A Competency-based Approach to Faculty Development

Background—Faculty development at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine (VCU SOM) has previously focused on enhancing teaching and learning in the medical and clinical education settings. While this work is important, this narrow focus does not address all facets a faculty member’s role. To broaden their programming, the VCU SOM faculty development team adopted a competency-based approach to the development and planning of faculty development activities. Summary of work—The Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs completed a research project focused on successful medical faculty who promote through the tenure process and advance in their careers. She identified the following categories for success: teaching, service, scholarship, advancing, and leadership. Each of these categories contains action-focused competencies that align with career progression addressing early, mid, and late career stages. The faculty development team adopted the identified competencies to their curriculum development and planning processes. Summary of results—The results of this adoption have been clearer goals for learners, a mapped structure for faculty development activities, and a broader range of topics offered that align with career stages. Discussion—Faculty development activities are now categorized into five (5) categories: Teach, Lead, Serve, Discover, and Advance with each category color coded for easy recognition in event marketing materials. A new logo reflecting these competency categories is now included on all Office of Faculty Affairs communications. Faculty are beginning to recognize and register for activities they need for promotion, tenure, and advancement. Conclusions—The adoption of the competencies for success from the Senior Associate Dean’s study has enriched faculty development offerings providing a recognizable structure allowing faculty to easily identify competency areas for development

It's not what you play, it's how you play it: timbre affects perception of emotion in music.

Salient sensory experiences often have a strong emotional tone, but the neuropsychological relations between perceptual characteristics of sensory objects and the affective information they convey remain poorly defined. Here we addressed the relationship between sound identity and emotional information using music. In two experiments, we investigated whether perception of emotions is influenced by altering the musical instrument on which the music is played, independently of other musical features. In the first experiment, 40 novel melodies each representing one of four emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, or anger) were each recorded on four different instruments (an electronic synthesizer, a piano, a violin, and a trumpet), controlling for melody, tempo, and loudness between instruments. Healthy participants (23 young adults aged 18-30 years, 24 older adults aged 58-75 years) were asked to select which emotion they thought each musical stimulus represented in a four-alternative forced-choice task. Using a generalized linear mixed model we found a significant interaction between instrument and emotion judgement with a similar pattern in young and older adults (p < .0001 for each age group). The effect was not attributable to musical expertise. In the second experiment using the same melodies and experimental design, the interaction between timbre and perceived emotion was replicated (p < .05) in another group of young adults for novel synthetic timbres designed to incorporate timbral cues to particular emotions. Our findings show that timbre (instrument identity) independently affects the perception of emotions in music after controlling for other acoustic, cognitive, and performance factors

Transplantation of Kidneys from Donors with Acute Renal Failure Five-Year Results from Double Center Experience

Background: Transplantation of kidneys from deceased donors with acute renal failure (ARF) has been described and represents an underutilized source of renal grafts. We reviewed retrospectively our double center experience with transplantation of ARF donor kidneys. Methods: Between January 2009 and June 2014, we performed a total of 397 kidney transplants at the two hospitals. Of which, 65 came from donors with ARF. The outcome was compared with 62 expanded criteria donor kidneys and 270 standard criteria donor kidneys. ARF was defined as donor terminal creatinine higher than 2. All kidneys from ARF donors had acceptable biopsies and were pumped. The immunosuppression was similar in all three groups (Thymoglobulin for induction and Prograf, Cellcept and steroids for maintenance). The outcome measurements included recipient serum creatinine, patient and graft survival at 6 months, 1 year and 3 years. We also reviewed the delayed graft function (DGF) rates and cold ischemic time in all groups. Results: Mean donor creatinine was 3.84±1.3. The 6 month, 1 and 3 year patient survival rates were 98.5%, 96.8% and 92.0% in ARF group, 98.1%, 97.0% and 93.4% SCD group and 98.4%, 93.2% and 77.7% in ECD group. The 6 month, 1 and 3 year death censored graft survival was 96.9%, 96.9%, 96.9% in ARF group, 97.7, 96.5, 91.8 in SCD group and 95.1%, 93.2%, 90.1% in ECD group. The mean 6mo, 1 year and 3 year recipient creatinine was 1.49, 1.46 and 1.51 in ARF group, 1.61, 1.72 and 1.77 in SCD group and 1.91, 1.92 and 2.15 in ECD group, respectively. ARF kidneys are noted to be associated with more DGF (58.5% in ARF group VS 41.5% in non ARF group), longer cold ischemic time (857.79 min in ARF group vs 589.32 min in non ARF group) and younger donor age (32.25 years in ARF group vs 40.65 years in non ARF group). Conclusion: Elevated terminal donor creatinine is not a risk factor for graft loss after deceased donor kidney transplantation. Although there is increased risk of DGF and longer cold ischemic time, transplantation of ARF kidneys provides comparable short and long term graft function and patient survival compared to kidneys from non ARF donors

A comparison of the cognitive difficulties posed by SPARQL query constructs

This study investigated difficulties in the comprehension of SPARQL. In particular, it compared the declarative and navigational styles present in the language, and various operators used in SPARQL property paths. The study involved participants selecting possible answers given a SPARQL query and knowledgebase. In general, no significant differences were found in terms of the response time and accuracy with which participants could answer questions expressed in either a declarative or navigational form. However, UNION did take significantly longer to comprehend than both braces and verti- cal line in property paths; with braces being faster than vertical line. Inversion and negated property paths both proved difficult, with their combination being very difficult indeed. Questions involving MINUS were answered more accu- rately than those involving negation in property paths, in particular where pred- icates were inverted. Both involve negation, but the semantics are different. With the MINUS questions, negation and inversion can be considered separate- ly; with property paths, negation and inversion need to be considered together. Participants generally expressed a preference for data represented graphically, and this preference was significantly correlated with accuracy of comprehen- sion. Implications for the design and use of query languages are discussed

The Ten Commandments of the Residency Interview

Securing a residency position has become increasingly competitive, thereby making the interview crucial in matching successfully. In this commentary, what I consider “Ten Commandments” of a successful interview are elaborated. Although this is geared to those applying in dermatology, the principles are applicable for any medical student applying for a residency program

First genome-wide association study investigating blood pressure and renal traits in domestic cats

Hypertension (HTN) and chronic kidney disease (CKD) are common in ageing cats. In humans, blood pressure (BP) and renal function are complex heritable traits. We performed the first feline genome-wide association study (GWAS) of quantitative traits systolic BP and creatinine and binary outcomes HTN and CKD, testing 1022 domestic cats with a discovery, replication and meta-analysis design. No variants reached experimental significance level in the discovery stage for any phenotype. Follow up of the top 9 variants for creatinine and 5 for systolic BP, one SNP reached experimental-wide significance for association with creatinine in the combined meta-analysis (chrD1.10258177; P = 1.34 × 10(–6)). Exploratory genetic risk score (GRS) analyses were performed. Within the discovery sample, GRS of top SNPs from the BP and creatinine GWAS show strong association with HTN and CKD but did not validate in independent replication samples. A GRS including SNPs corresponding to human CKD genes was not significant in an independent subset of cats. Gene-set enrichment and pathway-based analysis (GSEA) was performed for both quantitative phenotypes, with 30 enriched pathways with creatinine. Our results support the utility of GWASs and GSEA for genetic discovery of complex traits in cats, with the caveat of our findings requiring validation