The Rise of Political Fact-checking How Reagan Inspired a Journalistic Movement: A Reporter's Eye View

This report uses the Washington Post as a case study to trace the rise of modern political fact-checking. It considers fact-checking as a symptom of the larger, centuries-old struggle between the political establishment and the Fourth Estate to shape the narrative that will be presented to the voters. Through devices such as "Pinocchios" and "Pants-on-Fire" verdicts, journalists have formally asserted their right to adjudicate the truth or falsehood of the carefully-constructed campaign narratives of political candidates. This represents a shift of power back to the media following a low point during the run-up to the war in Iraq when The Post and other leading newspapers failed to seriously challenge the White House line on "weapons of mass destruction."The modern-day fact checking movement can be dated back to the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who attracted widespread ridicule for his claim that trees cause four times more pollution than automobiles. The ascent of political bloggers during the 2004 campaign put additional pressure on The Post and other mainstream news outlets to upgrade their fact checking operations. The Internet has democratized the fact-checking process by making information that was previously available only through expensive news databases such as Lexis-Nexis easily accessible to bloggers without any research budget

Generalized quantifiers in distributed databases.

Optimizing queries in a distributed database is quite difficult. This work proposes defining new generalized quantifiers which operate on sets rather than tuples. These quantifiers would allow for easier optimization in a horizontally distributed database. These operators are scalable with respect to both the number of hosts in the environment and the size of the data used

Long term evolution of planetary systems with a terrestrial planet and a giant planet

We study the long term orbital evolution of a terrestrial planet under the gravitational perturbations of a giant planet. In particular, we are interested in situations where the two planets are in the same plane and are relatively close. We examine both possible configurations: the giant planet orbit being either outside or inside the orbit of the smaller planet. The perturbing potential is expanded to high orders and an analytical solution of the terrestrial planetary orbit is derived. The analytical estimates are then compared against results from the numerical integration of the full equations of motion and we find that the analytical solution works reasonably well. An interesting finding is that the new analytical estimates improve greatly the predictions for the timescales of the orbital evolution of the terrestrial planet compared to an octupole order expansion. Finally, we briefly discuss possible applications of the analytical estimates in astrophysical problems.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA

Internal Analysis in Practice: Templates for Firm and Case Analysis

Case analysis is the foundation of business education at many educational institutions. However, there are significant challenges related to the use of cases with particular types of students, in courses with specific structural elements, and with a lack of guidance provided to students. While working with practicing managers, small business owners, and students, I developed a set of templates to aid in the assessment of a firm’s internal workings (to be used in conjunction with other templates addressing environmental, competitor, industry, and other factors). These internal analysis templates provide a structure that is systematic yet adaptable and has improved the quality of analysis and strategic insight demonstrated by student users. In this paper, I provide a copy of the templates, describe their structure and use, provide an example of a partially completed template, and discuss possible modifications and extensions

Identifying Interaction Sites in "Recalcitrant" Proteins: Predicted Protein and Rna Binding Sites in Rev Proteins of Hiv-1 and Eiav Agree with Experimental Data

Protein-protein and protein nucleic acid interactions are vitally important for a wide range of biological processes, including regulation of gene expression, protein synthesis, and replication and assembly of many viruses. We have developed machine learning approaches for predicting which amino acids of a protein participate in its interactions with other proteins and/or nucleic acids, using only the protein sequence as input. In this paper, we describe an application of classifiers trained on datasets of well-characterized protein-protein and protein-RNA complexes for which experimental structures are available. We apply these classifiers to the problem of predicting protein and RNA binding sites in the sequence of a clinically important protein for which the structure is not known: the regulatory protein Rev, essential for the replication of HIV-1 and other lentiviruses. We compare our predictions with published biochemical, genetic and partial structural information for HIV-1 and EIAV Rev and with our own published experimental mapping of RNA binding sites in EIAV Rev. The predicted and experimentally determined binding sites are in very good agreement. The ability to predict reliably the residues of a protein that directly contribute to specific binding events - without the requirement for structural information regarding either the protein or complexes in which it participates - can potentially generate new disease intervention strategies.Comment: Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing, Hawaii, In press, Accepted, 200

Introducing Students to International Business: The Fortune Global 500 Home Country Game

Students taking courses in international business or other courses with international modules within them are frequently less than excited to learn about the material, even though its importance to their future success may be growing quickly. To partially address this issue, we have developed a fun, interactive, competitive exercise based on the Fortune Global 500 to introduce international content to students. Students are asked to identify the home countries of twenty international businesses, some of whose products and services students have most likely used frequently. Participants realize more fully that whether they are cognizant of it or not, they engage in international business every day in some form or fashion; large multinational companies are not just U.S. firms; and none of us is as knowledgeable as we could or should be regarding international business. Included in this paper are the latest version of the Fortune Global 500 Home Country Game (and its key), descriptions of its structure and use, and a discussion of extensions and implications for enhanced international business education

Evaluations of Neurologists by Their Patients and Residents Are Inversely Correlated

Objective and Background: We hypothesized that evaluation scores for attending neurologists by patients and residents would parallel one another. Additionally, we hypothesized that provider productivity would be also be associated with performance evaluations by patients and residents. Methods: In a university neurology department, we collected individual Clinician and Group Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems patient satisfaction scores and standardized resident evaluation scores (n = 22 faculty members). We performed bivariate analysis of doctor–patient satisfaction versus resident evaluation scores. Results: Attending neurologists with higher patient satisfaction received lower resident evaluation scores (P \u3c .05). There seem to be disproportionate neurologists with low evaluations not meeting clinical productivity targets. Conclusion: Finding a significant inverse correlation was surprising. Perhaps what is valued by patients in their physician is not what residents value in teachers. That deserves further study. Maybe attending physicians who spend their energy on the patient experience do not have sufficient time to devote to teaching and vice versa. That neurologists with low evaluation scores appear more likely to not meet productivity targets supports this idea

Neurology Problem Based Learning with Limited Neurologist Resources is Feasible

Objective: To determine if a single neurologist can lead neurology PBL for an entire medical school class and assess the effect of a neurologist assisting in facilitating during neurology module problem-based learning on student perception of knowledge gained. Background: Problem-based learning (PBL) groups are widely becoming integrated into medical school curriculum. During each module, clinicians from the specialty area of study help conduct PBL and facilitate students through cases. For example, during the neurology module, neurologist facilitate cases pertaining to their study. At the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), there is a shortage of neurologists and it is not possible to have one neurologist lead multiple groups at once. Neurology PBL groups are therefore facilitated by non-physicians. The neurologist serves a few functions: 1) to create a written facilitator guide, 2) to open PBL to the entire class before splitting into small groups, 3) to make rounds during PBL sessions to ensure groups are on track and answer any questions, and 4) to serve as lead teacher during wrap-up of the PBL. Design/Methods: Using module surveys administered by UTRGV, we will compare student perception of PBL. Perceptions will be quantified by how they rated PBL. Data from previous modules will be used to compare surveys from the current neurology module. Results: Feedback from last year’s PBL session showed that 68.00% of students agree that neurology PBL was a useful way to learn about basic science and its application to patient care and clinical practice. Preliminary feedback from this year’s class indicates greater satisfaction with PBL than last year, where there was no neurologist involved, and formal feedback is in progress. Conclusions: Neurology PBL for an entire medical school class with a single neurologist is feasible, and appears effective based on preliminary feedback. We are awaiting formal feedback

Driving While High

As of May 2019, ten U.S. states and Washington DC have legalized non-medical/recreational use of cannabis. With increased access to legal marijuana across the country, some have raised concerns regarding unintended implications of these policies, such as the risk of motor vehicle crashes, which is the leading cause of mortality and injury among youth and young adults. Driving under the influence of marijuana is particularly concerning among young adults and college students, due to the increased level of substance use reported during the transition from high school to post-high school environments, such as college