Disclosure Of Conflicts Of Interest In The Orthopaedic Field And In Medical Education

DISCLOSURE OF CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN THE ORTHOPAEDIC FIELD AND IN MEDICAL EDUCATION. Brian L. Ju, Christopher P. Miller, Peter G. Whang, Jonathan N. Grauer. Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation, Yale University, School of Medicine, New Haven, CT. The purpose of this study was to determine the variability in disclosure information reported by authors at three annual orthopaedic conferences in the same year. Furthermore, we examined the number of medical schools with disclosure policies regarding educational activities and the acceptance of gifts from industry (law school policies were similarly analyzed for comparison). We hypothesize there will be significant variability in disclosure of conflicts of interest in both the professional and educational arena. The author disclosure information published for the 2008 North American Spine Society (NASS), Cervical Spine Research Society (CSRS), and Scoliosis Research Society (SRS) conferences were compiled into a database and examined. Online disclosure policies for all 131 accredited medical schools and all 200 accredited law schools were evaluated during August/September 2009. Disclosure records were available for 1,231 authors at NASS, 550 at CSRS, and 642 at SRS. Of the 153 authors who presented at the NASS and CSRS meetings, 51% exhibited discrepancies in their disclosure information. Of the 131 accredited medical schools, 98% (vs. 18% of law schools) had protocols in place requiring faculty to disclose their financial relationships to their institutions. Only a small percentage of both medical and law schools required lecturers to disclose these associations with students. 40% of medical schools (vs. 1% of law schools) had established policies limiting gifts from industry. These findings emphasize the significant variability that currently exists in the reporting of financial conflicts of interest by authors who presented at three major spine conferences. We believe these discrepancies are likely due to confusion regarding what relationships should be acknowledged in certain situations and the clear lack of uniformity among the disclosure policies. Not only in the professional arena, but the widespread implementation of disclosure guidelines in medical schools emphasizes the acknowledged need to regulate physician-industry relationships. The varied policies addressing faculty disclosures and the acceptance of gifts demonstrate that the regulation to these relationships remains inconsistent

Scaffolding for Optimal Challenge in K–12 Problem-Based Learning

Establishing optimal challenge enhances intrinsic motivation, interest, and the probability of success in the learning activity. In K–12 problem-based learning (PBL), students may struggle to address associated tasks that are beyond their current ability levels. This paper suggested learner-centered scaffolding systems (LSS) to improve K–12 students’ perception of optimal challenge by addressing their learning issues in PBL. LSS enhances students’ experience in autonomy and competence by providing multiple types of scaffolding in accordance with students’ different needs and difficulties in PBL. Students can control the nature and frequency of scaffolding by themselves according to their needs and ability, and it plays a role in improving their self-directed learning skills. Last, peer scaffolding between students with similar abilities satisfies students’ needs for relatedness

Sludge Digestion By Anaerobic Fluidized Beds. II: Kinetic Model

A model has been developed to describe the gas production and soluble-COD variations from the digestion of waste-activated sludge in the anaerobic fluidized-bed reactor. It indicates that a substantial rate increase can be attained by prehydrolysis of the biological sludge, external to the reactor. The model indicates that the rate-limiting step is in the sludge hydrolysis. The model is developed from an assumption of first-order kinetics in a set of series and parallel, irreversible reactions. That is, the formation of soluble substrate is first order with respect to the particulate biomass present, and that the production of methane is first order with respect to the soluble substrate present. The amount of particulate biomass can be approximated by the sludge-suspended solids and that the amount of soluble substrate can be approximated by the soluble COD present in the reactor. The model correlates well with the laboratory data observed in the study. © ASCE

Corporate Governance and Institutional Transparency in Emerging Markets

This paper posits that differences in corporate governance structure partly result from differences in institutional arrangements linked to business systems. We developed a new international triad of business systems: the Anglo-American, the Communitarian and the Emerging system, building on the frameworks of Choi et al. (British Academy of Management (Kynoch Birmingham) 1996, Management International Review 39, 257–279, 1999). A common factor determining the success of a corporate governance structure is the extent to which it is transparent to market forces. Such transparency is more than pure financial transparency; as it can also be based on factors such as governmental, banking and other types of institutional transparency mechanism. There may also be a choice for firms to adopt voluntary corporate disclosure in situations where mandatory disclosure is not established. The Asian financial crisis of 1997–1999 and the more recent corporate governance scandals such as Enron, Andersen and Worldcom in the United States and Ahold and Parmalat in Europe show that corporate governance and business ethics issues exist throughout the world. As an illustration we focus on Asia’s emerging1 markets, as, both in view of the pressure of globalization and taking into account the institutional arrangements peculiar to the emerging business system, these issues are important there. Particularly for those who have to find an accommodation between the corporate governance structures and disclosure standards of the Emerging system and those of the Anglo-American and Communitarian systems

Proximity Driven Enhanced Magnetic Order at Ferromagnetic Insulator / Magnetic Topological Insulator Interface

Magnetic exchange driven proximity effect at a magnetic insulator / topological insulator (MI/TI) interface provides a rich playground for novel phenomena as well as a way to realize low energy dissipation quantum devices. Here we report a dramatic enhancement of proximity exchange coupling in the MI / magnetic-TI EuS / Sb$_{2-x}$V$_x$Te$_3$ hybrid heterostructure, where V doping is used to drive the TI (Sb$_{2}$Te$_3$) magnetic. We observe an artificial antiferromagnetic-like structure near the MI/TI interface, which may account for the enhanced proximity coupling. The interplay between the proximity effect and doping provides insights into controllable engineering of magnetic order using a hybrid heterostructure.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Application of Geometric Probability Techniques to the Evaluation of Interaction Energies Arising from a General Radial Potential

A formalism is developed for using geometric probability techniques to evaluate interaction energies arising from a general radial potential V(r12), where r12 = ∣r2−r1∣. The integrals that arise in calculating these energies can be separated into a radial piece that depends on r12 and a nonradial piece that describes the geometry of the system, including the density distribution. We show that all geometric information can be encoded into a “radial density function” G(r12;ρ1,ρ2), which depends on r12 and the densities ρ1and ρ2 of two interacting regions. G(r12;ρ1,ρ2) is calculated explicitly for several geometries and is then used to evaluate interaction energies for several cases of interest. Our results find application in elementary particle, nuclear, and atomic physic

Analysis of alcohol dependence phenotype in the COGA families using covariates to detect linkage

Linkage analysis methods that incorporate etiological heterogeneity of complex diseases are likely to demonstrate greater power than traditional linkage analysis methods. Several such methods use covariates to discriminate between linked and unlinked pedigrees with respect to a certain disease locus. Here we apply several such methods including two mixture models, ordered subset analysis, and a conditional logistic model to genome scan data on the DSM-IV alcohol dependence phenotype on the Collaborative Studies on Genetics of Alcoholism families, and compare the results to traditional nonparametric linkage analysis. In general, there was little agreement among the various covariate-based linkage statistics. Linkage signals with empirical p-values less than 0.001 were detected on chromosomes 3, 4, 7, 10, and 12, with the highest peak occurring at the GABRB1 gene using the ecb21 covariate