Editorial: medical students and postgraduate trainees as medical educators: peer learning is everywhere

In this special issue we would like to encourage authors to contribute as many diverse understandings as possible of how learning occurs in situations where the teacher is, as Osler so memorably put it, a senior student anxious to help his or her juniors. So although we expect to see plenty of work on peer assisted learning programmes within clinical skills units or hospitals we would like to invite authors to be creative in their interpretation of what Medical Students and Postgraduate Trainees as Medical Educators means. In particular we’d like to advance the definition to include 'teaching and learning with flat hierarchies' - that is to say, teaching and learning that takes place between people who are fairly close in age, experience or stage of learning, as well as teaching and learning that occurs in the 'opposite direction’ - such as when seniors are able to learn from juniors. We will be celebrating the remarkable potential of peer teaching and learning with flat hierarchies and look forward to the publication of a variety of articles, including those that would not normally find an outlet elsewhere, such as replication studies, negative findings, pilots and protocols, case reports, narrative studies and reflections

Modified Chebyshev Picard Iteration: Integration of Perturbed Motion using Modified Equinoctial Elements

The topic of this dissertation is the fusion of a novel integration method, Modified Chebyshev Picard Iteration (MCPI), with Gauss' Variational Equations using a set of Modified Equinoctial Orbital Elements. This combination leads to a dramatically increased domain of Picard iteration convergence and an efficiency increase for MCPI solutions of the Initial Value Problem of Celestial Mechanics, thereby reducing the number of full gravity function calls. The set of Modified Equinoctial Orbital Elements (MEEs) are nonsingular over a large orbit variation domain, in contrast with the Classical Orbital Elements (COEs), which are singular at zero inclination and zero eccentricity, and propagation of MEEs with MCPI leads to much greater convergence time intervals for the IVP than is possible using Cartesian coordinates. This set of elements is also used to formulate the Two-Point Boundary Value Problem (TPBVP) associated with orbit transfer using a low-thrust, minimum-time control formulation and solves iteratively via a shooting method known as the Method of Particular Solutions

On the role of the AIS practitioner

Cognisant of the gulf between engineers and immunologists that currenty hinders a truly inter-disciplinary approach to the field of Artificial Immune Systems (AIS), we propose a redefinition of the term AIS practitioner, as an individual who identifies those components and interactions captured in computational immunology models that are responsible for a particular property of interest (POI), and distils from these a set of algorithms and principles that can be applied in an engineering domain. We outline the role of the cross-disciplinary practitioner and the potential benefits to the field

Peer teaching and learning; the key to scholarship

In our opening editorial we discussed our desire to receive a diverse range of submissions regarding peer teaching and learning. We are delighed to have received such a range of different submissions from healthcare education teams across the globe, focussing on peer education in very different settings. In this, our closing editorial, we discuss the key findings from the submissions that we have received, provide our own reflections on what authors have submitted and discuss our experiences of co-editing this themed edition of MedEdPublish

On the role of the AIS practitioner

Cognisant of the gulf between engineers and immunologists that currenty hinders a truly inter-disciplinary approach to the field of Artificial Immune Systems (AIS), we propose a redefinition of the term AIS practitioner, as an individual who identifies those components and interactions captured in computational immunology models that are responsible for a particular property of interest (POI), and distils from these a set of algorithms and principles that can be applied in an engineering domain. We outline the role of the cross-disciplinary practitioner and the potential benefits to the field

Framer: Planning Models from Natural Language Action Descriptions

In this paper, we describe an approach for learning planning domain models directly from natural language (NL) descriptions of activity sequences. The modelling problem has been identified as a bottleneck for the widespread exploitation of various technologies in Artificial Intelligence, including automated planners. There have been great advances in modelling assisting and model generation tools, including a wide range of domain model acquisition tools. However, for modelling tools, there is the underlying assumption that the user can formulate the problem using some formal language. And even in the case of the domain model acquisition tools, there is still a requirement to specify input plans in an easily machine readable format. Providing this type of input is impractical for many potential users. This motivates us to generate planning domain models directly from NL descriptions, as this would provide an important step in extending the widespread adoption of planning techniques. We start from NL descriptions of actions and use NL analysis to construct structured representations, from which we construct formal representations of the action sequences. The generated action sequences provide the necessary structured input for inducing a PDDL domain, using domain model acquisition technology. In order to capture a concise planning model, we use an estimate of functional similarity, so sentences that describe similar behaviours are represented by the same planning operator. We validate our approach with a user study, where participants are tasked with describing the activities occurring in several videos. Then our system is used to learn planning domain models using the participants' NL input. We demonstrate that our approach is effective at learning models on these tasks

Carer's perception of and reaction to reassurance seeking in obsessive compulsive disorder

The purpose of the present study is to explore the experience of being asked for reassurance from the perspective of carers of OCD sufferers, and to examine its relationship to sufferers’ reassurance seeking by a direct comparison with data obtained from the person they normally offer reassurance to. Forty-two individuals with OCD and their carers completed alternate versions of the Reassurance Seeking Questionnaire. Result suggest that carers report most commonly providing reassurance when asked to do so, and the frequency of their reassurance provision is associated with how carefully sufferers seek reassurance, rather than their OCD symptom severity. The carer's perspectives on the impact of reassurance provision was accurate; both sufferers and carers perceive that reassurance works only temporarily, but even if the anxiety-relieving effect of reassurance decreases in the medium term, it is likely to be perceived as beneficial because carers accurately perceived that sufferers would feel much worse if they refuse to provide reassurance. The present study is the first to quantitatively investigate carer’s experiences of reassurance provision, and elucidate why carers feel the need to provide it

Sustaining Clinician Penetration, Attitudes and Knowledge in Cognitive-Therapy for Youth Anxiety

Background: Questions remain regarding the sustainment of evidence-based practices following implementation. The present study examined the sustainment of community clinicians’ implementation (i.e., penetration) of cognitive-behavioral therapy, attitudes toward evidence-based practices, and knowledge of cognitive-behavioral therapy for youth anxiety two years following training and consultation in cognitive-behavioral therapy for youth anxiety. Methods: Of the original 115 participants, 50 individuals (43%) participated in the two-year follow-up. A t- test examined sustainment in penetration over time. Hierarchical linear modeling examined sustainment in knowledge and attitudes over time. Time spent in consultation sessions was examined as a potential moderator of the change in knowledge and attitudes. Results: Findings indicated sustained self-reported penetration of cognitive-behavioral therapy for anxious youth, with low fidelity to some key CBT components (i.e., exposure tasks). Follow-up knowledge was higher than at baseline but lower than it had been immediately following the consultation phase of the study. Belief in the utility of evidence-based practices was sustained. Willingness to implement an evidence-based practice if required to do so, appeal of evidence-based practices, and openness toward evidence-based practices were not sustained. Participation in consultation positively moderated changes in knowledge and some attitudes. Conclusions: Sustainment varied depending on the outcome examined. Generally, greater participation in consultation predicted greater sustainment. Implications for future training include higher dosages of consultation