Conception and Interpretation of Interdisciplinarity in Research Practice: Findings from Group Discussions in the Emerging Field of Digital Transformation.

In recent years, we have been observing the phenomenon of an emerging scientific field: digital transformation research (DTR). Due to the diversity and complexity of its object of research digital, transformation is not effectively researchable if confined to the boundaries of individual disciplines. In the light of Scientific/Intellectual Movement theory (Frickel and Gross 2005), we wonder how interdisciplinarity could and should be mobilized to further advance the development of the field of DTR. To answer this question, we (a) need to understand how interdisciplinarity is conceived and (b) how it is considered in research practice by researchers in the emerging field. This is important, as scientists' application of interdisciplinarity will highly influence an emerging field, shape its growth, consolidation as well as its academic establishment. We conducted six group discussions with 26 researchers from different disciplines and career levels (PhD students, postdocs, professors). The discussions were studied with a structuring qualitative content analysis. The results reflect the vagueness of the concept of interdisciplinarity. Interdisciplinarity is largely conceived as multidisciplinarity. Further, the interviewees mentioned more challenges than opportunities when it comes to interdisciplinary DTR. The present study widens the scientific understanding about how researchers of different career levels perceive, learn, and practice interdisciplinarity in DTR. It further provides valuable indications of how interdisciplinary research in an emerging field can be profitably shaped for practice.

[Motives, goals and anticipated barriers as experienced by employees engaged in an initiative promoting sustainability at a general hospital - A qualitative analysis]. / Motive, Ziele und erwartete Barrieren engagierter Mitarbeiter*innen einer Nachhaltigkeitsinitiative an einem Krankenhaus der Maximalversorgung ­ eine qualitative Analyse.

BACKGROUND: As a consequence of the climate crisis, a drastic reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and a transformation towards a sustainable economy are indispensable for the health care sector. METHODS: For the present study, barriers and facilitators in implementing a transformation towards more sustainability were evaluated in qualitative interviews with members of an initiative attempting to establish more sustainability at a general hospital. RESULTS: In 12 interviews, the interviewees were asked about the necessary personal characteristics for their commitment, short- and long-term ideas about how to reduce green house gas emissions, as well as barriers and facilitators of the organization's structure and of the societal context. CONCLUSION: The methods for implementing more sustainability at a general hospital are mostly known. However, more knowledge is needed about the capacity to withstand both organizational barriers and feelings of hopelessness and impotence in order to preserve one's ability to act.

An established protocol for generating transgenic wheat for wheat functional genomics via particle bombardment.

Wheat is one of the most important food crops in the world and is considered one of the top targets in crop biotechnology. With the high-quality reference genomes of wheat and its relative species and the recent burst of genomic resources in Triticeae, demands to perform gene functional studies in wheat and genetic improvement have been rapidly increasing, requiring that production of transgenic wheat should become a routine technique. While established for more than 20 years, the particle bombardment-mediated wheat transformation has not become routine yet, with only a handful of labs being proficient in this technique. This could be due to, at least partly, the low transformation efficiency and the technical difficulties. Here, we describe the current version of this method through adaptation and optimization. We report the detailed protocol of producing transgenic wheat by the particle gun, including several critical steps, from the selection of appropriate explants (i.e., immature scutella), the preparation of DNA-coated gold particles, and several established strategies of tissue culture. More importantly, with over 20 years of experience in wheat transformation in our lab, we share the many technical details and recommendations and emphasize that the particle bombardment-mediated approach has fewer limitations in genotype dependency and vector construction when compared with the Agrobacterium-mediated methods. The particle bombardment-mediated method has been successful for over 30 wheat genotypes, from the tetraploid durum wheat to the hexaploid common wheat, from modern elite varieties to landraces. In conclusion, the particle bombardment-mediated wheat transformation has demonstrated its potential and wide applications, and the full set of protocol, experience, and successful reports in many wheat genotypes described here will further its impacts, making it a routine and robust technique in crop research labs worldwide.

Microscopy and biomimetics: the NanoSuit® method and image retrieval platform.

This review aims to clarify a suitable method towards achieving next-generation sustainability. As represented by the term 'Anthropocene', the Earth, including humans, is entering a critical era; therefore, science has a great responsibility to solve it. Biomimetics, the emulation of the models, systems and elements of nature, especially biological science, is a powerful tool to approach sustainability problems. Microscopy has made great progress with the technology of observing biological and artificial materials and its techniques have been continuously improved, most recently through the NanoSuit® method. As one of the most important tools across many facets of research and development, microscopy has produced a large amount of accumulated digital data. However, it is difficult to extract useful data for making things as biomimetic ideas despite a large amount of biological data. Here, we would like to find a way to organically connect the indispensable microscopic data with the new biomimetics to solve complex human problems.

Simultaneous Treatment of Heart and Brain and Its Transformation of Chinese Medicine： History， Present Situation and Thinking / 中国实验方剂学杂志

The high morbidity and fatality rates of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases seriously harm human health，greatly affect the quality of life and increase the burden of disease. Thus， more and more attention has been paid to the relationship between heart and brain. "Simultaneous treatment of heart and brain" is the continuous deepening and development of the theory of "simultaneous treatment of different diseases" in traditional Chinese medicine （TCM）， and exploring the relationship between heart and brain as well as the current situation of Chinese medicine treatment has important clinical significance for the establishment of integrated traditional Chinese and western medicine diagnosis and treatment programs of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. Through a systematic theoretical tracing of the "simultaneous treatment of heart and brain"，the authors held that cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases had the same origin，and that heart and brain took blood as the material basis and governed mind jointly. They also expounded the modern biological relationship of the simultaneous treatment of heart and brain. In other words，the pathogenic factors of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases were the same， with complicated comorbidities， and the disorders of neurohumoral reflex and endocrine system and immune system regulation could affect each other's function. Additionally，the present situation of clinical application of Chinese medicine for simultaneous treatment of heart and brain and its intervention effect on cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases were discussed. It was found that these Chinese medicines could protect cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases through multi-target，multi-pathway and multi-link regulation. Combined with the existing problems in the current research，the authors thought and looked forward to the practical strategies of treating cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases with Chinese medicine by paying attention to key groups，focusing on dominant diseases，giving full play to the value of Chinese medicine，and scientifically explaining the connotation of simultaneous treatment of heart and brain， in order to provide ideas and reference for the follow-up transformation application research and better guidance of clinical practice.

Testing the quality of transformative science methods: the example of the Human Scale Development approach.

Scholars and funding bodies alike are increasingly calling for transformative research that delivers socially robust and impact-oriented outcomes. This paper argues that the Human Scale Development approach (HSDA) introduced by Max-Neef and colleagues in Latin America during the 1980s can serve as a method for transformative science (TSc). HSDA is both a theory and a participatory methodology and thus contributes toward fulfilling the objectives of TSc, which are scientific, practical and educational. In this paper, we begin by explicating how the fundamental human needs (FHN) approach of the HSDA can support scholars and practitioners alike in addressing complex sustainability challenges. We then refer to the methodological adaptations to the original proposal that we have previously developed to illustrate how Max-Neef's methodological approach might be further extended and to demonstrate how these changes can strengthen HSDA and make it even more useful for generating knowledge needed in sustainability transformations. To inform and support research that builds on the co-production of knowledge, we test HSDA with regard to TSc quality criteria and show how it adds value to the existing canon of TSc methods. To this end, we develop an analytical framework that can be deployed to assess the quality of TSc methods.