Journals
2026 EN
Boscardin Christy K. · Cookson John · Goddard-Fuller Rikki
+3 more
This paper provides twelve practical tips for institutions preparing to submit successful applications for the ASPIRE Award in the category of Assessment of Students, part of AMEE’s global initiative to recognize excellence in health professions education. This paper emphasizes the importance of achieving institutional buy-in, aligning assessment systems with the school’s mission and context, assembling a strong submission team, and providing explanation of the award criteria. It highlights the collection and presentation of comprehensive evidence, including metrics like psychometric analysis and construct alignment, to demonstrate standards of excellence. Engaging students in the application process is critical, as their perspectives enhance transparency, equity, and accountability. Institutions are encouraged to address inconsistencies, demonstrate impact through quality improvement cycles, and showcase their commitment to continuous learning and professional development. The tips also include the value of engaging with the ASPIRE Academy for expert support and collaboration during the application process. This paper highlights that the ASPIRE award is an opportunity to foster reflection, collaboration, and innovation, while contributing to global standards of excellence in assessment in health professions education.
Journals
2026 EN
Goddard-Fuller Rikki · Kemp Sandra · Boursicot Katharine
A critical component of all programmes of instruction in Medical and Health Professions Education (MHPE) disciplines is the assessment of learning and assurance of clinical competency, spanning knowledge, clinical/technical performance skills, and professionalism. AMEE’s ASPIRE-to-Excellence assessment framework draws together a series of key, evidence-based components of comprehensive assessment systems, providing a matrix to ‘assess assessment’ through the following stimulus questions How does an assessment programme serve and support the mission of the institution and the goal of MHPE globally in enhancing and improving the health of both populations and individuals? Does the assessment programme support, enhance, and create learning opportunities? How does the assessment programme ensure the competence of students as they progress? How is the assessment programme subject to a rigorous and continuous quality control process? How does the assessment programme demonstrate a commitment to scholarship and innovation, including the dissemination of good practice? In this paper, these elements are detailed together with descriptions of strategies that align with how each can be successfully demonstrated and evidenced. Drawing on details of assessment practices seen in a range of submissions to the ASPIRE award programme, from a range of jurisdictions and settings, the paper highlights strategies that align with success for excellence in assessment. How does an assessment programme serve and support the mission of the institution and the goal of MHPE globally in enhancing and improving the health of both populations and individuals? Does the assessment programme support, enhance, and create learning opportunities? How does the assessment programme ensure the competence of students as they progress? How is the assessment programme subject to a rigorous and continuous quality control process? How does the assessment programme demonstrate a commitment to scholarship and innovation, including the dissemination of good practice? In this paper, these elements are detailed together with descriptions of strategies that align with how each can be successfully demonstrated and evidenced. Drawing on details of assessment practices seen in a range of submissions to the ASPIRE award programme, from a range of jurisdictions and settings, the paper highlights strategies that align with success for excellence in assessment.
Journals
2026 EN
Ghias Kulsoom · Rourke James · Jenkins John
+8 more
Starting in 2024 to date, eight publications in the special series Building Excellence into Medical and Health Professional Education Programs in Medical Teacher have highlighted elements that define and evidence excellence across the domains of curriculum development, assessment, student engagement, faculty development, simulation, innovation, social accountability, and international collaboration. This commentary concludes the series by identifying critical cross-cutting features of the published articles, positioning excellence as an institutional ethos grounded in alignment of mission, cultures, and practices. Specifically, excellence is developmental, context responsive, and demonstrated through implementation, outcomes, and sustained impact. The AMEE ASPIRE-to-Excellence framework provides a constructive, globally informed roadmap for continuous quality improvement, supporting institutions in advancing equitable, socially responsive, and future ready education to meet evolving professional and societal needs.
Journals
2026 EN
Grimley Emma · Woods Orlando · Kong Lily
Schools play a pivotal role in guiding students to become certain types of people. International schools strive to educate global citizens who are adaptable and culturally curious. As part of this mission, international schools encourage the celebration of religious diversity through institutional accommodation and school celebrations. The eclectic mix of belonging and becoming encountered in international schools can lead to the creation of a more-than-national sense of identity. For Indian expatriates in Singapore, this becomes particularly complex due to degrees of attachment to India, feelings of belonging within Singapore, and the pursuit of a transnational ‘Global Indian’ identity. Drawing on 53 interviews with students, teachers, and school administrators from international schools in Singapore, we explore how the teaching and performance of Indian culture, specifically religious festivals, can shape the formation of more-than-Indian citizenship pathways.
Journals
2026 EN
de Matos Valerio Aline · Montanari João L. · Kampel Milton
+3 more
Chlorophyll-a concentration (Chla) is a key indicator of phytoplankton biomass and aquatic trophic status. However, satellite-derived Chla in sediment-rich waters, such as those found in the Lower Amazon River, remains challenging. The present study characterizes in situ Chla levels and their relationships with geographic, physical, and biogeochemical parameters in the Lower Amazon. Data collected between 2014 and 2017 across four hydrological seasons included measurements of Chla, remote sensing reflectance, and water quality parameters such as total suspended sediment, conductivity, water surface temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, dissolved organic carbon and coloured dissolved organic matter. An empirical model was developed to estimate Chla using simulated hyperspectral bands from NASA’s PACE mission, achieving high performance (R 2 = 0.76; RMSE = 0.11 μg·L −1 ). Red bands proved particularly effective for Chla retrieval, while the addition of ultraviolet bands further enhanced model accuracy. The application of the developed model to satellite imagery yielded results consistent with in situ observations for the same hydrologic season. Seasonal variation and geographic location were major factors influencing Chla dynamics. This study provides a novel contribution to Chla estimation in optically complex, highly turbid waters and highlights the potential of the PACE mission to enhance global aquatic ecosystem monitoring. By offering freely available hyperspectral data with high radiometric resolution, PACE represents a significant advancement in the realm of remote sensing of aquatic environments.
Journals
2026 EN
Garg Ankur · Tg Shriram · Shukla Tushar
+3 more
This paper presents a comprehensive end-to-end image processing framework developed for the high-resolution Electro-Optical Infrared (EOIR) payload onboard the EOS-08 Microsat-2C (M2C) microsatellite, which operates in dual thermal infrared channels – Mid-Wave Infrared (3.7–4.8 µm) and Long-Wave Infrared (7.7–11 µm). Designed for step-and-stare imaging from low Earth orbit, the system provides an 8.2 m ground sampling distance over a 5.2 km swath. This paper outlines the complete ground processing pipeline developed to address the unique challenges of high-resolution thermal imaging, including results from the initial commissioning phase and the calibration procedures applied to both MWIR and LWIR channels. The paper details a robust radiometric correction chain comprising time-interpolated background subtraction using calibration frames, Photo-Response Non-Uniformity (PRNU) correction, adaptive bad pixel filtering, FFT-based destriping, modified Wiener deblurring, denoising, and gradient flattening. Each stage is methodically described to address the challenges of high-resolution thermal imaging and is shown to significantly enhance radiometric fidelity, as assessed through Modulation Transfer Function (MTF) and Noise Equivalent Delta Temperature (NeDT) metrics. Additionally, the paper elaborates on the geometric processing framework, which includes full-strip modelling, rigorous bundle adjustment based on automatically extracted ground control points and spectral tie points, and band-to-band registration (BBR) to correct spatial misalignments and achieve precise geolocation. The resulting calibrated EOIR products have been successfully applied to gas flaring detection, industrial thermal anomaly monitoring, and urban heat island analysis, demonstrating the potential of microsatellite platforms for reliable thermal intelligence in environmental monitoring, infrastructure surveillance, and disaster management
Journals
2026 EN
Khabbazan Saeed · Hosseini Mehdi · Becker-Reshef Inbal
+2 more
Ukraine is a major global producer and exporter of corn and sunflower. Timely and accurate crop harvest information, during the war when not all planted crops can be harvested, is essential for food policymakers. Due to the ongoing war, in-country assessments are currently limited, making satellite data the primary reliable source for crop harvest monitoring. The goal of this study was to investigate how Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) polarization modes and satellite revisit times influence corn and sunflower harvest date estimations using machine learning (ML) algorithms. We evaluated SAR data acquired in two polarization modes: linear dual-polarization for Sentinel-1 (12-day revisit) and compact polarimetry for RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM) (4-day revisit). Three widely used ML algorithms, including Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Extreme Gradient Boosting (XG-Boost) were tested to quantify the impacts of polarization diversity and temporal resolution on estimation accuracy. Additionally, the transferability of trained ML models was explored by applying them to a region in Ukraine not included in the training phase. Results indicated comparable accuracy among the three ML algorithms in the training region; however, RF demonstrated better transferability to the unseen region. For Sentinel-1 data, VV and VH backscatter provided similar accuracy to coherence. For RCM data, m-chi decomposition parameters outperformed compact polarimetry backscatter. Combining all SAR data. For corn, Sentinel-1 data with RF provided accuracies of R 2 = 0.58 and RMSE = 12.75 days, while RCM data with XG-Boost yielded higher accuracies of R 2 = 0.74 and RMSE = 10.74 days. For sunflower, Sentinel-1 with RF reached accuracies of R 2 = 0.71 and RMSE = 4.78 days, and RCM data with XG-Boost achieved accuracies of R 2 = 0.70 and RMSE = 5.30 days. A single model for both crops achieved the highest accuracies of R 2 = 0.88 and RMSE = 7.86 days using RCM data. Results demonstrated good agreement between Sentinel-1 and RCM for crop harvest date estimation.
Journals
2026 EN
Uluer Ahmet Göksel
This article examines the Welfare Party (WP)’s rejection in 1992 of Turkish troop deployment to the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mission in Somalia – a Muslim country torn by civil war and humanitarian crisis – despite the WP’s position as the leading force of Turkey’s Islamist-conservative movement at the time. Drawing on a poststructuralist analysis of discourses in newspapers, parliamentary records, and journals, the study argues that the WP’s opposition – conceptualised as a practice of ‘double resistance’ – to the ‘Western/US-led’ intervention not only bolstered its popularity but also aligned its domestic and foreign policy narratives, reinforcing an identity-based resistance against political rivals. By foregrounding a civilisationalist discourse rooted in Ottomanist, national, and Islamic identity, and by framing the West/US as hypocritical and malevolent, the WP simultaneously carved out political space in the domestic struggle against Kemalist tutelage and centre-right/left ruling parties, while also enhancing its electoral appeal through conjunctural opportunities.
Journals
2026 EN
Mudie Lucy I. · Rachapudi Sruti · Echalier Lacey E.
+5 more
A survey of American Society of Ophthalmic Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery (ASOPRS) members’ opinions and attitudes towards sustainability in oculofacial plastic surgery practice was conducted. This represents the first survey on this topic that has been conducted within the subspeciality. An 11-point survey about sustainability practices was posted on the ASOPRS forum and sent via email to ASOPRS members who opted-in to receive surveys. Members were able to access the survey from November 2024 to January 2025, and all responses were submitted anonymously. A total of 114 surgeons started the survey. Of the 79 surgeons completing the survey, 68 were practicing oculofacial plastic surgeons, 10 were fellows-in-training and one was retired from clinical practice. Over 90% of respondents expressed concern about climate change and 93% agreed that the amount of waste generated during oculofacial plastic surgery is excessive. Regulatory concerns, time, and cost were the most frequently cited barriers to sustainability in oculofacial plastic surgery. There is significant interest in sustainability among ASOPRS members, and the majority of survey respondents expressed concern about climate health and the contributions of our profession to climate change. ASOPRS should consider including sustainability in its mission to advance education, research, and clinical care in oculofacial surgery.
Journals
2026 EN
Masago Hideki
A training course for performance evaluation of infrastructure inspection aquatic robots based on the Performance Evaluation Procedures issued by NEDO/METI was held in JFY2018 – 2020, and 41 trainees attended. The document consists of ‘specific ability test’ and ‘mission-type test’, and the latter is a more practical test based on the actual dam inspection scenario. In the course, trainees learned concepts and theories of the performance evaluation of robots and conducted performance evaluations of ROVs by referring to the test procedures. The evaluation reports submitted by the trainees exhibited wide variation in terms of evaluation items and criteria. This infers that the interpretation of the Procedure document varied amongst trainees, which was derived from what kinds of performances each trainee seemed to prioritise. The analyses of the evaluation results have provided clues for practical application and further improvements of the mission-type test of the underwater inspection robots.