Effective Continuous Student Assessment using Statistical Methods

The need of the hour is to impart knowledge to students especially those who are below average and help them gain foot in competing with confidence and vigor. Engineering courses are no cake walk however; a sense of enthusiasm can be developed in such students to partake later in the conglomeration of experts on completion of their course. For this to happen, proper assessment and evaluation of subjective content during the course must be done. A proper and effective assessment process should facilitate in timely identification of the student�s weak topics in a subject during the course. In this paper, we discuss about direct assessment technique that starts with the preparation of the question paper, pertaining to the subject, topic-wise. The assessment of the student�s answers shall be done and marks of the subject shall be entered topic-wise. When marks obtained for a particular topic of a subject is below a certain threshold, it acts as an alarm to notify the student of their weak topic that requires immediate attention

Gender differences in work stressors and psychiatric morbidity at workplace in doctors and nurses

Background: Work environment is one of the key factors responsible for stress in human life. Different aspects of working conditions affect person’s work. Work stress in turn leads to psychiatric problems. Doctors and nurses are prone to be affected by work stressors as their work includes more human interactions.Methods: It is a cross sectional observational study conducted at a Medical College affiliated General Hospital. Total 400 subjects were surveyed for this study including 200 doctors and 200 nurses with equal gender distribution. Subjects were interviewed in groups and asked to fill up self-rated questionnaires during the interview. The demographic details were collected through a specially designed semi-structured proforma with workplace stressors checklist, presence of past or present psychiatric illness and presence of enduring stress other than workplace stress. Psychiatric morbidity was assessed by DASS and GHQ-28.Results: In males lack of staff or resources and in females disputes with staff or seniors are important stressors at workplace while long working hours and work responsibilities on holiday were considered as the least stressful. 9.45%, 20.2% and 29.2% having self-rated depression, stress and anxiety respectively in DASS. No significant difference found in gender as well as class as regards of psychiatric morbidity. Past or present psychiatric illness and stress other than work place are significantly associated with GHQ 28 Case-ness. 3.5% females were having suicidal ideas (GHQ item D7) as compared to 0.5% males.Conclusions: Measures for improving working conditions and environment, adequate resources, clarifying roles, constructive resolution of conflicts and stress management training are required to increase work productivity.

Modulation of human peripheral blood mononuclear cell signaling by medicinal cannabinoids

Medical marijuana is increasingly prescribed as an analgesic for a growing number of indications, amongst which terminal cancer and multiple sclerosis. However, the mechanistic aspects and properties of cannabis remain remarkably poorly characterized. In this study we aimed to investigate the immune-cell modulatory properties of medical cannabis. Healthy volunteers were asked to ingest medical cannabis, and kinome profiling was used to generate comprehensive descriptions of the cannabis challenge on inflammatory signal transduction in the peripheral blood of these volunteers. Results were related to both short term and long term effects in patients experimentally treated with a medical marijuana preparation for suffering from abdominal pain as a result of chronic pancreatitis or other causes. The results reveal an immunosuppressive effect of cannabinoid preparations via deactivation of signaling through the pro-inflammatory p38 MAP kinase and mTOR pathways and a concomitant deactivation of the pro-mitogenic ERK pathway. However, long term cannabis exposure in two patients resulted in reversal of this effect. While these data provide a powerful mechanistic rationale for the clinical use of medical marijuana in inflammatory and oncological disease, caution may be advised with sustained use of such preparations

Immunotherapy in genitourinary malignancies

Abstract Treatment of cancer patients involves a multidisciplinary approach including surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy. Traditionally, patients with metastatic disease are treated with combination chemotherapies or targeted agents. These cytotoxic agents have good response rates and achieve palliation; however, complete responses are rarely seen. The field of cancer immunology has made rapid advances in the past 20 years. Recently, a number of agents and vaccines, which modulate the immune system to allow it to detect and target cancer cells, are being developed. The benefit of these agents is twofold, it enhances the ability the body’s own immune system to fight cancer, thus has a lower incidence of side effects compared to conventional cytotoxic chemotherapy. Secondly, a small but substantial number of patients with metastatic disease are cured by immunotherapy or achieve durable responses lasting for a number of years. In this article, we review the FDA-approved immunotherapy agents in the field of genitourinary malignancies. We also summarize new immunotherapy agents being evaluated in clinical studies either as single agents or as a combination