Community engagement: A central feature of NOSM’s socially accountable distributed medical education

Background: Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) serves as the Faculty of Medicine of Lakehead and Laurentian Universities, and views the entire geography of Northern Ontario as its campus. This paper explores how community engagement contributes to achieving social accountability in over 90 sites through NOSM’s distinctive model, Distributed Community Engaged Learning (DCEL).Methods: Studies involving qualitative and quantitative methods contribute to this paper, which draws on administrative data from NOSM and external sources, as well as surveys and interviews of students, graduates and other informants including the joint NOSM-CRaNHR (Centre for Rural and Northern Health Research) tracking and impact studies.Results: Community engagement contributes throughout the lifecycle stages of preadmission, admission, and undergraduate medical education. High school students from 70 Northern Ontario communities participate in NOSM’s week-long Health Sciences Summer Camps. The MD admissions process involves approximately 128 volunteers assessing written applications and over 100 volunteer interviewers. Thirty-six Indigenous communities host first year students and third-year students learn their core clinical medicine in 15 communities, throughout Northern Ontario. In general, learners and communities report net benefits from participation in NOSM programs.Conclusion: Community engagement makes a key contribution to the success of NOSM’s socially accountable distributed medical education

Definition of the Cattle Killer Cell Ig-like Receptor Gene Family: Comparison with Aurochs and Human Counterparts

Under selection pressure from pathogens, variable NK cell receptors that recognize polymorphic MHC class I evolved convergently in different species of placental mammal. Unexpectedly, diversified killer cell Ig–like receptors (KIRs) are shared by simian primates, including humans, and cattle, but not by other species. Whereas much is known of human KIR genetics and genomics, knowledge of cattle KIR is limited to nine cDNA sequences. To facilitate comparison of the cattle and human KIR gene families, we determined the genomic location, structure, and sequence of two cattle KIR haplotypes and defined KIR sequences of aurochs, the extinct wild ancestor of domestic cattle. Larger than its human counterpart, the cattle KIR locus evolved through successive duplications of a block containing ancestral KIR3DL and KIR3DX genes that existed before placental mammals. Comparison of two cattle KIR haplotypes and aurochs KIR show the KIR are polymorphic and the gene organization and content appear conserved. Of 18 genes, 8 are functional and 10 were inactivated by point mutation. Selective inactivation of KIR3DL and activating receptor genes leaves a functional cohort of one inhibitory KIR3DL, one activating KIR3DX, and six inhibitory KIR3DX. Functional KIR diversity evolved from KIR3DX in cattle and from KIR3DL in simian primates. Although independently evolved, cattle and human KIR gene families share important function-related properties, indicating that cattle KIR are NK cell receptors for cattle MHC class I. Combinations of KIR and MHC class I are the major genetic factors associated with human disease and merit investigation in cattle

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Factors affecting human self-control in a local versus global choice paradigm

Recently, Rachlin (1995a) has criticised the traditional smaller-sooner vs. larger-later model of self-control on the grounds that it fails to capture many of the essential characteristics of the situations to which the everyday language sense of self-control is usually applied. Rachlin's alternative model sees self-control as choosing to act in ways that deliver relatively small immediate (local) rewards but that contribute to a larger overall (global) pattern of reward. The choice procedure of Herrnstein, Loewenstein, Prelec, and Vaughan (1993) offers a laboratory-based instantiation of these conditions. This thesis is concerned with the examination of factors that may affect human choice between local and global rewards.The thesis reports four experiments that used the Herrnstein et al. (1993) paradigm to examine how cognitive and motivational factors may affect human choice. Overall, participants were found to be relatively insensitive to the global contingency. In Experiment 1, rewards were based on accumulating points. Participants preferred local reward when the difference in local rates was larger, but the provision of prospective and social comparative information reduced local choice. In Experiments 2 to 4, rewards were based on minimising delay. Experiment 2 manipulated the difference in local rates but the results were inconclusive. Experiment 3 found that global choice was increased by the provision of explicit delay information but that the rate at which the rewards changed between trials had no effect within the parameters studied. Experiment 4 found that the provision of a written description of the contingencies increased global choice relative to a control group but that a forced-choice training procedure did not. Generally, global strategies increased with awareness of the global contingency. Results are discussed in relation to Skinner's (1969) distinction between contingency-shaped and rule-governed behaviour.</p

Navigating in a sea of change : second set of working papers of the Higher Education Policy Project

"This volume represents the second collection of working papers and articles by participants in the Higher Education Policy Project (HEPP), a project funded by the Australian Research Council and based in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Queensland."--p. v

Within-host variation of avian influenza viruses

The emergence and spread of H5N1 avian influenza viruses from Asia through to Europe and Africa pose a significant animal disease problem and have raised concerns that the virus may pose a pandemic threat to humans. The epizootological factors that have influenced the wide distribution of the virus are complex, and the variety of viruses currently circulating reflects these factors. Sequence analysis of the virus genes sheds light on the H5N1 virus evolution during its emergence and spread, but the degree of virus variation at the level of an individual infected bird has been described in only a few studies. Here, we describe some results of a study in which turkeys, ducks and chickens were infected with either one of two H5N1 or one of three H7N1 viruses, and the degree of sequence variation within an individual infected avian host was examined. We developed 'deep amplicon' sequence analysis for this work, and the methods and results provide a background framework for application to disease outbreaks in the field

Community engagement: A central feature of NOSM's socially accountable distributed medical education

Background: Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) serves as the Faculty of Medicine of Lakehead and Laurentian Universities, and views the entire geography of Northern Ontario as its campus. This paper explores how community engagement contributes to achieving social accountability in over 90 sites through NOSM's distinctive model, Distributed Community Engaged Learning (DCEL). Methods: Studies involving qualitative and quantitative methods contribute to this paper, which draws on administrative data from NOSM and external sources, as well as surveys and interviews of students, graduates and other informants including the joint NOSM-CRaNHR (Centre for Rural and Northern Health Research) tracking and impact studies. Results: Community engagement contributes throughout the lifecycle stages of preadmission, admission, and undergraduate medical education. High school students from 70 Northern Ontario communities participate in NOSM's week-long Health Sciences Summer Camps. The MD admissions process involves approximately 128 volunteers assessing written applications and over 100 volunteer interviewers. Thirty-six Indigenous communities host first year students and third-year students learn their core clinical medicine in 15 communities, throughout Northern Ontario. In general, learners and communities report net benefits from participation in NOSM programs. Conclusion: Community engagement makes a key contribution to the success of NOSM's socially accountable distributed medical education