Odin Teatret’s The Tree: performing in the interstices

Abstract: This article aims to critically engage with Odin Teatret’s most recent addition to the repertoire, The Tree (2016), in order to investigate the ways in which Barba’s dramaturgical decision-making processes create a performance field that metaphorically comments on the status of the group today whilst critiquing contemporary geo-politics. Importantly, we argue that notions of interculturalism - which have often been employed by scholars to critique the Odin’s work - do not address the full complexity of the embodied concatenation of the group’s practice, and we employ the term interstitial to more effectively articulate the complex space produced by the group’s training and performances.</jats:p

Clinical Sequencing Exploratory Research Consortium: Accelerating Evidence-Based Practice of Genomic Medicine

Despite rapid technical progress and demonstrable effectiveness for some types of diagnosis and therapy, much remains to be learned about clinical genome and exome sequencing (CGES) and its role within the practice of medicine. The Clinical Sequencing Exploratory Research (CSER) consortium includes 18 extramural research projects, one National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) intramural project, and a coordinating center funded by the NHGRI and National Cancer Institute. The consortium is exploring analytic and clinical validity and utility, as well as the ethical, legal, and social implications of sequencing via multidisciplinary approaches; it has thus far recruited 5,577 participants across a spectrum of symptomatic and healthy children and adults by utilizing both germline and cancer sequencing. The CSER consortium is analyzing data and creating publically available procedures and tools related to participant preferences and consent, variant classification, disclosure and management of primary and secondary findings, health outcomes, and integration with electronic health records. Future research directions will refine measures of clinical utility of CGES in both germline and somatic testing, evaluate the use of CGES for screening in healthy individuals, explore the penetrance of pathogenic variants through extensive phenotyping, reduce discordances in public databases of genes and variants, examine social and ethnic disparities in the provision of genomics services, explore regulatory issues, and estimate the value and downstream costs of sequencing. The CSER consortium has established a shared community of research sites by using diverse approaches to pursue the evidence-based development of best practices in genomic medicine

Effects of design features of explicit values clarification methods: A systematic review

Background. Diverse values clarification methods exist. It is important to understand which, if any, of their design features help people clarify values relevant to a health decision. Purpose. To explore the effects of design features of explicit values clarification methods on outcomes including decisional conflict, values congruence, and decisional regret. Data Sources. MEDLINE, all EBM Reviews, CINAHL, EMBASE, Google Scholar, manual search of reference lists, and expert contacts. Study Selection. Articles were included if they described the evaluation of 1 or more explicit values clarification methods. Data Extraction. We extracted details about the evaluation, whether it was conducted in the context of actual or hypothetical decisions, and the results of the evaluation. We combined these data with data from a previous review about each values clarification method's design features. Data Synthesis. We identified 20 evaluations of values clarification methods within 19 articles. Reported outcomes were heterogeneous. Few studies reported values congruence or postdecision outcomes. The most promising design feature identified was explicitly showing people the implications of their values, for example, by displaying the extent to which each of their decision options aligns with what matters to them. Limitations. Because of the heterogeneity of outcomes, we were unable to perform a meta-analysis. Results should be interpreted with caution. Conclusions. Few values clarification methods have been evaluated experimentally. More research is needed to determine effects of different design features of values clarification methods and to establish best practices in values clarification. When feasible, evaluations should assess values congruence and postdecision measures of longer-term outcomes