Covid-19: Emerging Considerations for Body Sourcing and Handling. A Perspective View from Nigeria

The current Coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic has spread to about 220 countries of the world and has resulted in a significant number of deaths globally. Infections are still on the rise, and the impact on the global death rate could be devastating. There are fears over the likely impact of a large number of deaths on body sourcing and handling of cadavers for teaching and research. Historically, epidemics come with several challenges and have often led to some level of negligence of ethical practices and health and safety regulations associated with body sourcing and handling. The authors highlighted some emerging problems in this article, focusing on Africa and Nigeria in particular. These problems include a higher risk of coronavirus exposure for body handlers, shortage of cadavers for teaching and learning, a lack of standard regulations leading to unethical body sourcing and handling, and a lack of monitoring and collaboration needed for a well-coordinated Covid-19 pandemic response strategy. If these issues are ignored, the previous gains made in anatomical ethical practices may be destroyed. Some useful recommendations for policymaking geared toward prevention or curtailing these emerging issues have been instilled in this article.     

The Unintentional Effects on Body Donation Programs of a Competency-Based Curriculum in Postgraduate Medical Education

As medical programs place increasing importance on competency-based training and surgical simulations for residents, anatomy laboratories, and body donation programs find themselves in a position of adapting to changing demands. To better assess the demand for “life-like” cadaveric specimens and evaluate the possible impacts that competency-based medical education could have upon the body donation program of McGill University, Canada, the authors tracked, over the course of the last 10 years, the number of soft-embalmed specimens, along with the number of teaching sessions and the residents enrolled in competency-based programs that are using cadaveric material. The results reveal that the number of soft-embalmed specimens used within residency training increased from 5 in 2009 to 35 in 2019, representing an increase from 6% of bodies to 36.5% of the total number of body donors embalmed in this institution. Correspondingly, the number of annual teaching sessions for residents increased from 19 in 2012 to 116 in 2019. These increases in teaching are correlated with increasing number of residents enrolled in competency-based programs over the last 3 years (Pearson r ranging from 0.9705 to 0.9903, and R² ranging from 0.9418 to 0.9808). Those results suggest that the new skill-centered curricula which require residents to perform specific tasks within realistic settings, exhibit a growing demand for “life-like” cadaveric specimens. Institutions’ body donation programs must, therefore, adapt to those greater need for cadaveric specimens, which presents many challenges, ranging from the logistical to the ethical.     

Between Policy and Practice: Archival Descriptions,Digital Returns and a Place for Coalescing Narratives

ABSTRACT

The Strathfieldsaye Estate collection at the University of Melbourne Archives is discussed in relation to recognising, protecting and reclaiming Koori (First Peoples of southeast Australia) heritage. The settler collection includes early 1900s photographs of Koori people within two distinct albums – a family album that includes a series of studio portraits of Koori adults and children, and an album depicting Koori families on Ramahyuck Aboriginal Mission Station. In the past, these albums have been defined by, and limited to, traditional archiving practices excluding Koori interpretation, authorship and social context. Restoring Koori ownership and authorship of intangible heritage plays a large part in consolidating ancestor photographs with Koori perspectives of identity and culture.     

A Bioethos for Bodies: Respecting a Priceless Resource

The value that willed body donors provide to medical education is priceless. Their precious gift helps to teach anatomy, spatial relationships between morphological structures, anatomical variation, and professionalism to medical students in a way that plastic models, podcasts, and lectures cannot. They are also an important resource for medical research and a wide variety of postgraduate training opportunities. While many body donation programs throughout the world are nonprofit organizations, there are body donation companies in the United States that sell donors for-profit. These “body brokers” have accumulated large profits from this business. It is incongruous that others would profit from such a priceless, freely donated gift. To prevent this incongruity, it is proposed that the international anatomical community develop a normative culture (a bioethos) for body donation programs. This would involve the conscious and systematic development of ethical principles for the day-to-day policies and practices of institutions that collect and use human bodies. With the development of this bioethos, a cultural shift in how donors are treated would occur and, over time, this would become the normal practice. These principles would become fundamental and foundational for the procurement and use of priceless human tissues.     

Professional knowledge or motivation? Investigating the role of teachers’ expertise on the quality of technology-enhanced lesson plans

In an expertise study with 94 mathematics teachers varying in their relative teacher expertise (i.e., student teachers, trainee teachers, in-service teachers), we examined effects of teachers' professional knowledge and motivational beliefs on their ability to integrate technology within a lesson plan scenario. Therefore, we assessed teachers' professional knowledge (i.e., content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, technological knowledge), and their motivational beliefs (i.e., self-efficacy, utility-value). Furthermore, teachers were asked to develop a lesson plan for introducing the Pythagorean theorem to secondary students. Lesson plans by advanced teachers (i.e., trainee teachers, in-service teachers) comprised higher levels of instructional quality and technology exploitation than the ones of novice teachers (i.e., pre-service teachers). The effect of expertise was mediated by teachers' perceived utility-value of educational technology, but not by their professional knowledge. These findings suggest that teachers’ motivational beliefs play a crucial role for effectively applying technology in mathematics instruction.     

一种基于图卷积自编码模型的多维度学科知识网络融合方法

[目的/意义] 针对包含单一类型知识单元的知识网络难以全面反映学科知识结构的问题，提出一种从多维度进行知识网络结构融合的方法，为学科领域知识结构挖掘提供借鉴。[方法/过程] 利用LDA及TF-IDF方法抽取学科知识单元，然后运用语义相似度和关键词共现分析方法构建3个学科知识子网络：主题网络、关键词网络和实体网络，并采用空间节点传递对齐方法对齐子网络节点，接着设计基于图卷积操作的自编码模型对知识节点进行表示，最后通过计算余弦相似度重构学科知识网络。[结果/结论] 实验部分以人工智能领域为例，构建融合主题、关键词和实体的学科知识网络并展开分析，实验结果表明，本文所提方法能有效地揭示学科领域研究内容和知识结构，为学科知识发现与组织研究提供有益参考。     

科学解释在知识创新中的作用

科学解释是科学家用科学规律来消解自然之谜的知识创新活动，它在知识创新中的作用表现在：第一，科学解释具有预测未知现象的存在中未来事态发展趋势的功能；第二，它在建构新颖理论体系的过程中起着特别重要的作用。     

国内数字图书馆建设的反思

在调查咨询的基础上,总结目前我国数字图书馆发展中存在的问题,探讨问题产生的原因并提出解决办法。     

面向知识管理的高校图书馆

章主要引入了知识管理概念、目的、内容，分析知识管理的动态发展，探讨知识管理与高校图书馆业务之向的联系，阐述高校图书馆实施知识管理的措施。     

馆藏文献是人类文明的共同记忆——《中国图书馆员职业道德准则》试行有感

爱护文献资源是《中国图书馆员职业道德准则》规定的每个馆员应遵守的道德准则。图书馆员应树立馆藏文献是人类文明记忆的理念 ,建立科学管理制度 ,做到片纸不丢。规范职业行为 ,必须具有爱护文献资源的理念和品格。参考文献 3。