Research in Medical Education: Balancing Service and Science*

Since the latter part of the 1990’s, the English-speaking medical education community has been engaged in a debate concerning the types of research that should have priority. To shed light on this debate and to better understand its implications for the practice of research, 23 semi-structured interviews were conducted with “influential figures” from the community. The results were analyzed using the concept of “field” developed by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. The results reveal that a large majority of these influential figures believe that research in medical education continues to be of insufficient quality despite the progress that has taken place over the past 2 decades. According to this group, studies tend to be both redundant and opportunistic, and researchers tend to have limited understanding of both theory and methodological practice from the social sciences. Three factors were identified by the participants to explain the current problems in research: the working conditions of researchers, budgetary restraints in financing research in medical education, and the conception of research in the medical environment. Two principal means for improving research are presented: intensifying collaboration between PhD’s and clinicians, and encouraging the diversification of perspectives brought to bear on research in medical education

The Decoupling of Affluence and Waste Discharge under Spatial Correlation: Do Richer Communities Discharge More Waste?

経済学 / EconomicsAlthough there are many studies on the environmental Kuznets curve, very few of them address municipal solid waste cases, and there is still controversy concerning the validity of the waste Kuznets curve hypothesis. In this paper, we provide empirical evidence for the waste Kuznets curve hypothesis by applying spatial econometrics methods to municipal-level data in Japan. To our knowledge, this is the first study that finds valid evidence for the waste Kuznets curve hypothesis in the absolute decoupling manner. The successful result owes in part to our highly disaggregated data and also to the use of a spatial econometric model that takes into account the mimicking behavior among neighboring municipalities. The former indicates that distinguishing between household and business waste is the key to revealing the waste–income relationship, while the latter implies the importance of peer effects when municipal governments formulate waste-reduction policies.http://www.grips.ac.jp/list/jp/facultyinfo/yoshida_yuichiro

Reexamining the waste-income relationship

経済学 / EconomicsEven though many studies on Environmental Kuznets curve (EKC), are following a seminal work by Grossman and Krueger (1991), limited studies are available for municipal solid waste’s cases (WKC). Mazzanti and Montini eds. (2009) is a first comprehensive study of WKC with European data. More importantly, they define a absolute decoupling as ‘descending side of an inverted U shape’ and relative decoupling as ‘ascending path of an inverted U shape. In this paper, we add a new evidence for WKC by using municipal solid waste’s data in Japan. The successful result was derived due to highly disaggregated data as was suggested by Mazzanti and Zoboli (2009) as well as the richness of data set.http://www.grips.ac.jp/list/jp/facultyinfo/yoshida_yuichiro

Economic Geography and Productive Efficiency of Solid-Waste Logistics in Japan\u27s Prefectures: Measurements via the Data Envelopment Analysis

経済学 / EconomicsThis paper measures the productive efficiency of the municipal-solid-waste (MSW) logistics by applying the data envelopment analysis (DEA) to the cross-sectional data of prefectures in Japan. Either through public operation or by outsourcing private waste-collection operators, prefectural governments possess the fundamental authority of waste-processing operation in Japan. We thus estimate a multi-input-multi-output production efficiency at the prefectural level via DEA, where several different model settings are employed. Our data classify the volume of MSW into household solid waste (HSW) and business solid waste (BSW) collected by both private and public operators as separate outputs, while the numbers of trucks and workers used by private and public operators enter as inputs. Results consistently show that the geographical characteristics such that the number of inhabited remote islands is relatively larger than others is a dominant factor determining the inefficiency. While the implication that in these small islands minimum efficient scale is not achieved is in accord to the literature that waste logistics is increasing-return at the municipal level, our results indicate that the production of waste collection in Japan is well described as CRS technology at the prefectural level. Results also show that the prefectures that are inefficient in MSW logistics have higher spatial correlation with their neighbors both in terms of waste collection efficiency and the volume of illegal dumping of industrial waste.JEL Classification Codes: R49, R59, Q53http://www.grips.ac.jp/list/jp/facultyinfo/yoshida_yuichiro

乙第１号 2016 ソーシャルビジネスの評価手法と基盤強化に関する研究

Tohoku University of Community Service and Science（東北公益文科大学）2016年

スリランカ電子ガバナンスのためのデジタル変革レジーム

Tohoku University of Community Service and Science（東北公益文科大学）2021年

PSU(2,2|4) transformations of IIB superstring in AdS_5 x S^5

The PSU(2,2|4) transformation laws of the IIB superstring theory in the AdS_5 x S^5 background are explicitly obtained for the light-cone gauge in the Green-Schwarz formalism.Comment: LaTeX, 14 pages, a reference adde

Competition, quality and contract compliance: evidence from compulsory competitive tendering in local government in Great Britain, 1987-2000

The introduction of competition has frequently been found to cause costs to fall. There has, however, been a question as to whether this was partly achieved at the cost of quality. Auction theory predicts prices would fall more the greater the competition to provide the service. There has been some debate about whether the smaller budgets would make contract compliance more difficult. Evidence is found in support of this hypothesis. We also find some evidence that the better recorded performance of the in-house direct service organisations (DSOs) during this period was due to the information advantage they had from being incumbents

“Having Your Say” – Reflections on a Training Course For Older People Volunteering to Become Peer Visitors in Care Homes

This article analyses the “Having Your Say” training course which was designed as the initial stage of a project developing peer visitors for older people’s residential care homes. Peer visitors are older people who volunteer to take on a role aimed at capturing a “peer” perspective on the qualitative aspects of living within a residential care home 1, in contrast to the empirical and regulatory perspectives which various managerial and inspectoral regimes already address as part of their statutory obligations. This training course represents part of an ongoing programme aimed at further developing partnership working between a statutory provider, a higher education institution and a range of service user organisations including Worcestershire Association of Service Users (WASU) and Worcestershire Older Peoples’ Forum, a further intention being to evaluate the effectiveness of the actual “Having Your Say” scheme itself once it has become more fully established. Considered within the article are the processes of developing and implementing preliminary support and learning for peer visitors, the reflective learning environment’s ability to facilitate older participants’’ learning and experience in order to further inform the project and an examination of the challenges involved in working with older people in learning and teaching activities. The “Having Your Say” project is believed to be the first of its kind in the UK

N=6 conformal supergravity in three dimensions

N=6 conformal supergravity in three dimensions is studied in an off-shell component field formulation. We obtain local symmetry transformation laws and a Lagrangian of the conformal supergravity multiplet. We then couple it to the ABJM theory and obtain local transformation laws and a Lagrangian of the coupled theory.Comment: 20 page