Erfahrungswissenschaft und Expertenblick -Eine Forschungsmethode inspiriert von der biologisch-dynamischen Landwirtschaft

Experiential science is based on the unique knowledge gathered by experienced practitioners. Both the reflective evaluation of case studies and expert judgement processes and the use of pattern recognition are core elements of experiential scien-tific methodology. Development of experiential knowledge and insights are thus pri-marily based on experts’ actions and the reflections on those actions. The methodol-ogy has been created based on intensive cooperation between single farmers or farmer groups and scientists/advisors. Experiential knowledge is not only holistic, but also adequate. As in formal science, experienced practitioners develop valid knowl-edge and in new, unknown situations they have a capability to integrate their diagno-sis (“knowing what”) and suitable actions, necessary at a specific time (“knowing that”)

Building a comprehensive mentoring academy for schools of health.

Formal mentoring programs are increasingly recognized as critical for faculty career development. We describe a mentoring academy (MA) developed for faculty across tracks (i.e., researchers, clinicians, educators) within a "school of health" encompassing schools of medicine and nursing. The program is anchored dually in a clinical and translational science center and a school of health. The structure includes the involvement of departmental and center mentoring directors to achieve widespread uptake and oversight. A fundamental resource provided by the MA includes providing workshops to enhance mentoring skills. Initiatives for junior faculty emphasize establishing and maintaining strong mentoring relationships and implementing individual development plans (IDPs) for career planning. We present self-report data on competency improvement from mentor workshops and data on resources and barriers identified by junior faculty (n = 222) in their IDPs. Mentors reported statistically significantly improved mentoring competency after workshop participation. Junior faculty most frequently identified mentors (61%) and collaborators (23%) as resources for goal attainment. Top barriers included insufficient time and time-management issues (57%), funding limitations (18%), work-life balance issues (18%), including inadequate time for self-care and career development activities. Our MA can serve as a model and roadmap for providing resources to faculty across traditional tracks within medical schools

Are you reading what I am reading? The impact of contrasting alphabetic scripts on reading English

This study examines the impact of the crosslinguistic similarity of translation equivalents on word recognition by Russian-English bilinguals, who are fluent in languages with two different but partially overlapping writing systems. Current models for bilingual word recognition, like BIA+, hold that all words that are similar to the input letter string are activated and considered for selection, irrespective of the language to which they belong (Dijkstra and Van Heuven, 2002). These activation models are consistent with empirical data for bilinguals with totally different scripts, like Japanese and English (Miwa et al., 2014). Little is known about the bilingual processing of Russian and English, but studies indicate that the partially distinct character of the Russian and English scripts does not prevent co-activation (Jouravlev and Jared, 2014; Marian and Spivey, 2003; Kaushanskaya and Marian, 2007)

Initial results of in vivo non-invasive cancer imaging in the human breast using near-infrared photoacoustics

Near-infrared photoacoustic images of regions-of-interest in 4 of the 5 cases of patients with symptomatic breasts reveal higher intensity regions which we attribute to vascular distribution associated with cancer. Of the 2 cases presented here, one is especially significant where benign indicators dominate in conventional radiological images, while photoacoustic images reveal vascular features suggestive of malignancy, which is corroborated by histopathology. The results show that photoacoustic imaging may have potential in visualizing certain breast cancers based on intrinsic optical absorption contrast. A future role for the approach could be in supplementing conventional breast imaging to assist detection and/or diagnosis.\ud \u

Differential survival between visual environments supports a role of divergent sensory drive in cichlid fish speciation

Identifying the selective forces that initiate ecological speciation is a major challenge in evolutionary biology. Sensory drive has been implicated in speciation in various taxa, largely based on phenotype-environment correlations and signatures of selection in sensory genes. Here, we present a reciprocal transplant experiment revealing species differences in performance in alternative visual environments, consistent with speciation by divergent sensory drive. The closely related cichlids Pundamilia pundamilia and Pundamilia nyererei inhabit different visual environments in Lake Victoria and show associated differences in visual system properties. Mimicking the two light environments in the laboratory, we find a substantial reduction in survival of both species when reared in the other species’ visual environment. This implies that the observed differences in Pundamilia color vision are indeed adaptive and substantiates the implicit assumption in sensory drive speciation models that divergent environmental selection is strong enough to drive divergence in sensory properties

Modelling of yield point phenomenon in bake-hardening grade steel

In this study the yield point phenomenon in Bake-Hardening grade steel is predicted using a physically based thermo-mechanical model. A modified Taylor equation is proposed with a physically based dislocation density evolution approach. The softening that follows the higher yield point is incorporated with a Voce type decaying exponential function. The strain rate dependency of the plastic hardening is also incorporated in the model. The yield point in the decay function is also strain rate dependent but does not follow the same dependency of plastic hardening. This was solved by making the decay function strain rate dependent by adding a modified strain rate stress term to the exponential function. This parameter is calculated based on tensile experiments. Due to the softening behavior of the material, the numerical model is mesh size sensitive. Hence, a lower order strain gradient enhanced approach is implemented. The gradient is in a form of an additional hardening term assigned in the locally strained bands based on the plastic strain gradient. Hill48 yield criterion is used to assimilate the anisotropy in the steel grade. The numerical results show good correspondence with experimental tensile tests. The regularization significantly reduced the mesh size dependency of the numerical results.</p