A research agenda for malaria eradication: health systems and operational research

Health systems research and development is needed to support the global malaria eradication agenda. In this paper, we (the malERA Consultative Group on Health Systems and Operational Research) focus on the health systems needs of the elimination phase of malaria eradication and consider groupings of countries at different stages along the pathway to elimination. We examine the difference between the last attempt at eradication of malaria and more recent initiatives, and consider the changing health system challenges as countries make progress towards elimination. We review recent technological and theoretical developments related to health systems and the renewed commitment to strengthening health systems for universal access and greater equity. Finally, we identify a number of needs for research and development, including tools for analyzing and improving effective coverage and strengthening decision making and discuss the relevance of these needs at all levels of the health system from the community to the international level.     

暨南大学生态学专业植物学实验教学的改革与实践

植物学实验是生态学专业的基础课程之一,对生态学专业植物学实验课程的教学改革要结合专业特点和教师的科研特长,对实验课的课程体系进行优化,要在教学实践中不断完善,培养学生的实践动手能力和创新能力.该教学改革研究以2007级生态学专业本科生为对象,从优化整合实验课内容、引导学生对科研工作的兴趣和强化实践过程三个方面,对生态学系的植物学实验课进行了改革实验,取得了良好的教学效果.     

Focus: Rare Disease: Patients as Partners in Rare Disease Diagnosis and Research

There is great value in understanding the patient perspective in rare disease diagnosis and research, and in partnering actively with patients and their families throughout the process. Meaningful and respectful interaction between patients and researchers leads to learning on both sides, and ultimately, to better research outcomes. Researchers can help patients understand how research is conducted and what the latest advances and perceived gaps in research are, and patients, who have direct experience living with their health conditions, can impart to researchers what is most important to them. We describe our engagement with patients in the Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN) program, as well as the lessons we have learned to date. In the UDN, patients have been instrumental in bringing meaning to the work of clinicians and researchers, building patient communities, making the network aware of unmet patient needs, advocating for additional research funding, and disseminating UDN research findings. Although patient engagement in the UDN has already had a significant positive impact on our work, we continue to strive to involve patients earlier in the process, in the research design itself, and in addressing power dynamics that may arise between clinicians, researchers, and patients.     

病原生物学专业研究生综合素质培养的探讨

病原生物学是基础医学中一门重要学科,高素质病原生物学人才培养,是适应社会发展、满足社会需求、促进创新型人才建设的关键.作者在实际工作中,注重引导学生学习态度和思维模式的转变,开展多种形式的教学,从学习态度、科研能力、协作能力等方面对病原生物学专业研究生综合素质的培养进行了初步的探讨,把研究生带到知识前沿、形成研究问题、引导批判和创新,使研究生掌握一定的科研思路与科研方法;注重动手能力的训练,严格施教,加强学术道德教育,探索高素质病原生物学研究生培养的新模式.     

Best Practices for Core Facilities: Handling External Customers

This article addresses the growing interest among U.S. scientific organizations and federal funding agencies in strengthening research partnerships between American universities and the private sector. It outlines how core facilities at universities can contribute to this partnership by offering services and access to high-end instrumentation to both nonprofit organizations and commercial organizations. We describe institutional policies (best practices) and procedures (terms and conditions) that are essential for facilitating and enabling such partnerships. In addition, we provide an overview of the relevant federal regulations that apply to external use of academic core facilities and offer a set of guidelines for handling them. We conclude by encouraging directors and managers of core facilities to work with the relevant organizational offices to promote and nurture such partnerships. If handled appropriately, we believe such partnerships can be a win-win situation for both organizations that will support research and bolster the American economy.     

Anglo-Canadian Exchange in General Practice: British View of Canadian General Practice

The Canadian general practitioner is remunerated by an item-of-service system of payment which encourages servicing demands rather than needs, discourages delegation of work to paramedical workers, and involves his staff in a massive amount of paper work. He has an excellent hospital attachment, which unfortunately is overdone. His community facilities are piecemeal and his office organization is rudimentary. There are few incentives for good general practice in the community. He spends an inordinate amount of time examining well people. The university departments of general practice are extremely good and much should be heard from them very quickly. The patient''s attitude towards his doctor is quite different from the one prevailing currently in Britain.I returned happily to British general practice.     

Current Practice in Software Development for Computational Neuroscience and How to Improve It

Almost all research work in computational neuroscience involves software. As researchers try to understand ever more complex systems, there is a continual need for software with new capabilities. Because of the wide range of questions being investigated, new software is often developed rapidly by individuals or small groups. In these cases, it can be hard to demonstrate that the software gives the right results. Software developers are often open about the code they produce and willing to share it, but there is little appreciation among potential users of the great diversity of software development practices and end results, and how this affects the suitability of software tools for use in research projects. To help clarify these issues, we have reviewed a range of software tools and asked how the culture and practice of software development affects their validity and trustworthiness.We identified four key questions that can be used to categorize software projects and correlate them with the type of product that results. The first question addresses what is being produced. The other three concern why, how, and by whom the work is done. The answers to these questions show strong correlations with the nature of the software being produced, and its suitability for particular purposes. Based on our findings, we suggest ways in which current software development practice in computational neuroscience can be improved and propose checklists to help developers, reviewers, and scientists to assess the quality of software and whether particular pieces of software are ready for use in research.     

Bridging Restoration Science and Practice: Results and Analysis of a Survey from the 2009 Society for Ecological Restoration International Meeting

Developing and strengthening a more mutualistic relationship between the science of restoration ecology and the practice of ecological restoration has been a central but elusive goal of SERI since its inaugural meeting in 1989. We surveyed the delegates to the 2009 SERI World Conference to learn more about their perceptions of and ideas for improving restoration science, practice, and scientist/practitioner relationships. The respondents' assessments of restoration practice were less optimistic than their assessments of restoration science. Only 26% believed that scientist/practitioner relationships were “generally mutually beneficial and supportive of each other,” and the “science–practice gap” was the second and third most frequently cited category of factors limiting the science and practice of restoration, respectively (“insufficient funding” was first in both cases). Although few faulted practitioners for ignoring available science, many criticized scientists for ignoring the pressing needs of practitioners and/or failing to effectively communicate their work to nonscientists. Most of the suggestions for bridging the gap between restoration science and practice focused on (1) developing the necessary political support for more funding of restoration science, practice, and outreach; and (2) creating alternative research paradigms to both facilitate on‐the‐ground projects and promote more mutualistic exchanges between scientists and practitioners. We suggest that one way to implement these recommendations is to create a “Restoration Extension Service” modeled after the United States Department of Agriculture's Cooperative Extension Service. We also recommend more events that bring together a fuller spectrum of restoration scientists, practitioners, and relevant stakeholders.     

浅议微生物学教学综合改革

探讨了当前微生物学教学在教材建设、效率效果、成绩评定、教改应用等方面综合改革的方法和方向。立体教材是教材发展方向。教学效率的提高需要根据知识点灵活选取方法。教学效果的提高需要注重贴近社会需求、加强实践能力培养、紧密联系生产实际。微生物学理论课程成绩可采用客观公正题小量大的闭卷模式,实验成绩可通过独立实验来考核。好的微生物学教改成果应推广应用。     

Bonding, biophilia, biosynergy, and the future of primates in the wild

Human and nonhuman primates bond with one another in countless ways, and the results are varied and vital to the individuals and species involved. The manifesto that is the basis for the collection of essays in which this commentary is included proposes that the "human/nonhuman bonds that arise in primatological research and practice deserve and demand study and research." An essential corollary of this proposal is that the primatologists themselves must be studied. The aim of this essay is to explore the influence of human/nonhuman primate bonding on conservation practice and on the future of primates in the wild. This commentary applies the author's professional experience as a conservation psychologist and his research on the impact of profound interspecies bonds on human worldviews, attitudes, and behavior. It examines two general categories of bonds: those driven by Biophilia (human fascination with life) and those influenced by Biosynergy (mutual enrichment of life). It is the author's premise that biosynergy promotes complex collaborative interspecies bonds that broaden the conservationist's desire to enhance synergy among all organisms in an ecosystem. Conversely, biophilia induces relatively simple unidirectional bonds between humans and other animals that deepen the conservationist's desire to understand and protect certain species. This contrast raises some crucial questions. Do biophilia-driven bonds between conservationists and their favorite primates blind them to the synergistic needs of all species and impair their ability to work for sustained preservation of threatened habitat? Does biosynergy-based human/nature bonding enhance focus on conservation as an ecological science and thus ignore species-specific factors crucial to assure survival of endangered primates? How can both types of bonds be optimally applied to the conservation of wildlife and wilderness?     

Locating primitive communism in capitalist social formations

This essay argues that examining everyday dynamics in working-class communities, variable as they are through race and gender intersections, gives us a way of investigating the persistence and partial reproduction of primitive communism within capitalist social formations. Visible through occasions and needs demanding the creation of use-values beyond mere consumption, a resistant and non-capitalist set of work and exchange relations exist alongside—and at times in opposition to—institutions and dynamics that reproductive of capitalism. These non-exclusive spheres of kin-constituting work, pooling, and sharing in structurally precarious neighborhoods and transnational networks are ways of trying to ensure relative security, continuity, and sustaining relationships. Within them, we need to reconceptualize work as distinct from labor and query the labor theory of value as inappropriate for appreciating the core relations of primitive communism. By this kind of analysis, we find a way to bring feminist approaches to revitalize articulating modes of production debates in Marxism and to permit appreciating in practice the meaning of making use-values in producing enduring resistance.     

Bio-Serv's 'special needs' diets provide solutions to special challenges in research

Nutritionally balanced standard diets are suitable for many lab animals at various developmental stages. But certain animal and protocol conditions- including genetic alteration; breeding difficulty; digestive upset; post-operative intervention and dehydration; and diabetes and obesity- create a requirement for special needs products to ensure animal survival and encourage reliable research outcomes. With input from technicians and scientists from numerous research facilities, Bio- Serv has worked diligently to create a line of diets, enrichment treats and supplement for research animals with special needs. Here we provide an overview of what we have learned about some of these conditions and the recommended solutions we have developed to address them.     

Linking Research to the Practice of Youth Development

The articles in this special issue address some of the challenges of strengthening the links between research and the practice of youth development and identify some approaches that have worked well. Youth development emerged from practice rather than from theory or research. Research that is most useful in the practice of youth development honors that primacy both by exploring questions that are important in practice and by engaging practitioners as partners, not merely as consumers.     

Systems biology of lactic acid bacteria: a critical review

Understanding the properties of a system as emerging from the interaction of well described parts is the most important goal of Systems Biology. Although in the practice of Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB) physiology we most often think of the parts as the proteins and metabolites, a wider interpretation of what a part is can be useful. For example, different strains or species can be the parts of a community, or we could study only the chemical reactions as the parts of metabolism (and forgetting about the enzymes that catalyze them), as is done in flux balance analysis. As long as we have some understanding of the properties of these parts, we can investigate whether their interaction leads to novel or unanticipated behaviour of the system that they constitute. There has been a tendency in the Systems Biology community to think that the collection and integration of data should continue ad infinitum, or that we will otherwise not be able to understand the systems that we study in their details. However, it may sometimes be useful to take a step back and consider whether the knowledge that we already have may not explain the system behaviour that we find so intriguing. Reasoning about systems can be difficult, and may require the application of mathematical techniques. The reward is sometimes the realization of unexpected conclusions, or in the worst case, that we still do not know enough details of the parts, or of the interactions between them. We will discuss a number of cases, with a focus on LAB-related work, where a typical systems approach has brought new knowledge or perspective, often counterintuitive, and clashing with conclusions from simpler approaches. Also novel types of testable hypotheses may be generated by the systems approach, which we will illustrate. Finally we will give an outlook on the fields of research where the systems approach may point the way for the near future.     

Community engagement in global health research that advances health equity

Community engagement is gaining prominence in global health research. So far, a philosophical rationale for why researchers should perform community engagement during such research has not been provided by ethics scholars. Its absence means that conducting community engagement is still often viewed as no more than a ‘good idea’ or ‘good practice’ rather than ethically required. In this article, we argue that shared health governance can establish grounds for requiring the engagement of low‐ and middle‐income country (LMIC) community members in global health research, where such research aims to help reduce health disparities. This philosophical basis has important implications for the ethical goals ascribed to engagement and the approach adopted to undertake it. We suggest the ethical goals of engagement in equity‐oriented global health research should include: (a) generating research topics and questions that reflect the key problems disadvantaged groups face in accessing healthcare, services and broader social determinants of health and (b) promoting the translation of research findings into policy and practice in ways that benefit the health of disadvantaged groups. We propose engagement practice should have the following features: deliberation with LMIC community members to make a range of project decisions, beginning with setting research topics and questions; inclusion of members of disadvantaged groups and those with the power to change policy and practice to benefit them; and purposeful structuring of deliberations to minimize the impact of power disparities between LMIC community members. Finally, we reflect on how these features differ from those typical of much current community engagement practice in LMICs.     

Supporting families involved in court cases about life‐sustaining treatment: Working as academics,advocates and activists

This article explores the links between our roles as academics, advocates, and activists, focusing on our research on treatment decisions for patients in vegetative and minimally conscious states. We describe how our work evolved from personal experience through traditional social science research to public engagement activities and then to advocacy and activism. We reflect on the challenges we faced in navigating the relationship between our research, advocacy, and activism, and the implications of these challenges for our research ethics and methodology—giving practical examples of how we worked with research participants, wrote up case studies and developed interventions into legal debates. We also address the implications of the impact agenda—imposed by the British Research Excellence Framework— for our actions as scholar‐activists. Finally, we ask how practicing at the borders of academia, advocacy, and activism can inform research—helping to contextualize, sensitize, and engage theory with practice, leading to a more robust analysis of data and its implications, and helping to ensure a dialogue between research, theory, lived experience, front‐line practice, law, and public policy.     

Giving addicts their drug of choice: the problem of consent

Researchers working on drug addiction may, for a variety of reasons, want to carry out research which involves giving addicts their drug of choice. In carrying out this research consent needs to be obtained from those addicts recruited to participate in it. Concerns have been raised about whether or not such addicts are able to give this consent. Despite their differences, however, both sides in this debate appear to be agreed that the way to resolve this issue is to determine whether or not addicts have irresistible cravings for drugs – if they do, then they cannot consent to this type of research; if they do not, then they can. This I will argue is a mistake. Determining whether or not addicts can say 'No' to offers of drugs will not help us to make much progress here. Instead we need to look at the various ways in which different types of research may undermine an addict's competence to give consent. What we will find is that the details of the research make a big difference here and that, as such, we need to steer a course between, on the one hand, painting all addicts as being unable to consent to research which involves providing them with drugs, and, on the other, maintaining that there are no problems in obtaining consent from addicts to take part in such research.     

Impact of health research capacity strengthening in low- and middle-income countries: the case of WHO/TDR programmes

Background

Measuring the impact of capacity strengthening support is a priority for the international development community. Several frameworks exist for monitoring and evaluating funding results and modalities. Based on its long history of support, we report on the impact of individual and institutional capacity strengthening programmes conducted by the UNICEF/UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) and on the factors that influenced the outcome of its Research Capacity Strengthening (RCS) activities.

Methodology and Principal Findings

A mix of qualitative and quantitative methods (questionnaires and in-depth interviews) was applied to a selected group of 128 individual and 20 institutional capacity development grant recipients that completed their training/projects between 2000 and 2008. A semi-structured interview was also conducted on site with scientists from four institutions. Most of the grantees, both individual and institutional, reported beneficial results from the grant. However, glaring inequities stemming from gender imbalances and a language bias towards English were identified. The study showed that skills improvement through training contributed to better formulation of research proposals, but not necessarily to improved project implementation or communication of results. Appreciation of the institutional grants'' impact varied among recipient countries. The least developed countries saw the programmes as essential for supporting basic infrastructure and activities. Advanced developing countries perceived the research grants as complementary to available resources, and particularly suitable for junior researchers who were not yet able to compete for major international grants.

Conclusion

The study highlights the need for a more equitable process to improve the effectiveness of health research capacity strengthening activities. Support should be tailored to the existing research capacity in disease endemic countries and should focus on strengthening national health research systems, particularly in the least developing countries. The engagement of stakeholders at country level would facilitate the design of more specific and comprehensive strategies based on local needs.     

Study protocol of a mixed-methods evaluation of a cluster randomized trial to improve the safety of NSAID and antiplatelet prescribing: data-driven quality improvement in primary care

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Trials of complex interventions are criticized for being 'black box', so the UK Medical Research Council recommends carrying out a process evaluation to explain the trial findings. We believe it is good practice to pre-specify and publish process evaluation protocols to set standards and minimize bias. Unlike protocols for trials, little guidance or standards exist for the reporting of process evaluations. This paper presents the mixed-method process evaluation protocol of a cluster randomized trial, drawing on a framework designed by the authors.Methods/designThis mixed-method evaluation is based on four research questions and maps data collection to a logic model of how the data-driven quality improvement in primary care (DQIP) intervention is expected to work. Data collection will be predominately by qualitative case studies in eight to ten of the trial practices, focus groups with patients affected by the intervention and quantitative analysis of routine practice data, trial outcome and questionnaire data and data from the DQIP intervention. DISCUSSION: We believe that pre-specifying the intentions of a process evaluation can help to minimize bias arising from potentially misleading post-hoc analysis. We recognize it is also important to retain flexibility to examine the unexpected and the unintended. From that perspective, a mixed-methods evaluation allows the combination of exploratory and flexible qualitative work, and more pre-specified quantitative analysis, with each method contributing to the design, implementation and interpretation of the other.As well as strengthening the study the authors hope to stimulate discussion among their academic colleagues about publishing protocols for evaluations of randomized trials of complex interventions.Data-driven quality improvement in primary care trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov: NCT01425502.     

美国实验动物医学发展简史——对中国实验动物医学发展的思考

美国实验动物医学的发展起始于上世纪50年代,目前可能代表着世界上该领域的最高水平.本文对其发展史作了简的地回顾,包括生物医学领域对实验动物兽医的需求,实验动物科学领域早期的兽医实践,实验动物医学会的诞生,实验动物医学领域的培训、教育和考核等的沿革,以及相关法律法规对实验动物医学发展的影响等.笔者依据自身的工作实践和中国国情对中国实验动物医学领域的发展进行了一些思考,期盼实验动物相关法律法规能更加完善、在兽医教育中适度增加实验动物医学相关内容、加强实验动物医学领军人才的培养、加强实验动物医学界多渠道的交流、增加相关领域科研投入和支持等.中国要站在西方发达国家的肩膀上,借鉴其成功的经验,发展有中国特色的实验动物医学事业.