Investigation of the teaching cognition and capabilities of clinical advisers for masters degree level nursing specialty graduate students

Purpose:To assess the culturing cognition and teaching of core capabilities of clinical advisers for masters degree level nursing graduate students in order to provide criteria for selecting and training clinical advisers,and to monitor clinical teaching quality.Methods:A questionnaire was completed by 66 nursing specialty clinical advisers.The questionnaire was divided into three sections:basic condition,culturing cognition of the nursing specialty graduate students,and self-evaluation of teaching core capabilities as measured by the Clinical Nursing Teachers Core Capabilities Graphic Rating Scale.Results:Forty-five of the surveyed advisers served undergraduate level students(68.18%),and seven of them(10.61%)had experience advising graduate nursing students.The advisers,in general,had limited knowledge regarding guidance for nursing specialty graduate students.The self evaluation total score for core capabilities teaching was(120.55
7.37),containing professional capability(4.47±0.34),leadership capability(4.01±0.22),problem solving capability(3.89±0.30),and education teaching capability(3.65±0.23).The highest scored item was the capability to assess and handle a patients’condition(4.44±0.56),while the lowest scored item was the capability to do scientific research(3.29±0.89).Conclusion:Clinical advisers for nursing specialty graduate students in our survey were generally inexperienced with regarding to training and culturing nursing graduate students.These advisers were prepared for core teaching competency,but were not qualified to conduct scientific research.Based on these results,it would be beneficial to provide the clinical advisers more training on teaching cognition for graduate students and improve their competency to perform scientific research.

Speaker-independent speech emotion recognition by fusion of functional and accompanying paralanguage features

Functional paralanguage includes considerable emotion information, and it is insensitive to speaker changes. To improve the emotion recognition accuracy under the condition of speaker-independence, a fusion method combining the functional paralanguage features with the accompanying paralanguage features is proposed for the speaker-independent speech emotion recognition. Using this method, the functional paralanguages, such as laughter, cry, and sigh, are used to assist speech emotion recognition. The contributions of our work are threefold. First, one emotional speech database including six kinds of functional paralanguage and six typical emotions were recorded by our research group. Second, the functional paralanguage is put forward to recognize the speech emotions combined with the accompanying paralanguage features. Third, a fusion algorithm based on confidences and probabilities is proposed to combine the functional paralanguage features with the accompanying paralanguage features for speech emotion recognition. We evaluate the usefulness of the functional paralanguage features and the fusion algorithm in terms of precision, recall, and F1-measurement on the emotional speech database recorded by our research group. The overall recognition accuracy achieved for six emotions is over 67% in the speaker-independent condition using the functional paralanguage features.

Pathway-based Analysis Tools for Complex Diseases: A Review

Genetic studies are traditionally based on single-gene analysis. The use of these analyses can pose tremendous challenges for elucidating complicated genetic interplays involved in complex human diseases. Modern pathway-based analysis provides a technique, which allows a comprehen- sive understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying complex diseases. Extensive studies uti- lizing the methods and applications for pathway-based analysis have significantly advanced our capacity to explore large-scale omics data, which has rapidly accumulated in biomedical fields. This article is a comprehensive review of the pathway-based analysis methods the powerful methods with the potential to uncover the biological depths of the complex diseases. The general concepts and procedures for the pathway-based analysis methods are introduced and then, a comprehensive review of the major approaches for this analysis is presented. In addition, a list of available path- way-based analysis software and databases is provided. Finally, future directions and challenges for the methodological development and applications of pathway-based analysis techniques are dis- cussed. This review will provide a useful guide to dissect complex diseases.