Criteria for Evaluating Journals in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and the Life Sciences

The purpose of this paper was to identify existing criteria that may be considered in evaluating journals in the scholarship of teaching and learning in agriculture, natural resources, and the life sciences. This can assist faculty authors and evaluators of promotion and tenure cases to explain indicators of the quality of the publications. The commonly accepted criteria are: peer review; acceptance rate; longevity; open access availability; inclusion in indexing/abstracting services; citation analysis; and expert opinion. These data were collected for a representative set of journals which indicated that: acceptance rates for the journals varied widely; most of the journals existed for at least 10 years; most of the journals did not have an ISI impact factor or Eigenfactor TM Score; the ERIC database was the predominant indexing resource; and there were no published lists of journals in these subjects compiled from expert opinion

Incidence, prevalence, and clinical course of hepatitis C following liver transplantation

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is the agent responsible for posttransfusion hepatitis. The incidence, timing, and clinical course of HCV positive hepatitis in liver transplant recipients are unknown. Three hundred and seventeen donor-recipient liver transplant pairs were grouped on the basis of their pretransplant HCV antibody status. The biopsy findings were examined. Four distinct groups were identified on the basis of HCV serology: group I, both were negative; group II, donor was negative and recipient was positive; group III, donor was positive and recipient was negative; group IV, both were positive. The prevalence of anti-HCV positivity in recipients was 13.6%. The rate of seroconversion was 9.2%. Histologic hepatitis not ascribable to any specific cause other than non-A, non-B (NANB) hepatitis occurred in 13.8%. The incidence of histologic chronic active hepatitis was 1.6%, and none progressed to cirrhosis. The concordance rate for a positive anti-HCV serology and NANB hepatitis was 2.8%. Of the 35 patients (group II and IV) with positive anti-HCV serology pretransplant, only 17 were positive posttransplantation. Based on these data it can be concluded that posttransplant NANB hepatitis occurred in 13.8% of liver recipients. Twenty percent of these were anti-HCV positive. Progression to histologic chronic active hepatitis occurs over a period of 1-5 years in 1.6% of cases. © 1992

A General control mechanism of energy flow in the excited state of polyenic biochromophores.

Quantum dynamics in photobiology is a highly controversial subject of modern research. In particular, the role of low-frequency vibrational coherence of biochromophores has been intensely discussed. Coherent control of polyenic chromophores, like carotenoids and retinoids, has been showing that the manipulation of such low frequency coherences may play a crucial role in the evolution of excited population and therefore in the efficiency of photosynthesis. However, no precise control mechanism has been derived. In order to clarify this open question, we combined quantum dynamical modelling with a sensitive experimental technique, namely Pump-Degenerate Four Wave Mixing (Pump-DFWM). In this work we investigate in detail the internal conversion channel of β-carotene, an important polyenic chromophore, under multipulse excitation and focus on the role of the non-adiabatic coupling between excited-state potentials and the internal energy loss. Our control mechanism is based on the interference between wavepackets in the excited state, which leads to a transient evolution of the vibrational population dependent on the relative phase between excitation sub-pulses. Such a transient evolution can affect the branching ratio between competing channels in the excited state. Therefore, our results are able to rationalize pulse shapes found in a whole class of coherent control experiments involving polyenic biochromophores, like in light harvesting complexes and in bacteriorhodopsin

Constraints on the Universal CIV Mass Density at z~6 from Early IR Spectra Obtained with the Magellan FIRE Spectrograph

We present a new determination of the intergalactic CIV mass density at 4.3 < z < 6.3. Our constraints are derived from high signal-to-noise spectra of seven quasars at z > 5.8 obtained with the newly commissioned FIRE spectrograph on the Magellan Baade telescope, coupled with six observations of northern objects taken from the literature. We confirm the presence of a downturn in the CIV abundance at =5.66 by a factor of 4.1 relative to its value at =4.96, as measured in the same sightlines. In the FIRE sample, a strong system previously reported in the literature as CIV at z=5.82 is re-identified as MgII at z=2.78, leading to a substantial downward revision in $\Omega_{CIV}$ for these prior studies. Additionally we confirm the presence of at least two systems with low-ionization CII, SiII, and OI absorption but relatively weak signal from CIV. The latter systems systems may be of interest if the downward trend in $\Omega_{CIV}$ at high redshift is driven in part by ionization effects.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables. Submitted to Ap

Is glycoprotein IIb/IIIa antagonism as effective in women as in men following percutaneous coronary intervention? Lessons from the ESPRIT study

AbstractObjectivesThe study was done to determine whether eptifibatide, a platelet glycoprotein (GP) IIb/IIIa antagonist, prevents ischemic complications following percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs) in women as well as in men.BackgroundEptifibatide reduces ischemic complications after nonurgent coronary stent interventions.MethodsWe compared outcomes in women (n = 562) and men (n = 1,502) enrolled in the Enhanced Suppression of the Platelet GP IIb/IIIa Receptor with Integrilin Therapy (ESPRIT) trial of double-bolus eptifibatide during PCI.ResultsWomen in the ESPRIT trial were older, and more frequently had hypertension, diabetes mellitus, or acute coronary syndromes, but were less likely to have prior PCI or coronary artery bypass graft surgery. The primary end point, a composite at 48 h of death, myocardial infarction (MI), urgent target vessel revascularization (TVR), and unplanned GP IIb/IIIa use, occurred in 10.5% of women and 7.9% of men (p = 0.082). The composite of death, MI, or TVR after one year occurred in 24.5% of women compared with 18% of men (p = 0.0008). At 48 h, eptifibatide reduced the composite of death, MI, and TVR from 14.5% to 6.0% in women versus 9.0% to 6.8% in men. At one year, these differences persisted: 28.9% versus 20.0% for women and 19.5% versus 16.6% for men. No statistical interaction existed between treatment and gender at either 48 h (p = 0.063) or one year (p = 0.2). Bleeding occurred more commonly in women (5.5% vs. 2.6%, p = 0.002), and was more common in eptifibatide-treated women. After adjustment for age, weight, and hypertension, no interaction between treatment and gender was present.ConclusionsEptifibatide is effective to prevent ischemic complications of PCI in women and may eliminate gender-related differences in PCI outcomes

Attribution-based motivation treatment efficacy in an online learning environment for students who differ in cognitive elaboration

Attribution-based motivation treatments can boost performance in competitive achievement settings (Perry and Hamm 2017), yet their efficacy relative to mediating processes and affect-based treatments remains largely unexamined. In a two-semester, pre-post, randomized treatment study (n = 806), attributional retraining (AR) and stress-reduction (SR) treatments were administered in an online learning environment to first-year college students who differed in cognitive elaboration (low, high). Low elaborators who received AR outperformed their SR peers by nearly a letter grade on a class test assessed 5 months post-treatment. Path analysis revealed this AR-performance linkage was mediated by causal attributions, perceived control, and positive and negative achievement emotions in a hypothesized causal sequence. Results advance the literature by showing AR (vs. SR) improved performance indirectly via cognitive and affective process variables specified by Weiner’s (1985a, 2012) attribution theory of motivation and emotion

Cascaded Multi-View Canonical Correlation (CaMCCo) for Early Diagnosis of Alzheimer\u27s Disease via Fusion of Clinical, Imaging and Omic Features

The introduction of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) as a diagnostic category adds to the challenges of diagnosing Alzheimer\u27s Disease (AD). No single marker has been proven to accurately categorize patients into their respective diagnostic groups. Thus, previous studies have attempted to develop fused predictors of AD and MCI. These studies have two main limitations. Most do not simultaneously consider all diagnostic categories and provide suboptimal fused representations using the same set of modalities for prediction of all classes. In this work, we present a combined framework, cascaded multiview canonical correlation (CaMCCo), for fusion and cascaded classification that incorporates all diagnostic categories and optimizes classification by selectively combining a subset of modalities at each level of the cascade. CaMCCo is evaluated on a data cohort comprising 149 patients for whom neurophysiological, neuroimaging, proteomic and genomic data were available. Results suggest that fusion of select modalities for each classification task outperforms (mean AUC = 0.92) fusion of all modalities (mean AUC = 0.54) and individual modalities (mean AUC = 0.90, 0.53, 0.71, 0.73, 0.62, 0.68). In addition, CaMCCo outperforms all other multi-class classification methods for MCI prediction (PPV: 0.80 vs. 0.67, 0.63)

Does managed care make a difference? Physicians' length of stay decisions under managed and non-managed care

BACKGROUND: In this study we examined the influence of type of insurance and the influence of managed care in particular, on the length of stay decisions physicians make and on variation in medical practice. METHODS: We studied lengths of stay for comparable patients who are insured under managed or non-managed care plans. Seven Diagnosis Related Groups were chosen, two medical (COPD and CHF), one surgical (hip replacement) and four obstetrical (hysterectomy with and without complications and Cesarean section with and without complications). The 1999, 2000 and 2001 – data from hospitals in New York State were used and analyzed with multilevel analysis. RESULTS: Average length of stay does not differ between managed and non-managed care patients. Less variation was found for managed care patients. In both groups, the variation was smaller for DRGs that are easy to standardize than for other DRGs. CONCLUSION: Type of insurance does not affect length of stay. An explanation might be that hospitals have a general policy concerning length of stay, independent of the type of insurance of the patient

Introduction

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/67161/2/10.1177_0308275X9301300401.pd