arc of a novel research program-conducted in collaboration with physician-scientists at Columbia, Weill Cornell Medical College, and New York University School of Medicine-that runs through social cognitive theory, behavioral economics, and the emerging science of positive psychology in an effort to develop promising new approaches to fostering the adoption and maintenance of health-related behavioral change. The article concludes with what has been learned and what the implications of the work are for advancing behavioral self-management and patient education to improve patient outcomes and achieve the compression of morbidity.

History, Pending

Tesconi-Warren collaborations began 50 years ago at the University of Illinois-Chicago, then abbreviated fondly as “Chicago Circle,” perhaps the only American institution of higher learning named for a traffic-control installation. We offered Foundations courses in teacher preparation programs of the College of Education, occasionally as a team. Our wives and children became friends. Van Cleve Morris was our dean and president of the American Educational Studies Association (AESA) around the time Tesconi brought Warren into the young association early in the 1970s. We jointly designed a PhD specialization in education policy studies and secured grants to support multicultural curriculum development and recruitment of American Indian students from Chicago's Native community. Later, we went separate ways. Our work became more administrative, Tesconi as dean of education and social services at the University of Vermont and American University and Warren in a similar capacity at Indiana University. This article relies extensively on personal memories, refreshed and fact-checked through AESA archives. Readers may find it fantastical and on some points mistaken. But the want of a history of AESA makes searching its past for coherence a stagger through patchy recollections. Believing is seeing. Although our association experiences have extended across 5 decades, the ones we emphasize here occurred in the 1970s and 1980s. All had rippling effects. Specifically, we cite Pride and Promise, an AESA-sponsored publication in 1984; enactment of standards for assessing Foundations courses and sequences in professional education programs; and the AESA campaign to establish what was originally called the Council of Learned Societies in Education, a bonding of Foundations-related associations subsequently renamed the Council for Social Foundations of Education (American Educational Studies Association, 2017, sec. 1978; Tozer, Gallegos, Henry, Greiner, & Price, 2011).An AESA narrative should be constructed as multiple stories with shifting centers of gravity, a design permitting transdisciplinary understanding of how diversity can grow as one without compromising unique traits and histories. Sturdy purposes, reinterpreted and reaffirmed, injected the powerful secret ingredients. The association has always been hydra-headed, but united nonetheless. Membership analyses would confirm whether the guesses have merit. AESA has changed without coherently pinpointing when, how, and why. It devised long-range plans but did not follow them religiously. The flexibility may well have proved to be an asset.

Passing Rhetoric’s Kaleidoscope

Passing Rhetoric’s Kaleidoscope

A Harmonic Way to Transdisciplinarity: Experience from Global Health Development

Aiming at generating innovative solutions to mitigate global health challenges through working along the continuum from innovation to application harmonically leads to a transdisciplinary understanding of, and practice for, health and social development. The One Health approach is presented as a case study where a transdisciplinary concept and approach is validated in different social, cultural and ecological settings, and is subsequently put into public health practice leading to a measurable impact for human and animal health and well-being of the communities concerned.

Making sense of ‘place’: Reflections on pluralism and positionality in place research

Drawing on critical pluralism and positionality, this essay offers a four-part framework for making sense of the manifold ways place has been studied and applied to landscape planning and management. The first element highlights how diverse intellectual origins behind place research have inhibited a trans-disciplinary understanding of place as an object of study in environmental planning and management. The second focuses on ontological pluralism as found in attempts to make sense of place meanings by (a) fleshing out four layers of place meaning that vary in terms of tangibility, commonality, and emotionality and (b) critiquing four methodological approaches to identifying place meanings. The third looks at making sense of place-making as a way to highlight ontological and epistemic pluralism in studies of the material and social-discursive practices that create, govern, and transform places. In particular it draws attention to the way place meanings, knowledge, and practices are always situated or positioned. The fourth highlights axiological or normative pluralism as reflected in various prescriptive notions of place-making as the outcome of deliberate efforts of people to try to shape, contest, and/or otherwise govern the landscape. These include place as bios, ethnos, and demos as normative ideals for prescribing what constitutes a good place and underscores the challenge of adjudicating across different conceptions of sensible places. This paper concludes by reiterating the ways that place research and practice can benefit from both a critical pluralist perspective and a heightened awareness of the diverse positionalities occupied by observers of and actors in the landscape.

Information is provisional

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a transdisciplinary understanding of the nature of information.Design/methodology/approach– The work draws from previous work done on information in several disciplines and contexts, and proposes a new framework for describing and understanding information. It applies the framework to several different situations involving information, explores the insights revealed by the use of the framework and discusses some of the implications.Findings– Information is usefully described as a situated event that extracts or generates meaning, with the distinction between extracting or generating meaning corresponding to the distinction between semantic and environmental information. A diagrammatic convention based on communications theory and making use of hierarchies of levels is found to provide a powerful means of conveying many of the aspects of the nature of information, and of understanding the role of information in a wide range of applications. An additional specific finding of the work is that information is inherently provisional.Originality/value– The diagrammatic framework is a new way of presenting, describing and understanding information, and the suggestion that information is inherently provisional is believed to be new.

Plasticity as a framing concept enabling transdisciplinary understanding and research in neuroscience and education

This article examines the emerging literature on the need for a synergy between neuroscience and educational sciences, identifying several differences in approach and methods that hinder the connecting processes between these two disciplines. From this review a transdisciplinary framework is presented which is based on the systemic and lifelong property of plasticity. The notion of plasticity is a framing concept that enables to connect disciplines because illuminates the understanding of the learning processes. The new framework for the understanding and research in neuro-education is based on a systemic and functional architecture organised in three dimensions of plasticity (autonomy – vulnerability – resilience) and at least three systemic levels (genes, experience and the nervous system). We conclude that the concept of plasticity contributes to enlarging our understanding of the educational diversity of learners in their experiential contexts, combined with special attention to human agency and the capacity to making choices and effect changes.

China and Deep-Rooted Vision: Cultural Grammar in Contest in Tourism, Today

In this review article, Hou provides critique of China, today, as an imaginal realm performed and articulated through tourism. In noting the inevitability that the projections of tourism about places and nations are infused with historically informed understandings forged not just decades ago but centuries past, she calls for much greater awareness in Tourism Studies/Tourism Management (and beyond) of the cultural grammar of tourism, and thereby not only of what conceivably gets represented through tourism, but also of what conceivably gets misrepresented. In this respect, Hou works from the premise that a relatively large intellectual gap has existed between (for instance) established Chinese notions of Chineseness, and “European” notions of Chineseness. In that light, she examines what can be learned for Tourism Studies/Tourism Management from scrutiny of what a recent Western observer (the Hungarian academic, Nyíri) says was and is happening about the signification of Chineseness today, and what certain lead experts on the politics of nationalism say was and is happening in terms of the projection of Chineseness. Overall, Hou queries whether there are many who work on such matters of cultural grammar in research or operational practice in tourism who have been sufficiently trained in transdisciplinary understanding to be able to comment critically on the constitutive exteriority of China (or of any still-developing/fast-developing nation) in and through tourism. Hou argues that while the inscriptive and performative authority of tourism is manifestly immense, the critical capacity of Tourism Studies/Tourism Management scholars to scrutinize the selective and productive rhetoric of “place”/“space”/“nation” construction is not. (Abstract by the Reviews Editor)

Interactive simulations for promoting transdisciplinary understanding: a case study of the Western Cape fisheries, South Africa

Simulations have proven beneficial in enabling participants from various backgrounds to meaningfully engage in learning from experience. The aim of this paper is to investigate how interactive simulations can play a role in navigating the changes faced in a multi- stakeholder setting, characterised by users dependent on marine resources and an authorising institution. Relevant literature in the areas of simulation and gaming, change management, systems thinking, and complexity theory was examined. A qualitative research approach and purposive sampling were employed. Interviews were first conducted with diverse stakeholders in the Western Cape fisheries of South Africa to determine the issues. A simulation was thereafter designed. The main findings from this study indicate that simulation use illustrates how the various stakeholders in a system interact, and how their actions and decisions influence each other. The simulation may be used in other areas of natural resource management, as well as in other kinds of multi- stakeholder scenarios.Keywords: Simulation and gaming, Change management, Fisheries, Multi-stakeholder scenarios, Systems thinking, Complexity theoryDisciplines: Conflict Resolution, Leadership Studies, Management Studies, Natural Resource Management

A boundary object for scale selection — Moderating differences and synergising understanding

Lack of attention to scale selection may limit the utility of multidisciplinary assessments and studies. This paper integrates research on scale from several disciplines to identify commonalities.Boundary objects – flexible enough to appeal and apply to different interest groups, and yet robust enough to maintain core concepts – offer a medium to connect findings from different disciplines.We propose a boundary object on scale — a 3-dimensional framework, whose axes are reality-, model- and data-scale. This framework can be applied to facilitate an improved transdisciplinary understanding of scale and more conscious scale selection that promotes the credibility, salience and legitimacy of decision support systems.

Toward a transdisciplinary understanding and a global control of emerging infectious diseases

The Franceville International Centre for Medical Research (CIRMF) organized a first international symposium on infectious diseases, environments, and biodiversity. Over 200 international experts gathered in Gabon to forecast and work to prevent the emergence of infectious diseases. This symposium aimed to strengthen the regional and international fight against the emergence of infectious diseases with high-level scientific debates. Toward this goal, it brought together experts in human and animal health, the environment, and ecology, including biologists, climatologists, microbiologists, epidemiologists, public health professionals, and human and social sciences specialists. National, regional and international participants were present to debate on the challenges related to the emergence of infectious diseases and on the responses to be implemented. The symposium was very successful, and plans for a second symposium of this kind to be held in the near future in another high-biodiversity area are already underway.