Predicting success in graduate entry medical students undertaking a graduate entry medical program (GEM)

Background: Success in undergraduate medical courses in the UK can be predicted by school exit examination (A level) grades. There are no documented predictors of success in UK graduate entry medicine (GEM) courses. This study looks at the examination performance of GEM students to identify factors which may predict success; of particular interest was A level score. Methods: Data was collected for students graduating in 2004, 2005 and 2006, including demographic details (age and gender), details of previous academic achievement (A level total score and prior degree) and examination results at several points during the degree course. Results: Study group comprised 285 students. Statistical analyses identified no significant variables when looking at clinical examinations. Analysis of pass/fail data for written examinations showed no relationship with A level score. However, both percentage data for the final written examination and the analysis of the award of honours showed A level scores of AAB or higher were associated with better performance (p < 0.001). Discussion: A prime objective of introducing GEM programs was to diversify admissions to medical school. In trying to achieve this, medical schools have changed selection criteria. The findings in this study justify this by proving that A level score was not associated with success in either clinical examinations or passing written examinations. Despite this, very high achievements at A level do predict high achievement during medical school. Conclusions: This study shows that selecting graduate medical students with the basic requirement of an upper-second class honours degree is justifiable and does not disadvantage students who may not have achieved high scores in school leaver examinations

A frequentist framework of inductive reasoning

Reacting against the limitation of statistics to decision procedures, R. A. Fisher proposed for inductive reasoning the use of the fiducial distribution, a parameter-space distribution of epistemological probability transferred directly from limiting relative frequencies rather than computed according to the Bayes update rule. The proposal is developed as follows using the confidence measure of a scalar parameter of interest. (With the restriction to one-dimensional parameter space, a confidence measure is essentially a fiducial probability distribution free of complications involving ancillary statistics.) A betting game establishes a sense in which confidence measures are the only reliable inferential probability distributions. The equality between the probabilities encoded in a confidence measure and the coverage rates of the corresponding confidence intervals ensures that the measure's rule for assigning confidence levels to hypotheses is uniquely minimax in the game. Although a confidence measure can be computed without any prior distribution, previous knowledge can be incorporated into confidence-based reasoning. To adjust a p-value or confidence interval for prior information, the confidence measure from the observed data can be combined with one or more independent confidence measures representing previous agent opinion. (The former confidence measure may correspond to a posterior distribution with frequentist matching of coverage probabilities.) The representation of subjective knowledge in terms of confidence measures rather than prior probability distributions preserves approximate frequentist validity.Comment: major revisio

Methods for estimating the case fatality ratio for a novel, emerging infectious disease.

During the course of an epidemic of a potentially fatal disease, it is important that the case fatality ratio be well estimated. The authors propose a novel method for doing so based on the Kaplan-Meier survival procedure, jointly considering two outcomes (death and recovery), and evaluate its performance by using data from the 2003 epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome in Hong Kong, People's Republic of China. They compare this estimate obtained at various points in the epidemic with the case fatality ratio eventually observed; with two commonly quoted, naïve estimates derived from cumulative incidence and mortality statistics at single time points; and with estimates in which a parametric mixture model is used. They demonstrate the importance of patient characteristics regarding outcome by analyzing subgroups defined by age at admission to the hospital

Salish Sea Initiative Interactive Map

The Salish Sea Initiative (SSI) is a Government of Canada, Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) Accommodation Measure designed to respond to First Nations concerns about the potential environmental impacts of human activities on coastal and marine ecosystems in the Salish Sea. Led by Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the SSI aims to support the capacity building of eligible First Nations within and around the Salish Sea to plan, develop and conduct marine stewardship activities, including environmental monitoring, traditional use studies, and cumulative effects assessments. Thirty-three First Nations are eligible to participate in SSI and the initiative runs until March 2024. A key component of the SSI is the co-development of the SSI Interactive Map (SSIM). The SSIM is a user-friendly, decision support tool that displays data layers of natural marine environmental components, stressors and Indigenous cultural components. The purpose of the map is to provide a platform for SSI participants to visualize valued components (VCs) and other information that will be useful for project planning, implementation of marine stewardship work and cumulative effects assessments. The map is associated with a data catalogue and portal and functions are being created to enable data analysis. The map also serves as a communication tool to host conversations between SSI participants and between SSI participants and the Government of Canada. Enhanced communication capabilities provide support for project planning and coordination, the creation of partnerships, as well as a shared platform for inter-generational knowledge transfer opportunities within communities. The purpose of this presentation is to outline the background and process associated with the SSIM creation and to provide a demonstration to show the work completed to date. We will also highlight future actions to be taken for map enhancement

Proceedings of OMAE &apos;02: 21 ST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON OFFSHORE MECHANICS AND ARCTIC ENGINEERING OMAE2002-28307 CHALLENGES IN THE DESIGN OF AN OFFSHORE WIND TURBINE FOUNDATION FOR ARCTIC CONDITIONS

ABSTRACT NEG Micon&apos;s Yttre Stengrund Offshore Wind Turbines in the Kalmarsund, Sweden, are supported on unique foundations designed by AMEC. The chosen foundation comprised a steel monopile secured into a rock socket drilled out beneath a deep layer of overlying soil. Sea-ice loading and fatigue governed the design. To minimise the sea-ice loads the foundation was fitted with an ice protection shield. In order to achieve the required fatigue life, time domain simulations were conducted to determine the response of the turbine to combined wind and wave action. Details of the fatigue analyses and methods used to calculate the sea-ice loading are presented herein

Wellbeing and Nurture: Physical and Emotional Security in Childhood

While there is increasing concern about developing and reinforcing children’s physical and emotional security, researchers have been busy working out the actual mechanics, even at the cellular level, of how this can be achieved. This report will provide a concise update on what is known about optimising children’s wellbeing and security in childhood and far beyond. In examining the ways in which children grow and develop, we can learn from that because their physical and emotional wellbeing and therefore that of our future society will depend on it. This report represents what we have learned and we hope that it will contribute in a small way to the making of the brave new ‘post-Covid’ world

Field-study science classrooms as positive and enjoyable learning environments

We investigated differences between field-study classrooms and traditional science classrooms in terms of the learning environment and students’ attitudes to science, as well as the differential effectiveness of field-study classrooms for students differing in sex and English proficiency. A modified version of selected scales from the What Is Happening In this Class? questionnaire was used to assess the learning environment, whereas students’ attitudes were assessed with a shortened version of a scale from the Test of Science Related Attitudes. A sample of 765 grade 5 students from 17 schools responded to the learning environment and attitude scales in terms of both their traditional science classrooms and classrooms at a field-study centre in Florida. Large effect sizes supported the effectiveness of the field-studies classroom in terms of both the learning environment and student attitudes. Relative to the home school science class, the field-study class was considerably more effective for students with limited English proficiency than for native English speakers