Diurnal.plant.tools in 2024: expanding to Marchantia polymorpha and four angiosperms.

Diurnal gene expression is a pervasive phenomenon occurring across all kingdoms of life, orchestrating adaptive responses to daily environmental fluctuations and thus enhancing organismal fitness. Our understanding of the plant circadian clock is primarily derived from studies in Arabidopsis and direct comparisons are difficult due to differences in gene family sizes. To this end, the identification of functional orthologs based on diurnal and tissue expression is necessary. The diurnal.plant.tools database constitutes a repository of gene expression profiles from 17 members of the Archaeplastida lineage, with built-in tools facilitating cross-species comparisons. In this database update, we expand the dataset with diurnal gene expression from 4 agriculturally significant crop species and Marchantia, a plant of evolutionary significance. Notably, the inclusion of diurnal gene expression data for Marchantia enables researchers to glean insights into the evolutionary trajectories of the circadian clock and other biological processes spanning from algae to angiosperms. Moreover, integrating diurnal gene expression data with datasets from related gene co-expression databases, such as CoNekt-Plants and CoNekt-Stress, which contain gene expression data for tissue and perturbation experiments, provides a comprehensive overview of gene functions across diverse biological contexts. This expanded database serves as a valuable resource for elucidating the intricacies of diurnal gene regulation and its evolutionary underpinnings in plant biology.

Preparation for practice: What are students learning for?

BACKGROUND: Junior doctors often feel inadequately prepared for clinical practice. Current approaches to optimising the pre-clinical to clinical transition generally overlook intrinsic factors, yet motivation and emotional engagement are likely to be important in building clinical competence. To address this gap, we explored the attitudes of medical undergraduates and clinicians towards learning and how these attitudes seemed to affect learning motivation. METHODS: We conducted semi-structured individual or group interviews with 22 medical undergraduates and eight clinicians. Interviews were transcribed and thematically analysed. RESULTS: Students and clinicians had differing perspectives on the content and context of learning, as well as divergent attitudes towards learning. Students focused on factual knowledge and examination performance, preferably with simple, clear-cut answers, privileged book learning, and equated medical knowledge with clinical competence. Conversely, clinicians focused on soft skills and clinical reasoning, emphasised learning through observation and experience, assessments that acknowledged complexity and context, and saw knowledge as a foundation for practice. Further, clinicians mostly felt that the pre-clinical curriculum over-emphasised factual recall of knowledge that was neither useful nor relevant for clinical practice. CONCLUSION: We found that students tended to be extrinsically motivated by examination performance, which led to adopting surface learning approaches. This in turn led to a mismatch between the pre-clinical emphasis on factual recall and the higher-order skills necessary for clinical practice. We propose that a shift away from content overload and high-stakes assessment towards patient-centric teaching approaches may help re-orientate students towards intrinsic motivation and more effective learning methods.

ChatGPT versus a customized AI chatbot (Anatbuddy) for anatomy education: A comparative pilot study.

Large Language Models (LLMs) have the potential to improve education by personalizing learning. However, ChatGPT-generated content has been criticized for sometimes producing false, biased, and/or hallucinatory information. To evaluate AI's ability to return clear and accurate anatomy information, this study generated a custom interactive and intelligent chatbot (Anatbuddy) through an Open AI Application Programming Interface (API) that enables seamless AI-driven interactions within a secured cloud infrastructure. Anatbuddy was programmed through a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) method to provide context-aware responses to user queries based on a predetermined knowledge base. To compare their outputs, various queries (i.e., prompts) on thoracic anatomy (n = 18) were fed into Anatbuddy and ChatGPT 3.5. A panel comprising three experienced anatomists evaluated both tools' responses for factual accuracy, relevance, completeness, coherence, and fluency on a 5-point Likert scale. These ratings were reviewed by a third party blinded to the study, who revised and finalized scores as needed. Anatbuddy's factual accuracy (mean ± SD = 4.78/5.00 ± 0.43; median = 5.00) was rated significantly higher (U = 84, p = 0.01) than ChatGPT's accuracy (4.11 ± 0.83; median = 4.00). No statistically significant differences were detected between the chatbots for the other variables. Given ChatGPT's current content knowledge limitations, we strongly recommend the anatomy profession develop a custom AI chatbot for anatomy education utilizing a carefully curated knowledge base to ensure accuracy. Further research is needed to determine students' acceptance of custom chatbots for anatomy education and their influence on learning experiences and outcomes.

Navigating Confidentiality Dilemmas in Student Support: An Institutional Ethnography Informed Study.

Introduction: School-level student support programmes provide students with pastoral care and support for academic, wellbeing and other issues often via a personal tutor (PT). PT work is a balancing act between respecting the confidential information divulged by students and doing what is expected in terms of accountability and duty of care. We aimed to explore how tutors manage this tension, with the aim of advancing understanding of student support programmes. Methods: This qualitative study was informed by an Institutional Ethnography approach. We conducted 11 semi-structured interviews with PTs from one medical school in Singapore. We considered how they worked in relation to relevant national and institutional-level policy documents and reporting guidelines. Data collection and analysis were iterative. Results: We crafted two composite accounts to illustrate the dilemmas faced by PTs. The first depicts a PT who supports student confidentiality in the same way as doctor-patient confidentiality. The second account is a PT who adopted a more mentoring approach. Both tutors faced confidentiality challenges, using different strategies to "work around" and balance tensions between accountability and maintaining trust. PTs were torn between school and student expectations. Discussion: Fostering trust in the tutor-student relationship is a priority for tutors but tensions between confidentiality, accountability and governance sometimes make it difficult for tutors to reconcile with doing what they think is best for the student. A more nuanced understanding of the concept of confidentiality may help support PTs and ultimately students.

Opening the black box of school-wide student wellbeing programmes: a critical narrative review informed by activity theory.

PURPOSE: Medical schools have a duty of care to support student wellbeing but there is little guidance on how to translate this mandate into practice. Often schools focus on implementing and reporting individual-level interventions which typically only address one aspect of wellbeing. Conversely, less attention has been paid to holistic school-wide approaches towards student wellbeing that address multiple wellbeing dimensions. Thus, this review sought to improve our understanding of how support is mediated within such school-wide wellbeing programmes. METHOD: This critical narrative review was conducted in two stages. First, the authors searched several key databases for papers published up to 25th May 2021, using a systematic search strategy and TREND checklist to guide our data extraction process. We later expanded our search to include literature published from the original date to 20th May 2023. Second, the identified articles were critically analysed using activity theory as a theoretical lens to aid explanation. RESULTS: We found school-wide wellbeing programmes emphasize social connectivity and building a sense of community. Tutors take a key role in the activity of supporting students' wellbeing. We mapped out the activity system components to describe the complexity of this tutor role. This analysis illustrated: tensions and contradictions in the system which may open up opportunities for change; the importance of context for influencing how system components interact; and that students' trust underpins the whole activity system. CONCLUSIONS: Our review shines a light into the black-box of holistic school-wide wellbeing programmes. We identified that tutors play a key role in wellbeing systems but confidentiality is a recurring tension which may jeopardise a wellbeing system. The time has come to investigate these systems in more detail, embracing and exploring the role of context at the same time as looking for common threads.

'But what if you miss something ?': factors that influence medical student consideration of cost in decision making.

CONTEXT: Cost-conscious care is critical for healthcare sustainability but evidence suggests that most doctors do not consider cost in their clinical decision making. A critical step in changing this is understanding the barriers to encouraging behaviours and attitudes related to cost-conscious care. We therefore conducted a qualitative study to address the research question: what factors influence consideration of cost in emergency medicine (ED) clinical decision making? METHODS: This was a qualitative focus group study using patient vignettes to explore attitudes towards cost-conscious clinical decision making. Participants were Year 4 and Year 5 medical students from Singapore, a country with a fee-for-service healthcare system. After a data-driven initial data analysis, and to make sense of a multitude of factors impacting on cost conscious care, we selected Fishbein's integrative model of behavioural prediction to underpin secondary data analysis. RESULTS: Via four focus groups with 21 participants, we identified five main themes relevant to the integrative model of behavioural prediction. These were: attitudes towards considering cost when managing a patient (e.g., "better safe than sorry"); normative beliefs (e.g., doing what others do, perceptions of patient wishes); efficacy beliefs (e.g., no authority to take decisions or challenge); skills and knowledge (e.g., little knowledge of costs), and environmental constraints (e.g., the nature of the healthcare system). DISCUSSION: Medical students do not consider cost in their clinical decision making due to numerous factors, of which lack of knowledge of costs is but one. While some of the factors identified reflect those found in previous studies with residents and fully-trained staff, and in other contexts, theory driven analysis added value in that it facilitated a richer exploration of why students do not consider cost in clinical decision making. Our findings provide insight to inform how best to engage and empower educators and learners in teaching and learning about cost-conscious care.

Protist.guru: A Comparative Transcriptomics Database for Protists.

During the last few decades, the study of microbial ecology has been enabled by molecular and genomic data. DNA sequencing has revealed the surprising extent of microbial diversity and how microbial processes run global ecosystems. However, significant gaps in our understanding of the microbial world remain, and one example is that microbial eukaryotes, or protists, are still largely neglected. To address this gap, we used gene expression data from 17 protist species to create protist.guru: an online database equipped with tools for identifying co-expressed genes, gene families, and co-expression clusters enriched for specific biological functions. Here, we show how our database can be used to reveal genes involved in essential pathways, such as the synthesis of secondary carotenoids in Haematococcus lacustris. We expect protist.guru to serve as a valuable resource for protistologists, as well as a catalyst for discoveries and new insights into the biological processes of microbial eukaryotes. AVAILABILITY: The database and co-expression networks are freely available from http://protist.guru/. The expression matrices and sample annotations are found in the supplementary data.

Effect of Seating Arrangement on Class Engagement in Team-based Learning: a Quasi-Experimental Study.

INTRODUCTION: This study investigated the effects of seating distance and orientation on engagement in novice and experienced learners in a large classroom explicitly designed for team-based learning (TBL). Learning what affects TBL engagement may improve its implementation. METHODS: Participants were novice first-year and experienced second-year undergraduate medical students in Singapore (male = 103, female = 57). Their age ranged from 18 to 23 (M = 19.5, SD = 1.06). This quasi-experimental study considered two factors. Firstly, the distance from the teams' table to the tutor's table. Secondly, students' orientation at each table, with either their front or back facing the tutor. Engagement was measured using two instruments, Situational Cognitive Engagement Measure and Classroom Engagement Survey at two TBL sessions - before and after swapping seating arrangements. RESULTS: For experienced students, seating distance did not significantly affect engagement (p = 0.08-0.89). Novice student's engagement levels decreased significantly for those who moved further; M = 3.30 to 2.98 (p = 0.009-0.023). However, overall engagement also decreased post-swap regardless of direction moved; M = 3.26 to 3.00 (p = 0.004). For both cohorts, seating orientation did not significantly affect engagement (p = 0.07-0.62). Those unaffected by seating arrangement commended the classroom's design, such as screens all around and quality audio-visual system. Novice students exhibited a stronger preference to sit nearer to the tutor than experienced students. Both groups preferred sitting with their front-facing the tutor. DISCUSSION: Within specially designed TBL classrooms, seating distance and orientation did not significantly affect engagement. Technologically enhanced team-centric spaces provide a favourable environment for TBL, though students' preferences for seats may change with more TBL experience. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40670-021-01469-7.