The Impact of Small Group Case-based Learning on Traditional Pharmacology Teaching

Objectives: This study aimed to measure medical students’ perceptions of incorporating small group case-based learning (CBL) in traditional pharmacology lectures. Methods: Data were collected from third-year students (N = 68; 57% males, 43% females) at Al Quds University Medical School, Palestine. The students were offered a CBL-incorporated Pharmacology-2 course after they had been taught Pharmacology-1 in the traditional format during the preceding semester. Student attitudes towards the restructured course were examined by a self-administered structured questionnaire. Results: The majority of students thought that CBL was an effective learning tool for them (82%) and that it improved their learning skills (83%), independent learning skills (74%), analytical skills (70%), and their level of preparation for exams (75%). Most students reported that team discussions addressed lecture objectives (84%). Regarding cases discussed, most responders said that the cases were appropriate to the lecture topics (96%) and that the time allocated for case discussion was sufficient (86%). A large proportion of students thought that CBL improved their communication and collaborative skills (68% and 80%, respectively) and ability to work within a team (79%). Conclusion: Pharmacology-2 course restructuring led to a significant improvement of self-reported student satisfaction, motivation, and engagement

Optimal Time Window for the Integration of Spatial Audio-Visual Information in Virtual Environments

Sound duration and location may influence both auditory and visual perception with consequences for the judgement of both auditory-visual event location and integration. This study investigated audio-visual integration in a virtual environment using both short- and long-duration auditory stimuli with visual stimuli temporally offset from the start of the auditory stimulus, to investigate the effects of top-down neural effects on perception. Two tasks were used, an auditory localization task and a detection task (judgement of audio-visual synchrony). Eleven participants took part in the study using a HTC Vive Pro. The short-duration auditory stimuli (35-ms spatialized sound) and long-duration auditory stimuli (600-ms non-spatialized sound followed by 35 ms of spatialized sound) were presented at -60°, -30°, 0°, +30° and +60° degrees azimuth, with the visual stimulus presented synchronously or asynchronously with respect to the start of the auditory stimulus. Results showed that localization errors were larger for the longer-duration stimuli and judgements of audiovisual synchrony tended to be improved for stimuli presented at ±30°. Top-down neural processing can affect spatial localization and audio-visual processing. Auditory localization errors and audio-visual synchrony detection may reveal the effects of underlying neural feedback mechanisms that can be harnessed to optimize audio-visual experiences in virtual environments

Neural correlates of attention and streaming in a perceptually multistable auditory illusion

In a complex acoustic environment, acoustic cues and attention interact in the formation of streams within the auditory scene. In this study, a variant of the “octave illusion” [Deutsch (1974). Nature 251, 307–309] was used to investigate the neural correlates of auditory streaming, and to elucidate the effects of attention on the interaction between sequential and concurrent sound segregation in humans. By directing subjects’ attention to different frequencies and ears, it was possible to elicit several different illusory percepts with the identical stimulus. The first experiment tested the hypothesis that the illusion depends on the ability of listeners to perceptually stream the target tones from within the alternating sound sequences. In the second experiment, concurrent psychophysical measures and electroencephalography recordings provided neural correlates of the various percepts elicited by the multistable stimulus. The results show that the perception and neural correlates of the auditory illusion can be manipulated robustly by attentional focus and that the illusion is constrained in much the same way as auditory stream segregation, suggesting common underlying mechanisms

Analisis Lama Kambuh Pasien Hipertensi Dengan Sensor Tipe III Menggunakan Regresi Cox Kegagalan Proporsional (Studi Kasus Di RSUD Kartini Jepara)

Hypertension is a disease that silently kills the patients because they do not realize that they get hypertension until they check their blood pressure. It is important for hypertensive patients to know the factors that lead to the relapse time. To determine the relationship between the relapse time on hypertensive patients with the influencing factors is using regression analysis, the dependent variable is the failure time so to determine the relationship is using regression Cox proportional hazard. This research uses the medical records of hypertensive patients in period January to December 2014 in RSUD Kartini Jepara. The results indicate that the factors which affect relapse time of hypertension are kidney disease and stroke. The hypertensive patients that also suffer from kidney disease have relapse time sooner than patients who do not suffer from kidney disease. The hypertensive patients that also suffer from stroke have relapse time sooner than patients who do not suffer from a stroke