How do medical teachers in Mauritius feel about teaching-learning communication skills? Development of a tool of communication skills teaching-learning perception score

Background: Since communication skills (CS) are essential for medical professionals, many medical institutes have included communication skills as an integral part of medical curriculum. The present study was done to assess the perceptions of medical teachers in a medical college in Mauritius towards teaching and learning communication skills.Methods: A 14-item questionnaire with modified Likert-like scale was designed and administered to medical teachers at a medical college in Mauritius to assess their perceptions on teaching-learning communication skills. Positive scale scores and negative scale scores were calculated to know the perceptions on positive-sounding and negative-sounding items respectively. Based on these scores, the “Communication skills teaching-learning perception score” (CSTLPS) was calculated.Results: The medical teachers had an average positive scale score of 21.7 (Range 12-28). Their average negative scale score was 15.7 (Range 10-20). The average CSTLPS was 6.0652 with a range of minus 6 to 17. More than 80 percent teachers agreed on all the positive-sounding items, whereas 50 or more percentage of teachers disagreed on most of the negative-sounding items.Conclusions: The medical teachers in Mauritius had a positive attitude towards teaching-learning communication skills in medical college. Finding out CSTLPS can serve as a useful tool

Student perceptions and learning outcome on a “fishbowl” strategy-based pharmacology seminar on drug dependence

Background: In traditional seminars usually the participants (speakers) study a topic and the non-speakers remain passive. The present study was done by using a novel “fishbowl” strategy for conducting a pharmacology seminar.Methods: A novel method based on “fishbowl” principle was applied to a drug dependence seminar in pharmacology, wherein every student was actively involved in the process. Learning outcome was assessed by comparing pre-test and post-test scores. Perceptions of students were assessed by a comprehensive questionnaire inquiring about the novel “fishbowl” method as well as seminars in general as a teaching-learning tool.Results: The novel, “fishbowl” method showed a better learning outcome on a paired t test (p<0.0001) as well as positive student perceptions. The students preferred seminars rather than lectures; however, they felt that traditional seminars are beneficial only to the speakers, and that in general seminar was a difficult and time consuming task. Majority of students expressed that the seminars were useful in preparing for medical examinations, and that seminar may be a part of evaluation in MBBS examination system.Conclusions: Use of the “fishbowl” technique produced better learning outcome through a pharmacology seminar on drug dependence. The newly designed method did involve each participant in the class, facilitated active learning, benefited to the speakers as well as non-speakers, and helped build the team spirit. “Fishbowl” principle highlights the importance of individual and small-group learning, and thus makes pharmacology learning more effective and interesting

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Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College

Methods to learn human anatomy: perceptions of medical students in paraclinical and clinical phases regarding cadaver dissection and other learning methods

Background: Though the medical students learn human anatomy during their first year of curriculum, the application of the anatomy knowledge truly starts when they enter the preclinical and clinical phases. Therefore, it is more important and worth knowing from paraclinical and clinical students that which methods of learning gross anatomy during their first year curriculum were useful to them.Methods: The present study was based on the feedback through a 16-item questionnaire inquiring into the role of cadaveric dissection and other methods in learning human anatomy from the medical students in paraclinical and clinical phases (2nd year, 3rd year and interns), who have undergone the process of cadaveric dissection as a part of anatomy course in their first year of medical education.Results: Most of the respondents gave positive feedback about the cadaveric dissection as learning methodology, however around 20% students also gave a feedback about the limitation of this method as time consuming when the course duration is less while around 85% felt the need of less crowded dissection tables for better understanding. About 25% students also said that they understood anatomy better with other methods than dissection. More than 70% students expressed that more importance to living and radiological anatomy was needed in the curriculum to benefit them in the future clinical practice. About one fourth of the students felt that complete replacement of cadaveric dissection by combination of other methods to learn anatomy is possible, especially when the newer technologies can be used to understand the subject.Conclusions: Perception of knowledge by an individual student is different based on the individual primary mental abilities. Therefore, some individuals may show better learning by particular methods. Hence a blend of different methodologies to teach a subject is helpful for majority of the students. In the teaching of human gross anatomy too, a combination of different methods has been in use. However, in the era of decrease in course duration, high “student:cadaver ratio”, and easy availability of newer technologies, there is a need to review the priorities and preferences of the methods or to find out different ways to use the existing methods to increase their effectiveness

Quantification of the glycogen cascade system: the ultrasensitive responses of liver glycogen synthase and muscle phosphorylase are due to distinctive regulatory designs

BACKGROUND: Signaling pathways include intricate networks of reversible covalent modification cycles. Such multicyclic enzyme cascades amplify the input stimulus, cause integration of multiple signals and exhibit sensitive output responses. Regulation of glycogen synthase and phosphorylase by reversible covalent modification cycles exemplifies signal transduction by enzyme cascades. Although this system for regulating glycogen synthesis and breakdown appears similar in all tissues, subtle differences have been identified. For example, phosphatase-1, a dephosphorylating enzyme of the system, is regulated quite differently in muscle and liver. Do these small differences in regulatory architecture affect the overall performance of the glycogen cascade in a specific tissue? We address this question by analyzing the regulatory structure of the glycogen cascade system in liver and muscle cells at steady state. RESULTS: The glycogen cascade system in liver and muscle cells was analyzed at steady state and the results were compared with literature data. We found that the cascade system exhibits highly sensitive switch-like responses to changes in cyclic AMP concentration and the outputs are surprisingly different in the two tissues. In muscle, glycogen phosphorylase is more sensitive than glycogen synthase to cyclic AMP, while the opposite is observed in liver. Furthermore, when the liver undergoes a transition from starved to fed-state, the futile cycle of simultaneous glycogen synthesis and degradation switches to reciprocal regulation. Under such a transition, different proportions of active glycogen synthase and phosphorylase can coexist due to the varying inhibition of glycogen-synthase phosphatase by active phosphorylase. CONCLUSION: The highly sensitive responses of glycogen synthase in liver and phosphorylase in muscle to primary stimuli can be attributed to distinctive regulatory designs in the glycogen cascade system. The different sensitivities of these two enzymes may exemplify the adaptive strategies employed by liver and muscle cells to meet specific cellular demands

Trust based multi objective honey badger algorithm to secure routing in vehicular ad-hoc networks

A vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET) is a set of intelligent vehicles that interact without any fixed infrastructure. Data transmission between each transmitter/receiver pair is accomplished using routing protocols. However, communication over the VANET is vulnerable to malicious attacks, because of the unavailability of fixed infrastructure and wireless communication. In this paper, the trust based multi objective honey badger algorithm (TMOHBA) is proposed to achieve secure routing over the VANET. The TMOHBA is optimized by incorporating different cost functions, namely, trust, end to end delay (EED), routing overhead, energy, and distance. The developed secure route discovery using the TMOHBA is used to improve the robustness against the malicious attacks, for increasing the data delivery. Moreover, the shortest path discovery is used to minimize the delay while improving the security of VANET. The TMOHBA method is evaluated using the packet delivery ratio (PDR), throughput and EED. Existing researches such as hybrid enhanced glowworm swarm optimization (HEGSO) and ad-hoc on-demand distance vector based secure protocol (AODV-SP) are used to evaluate the TMOHBA method. The PDR of the TMOHBA method for 10 malicious attacks is 90.6446% which is higher when compared to the HEGSO and AODV-SP

A steady state analysis indicates that negative feedback regulation of PTP1B by Akt elicits bistability in insulin-stimulated GLUT4 translocation

BACKGROUND: The phenomenon of switch-like response to graded input signal is the theme involved in various signaling pathways in living systems. Positive feedback loops or double negative feedback loops embedded with nonlinearity exhibit these switch-like bistable responses. Such feedback regulations exist in insulin signaling pathway as well. METHODS: In the current manuscript, a steady state analysis of the metabolic insulin-signaling pathway is presented. The threshold concentration of insulin required for glucose transporter GLUT4 translocation was studied with variation in system parameters and component concentrations. The dose response curves of GLUT4 translocation at various concentration of insulin obtained by steady state analysis were quantified in-terms of half saturation constant. RESULTS: We show that, insulin-stimulated GLUT4 translocation can operate as a bistable switch, which ensures that GLUT4 settles between two discrete, but mutually exclusive stable steady states. The threshold concentration of insulin required for GLUT4 translocation changes with variation in system parameters and component concentrations, thus providing insights into possible pathological conditions. CONCLUSION: A steady state analysis indicates that negative feedback regulation of phosphatase PTP1B by Akt elicits bistability in insulin-stimulated GLUT4 translocation. The threshold concentration of insulin required for GLUT4 translocation and the corresponding bistable response at different system parameters and component concentrations was compared with reported experimental observations on specific defects in regulation of the system

The impact of COVID-19 on the practice of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology in the United States and Canada

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted the delivery of healthcare, including oral healthcare services. The restrictions imposed for mitigating spread of the virus forced dental practitioners to adopt significant changes in their workflow pattern. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of the pandemic on the practice of oral and maxillofacial pathology in two countries in regard to educational activities, and clinical and diagnostic pathology services

Air Pollution Monitoring & Control at Foundry Clusters in Belgaum-A Case Study

Foundry in Belgaum is the only relatively modern. A foundry is a casting manufacturing system. Casting is the process of forming objects by pouring liquid metal into prepared mould and allowing the melt to solidify. The foundry operations generate different kinds of air pollution, depending upon the kinds of furnace in use and the kinds of energy inputs that they use.The present study indicates the air pollution concentration of foundry clusters area of Belgaum city divided in three zones and the concentration of different air pollutants such as Sulphur dioxide (SO2), Nitrogen dioxide (NO2), Ammonia (NH3), Particulate Matter 10 (PM10) and Particulate Matter 2.5 (PM2.5) are analyzed. Monitoring locations were divided in three zones Udyambag, Angol, Machhe sampling was done for 24 hours duration. The samples were collected during the month of January February, March and April 2014

Depolymerization of bagasse by Ruminococcus albus in the production of eco-friendly fuel

Ethanol production by fermentation of lignocellulosic biomass-derived sugars involves a fairly ancient art and an ever-evolving science. Production of ethanol from lignocellulosic biomass is not avant-garde, and wood ethanol plants have been in existence since at least 1915. Most current ethanol production relies on starch- and sugarbased crops as the substrate; however, limitations of these materials and competing value for human and animal feeds is renewing interest in lignocellulose  conversion.Lignocellulosic biomass contains carbohydrate fractions that can be converted into ethanol. In order to convert these fractions, the cellulose and hemicelluloses must ultimately be converted or hydrolysed into monosaccharides; it is the hydrolysis that has historically proven to be problematic. Biologically mediated processes are promising for energy conversion, in particular for the conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into  fuels. The objective of the present study is to optimise cellulosic ethanol production from bagasse by using Ruminococcus albus isolated from rumen of herbivores animals. The processing and utilization of the  lignocellulosic substrate is complex, differing in many aspects from crop-based ethanol production. Since the scientific dogma states that the breakdown or depolymerisation of lignocellulose can be achieved only by chemical or by enzymatic approach; in the present study we isolated Ruminococcus albus from rumen animals which was depolymerise cellulose and hemicellulose as well as to tolerate stress conditions. Optimum temperature, pH and substrate concentration for depolymerization were 390C, 8.8 and 3.5% respectively for Ruminococcus albus. For the feed  stock of concentration 3.5%, ethanol yield of 19.8g/l was obtained