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.     

‘Teaching’ the path towards university: understanding student access through storied-futures and meritocratic grand narratives

The notion that the stories of our lives shape dispositions towards imagined futures is another lens through which university underrepresentation should be viewed. A storied lens attends to how futures, like university attendance, are storied during childhood to the extent that some youth imagine, and therefore plan, these futures as natural progression. Such was the case for study participants, indicating that childhood stories contain answers for mitigating social reproduction connected to parental education and cultural forces within the home. Examining social mobility through the underexplored storied-futures grand narrative presents unique solutions that lay hidden within the dominant meritocratic grand narrative.     

Adherence to 24-hour movement guidelines among Portuguese preschool children: the prestyle study

ABSTRACT

Purpose

The 24-Hour Movement Guidelines (24 hMG) provide specific recommendations, including physical activity (PA), screen-time and sleep-duration, which preschoolers should achieve for a healthy day (24 h). The aim of the current study was to analyse preschooler’s adherence with the 24-Hour Movement Guidelines.     

指向武术核心素养的中小学武术有效教学策略与方法设计

为了有效促进学生武术核心素养的培育,针对我国武术教学中存在套路内容“繁难”、教法单一、重“形”轻“击”、重知识灌输,轻自主性培养、重教师的“教”,轻学生的“学”“学生不喜欢武术课”等一系列问题,提出了有效促进武术认知、武术运动能力、武术人格培育的原则,基于此原则,对“化难为易”策略、“化浅为深”策略、“化无趣为有趣”策略、“化技术为实践”策略、“知新温故”等策略进行了具体探索性设计,并对上述策略的具体实施方法进行了阐述,为中小学武术教学改革提供现实指导。     

Where do you come from,where do you go? Assessing skills gaps and labour market outcomes for young adults with different immigration backgrounds

Using PISA and PIAAC data from twelve OECD countries, we examine the gap in cognitive skills among immigrants and natives and evaluate how those differences have evolved over time. We also consider how demographics, family background and school quality explain the development of cognitive skills of young people with immigrant backgrounds. The results show, first, that some convergence in skills occurs between second-generation immigrants and natives over time. Second, demographics, family background and school quality variables all contribute to the achievement gaps across different groups.     

图书情报学领域学科交叉及其国家差异的动态分析

[目的/意义]领域知识的跨学科交叉研究能够打破学科间的壁垒,有助于发现重大科学问题的解决方案。[研究设计/方法]基于图书情报学领域文献题录信息构建轻量级领域知识图谱,从中提取学科信息、国家信息、时间信息及其关联,采用时间与空间相结合的多维度分析方法,对学科交叉的演化进程以及国家差异进行跟踪与分析。[结论/发现]图书情报学领域内学科交叉现象日渐显著,各国家的学科交叉程度与倾向存在差异,一些目前尚不突出的交叉学科方向值得关注。[创新/价值]采用多维度视角分析学科交叉现象,相关结论可以为国家科技战略制定及学科发展规划提供有益参考。     

大学生孤独感对手机成瘾倾向的影响:生命意义感的调节作用

为了探究大学生孤独感、手机成瘾倾向和生命意义感之间的关系,采用UCLA孤独量表、大学生手机成瘾倾向量表、人生意义感问卷,选取408名大学生作为被试进行问卷调查。结果发现:(1)孤独感与手机成瘾倾向呈显著性正相关,生命意义感与手机成瘾倾向呈显著性负相关,孤独感和生命意义感相关性不显著;(2)孤独感和生命意义感都显著预测手机成瘾倾向,生命意义感在孤独感和手机成瘾倾向之间的调节效应显著,低生命意义感大学生的孤独感对手机成瘾倾向的预测力更强。因此,大学生的孤独感能正向预测手机成瘾倾向,生命意义感能调节二者之间的关系,低水平的生命意义感会加剧孤独感对手机成瘾倾向的预测作用,而高水平的生命意义感会使孤独感对手机成瘾倾向的影响较小。     

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.