In-scene LWIR downwelling radiance estimation

Effective hyperspectral thermal infrared imaging requires accurate atmospheric compensation to convert the measured at-sensor radiance to the ground radiance. The ground radiance consists of the thermal emission of the material and the reflected downwelling radiance. An accurate estimate of the downwelling radiance is required for temperature-emissivity separation (TES) to remove the spectrally sharp reflected atmospheric effects and retrieve a smooth and accurate material emissivity to use for detection. Determination of the downwelling radiance is difficult due to the fact that a down-looking sensor has no knowledge of the atmospheric properties above its line of sight. As the sensor altitude increases and more of the atmospheric emitters are below the sensor, a relationship forms between the upwelling and downwelling radiances. This relationship comes at the expense of increased pixel size, which increases the likelihood of mixed pixels and nonlinear spectral mixing. In this paper improvements to methods used to estimate the downwelling radiance of low altitude collections are proposed. The ground radiances of reflective pixels are used to estimate the atmosphere above the sensor. The reflective pixels are identified from their sharp atmospheric spectral features. Using the assumption that emissivity spectra are smooth across the narrow reflected atmospheric downwelling radiance features, the temperatures and emissivities are then separated for the reflective pixels using a look-up-table of downwelling radiances. The downwelling radiance that provides the best overall fit for the reflective pixels is then chosen as the scene downwelling radiance.United States. Air Force Research Laboratory (Air Force Contract #FA8721-05-C-0002

Transforming Ethics Education to Develop Empathy in Pharmacy Students

Objectives: Teaching pharmacy students to be effective clinicians and empathetic caregivers is essential for delivering comprehensive pharmaceutical care; however there are inherent difficulties in teaching and evaluating empathetic responses in pharmacy students. Our objectives were to help prepare students for the ethical and therapeutic issues associated with chemotherapy-related morbidity and mortality situations by integrating the teaching of our Ethics and Oncology courses. Method: The 30-item Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale (BEES) was used to evaluate emotional empathy in third year pharmacy students at Wingate University School of Pharmacy enrolled in the Ethics and Oncology Pharmacology courses. The 50 minute courses were delivered back-to-back, twice weekly for five weeks. 56 of 64 students completed a pre- and post-course module empathy questionnaire. Informed consent and IRB approval was established. The teaching of ethical issues associated with death and dying were integrated with pharmacology. The film Wit was used to humanize lecture content. Ethics issues were also incorporated into pharmacology quizzes to draw out humanistic aspects of care. Results: We were seeking an improvement in empathy scores as an outcome of our integrated course offering. Preliminary assessment of raw scores shows 34 of 56 students\u27 demonstrating gain in their empathy score. There was a statistically significant increase in post-test scores as compared to pre-test scores (p \u3c 0.05). Implications: Preliminary data suggest a positive impact on developing empathy attitudes in pharmacy students by transforming ethics education from stand-alone ethics and therapeutics courses to an integrated, team approach. This format will continue and further study will follow

Factors influencing faculty perceptions of teaching workload

Background: Teaching workloads are often not clearly defined at academic institutions. Within health professional programs, the existence of both didactic and experiential teaching assignments make equitable distribution of teaching workloads more complex. Several reports in the literature have described the development of workload allocation formulas that have been predicted to improve faculty perceptions of fairness. Additional factors such as faculty shortage and lack of teaching support can influence faculty perceptions of workload. Objectives: The primary objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between the presence of workload measurement and allocation formulas and faculty satisfaction with workload. A secondary objective was to investigate the influence of several factors such as teaching support on workload dissatisfaction. Methods: Upper level administrators at six schools of pharmacy were interviewed in order to identify variables associated with workload assignments. This information was incorporated into a survey instrument to access faculty perceptions of teaching workload, and a link to the survey was sent via email to 690 faculty members at 12 pharmacy schools, with a request for their participation. Results: The survey response rate was 43%. Conclusions: The presence of workload measurement and workload allocation formulas were indicated by 37% and 14% of the respondents, respectively. The ability to participate in teaching schedule development appeared to improve workload satisfaction, whereas the presence of a workload allocation formula appeared to improve workload satisfaction and perceptions of fairness. A shortage of teaching support was the major factor associated with teaching workload dissatisfaction. © 2013 Elsevier Inc