Reducing corruption in a Mexican medical school: impact assessment across two cross-sectional surveys

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Corruption pervades educational and other institutions worldwide and medical schools are not exempt. Empirical evidence about levels and types of corruption in medical schools is sparse. We conducted surveys in 2000 and 2007 in the medical school of the Autonomous University of Guerrero in Mexico to document student perceptions and experience of corruption and to support the medical school to take actions to tackle corruption.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In both 2000 and 2007 medical students completed a self-administered questionnaire in the classroom without the teacher present. The questionnaire asked about unofficial payments for admission to medical school, for passing an examination and for administrative procedures. We examined factors related to the experience of corruption in multivariate analysis. Focus groups of students discussed the quantitative findings.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In 2000, 6% of 725 responding students had paid unofficially to obtain entry into the medical school; this proportion fell to 1.6% of the 436 respondents in 2007. In 2000, 15% of students reported having paid a bribe to pass an examination, not significantly different from the 18% who reported this in 2007. In 2007, students were significantly more likely to have bribed a teacher to pass an examination if they were in the fourth year, if they had been subjected to sexual harassment or political pressure, and if they had been in the university for five years or more. Students resented the need to make unofficial payments and suggested tackling the problem by disciplining corrupt teachers. The university administration made several changes to the system of admissions and examinations in the medical school, based on the findings of the 2000 survey.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The fall in the rate of bribery to enter the medical school was probably the result of the new admissions system instituted after the first survey. Further actions will be necessary to tackle the continuing presence of bribery to pass examinations and for administrative procedures. The social audit helped to draw attention to corruption and to stimulate actions to tackle it.</p

γδ T Cells Are Reduced and Rendered Unresponsive by Hyperglycemia and Chronic TNFα in Mouse Models of Obesity and Metabolic Disease

Epithelial cells provide an initial line of defense against damage and pathogens in barrier tissues such as the skin; however this balance is disrupted in obesity and metabolic disease. Skin γδ T cells recognize epithelial damage, and release cytokines and growth factors that facilitate wound repair. We report here that hyperglycemia results in impaired skin γδ T cell proliferation due to altered STAT5 signaling, ultimately resulting in half the number of γδ T cells populating the epidermis. Skin γδ T cells that overcome this hyperglycemic state are unresponsive to epithelial cell damage due to chronic inflammatory mediators, including TNFα. Cytokine and growth factor production at the site of tissue damage was partially restored by administering neutralizing TNFα antibodies in vivo. Thus, metabolic disease negatively impacts homeostasis and functionality of skin γδ T cells, rendering host defense mechanisms vulnerable to injury and infection

The Lyman alpha reference sample. II. Hubble space telescope imaging results, integrated properties, and trends

We report new results regarding the Lyα output of galaxies, derived from the Lyman Alpha Reference Sample, and focused on Hubble Space Telescope imaging. For 14 galaxies we present intensity images in Lyα, Hα, and UV, and maps of Hα/Hβ, Lyα equivalent width (EW), and Lyα/Hα. We present Lyα and UV radial light profiles and show they are well-fitted by Sérsic profiles, but Lyα profiles show indices systematically lower than those of the UV (n ≈ 1-2 instead of gsim 4). This reveals a general lack of the central concentration in Lyα that is ubiquitous in the UV. Photometric growth curves increase more slowly for Lyα than the far ultraviolet, showing that small apertures may underestimate the EW. For most galaxies, however, flux and EW curves flatten by radii ≈10 kpc, suggesting that if placed at high-z only a few of our galaxies would suffer from large flux losses. We compute global properties of the sample in large apertures, and show total Lyα luminosities to be independent of all other quantities. Normalized Lyα throughput, however, shows significant correlations: escape is found to be higher in galaxies of lower star formation rate, dust content, mass, and nebular quantities that suggest harder ionizing continuum and lower metallicity. Six galaxies would be selected as high-z Lyα emitters, based upon their luminosity and EW. We discuss the results in the context of high-z Lyα and UV samples. A few galaxies have EWs above 50 Å, and one shows $f_\mathrm{esc}^{\mathrm{Ly}\alpha }$ of 80%; such objects have not previously been reported at low-z

The COS Legacy Archive Spectroscopy SurveY (CLASSY) Treasury Atlas

Far-ultraviolet (FUV; ~1200-2000 angstroms) spectra are fundamental to our understanding of star-forming galaxies, providing a unique window on massive stellar populations, chemical evolution, feedback processes, and reionization. The launch of JWST will soon usher in a new era, pushing the UV spectroscopic frontier to higher redshifts than ever before, however, its success hinges on a comprehensive understanding of the massive star populations and gas conditions that power the observed UV spectral features. This requires a level of detail that is only possible with a combination of ample wavelength coverage, signal-to-noise, spectral-resolution, and sample diversity that has not yet been achieved by any FUV spectral database. We present the COS Legacy Spectroscopic SurveY (CLASSY) treasury and its first high level science product, the CLASSY atlas. CLASSY builds on the HST archive to construct the first high-quality (S/N_1500 >~ 5/resel), high-resolution (R~15,000) FUV spectral database of 45 nearby (0.002 < z < 0.182) star-forming galaxies. The CLASSY atlas, available to the public via the CLASSY website, is the result of optimally extracting and coadding 170 archival+new spectra from 312 orbits of HST observations. The CLASSY sample covers a broad range of properties including stellar mass (6.2 < logM_star(M_sol) < 10.1), star formation rate (-2.0 < log SFR (M_sol/yr) < +1.6), direct gas-phase metallicity (7.0 < 12+log(O/H) < 8.8), ionization (0.5 < O_32 < 38.0), reddening (0.02 < E(B-V < 0.67), and nebular density (10 < n_e (cm^-3) < 1120). CLASSY is biased to UV-bright star-forming galaxies, resulting in a sample that is consistent with z~0 mass-metallicity relationship, but is offset to higher SFRs by roughly 2 dex, similar to z >~2 galaxies. This unique set of properties makes the CLASSY atlas the benchmark training set for star-forming galaxies across cosmic time.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap

MerTK inhibition in tumor leukocytes decreases tumor growth and metastasis

MerTK, a receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) of the TYRO3/AXL/MerTK family, is expressed in myeloid lineage cells in which it acts to suppress proinflammatory cytokines following ingestion of apoptotic material. Using syngeneic mouse models of breast cancer, melanoma, and colon cancer, we found that tumors grew slowly and were poorly metastatic in MerTK(–/–) mice. Transplantation of MerTK(–/–) bone marrow, but not wild-type bone marrow, into lethally irradiated MMTV-PyVmT mice (a model of metastatic breast cancer) decreased tumor growth and altered cytokine production by tumor CD11b(+) cells. Although MerTK expression was not required for tumor infiltration by leukocytes, MerTK(–/–) leukocytes exhibited lower tumor cell–induced expression of wound healing cytokines, e.g., IL-10 and growth arrest-specific 6 (GAS6), and enhanced expression of acute inflammatory cytokines, e.g., IL-12 and IL-6. Intratumoral CD8(+) T lymphocyte numbers were higher and lymphocyte proliferation was increased in tumor-bearing MerTK(–/–) mice compared with tumor-bearing wild-type mice. Antibody-mediated CD8(+) T lymphocyte depletion restored tumor growth in MerTK(–/–) mice. These data demonstrate that MerTK signaling in tumor-associated CD11b(+) leukocytes promotes tumor growth by dampening acute inflammatory cytokines while inducing wound healing cytokines. These results suggest that inhibition of MerTK in the tumor microenvironment may have clinical benefit, stimulating antitumor immune responses or enhancing immunotherapeutic strategies

Interpreting the Si ii and C ii Line Spectra from the COS Legacy Archive Spectroscopic SurveY Using a Virtual Galaxy from a High-resolution Radiation-hydrodynamic Simulation

Observations of low-ionization state metal lines provide crucial insights into the interstellar medium (ISM) of galaxies, yet, disentangling the physical processes responsible for the emerging line profiles is difficult. This work investigates how mock spectra generated using a single galaxy in a radiation-hydrodynamical simulation can help us interpret observations of a real galaxy. We create 22,500 C ii and Si ii spectra from the virtual galaxy at different times and through multiple lines of sight and compare them with the 45 observations of low-redshift star-forming galaxies from the COS Legacy Spectroscopic SurveY ( classy ). We find that the mock profiles provide accurate replicates of the observations of 38 galaxies with a broad range of stellar masses (10 ^6 –10 ^9 M _⊙ ) and metallicities (0.02–0.55 Z _⊙ ). Additionally, we highlight that aperture losses explain the weakness of the fluorescent emission in several classy spectra and must be accounted for when comparing simulations to observations. Overall, we show that the evolution of a single simulated galaxy can produce a large diversity of spectra whose properties are representative of galaxies of comparable or smaller masses. Building upon these results, we explore the origin of the continuum, residual flux, and fluorescent emission in the simulation. We find that these different spectral features all emerge from distinct regions in the galaxy’s ISM, and their characteristics can vary as a function of the viewing angle. While these outcomes challenge simplified interpretations of down-the-barrel spectra, our results indicate that high-resolution simulations provide an optimal framework to interpret these observations