Identity change and the human dissection experience over the first year of medical training

The aim of this study is to explore identity change in medical students over their first year of medical training, particularly in relation to their experience of human dissection. Each of our four participants completed two repertory grids at the end of term one and, again, towards the end of term three. One grid tapped their identity construction, and the other, their experience of human dissection. Our participants were optimistic about becoming similar to a doctor they admired and, towards the end of term three, began to develop a stable identity as a medical student. Their identity constructs involved three common themes: dedication, competence, and responsibility. However, the data also revealed negative reactions to the demands of training, such as feeling driven and stressed. Three major themes were apparent in their experience of human dissection: involvement, emotional coping, and ability. Our participants’ dedication to their studies was reflected in their appreciation of the need to become involved actively in the process of dissection but some experienced an erosion of their self-confidence and perceived some of their colleagues to have lost much of their enthusiasm for learning. Emotional coping could be an additional challenge within this context and their reaction tended to reflect distancing processes previously identified in the literature. In all, we see a development of a vulnerable sense of professionalism alongside a frustration of losing out potentially on wider aspects of personal development due to the high work demands

Report on the Iowa Department of Human Services for the year ended June 30, 2010

Report on the Iowa Department of Human Services for the year ended June 30, 201

Report on the Iowa Department of Human Rights for the year ended June 30, 2009

Report on the Iowa Department of Human Rights for the year ended June 30, 200

ICMI 2012 chairs' welcome

Welcome to Santa Monica and to the 14th edition of the International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, ICMI 2012. ICMI is the premier international forum for multidisciplinary research on multimodal human-human and human-computer interaction, interfaces, and system development. We had a record number of submissions this year: 147 (74 long papers, 49 short papers, 5 special session papers and 19 demo papers). From these submissions, we accepted 15 papers for long oral presentation (20.3% acceptance rate), 10 papers for short oral presentation (20.4% acceptance rate) and 19 papers presented as posters. We have a total acceptance rate of 35.8% for all short and long papers. 12 of the 19 demo papers were accepted. All 5 special session papers were directly invited by the organizers and the papers were all accepted. In addition, the program includes three invited Keynote talks. One of the two novelties introduced at ICMI this year is the Multimodal Grand Challenges. Developing systems that can robustly understand human-human communication or respond to human input requires identifying the best algorithms and their failure modes. In fields such as computer vision, speech recognition, and computational linguistics, the availability of datasets and common tasks have led to great progress. This year, we accepted four challenge workshops: the Audio-Visual Emotion Challenge (AVEC), the Haptic Voice Recognition challenge, the D-META challenge and Brain-Computer Interface challenge. Stefanie Telex and Daniel Gatica-Perez are co-chairing the grand challenge this year. All four Grand Challenges will be presented on Monday, October 22nd, and a summary session will be happening on Wednesday, October 24th, afternoon during the main conference. The second novelty at ICMI this year is the Doctoral Consortium—a separate, one-day event to take place on Monday, October 22nd, co-chaired by Bilge Mutlu and Carlos Busso. The goal of the Doctoral Consortium is to provide Ph.D. students with an opportunity to present their work to a group of mentors and peers from a diverse set of academic and industrial backgrounds and institutions, to receive feedback on their doctoral research plan and progress, and to build a cohort of young researchers interested in designing multimodal interfaces. All accepted students receive a travel grant to attend the conference. From among 25 applications, 14 students were accepted for participation and to receive travel funding. The organizers thank the National Science Foundation (award IIS-1249319) and conference sponsors for financial support

In Our Own Back Yard -- Human Rights in the Heartland

This report is designed to educate Midwesterners about the crucial role of human rights protections and to reveal the gap between human rights standards and realities in the Midwest. It is produced as an abridged report, not as a comprehensive analysis of human rights, and is primarily based on conditions encountered by Heartland Alliance in its provision of direct services to more than 72,000 individuals over the past year. It pinpoints areas of concern and provides illustrative case studies of human rights abuses. The recommendations stem from these and many other cases

Stratification of the phase clouds and statistical effects of the non-Markovity in chaotic time series of human gait for healthy people and Parkinson patients

In this work we develop a new method of diagnosing the nervous system diseases and a new approach in studying human gait dynamics with the help of the theory of discrete non-Markov random processes. The stratification of the phase clouds and the statistical non-Markov effects in the time series of the dynamics of human gait are considered. We carried out the comparative analysis of the data of four age groups of healthy people: children (from 3 to 10 year olds), teenagers (from 11 to 14 year oulds), young people (from 21 up to 29 year oulds), elderly persons (from 71 to 77 year olds) and Parkinson patients. The full data set are analyzed with the help of the phase portraits of the four dynamic variables, the power spectra of the initial time correlation function and the memory functions of junior orders, the three first points in the spectra of the statistical non-Markov parameter. The received results allow to define the predisposition of the probationers to deflections in the central nervous system caused by Parkinson's disease. We have found out distinct differencies between the five submitted groups. On this basis we offer a new method of diagnostics and forecasting Parkinson's disease.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figs, 3 Table

Changes in Human Capital and Wage Inequality in Mexico

Over the last two decades Mexico has witnessed a significant increase in wage inequality, typically attributed to the increase in relative demand for skilled labor. Over this period the educational achievements and their distribution across the labor force have also changed substantially. In this paper we analyze the impact of changes in human capital on wage inequality in Mexico. We focus our analysis on decomposing (1) the level of inequality in any given year and (2) change in inequality over time, into observable (e.g. age, education, occupation, etc.) and unobservable differences across workers. The main findings of this paper are: unobservable factors (within group inequality) account for most of the inequality in any given year. Among the observable factors human capital emerges as the most important variables in explaining the level of, and changes in, inequality

Changes in Human Capital and Wage Inequality in Mexico

Over the last two decades Mexico has witnessed a significant increase in wage inequality, typically attributed to the increase in relative demand for skilled labor. Over this period the educational achievements and their distribution across the labor force have also changed substantially. In this paper we analyze the impact of changes in human capital on wage inequality in Mexico. We focus our analysis on decomposing (1) the level of inequality in any given year and (2) change in inequality over time, into observable (e.g. age, education, occupation, etc.) and unobservable differences across workers. The main findings of this paper are: unobservable factors (within group inequality) account for most of the inequality in any given year. Among the observable factors human capital emerges as the most important variables in explaining the level of, and changes in, inequality

Research in medical education

The year 2009 saw a number of developments in Medical Education in Malta that were initiated as a result of a commitment to revising the medical curriculum in order to meet the challenges in medical education. A record number of students were admitted to the medical course in 2009. There is concern that eventually this exponential increase in admissions is not sustainable due to infrastructural, financial and human resource restraints. Meanwhile there has been a simultaneous attempt to re-vamp the first and second year curriculum and to continue to fine tune the curriculum in years three, four and five. Students are now introduced to clinical scenarios as early as during the first year of the medical course and case based learning is being implemented into a modular system of teaching that integrates anatomy, physiology, biochemistry and genetics to ensure a holistic approach to understanding the human body in health and subsequently in disease. It is hoped that such changes will bring the University of Malta Medical School more in line with the ethos of the Bologna process and the European Credit Transfer System.peer-reviewe