scholarly journals Research assessments should recognize responsible research practices — Narrative review of a lively debate and promising developments

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noémie Aubert Bonn ◽  
Lex Bouter
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Review ◽  
Research Assessment ◽  
The Past ◽  
Lively Debate ◽  
Different Dimensions ◽  
The Common ◽  
High Integrity ◽  
Responsible Research ◽  
The Way

Research assessments have been under growing scrutiny in the past few years. The way in which researchers are assessed has a tangible impact on decisions and practices in research. Yet, there is an emerging understanding that research assessments as they currently stand might hamper the quality and the integrity of research. In this chapter, we provide a narrative review of the shortcomings of current research assessments and showcase innovative actions that aim to address these. To discuss these shortcomings and actions, we target five different dimensions of research assessment. First, we discuss the content of research assessment, thereby introducing the common indicators used to assess researchers and the way these indicators are being used. Second, we address the procedure of research assessments, describing the resources needed for assessing researchers in an ever-growing research system. Third, we describe the crucial role of assessors in improving research assessments. Fourth, we present the broader environments in which researchers work, explaining that omnipresent competition and employment insecurity also need to be toned down substantially to foster high quality and high integrity research. Finally, we describe the challenge of coordinating individual actions to ensure that the problems of research assessments are addressed tangibly and sustainably.

Beyond Promoter: The Role of Macrophage in Invasion and Progression of Renal Cell Carcinoma

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (7) ◽  
pp. 588-596
Author(s):  
Haibao Zhang ◽  
Guodong Zhu
Keyword(s):  
Renal Cell Carcinoma ◽  
Tumor Microenvironment ◽  
Cell Carcinoma ◽  
Renal Cell ◽  
Cell Formation ◽  
Biological Behavior ◽  
Tumor Stem Cell ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Common

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is one of the common urologic neoplasms, and its incidence has been increasing over the past several decades; however, its pathogenesis is still unknown up to now. Recent studies have found that in addition to tumor cells, other cells in the tumor microenvironment also affect the biological behavior of the tumor. Among them, macrophages exist in a large amount in tumor microenvironment, and they are generally considered to play a key role in promoting tumorigenesis. Therefore, we summarized the recent researches on macrophage in the invasiveness and progression of RCC in latest years, and we also introduced and discussed many studies about macrophage in RCC to promote angiogenesis by changing tumor microenvironment and inhibit immune response in order to activate tumor progression. Moreover, macrophage interactes with various cytokines to promote tumor proliferation, invasion and metastasis, and it also promotes tumor stem cell formation and induces drug resistance in the progression of RCC. The highlight of this review is to make a summary of the roles of macrophage in the invasion and progression of RCC; at the same time to raise some potential and possible targets for future RCC therapy.

scholarly journals Individualism as a Cultural Syndrome in Recent American Cinema

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 114-122
Author(s):  
Nina A Tsyrkun
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Cultural Constructs ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
The Past ◽  
Individualism And Collectivism ◽  
The Face ◽  
Survival Condition ◽  
The Way

The article explores the balance of the two basic cultural constructs - individualism and collectivism - and the way it is represented in the American cinema of 2015-2016 as exemplified by a number of films set in the past, present and future. The author comes to the conclusion that in the face of a global peril the idea of individual moral responsibility inevitably leads to the role of collectivism as the essential survival condition.

Researchers in Ghana identify specific factors that “provide the seedbed for institutionalized bullying” in universities

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Design Methodology ◽  
Strong Relationship ◽  
Individual Factors ◽  
Management Behavior ◽  
Content Type ◽  
State Sector ◽  
The Past ◽  
Specific Factors ◽  
Different Dimensions

Purpose The authors decided to study the causes of coercive management behavior (CMB) in universities because this area has been neglected in the past. There has been a lot of research into CMB in profit-oriented organizations, but it has been assumed that universities were unaffected. Design/methodology/approach The study was conducted at 10 universities, five from the private sector and five from the state sector out of the 100 accredited Ghanaian universities. The authors sent out 405 questionnaires and 371 were returned. Findings The results showed a strong relationship between specific causes and different dimensions of CMB. The authors said their analysis identified specific factors that “provide the seedbed for institutionalized bullying”. Originality/value The authors said the research provides the basis for designing policies for employees at any organization. A one-size-fits-all approach was not always appropriate, however, and their identification of the role of individual factors could help universities find their own solutions.

Narratives of human trafficking: Defining policy, practice and positioning in a contested field

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Bryony Cornforth-Camden
Keyword(s):  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Policy Practice ◽  
Local Responses ◽  
The Past ◽  
Crime Type ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
The Way

<p><b>This research uses narrative criminology to investigate the way the problem of human trafficking is narrated in New Zealand and international settings. It draws on accounts from professionals who are responsible for defining and responding to human trafficking, and reports, policy, and other guiding documents. The main issue driving this research is the contested nature of human trafficking. Human trafficking is a crime type that has been highly politicised resulting in shifts and changes to the way the problem of trafficking has been approached over the past 20 years, with differing trends coming to the fore and dominating trafficking practices at different times. The internationally dominant approaches which emphasise prostitution, harsh criminal responses, and border security have come under criticism for having harmful impacts for migrant workers. This research aims to understand how human trafficking is defined, what discourses are drawn on, and how international narratives may be influencing local responses with the overall aim of identifying new and less problematic ways of conceptualising human trafficking and responding to migrant exploitation.</b></p> <p>This thesis finds that different ways of narrating human trafficking are constitutive of different trafficking realities. Narratives determine the shape the problem takes, who is involved, what the causes and solutions are, who responds, and who are classed as victims and perpetrators. This research concludes that as narratives structure reality and action, in order to change how we deal with certain problems, the way the problem is narrated must also change.</p> <p>The findings of this thesis reflect current challenges in the wider international anti-trafficking field of how to avoid positioning western states and systems as outside of the problem of trafficking, issues with broadening definitions of victimhood, and questions of the role of international versus local bodies in defining problems involving migration and crime. As well as reflecting these current challenges, the findings from this research provide insights for moving forwards by proposing an alternative narrative. This counter narrative is created through drawing together components of narratives identified in this research. It avoids the issues of western exceptionalism, narrow forms of victimhood, and a focus on sex trafficking, and provides a different method for conceptualising migration, exploitation, and harm.</p>

Personality

2016 ◽  
pp. 98-101
Author(s):  
Jonathan Leicester
Keyword(s):  
Personality Traits ◽  
Direct Effect ◽  
Need For Closure ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
The Real ◽  
Occupational Roles ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Way

The chapter opens by questioning the role of personality traits in causing behaviour, and decides to work with the common assumption that they have an important role. There is an account of the search for the real units or traits of personality. Some of the traits and dispositions, selected for their particularly direct effect on belief, for example, strong need for closure, are briefly described. There is a comment on the way long-standing occupational roles can sometimes modify personality.

Veronicas and Artists

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Religious Images ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way ◽  
Contemporary Artists

Chapter One deals with several central issues with regard to understanding the role of religious motifs in contemporary art. Besides being a repetition of imagery from the past, religious motifs embedded in contemporary artworks become a means to problematise not only the way different periods in the history of art are delimited, but larger and seemingly more rigid distinctions as those between art and non-art images. Early religious images differ significantly from art images. The two types are regulated according to different sets of rules related to the conditions of their production, display, appreciation and the way images are invested with the status of being true or authentic instances of art or sacred images. Chapter One provides a discussion of the important motif of the image not made by an artist’s hand, or acheiropoietos, and its survival and transformation, including its traces in contemporary image-making practices. All images are the result of human making; they are fictions. The way the conditions of these fictions are negotiated, or the way the role of the maker is brought to visibility, or concealed, is a defining feature of the specific regime of representation. While the cult image concealed its maker in order to maintain its public significance, and the later art image celebrated the artist as a re-inventor of the old image, contemporary artists cite religious images in order to reflect on the very procedures that produce the public significance and status of images.

scholarly journals Neural Control of Immunity in Hypertension: Council on Hypertension Mid Career Award for Research Excellence, 2019

Hypertension ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 622-628
Author(s):  
Daniela Carnevale
Keyword(s):  
Immune Response ◽  
Nervous System ◽  
Neural Control ◽  
Neural Signals ◽  
The Past ◽  
Target Organs ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Brain

The nervous system and the immune system share the common ability to exert gatekeeper roles at the interfaces between internal and external environment. Although interaction between these 2 evolutionarily highly conserved systems has been recognized for long time, the investigation into the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying their crosstalk has been tackled only in recent decades. Recent work of the past years elucidated how the autonomic nervous system controls the splenic immunity recruited by hypertensive challenges. This review will focus on the neural mechanisms regulating the immune response and the role of this neuroimmune crosstalk in hypertension. In this context, the review highlights the components of the brain-spleen axis with a focus on the neuroimmune interface established in the spleen, where neural signals shape the immune response recruited to target organs of high blood pressure.

History Repeating Itself. The function of turning points and continuity in three historical narratives on operetta

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 102
Author(s):  
Mikael Strömberg
Keyword(s):  
Turning Points ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Narrative Strategy ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

The article’s primary aim is to discuss the function of turning points and continuity within historiography. That a historical narrative, produced at a certain time and place, influence the way the historian shapes and develops the argument is problematized by an emphasis on the complex relationship between turning points and continuity as colligatory concepts within an argumentative framework. Aided by a number of examples from three historical narratives on operetta, the article stresses the importance of creating new narratives about the past. Two specific examples from the history of operetta, the birth of the genre and the role of music, are used to illustrate the need to revise not only the use of source material and the narrative strategy used, but also how the argument proposed by the historian gathers strength. The interpretation of turning points and continuity as colligatory concepts illustrate the need to revise earlier historical narratives when trying to counteract the repetitiveness of history.

Indigenous approaches to the past: ‘Creative histories’ at the Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kiera Lindsey
Keyword(s):  
Visual Art ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Responses ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Way

This article discusses a recent art project created by the Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi artist Jonathon Jones, which was commissioned to commemorate the opening of the revitalized Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney in early 2020. Jones’ work involves a dramatic installation of red and white crushed stones laid throughout the grounds of the barracks, merging the image of the emu footprint with that of the English broad convict arrow to ‘consider Australia’s layered history and contemporary cultural relations’. This work was accompanied by a ‘specially-curated programme’ of performances, workshops, storytelling and Artist Talks. Together, these elements were designed to unpack how certain ‘stories determine the ways we came together as a nation’. As one of the speakers of the Artist Talk’s programme, I had a unique opportunity to experiment with what colleagues and I have been calling ‘Creative histories’ in reference to the way some artists and historians are choosing to communicate their research about the past in ways that experiment with form and function and push disciplinary or generic boundaries. This article reflects upon how these two distinct creative history projects – one visual art, the other performative – renegotiate the complex and contested pasts of the Hyde Park Barracks. I suggest that both examples speak to the role of memory and creativity in shaping cultural responses to Australia’s colonial past, while Jones' programme illustrates how Indigenous artists and academics are making a profound intervention into contemporary understandings of how history is ‘done’ in Australia.

Postnatal care

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 293-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Devoshree Chatterjee
Keyword(s):  
Maternity Care ◽  
Postnatal Care ◽  
Postnatal Period ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Common

The role of GPs in providing maternity care has changed dramatically over the past 30 years, with a trend towards declining involvement; however, recent proposals have suggested greater involvement is required. Nevertheless, the GP remains an important point of contact for postnatal advice, and it is the GP who usually carries out the 6-week postnatal maternal check. This article aims to provide an overview of the common types of problems mothers may encounter in the postnatal period and how they can be appropriately managed. It also provides a guide for the topics to be covered during the 6-week postnatal maternal check.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document