The development of clinical reasoning skills: A major objective of the anatomy course

Traditional medical school curricula have made a clear demarcation between the basic biomedical sciences and the clinical years. It is our view that a comprehensive medical education necessarily involves an increased correlation between basic science knowledge and its clinical applications. A basic anatomy course should have two main objectives: for the student to successfully gain a solid knowledge base of human anatomy and to develop and hone clinical reasoning skills. In a basic anatomy course, clinical case discussions based on underlying anatomic anomalies or abnormalities are the major means to teach students clinical reasoning skills. By identifying, classifying, and analyzing the clinical data given, a student learns to methodically approach a clinical case and formulate plausible diagnoses. Practicing and perfecting clinical problem‐solving skills should be a major objective of the anatomy curriculum. Such clinical reasoning skills are indeed crucial for the successful and expert practice of medicine. Anat Sci Ed 1:267–268, 2008. © 2008 American Association of Anatomists.     

Hybrid Deterministic Views About Genes in Biology Textbooks: A Key Problem in Genetics Teaching

A major source of difficulties in promoting students’ understanding of genetics lies in the presentation of gene concepts and models in an inconsistent and largely ahistorical manner, merely amalgamated in hybrid views, as if they constituted linear developments, instead of being built for different purposes and employed in specific contexts. In this paper, we report the results of a study about how textbooks can provide the grounds for the students’ construction of such hybrid views about genes. These views are a key problem in genetics teaching, because they make it more difficult that students properly understand this central biological concept and strengthen genetic deterministic ideas, which characterize a widespread discourse about genes in the public opinion. We analyzed 18 textbooks using categorical content analysis, employing categories derived from the literature addressing the historical development of gene models and concepts. Our findings indicate that the analyzed textbooks do convey hybrid views about genes, with no correspondence to scientific models related to this biological concept. These views reinforce genetic deterministic discourses and may lead students to serious misunderstandings about the nature of genes and their role in living systems, with consequences to future learning about genetics.     

Psychologists’ dilemmas in career counselling practice

In this study, we explored main dilemmas psychologists face in career counselling in two main professional settings: employment and education. Participants included 24 experienced Portuguese psychologists, working in employment (n?=?14) and educational (n?=?10) settings. We used consensual qualitative research to conduct and analyse semi-structured interviews. Results revealed dilemmas?? in five domains: neutrality, assessment, dual loyalty, role boundaries, and confidentiality, with the typical dilemma in the domain of neutrality. Differences between groups were found in the domains of dual loyalty and role boundaries.     

Conceptual Variation or Incoherence? Textbook Discourse on Genes in Six Countries

The aim of this paper is to investigate in a systematic and comparative way previous results of independent studies on the treatment of genes and gene function in high school textbooks from six different countries. We analyze how the conceptual variation within the scientific domain of Genetics regarding gene function models and gene concepts is transformed via the didactic transposition into school science textbooks. The results indicate that a common textbook discourse on genes and their function exist in textbooks from the different countries. The structure of science as represented by conceptual variation and the use of multiple models was present in all the textbooks. However, the existence of conceptual variation and multiple models is implicit in these textbooks, i.e., the phenomenon of conceptual variation and multiple models are not addressed explicitly, nor its consequences and, thus, it ends up introducing conceptual incoherence about the gene concept and its function within the textbooks. We conclude that within the found textbook-discourse ontological aspects of the academic disciplines of genetics and molecular biology were retained, but without their epistemological underpinnings; these are lost in the didactic transposition. These results are of interest since students might have problems reconstructing the correct scientific understanding from the transformed school science knowledge as depicted within the high school textbooks. Implications for textbook writing as well as teaching are discussed in the paper.     

Ciencia en Nepantla: the journey of Nepantler@s in science learning and teaching

This paper presents a new approach to science education that takes a path through sociocultural theory and into the ideas of Gloria Anzaldúa. We apply Anzaldúan theory to science education by illustrating it in action through various examples which explore the multidimensionality of teaching science with Latin@ students in various contexts including dual language settings. We present what it is to journey through transformation using examples from educators at various levels of science within the world of teaching science with Latin@ students in the U.S. Our examples illustrate how Latin@ students cross many cultural borders in Spanish, English, Latin@ home culture, school culture, and the world of scientific dialogue and content, and in doing so, go through tensions and transformations between dominant and non-dominant worlds, which should be acknowledged and better understood through Anzaldúan theory. Fundamentally, we present a transformative notion of Latin@ science learning as “living on the bridges” of many dialogic and cultural practices, and having to negotiate these in-between spaces, or “nepantla” (Anzaldu´a and Keating in Interviews, Psychology Press, London, 2000), where Latin@ students must contend with the fragmented and sometimes painful struggle of living in racialized reality amidst the demands of a dominant culture, and where transformation and healing are possible through the path of conocimiento. We advocate for teachers to become science teacher nepantler@s, who guide their students through nepantla, and into a new mestiz@ consciousness of science education.     

Learning to rank query suggestions for adhoc and diversity search

Query suggestions have become pervasive in modern web search, as a mechanism to guide users towards a better representation of their information need. In this article, we propose a ranking approach for producing effective query suggestions. In particular, we devise a structured representation of candidate suggestions mined from a query log that leverages evidence from other queries with a common session or a common click. This enriched representation not only helps overcome data sparsity for long-tail queries, but also leads to multiple ranking criteria, which we integrate as features for learning to rank query suggestions. To validate our approach, we build upon existing efforts for web search evaluation and propose a novel framework for the quantitative assessment of query suggestion effectiveness. Thorough experiments using publicly available data from the TREC Web track show that our approach provides effective suggestions for adhoc and diversity search.     

Media Education in a New Context

Abstract

The ICEM Conference which was held in Lisbon in October 1997 was entitled ‘Education for Media’. This article presents some reflections from one of the Portuguese representatives, a TV researcher and producer, on the discussions which took place during the conference, and looks at some of the implications which can perhaps be felt world wide     

Using decision support systems to facilitate the social process of knowledge management

The social processes involved in engaging small groups of 3–15 managers in their sharing, organising, acquiring, creating and using knowledge can be supported with software and facilitator assistance. This paper introduces three such systems that we have used as facilitators to support groups of managers in their social process of decision-making by managing knowledge during face-to-face meetings. The systems include Compendium, Group Explorer (with Decision Explorer) and V*I*S*A. We review these systems for group knowledge management where the aim is for better decision-making, and discuss the principles of deploying each in a group meeting.     

Effects of purposeful soccer heading on circulating small extracellular vesicle concentration and cargo

BackgroundConsidering the potential cumulative effects of repetitive head impact (HI) exposure, we need sensitive biomarkers to track short- and long-term effects. Circulating small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) (<200 nm) traffic biological molecules throughout the body and may have diagnostic value as biomarkers for disease. The purpose of this study was to identify the microRNA (miRNA) profile in circulating sEVs derived from human plasma following repetitive HI exposure.MethodsHealthy adult (aged 18–35 years) soccer players were randomly assigned to one of 3 groups: the HI group performed 10 standing headers, the leg impact group performed 10 soccer ball trapping maneuvers over 10 min, and the control group did not participate in any soccer drills. Plasma was collected before testing and 24 h afterward, and sEVs were isolated and characterized via nanoparticle tracking analysis. Next-generation sequencing was utilized to identify candidate miRNAs isolated from sEVs, and candidate microRNAs were analyzed via quantitative polymerase chain reaction. In silico target prediction was performed using TargetScan (Version 7.0; targetscan.org) and miRWalk (http://mirwalk.umm.uni-heidelberg.de/) programs, and target validation was performed using luciferase reporter vectors with a miR-7844-5p mimic in human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293T/17 cells.ResultsPlasma sEV concentration and size were not affected across time and group following repetitive HI exposure. After 24 h, the HI read count from next-generation sequencing showed a 4-fold or greater increase in miR-92b-5p, miR-423-5p, and miR-24-3p and a 3-fold or greater decrease in miR-7844-5p, miR-144-5p, miR-221-5p, and miR-22-3p. Analysis of quantitative polymerase chain reaction revealed that leg impact did not alter the candidate miRNA levels. To our knowledge, miR-7844-5p is a previously unknown miRNA. We identified 8 miR-7844-5p mRNA targets: protein phosphatase 1 regulatory inhibitor subunit 1B (PPP1R1B), LIM and senescent cell antigen-like domains 1 (LIMS1), autophagy-related 12 (ATG12), microtubule-associated protein 1 light chain 3 beta (MAP1LC3B), integrin subunit alpha-1 (ITGA1), mitogen-activated protein kinase 1 (MAPK1), glycogen synthase kinase 3β (GSK3β), and mitogen-activated protein kinase 8 (MAPK8).ConclusionCollectively, these data indicate repetitive HI exposure alters plasma sEV miRNA content, but not sEV size or number. Furthermore, for the first time we demonstrate that previously unknown miR-7844-5p targets mRNAs known to be involved in mitochondrial apoptosis, autophagy regulation, mood disorders, and neurodegenerative disease.