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Radiation safety education for laboratory animal science.

Students enrolled in the laboratory animal science graduate program at MCP Hahnemann University seek to gain entrance to veterinary school or to manage an animal facility within an academic institution, pharmaceutical or biotechnology company conducting biomedical research. Ongoing interaction between faculty in the radiation oncology, radiation safety, and lab animal science disciplines revealed an acute need for radiation safety education for laboratory animal science students who will likely interact with researchers either designing and writing protocols for animal studies using radiation or radioactive materials, or veterinary staff who will use sources of radiation to diagnose and/or treat possible animal injuries and diseases. A core course in the Radiation Sciences graduate program was modified to address the needs of these students, instructing them in radiation safety, detection and counting instrumentation, and radiation biology. These fundamental areas were integrated to help the students gain a sound, basic knowledge of radiation and radioactive materials used in biomedical research.

Animals↗

Adherence to antiretroviral therapy among patients with HIV: a critical link between behavioral and biomedical sciences.

Rapid advances in biomedical science, such as pharmaceutical developments for HIV disease, must be integrated with advances in behavioral science to further our understanding of medication adherence. This article evaluates the current state of the science in adherence to antiretroviral therapy for persons with HIV. The primary objectives are to 1) identify critical determinants of adherence, and 2) describe interventions to improve adherence. Adherence is a complex dynamic behavior influenced by characteristics of the patient, treatment regimen, disease, patient-provider relationship, and clinical setting. Therefore, the most promising interventions are multifaceted and target different locations in this matrix simultaneously. Unfortunately, nonadherence remains a formidable barrier in the management of HIV, resulting in the development of resistance and drug failure. Moreover, adherence is a public health concern, with implications for the transmission of HIV in general and the transmission of drug-resistant strains of HIV specifically. Despite substantial attention to adherence in recent years, much more remains to be done to better understand and promote adherence to antiretroviral therapy through effective interventions. From this integration of biomedical and behavioral science, effective clinical interventions can be developed and implemented to enhance the health of patients with HIV.

Antiretroviral Therapy, Highly Active↗

Medical students' clinical reasoning skills as a function of basic science achievement and clinical competency measures: a structural equation model.

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to investigate the fit of a hypothesized model of medical students' diagnostic or clinical reasoning skills based on their aptitude for medical school, basic science achievement, and clinical competency measures. METHOD: A total of 589 medical students who received their MD from 1994 to 2002 participated in this study. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to evaluate the fit of theoretical models of clinical reasoning using measures of basic science and clinical knowledge. RESULTS: The results provided support for a three-factor model of medical student performance (Bentler's Comparative Fit Index = .905, standardized root mean squared residual = .054, root mean squared error of approximation = .105). The clinical reasoning skills of medical students were influenced by an independent relationship between latent variables of basic science achievement and clinical competency. CONCLUSION: The findings support a theoretical model of diagnostic or clinical reasoning that treats the basic science and clinical knowledge of medical students as distinct domains.

Aptitude Tests↗

Regime, phase and paradigm shifts: making community ecology the basic science for fisheries.

Modern fishery science, which began in 1957 with Beverton and Holt, is ca. 50 years old. At its inception, fishery science was limited by a nineteenth century mechanistic worldview and by computational technology; thus, the relatively simple equations of population ecology became the fundamental ecological science underlying fisheries. The time has come for this to change and for community ecology to become the fundamental ecological science underlying fisheries. This point will be illustrated with two examples. First, when viewed from a community perspective, excess production must be considered in the context of biomass left for predators. We argue that this is a better measure of the effects of fisheries than spawning biomass per recruit. Second, we shall analyse a simple, but still multi-species, model for fishery management that considers the alternatives of harvest regulations, inshore marine protected areas and offshore marine protected areas. Population or community perspectives lead to very different predictions about the efficacy of reserves.

Animals↗

Cosmopolitan political science.

Until recently, the term cosmopolitism could rarely be found in modern political science literature. It was only in the 1990s that the term was rediscovered by political scientists in the critical discourse on globalization. In this article, I will explore the full potential of cosmopolitism as an analytical concept for empirical political science. I will argue that the concept of cosmopolitism should not be restricted to the analysis of global politics. Indeed, cosmopolitism has much more to offer for political scientists. Properly understood, it enables--and necessitates--a re-invention of political science in the age of globalization, comparable to the behavioural revolution in political science in the 1950s. Such a paradigmatic shift should be based on a twofold transformation of existing disciplinary boundaries: A removal of the boundary between national (and comparative) and international politics on the one hand; and a re-definition of the boundaries between empirical and normative approaches on the other. As a result, cosmopolitism may serve as a new, critical theory of politics based on the integration of hitherto separated fields and sub-fields.

European Union↗

The questionable effectiveness of science spending by international conservation organizations in the tropics.

The general context of conservation in the tropics--in the Amazon basin and elsewhere--is stagnant or declining funding and rapidly growing threat levels. For conservation programs this makes strategic deployment of limited conservation resources all the more important. International conservation organizations active in the tropics increasingly define themselves as science driven and expend considerable resources on science-based activities such as ecoregional analysis, field research, and monitoring of ecological variables. l argue that an overemphasis on science has generated a series of unintended but serious problems for conservation in the tropics. Spending on monitoring and ecoregional analysis has effectively starved protection and threat analysis of resources. A decoupling of biology from serious cost-benefit analysis has led to the privileging of small-scale and local analyses, rather than the systemic analyses essential for the strategic allocation of scarce conservation resources. Successful conservation in the tropics depends on the crossing of biogeography with sophisticated threat analysis to identify priority geographies for protection. This should be combined with much more systematic engagement with the principal drivers of tropical deforestation, especially agribusiness. Caution and a sense of proportion are required when balancing the financial demands of science and those of protection. I suggest that conservation organizations should cooperate far more in assembling and analyzing information on conservation spending and on threat levels and biogeography at the continental, national, and regional levels. Site selection should follow rather than precede this kind of strategic analysis, and sites should be considered elements of a network rather than stand-alone projects. More attention should be paid to market-driven conservation through techniques such as certification and responsible supply-chain management.

Brazil↗

Levels of analysis in health science. A framework for integrating sociobehavioral and biomedical research.

One of the principal goals of the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research at the National Institutes of Health is to facilitate interdisciplinary research between social, behavioral, and biomedical scientists. The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for such interdisciplinary health research. The essence of this framework is the concept of levels of analysis in the health sciences. These levels include the social/environment, behavioral/psychological, organ systems, cellular, and molecular. The interdependence of these five levels of analysis suggests that advances in the health sciences may be accelerated by a more integrated, multilevel approach to research. The principles of integrated, multilevel research are outlined, and examples of research that support this approach are presented. Finally, some of the activities of the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research that will further interdisciplinary research across levels of analysis are summarized.

Humans↗

The first six years at the National Institute for Longevity Sciences, Japan.

The National Institute for Longevity Sciences (NILS) of Japan opened on July 7, 1995, 15 years after the Science Council of Japan recommended the establishment of the National Center for Aging and Geriatric Illnesses (the provisional name for NILS) in 1980. During the first four years of operation, 8 separate research departments, containing 21 laboratories, were established. NILS has both research departments for biomedical sciences, such as dementia research, molecular genetics, and geriatric research, and also departments of gerontechnology and the care of the elderly, which engage in research directed toward the comprehensive improvement of the health and well- being of the elderly. On July 9, 1995, the day of the opening ceremonies, NILS employed only three staff members, including the director general. At the end of fiscal year 2000 (March 31, 2001), the institute comprised a staff of more than 200 people, including 30 senior science staff and about 50 junior scientists. The Japanese government has recently decided to expand NILS to double its present size by the end of fiscal year 2004 (March 2005).

Academies and Institutes↗

The brain and communication are basic for clinical human sciences.

This article focuses on basic concepts modelled on medical science for the human sciences. This reformulates problems experienced by people who consult counsellors, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers and other human science clinicians as located in the brain. These troubles can be described as difficulties in social life and human communication, on the one hand, and as varied brain physiology, on the other. These problems and their solutions are not traditionally biological but restrictive views of biology need modification as the brain is obviously the central organ for not only the medical specialities of neurology and psychiatry but for all professionals concerned with social interactions. The human genome determines the brain of each person: each such brain constitutes the latest iteration of ancestral genomes that include species precursor to humans and primates, extending back to unicellular life forms. The genome that determines the human brain confers remarkable flexibility or learning potential. Yet many factors influence what is learned and experienced. Understanding this entails comparing and contrasting humans and non-humans. The genomes of chimpanzees and gorillas differ little from that of humans so most basic plans determining behaviour must be shared. Yet contrasted to these animals, the human brain is three times greater in mass and the human cerebral cortex has four times more area. This increased brain correlated with more social interaction; humans are the story-telling animal, producing, consuming and otherwise using small and large tales intensely and incessantly. But do communicational features resemble each other across species? Commnunicational propensity states in humans compare to those of non-humans. So do those of normal people and psychiatric patients. Psychiatry's efforts at systematic description and nosology provided guidelines to the ethology of ancient but still active communicational propensity states called PSALICs (Gardner, 1988). This double acronym refers to their normal function and prehuman origins; they are defined from a three-legged base in that each exists in psychiatric patients, normal people and non-human animals. This article describes the following psalics: alpha, audience, in-group omega, mating, nurturant, nurturance-eliciting, out-group omega and spacing-avoidant. The article describes psalics' varied expression in people. This basic science formulation and an across-species comparisons approach has implications for treating patients and clients.

Animals↗

The National Science Foundation looks to the future.

Great advances have been made in fundamental scientific research in recent years. The new knowledge gathered, in addition to deepening our understanding of the physical universe, contributes a range of abilities and opportunities to society that would not otherwise be available. Much research that may be called applied because it addresses needs of society is quite fundamental in character, and support of such research at the National Science Foundation is to be handled in tandem by the research directorates. Other areas that require a refocusing of support are engineering science and education, at all levels, in science and engineering. Increasing our strength in these areas is essential to achieve our national economic, social, and political goals. Steps are being taken by the National Science Foundation to make its structure better able to deal with engineering and applied research and to provide greater mutual reinforcement between applied and basic research.

Cell Biology↗

Valid and reliable authentic assessment of culminating student performance in the biomedical sciences.

There is increasing pressure, both from institutions central to the national scientific mission and from regional and national accrediting agencies, on natural sciences faculty to move beyond course examinations as measures of student performance and to instead develop and use reliable and valid authentic assessment measures for both individual courses and for degree-granting programs. We report here on a capstone course developed by two natural sciences departments, Biological Sciences and Chemistry/Biochemistry, which engages students in an important culminating experience, requiring synthesis of skills and knowledge developed throughout the program while providing the departments with important assessment information for use in program improvement. The student work products produced in the course, a written grant proposal, and an oral summary of the proposal, provide a rich source of data regarding student performance on an authentic assessment task. The validity and reliability of the instruments and the resulting student performance data were demonstrated by collaborative review by content experts and a variety of statistical measures of interrater reliability, including percentage agreement, intraclass correlations, and generalizability coefficients. The high interrater reliability reported when the assessment instruments were used for the first time by a group of external evaluators suggests that the assessment process and instruments reported here will be easily adopted by other natural science faculty.

Biomedical Research↗

Aliens among us: a representation of children in science fiction.

As a literary genre, science fiction has been largely ignored by psychoanalysis. Science fiction lends itself well to analytic interpretations since its structure embraces an attitude of "cognitive estrangement" (a term that defines the genre). Science fiction allows for the exploration of new and different permutations of seemingly ageless conflicts and concerns. One of the conflicts science fiction seems to address revolves about our fears regarding our children. These children become the "aliens" among us, as they seek to usurp parental power and authority. This issue is addressed through a study of two of Ray Bradbury's short stories. By manipulating the reader's experience of the "uncanny," Bradbury succeeds in tapping what appear to be prevalent and potent fears regarding children and, reflexively, the adults who produce them. Mechanisms involved in this play on "alienness" include projective identification of destructive aspects of the self, a resurgence of archaic superego forerunners constituted around primal scene material, and a reawakening of oedipal struggles.

Adolescent↗

Lyrical language and nursing discourse: can science be the tool of love?

Lyricism is a quality of discourse expressing intensely personal feeling or emotion. It is historically associated with romanticism, which involves the imagination and emotions, the use of autobiographical material, the exaltation of a common humanity, and an appreciation of nature. The language of a science conveys the meaning, significance, and utility of concepts among scholars, practitioners, and the general public. It is incumbent upon nurses to attempt to represent in our disciplinary language the realities lived by people, that is, to apprehend, describe, and explain the full breadth and diversity of human phenomena, guided by the discipline-wide focus on the wholeness of the human being. The language of objectivistic science cannot do this. Even in contemporary qualitative research there are limitations in achieving such a representation. This column therefore calls for greater attention to lyrical discourse in nursing science and outlines the potential benefits in nursing theory development, research, and practice. Encouragement of lyrical discourse in nursing science is consistent with the contemporary movement toward a dialogical rationality. It is posited that, if the ethos of nursing is rooted in love of humanity, lyrical discourse may be one way for nursing to pursue its mission to serve humankind.

Communication↗

The dilemma of nursing science: current quandaries and lack of direction.

The theme of this paper is the need to address the central question in nursing science. It is hypothesized that in the absence of a central, unifying question, the view of nursing as an applied science, the current research methodological debate, and the social policy statement definition of nursing have hindered nursing's ability to advance the science of nursing. The authors suggest that the terminology of applied science has been wrongfully interpreted as immediate application to nursing practice, that the research methodological debate has occurred because the focus of research efforts is on the means and not the end, and that the policy statement implies a stimulus-response approach to human behavior.

Humans↗

Basic science research in pain.

Pain is not simply a physiologic event, but a dynamic process that involves continuous interaction among complex systems. Nurses have the unique disciplinary background to envision the pain process within the context of the whole dynamic human being. Understanding the human condition in this holistic manner prepares nurses to develop clinically relevant research questions. Many of these research questions can best be answered initially through basic science research. Basic science research by a nurse will be distinct from other disciplines from the inception of the hypothesis through the conclusions drawn to the delineation of areas for further research. This article provides a few examples of basic science research in the area of pain by nurse researchers. The research includes both cellular and animal models and describes the relationship of the research to clinical practice. Patient care will ultimately benefit from clinically relevant research whether the methodology used is basic science or other methods.

Animals↗

Multimedia Bootcamp: a health sciences library provides basic training to promote faculty technology integration.

BACKGROUND: Recent research has shown a backlash against the enthusiastic promotion of technological solutions as replacements for traditional educational content delivery. Many institutions, including the University of Virginia, have committed staff and resources to supporting state-of-the-art, showpiece educational technology projects. However, the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library has taken the approach of helping Health Sciences faculty be more comfortable using technology in incremental ways for instruction and research presentations. In July 2004, to raise awareness of self-service multimedia resources for instructional and professional development needs, the Library conducted a "Multimedia Bootcamp" for nine Health Sciences faculty and fellows. METHODS: Case study. RESULTS: Program stewardship by a single Library faculty member contributed to the delivery of an integrated learning experience. The amount of time required to attend the sessions and complete homework was the maximum fellows had to devote to such pursuits. The benefit of introducing technology unfamiliar to most fellows allowed program instructors to start everyone at the same baseline while not appearing to pass judgment on the technology literacy skills of faculty. The combination of wrapping the program in the trappings of a fellowship and selecting fellows who could commit to a majority of scheduled sessions yielded strong commitment from participants as evidenced by high attendance and a 100% rate of assignment completion. Response rates to follow-up evaluation requests, as well as continued use of Media Studio resources and Library expertise for projects begun or conceived during Bootcamp, bode well for the long-term success of this program. CONCLUSION: An incremental approach to integrating technology with current practices in instruction and presentation provided a supportive yet energizing environment for Health Sciences faculty. Keys to this program were its faculty focus, traditional hands-on instruction, unrestricted access to technology tools and support, and inclusion of criteria for evaluating when multimedia can augment pedagogical aims.

Journal Article↗

The University of Alabama at Birmingham Center for Community OutReach Development Summer Science Institute Program: a 3-yr laboratory research experience for inner-city secondary-level students.

This article describes and assesses the effectiveness of a 3-yr, laboratory-based summer science program to improve the academic performance of inner-city high school students. The program was designed to gradually introduce such students to increasingly more rigorous laboratory experiences in an attempt to interest them in and model what "real" science is like. The students are also exposed to scientific seminars and university tours as well as English and mathematics workshops designed to help them analyze their laboratory data and prepare for their closing ceremony presentations. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of student performance in these programs indicates that participants not only learn the vocabulary, facts, and concepts of science, but also develop a better appreciation of what it is like to be a "real" scientist. In addition, the college-bound 3-yr graduates of this program appear to be better prepared to successfully academically compete with graduates of other high schools; they also report learning useful job-related life skills. Finally, the critical conceptual components of this program are discussed so that science educators interested in using this model can modify it to fit the individual resources and strengths of their particular setting.

Alabama↗

Developments in the instruction of biostatistics at the Kuwait University Health Science Centre in a decade.

BACKGROUND: Kuwait has witnessed many changes that influenced, among other things, the structure of medical education including biostatistics. This article describes the developments in biostatistics instruction and curriculum in the Health Science Centre, University of Kuwait, during the past 10 years. DESCRIPTION: Instead of teaching biostatistics as an independent component, the university has developed an integrated course (35 hr of lectures and 12 hr of tutorial sessions) of biostatistics, epidemiology, and demography that is taught to undergraduate medical and dentistry students to ensure interdisciplinary interaction, to remove redundancies, and to standardize terminology across the three disciplines. The core curriculum of the biostatistics course is compatible with the recommendations of the American Statistical Association. Separate biostatistics courses are also offered to pharmacy and allied health students to address their diverse interests. In addition, new biostatistics and computer applications instruction courses were developed and are taught to the students of the Master of Science (MSc), Master of Public Health (MPH), and PhD programs. For continuing medical education, a workshop on biostatistics and computer applications is organized annually for the medical profession as a collaboration between the Health Science Centre and the Kuwait Institute for Medical Specialization. EVALUATION: The instructor and curriculum content of the biostatistics courses are confidentially evaluated and independently analyzed by the office of the Vice Dean for Academic Affairs. Overall, students evaluate the biostatistics instructors highly and are pleased with the content of the biostatistics curriculum. CONCLUSIONS: During the last decade, biostatistics instruction in the Kuwait Health Science Centre had many new developments. An integrated course on biostatistics, epidemiology, and demography was developed with emphasis on problem solving and small group learning. Another biostatistics course is offered to the students of the new faculty of pharmacy. Further biostatistics courses became operational for the postgraduate programs: (MSc), (MPH), and PhD. Continuing medical education is supported by workshops, which is a sign of collaboration with the health community, and a consultancy office has been established. Overall, biostatistics instruction is well received by students, and the role of biostatistics is recognized by researchers from the medical profession.

Biometry↗