The Road to Tenure: Obstacles for the Media Adviser

Tenure has been the topic of various journal articles, but few have examined the process from within specific disciplines. This study surveyed 136 advisers of campus radio and television stations to ascertain what obstacles to tenure were associated with this position. Respondents reported that 1) advising a media outlet takes time from teaching and research; 2) advising the station and producing programming is not highly valued by tenure committees; 3) tenure is essential to job security because students tend to push the envelope in on-air activities, and; 4) tenure is an archaic concept and they have no interest in pursuing it

The Myth of the Five-Day Forecast: A Study of Television Weather Accuracy and Audience Perceptions of Accuracy in Columbus, Ohio

Television weather has not been studied in a communication journal since 1982, despite technological advances and a reliance on forecasts by a transient public.This study measured accuracy of weather forecasts in central Ohio and found that stations were very accurate in predicting within 48 hours,but extended forecasts were quite inaccurate. Interviews with local television weathercasters revealed that they use the extended forecast as a marketing tool. Telephone interviews with 315 central Ohio residents revealed that they not only rely on the five-day forecasts, but believe them to be accurate.Television was cited as the dominant resource for weather information, and a majority of respondents said they choose weather forecasts for reasons other than perceived accuracy

Sensitive and specific multi-cancer detection and localization using methylation signatures in cell-free DNA

Early cancer detection could identify tumors at a time when outcomes are superior and treatment is less morbid. This prospective case-control sub-study (from NCT02889978 and NCT03085888) assessed the performance of targeted methylation analysis of circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA) to detect and localize multiple cancer types across all stages at high specificity.The 6689 participants [2482 cancer (>50 cancer types), 4207 non-cancer] were divided into training and validation sets. Plasma cfDNA underwent bisulfite sequencing targeting a panel of >100 000 informative methylation regions. A classifier was developed and validated for cancer detection and tissue of origin (TOO) localization.Performance was consistent in training and validation sets. In validation, specificity was 99.3% [95% confidence interval (CI): 98.3% to 99.8%; 0.7% false-positive rate (FPR)]. Stage I–III sensitivity was 67.3% (CI: 60.7% to 73.3%) in a pre-specified set of 12 cancer types (anus, bladder, colon/rectum, esophagus, head and neck, liver/bile-duct, lung, lymphoma, ovary, pancreas, plasma cell neoplasm, stomach), which account for ∼63% of US cancer deaths annually, and was 43.9% (CI: 39.4% to 48.5%) in all cancer types. Detection increased with increasing stage: in the pre-specified cancer types sensitivity was 39% (CI: 27% to 52%) in stage I, 69% (CI: 56% to 80%) in stage II, 83% (CI: 75% to 90%) in stage III, and 92% (CI: 86% to 96%) in stage IV. In all cancer types sensitivity was 18% (CI: 13% to 25%) in stage I, 43% (CI: 35% to 51%) in stage II, 81% (CI: 73% to 87%) in stage III, and 93% (CI: 87% to 96%) in stage IV. TOO was predicted in 96% of samples with cancer-like signal; of those, the TOO localization was accurate in 93%.cfDNA sequencing leveraging informative methylation patterns detected more than 50 cancer types across stages. Considering the potential value of early detection in deadly malignancies, further evaluation of this test is justified in prospective population-level studies.•Targeted methylation analysis of cfDNA simultaneously detected and localized >50 cancer types, including high-mortality cancers that lack screening paradigms.•Cancers were detected across all stages (stage I–III sensitivity: 43.9%; stage I–IV sensitivity: 54.9%) at a specificity of >99% and a single false positive rate of 90% accuracy, which will be critical for directing follow-up care.•This supports the continued investigation of this test with the goal of population-scale early multi-cancer detection