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Basic knowledge of biochemistry underpins oral and dental care. Undergraduate dental students do not always engage well with basic science teaching due to not appreciating its clinical relevance. Co-teaching provides one approach to overcome students' disengagement and involves two lecturers, with complementary expertise, presenting the curriculum together. This study investigated student experiences and engagement using co-teaching to integrate biochemistry with clinical sciences in the students' second-year dental curriculum. Two successive second year dental student cohorts were co-taught. Content was delivered by a biochemist and an oral biologist, either online (during the 2020 COVID lockdown) or in-person (2021). Each cohort was surveyed at the end of the teaching module using an online questionnaire containing both interval scale and free-text questions. Responses were received from 39 (42%) and 64 (85%) of students in 2020 and 2021, respectively. Students from both cohorts preferred the co-teaching approach with a mean of 8.74 on a 10-point interval scale. In 2020 and 2021, 77% and 76% of participants, respectively, preferred a combined biochemistry and clinical dentistry delivery, either in-person (37%), via Zoom (19%) or via video recording (14%). Thematic analysis of responses revealed students experienced enhanced engagement when co-taught and they attributed this to integration of the curriculum making the content more relevant and stimulating. Students preferred co-teaching to individual subjects being taught by a single teacher. Co-teaching established the relevance of theoretical biochemistry to clinical dental sciences and enhanced the students' learning experience.

While there are many studies in which body ownership can be transferred to a virtual body, there are few experimental studies of how subjects feel about their own bodies being deformed since a real body cannot be deformed. Here, we propose such an experimental setup, in which a twisted hand is diagonally viewed from behind, which is called a “monkey's hand.” Although the subject cannot see the thumb hidden behind his or her arm, he or she feels that the monkey's hand has an ambiguous thumb that functionally never exists but structurally exists. This ambiguity is consistent with experimental results on proprioceptive drift, by which the deformation of the hand is measured. The ambiguity of the presence and absence of the thumb is finally analyzed with a specific algebraic structure called a lattice. This can help us understand disownership as being different from the absence of ownership.

In implementing the PMC model, trusting relationships between owners and PMC contractors is the key to resolving the dilemmas caused by institutional constraints and conventional thinking, such as frequent organizational conflicts, low management efficiency, and higher transaction costs. This study utilized PMC projects in Guangxi, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Tibet, and Guizhou as analysis samples and employed semi-structured field interviews to investigate the antecedents of trust between owners and PMC contractors. In addition, questionnaires were used to quantify the mechanism of trust formation between the two parties and the influence of trust on project performance. The findings indicated that the managerial competence and reputation of the PMC contractor, the adequacy of the owner's authorization, and the effectiveness of the owner's supervisory measures were the key drivers of calculative trust. The adequacy of the owner's authorization, the effectiveness of the owner's supervisory measures, and social similarity play the greatest roles in influencing relational trust. Calculative and relational trust significantly impact project performance, with relational trust having a slightly more substantial impact. This study can serve as a resource for enhancing the performance of PMC projects and achieving PMC project success.