A conceptual analytics model for an outcome-driven quality management framework as part of professional healthcare education

BACKGROUND: Preparing the future health care professional workforce in a changing world is a significant undertaking. Educators and other decision makers look to evidence-based knowledge to improve quality of education. Analytics, the use of data to generate insights and support decisions, have been applied successfully across numerous application domains. Health care professional education is one area where great potential is yet to be realized. Previous research of Academic and Learning analytics has mainly focused on technical issues. The focus of this study relates to its practical implementation in the setting of health care education. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to create a conceptual model for a deeper understanding of the synthesizing process, and transforming data into information to support educators’ decision making. METHODS: A deductive case study approach was applied to develop the conceptual model. RESULTS: The analytics loop works both in theory and in practice. The conceptual model encompasses the underlying data, the quality indicators, and decision support for educators. CONCLUSIONS: The model illustrates how a theory can be applied to a traditional data-driven analytics approach, and alongside the context- or need-driven analytics approach

Retrograde trafficking of Argonaute 2 acts as a rate-limiting step for de novo miRNP formation on endoplasmic reticulum–attached polysomes in mammalian cells

microRNAs are short regulatory RNAs in metazoan cells. Regulation of miRNA activity and abundance is evident in human cells where availability of target messages can influence miRNA biogenesis by augmenting the Dicer1-dependent processing of precursors to mature microRNAs. Requirement of subcellular compartmentalization of Ago2, the key component of miRNA repression machineries, for the controlled biogenesis of miRNPs is reported here. The process predominantly happens on the polysomes attached with the endoplasmic reticulum for which the subcellular Ago2 trafficking is found to be essential. Mitochondrial tethering of endoplasmic reticulum and its interaction with endosomes controls Ago2 availability. In cells with depolarized mitochondria, miRNA biogenesis gets impaired, which results in lowering of de novo–formed mature miRNA levels and accumulation of miRNA-free Ago2 on endosomes that fails to interact with Dicer1 and to traffic back to endoplasmic reticulum for de novo miRNA loading. Thus, mitochondria by sensing the cellular context regulates Ago2 trafficking at the subcellular level, which acts as a rate-limiting step in miRNA biogenesis process in mammalian cells

Transport and Spectra in the Half-filled Hubbard Model: A Dynamical Mean Field Study

We study the issues of scaling and universality in spectral and transport properties of the infinite dimensional particle--hole symmetric (half-filled) Hubbard model within dynamical mean field theory. One of the simplest and extensively used impurity solvers, namely the iterated perturbation theory approach is reformulated to avoid problems such as analytic continuation of Matsubara frequency quantities or calculating multi-dimensional integrals, while taking full account of the very sharp structures in the Green's functions that arise close to the Mott transitions and in the Mott insulator regime. We demonstrate its viability for the half-filled Hubbard model. Previous known results are reproduced within the present approach. The universal behavior of the spectral functions in the Fermi liquid regime is emphasized, and adiabatic continuity to the non-interacting limit is demonstrated. The dc resistivity in the metallic regime is known to be a non-monotonic function of temperature with a `coherence peak'. This feature is shown to be a universal feature occurring at a temperature roughly equal to the low energy scale of the system. A comparison to pressure dependent dc resistivity experiments on Selenium doped NiS$_2$ yields qualitatively good agreement. Resistivity hysteresis across the Mott transition is shown to be described qualitatively within the present framework. A direct comparison of the thermal hysteresis observed in V$_2$O$_3$ with our theoretical results yields a value of the hopping integral, which we find to be in the range estimated through first-principle methods. Finally, a systematic study of optical conductivity is carried out and the changes in absorption as a result of varying interaction strength and temperature are identified.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figure

Pharmacoepidemiological survey of schizophrenia in a tertiary care teaching hospital

Background: Prevalence of chronic schizophrenia is somewhat less than 1% of the population but this is one of the most important psychiatric illness due to its early onset, chronicity and associated disability.Methods: A prospective and observational study was carried out on 76 patients for 12 months. Patients of either sex, aged between 18 to 50 years who were diagnosed as schizophrenia according to DSM IV-TR were screened and recruited for the study. Prescriptions were analyzed for socio demographic details and psychotropic drugs prescribed.Results: Out of 76 patients 46 (60.53%) were males, maximum occurred 19 (41.30%) between 18 and 25 years of age. Females were 30 (39.47%), maximum occurred 12 (40%) between 34 - 39 years of age. 52 (68.42%) were from urban area and 24 (31.57%) were from rural area. 26 (34.21%) were illiterate, 24 (31.58%) primary educated, 16 (21.05%) secondary educated and 10 (13.16%) higher secondary and above. 20 (26.32%) were unemployed, students 9 (11.84%), housewives 19 (25%), agricultural workers 10 (13.16%), nonagricultural outdoor workers 4 (5.26%) and nonagricultural indoor workers were 14 (18.42%). Only atypical antipsychotics were prescribed .Olanzapine was prescribed in 30 (39.47%), risperidone 16 (21.05%), amisulpride 13 (17.11%), aripiprazole 11 (14.47%) and quetiapine 06 (7.89%) respectively.Conclusions: The sociodemographic factors associated with schizophrenia are urban locality, illiteracy, low socioeconomic status and unemployment. The treatment pattern observed correlates with the changing trends in the treatment of schizophrenia worldwide

A fuzzy logic controller based mid-term load forecasting with renewable penetration in Assam, India

An accurate mid-term load forecasting (MTLF) tool is an essential part of power systems planning and sustainable development. In order to compensate the extra uncertainties, the power systems with high renewable penetration need even more accurate MTLF tool. The electric load demand is highly prejudiced by the thermal inertia due to the local climatic factors. Therefore, the accuracy of an MTLF method is highly dependent on the incorporated climatic factors. This paper proposes a fuzzy logic comptroller based MTLF method with renewable penetration. In order to achieve a higher degree of forecasting accuracy proposed method incorporated several climatic factors in the forecasting process. The study is done in Assam, a state of India and the proposed method is utilized to forecast the daily average load demand for one month. The forecasting accuracy of the proposed method is compared with one of most commonly used tool for MTLF called artificial neural network (ANN). The empirical results affirm the superiority of the proposed method over the ANN

The Broadband Infrared Emission Spectrum of the Exoplanet HD 189733b

We present Spitzer Space Telescope time series photometry of the exoplanet system HD 189733 spanning two times of secondary eclipse, when the planet passes out of view behind the parent star. We estimate the relative eclipse depth in 5 distinct bands and find the planet-to-star flux ratio to be 0.256 +/- 0.014% (3.6 microns), 0.214 +/- 0.020% (4.5 microns), 0.310 +/- 0.034% (5.8 microns), 0.391 +/- 0.022% (8.0 microns), and 0.598 +/- 0.038% (24 microns). For consistency, we re-analyze a previously published time series to deduce a contrast ratio in an additional band, 0.519 +/- 0.020% (16 microns). Our data are strongly inconsistent with a Planck spectrum, and we clearly detect emission near 4 microns as predicted by published theoretical models in which this feature arises from a corresponding opacity window. Unlike recent results for the exoplanet HD 209458b, we find that the emergent spectrum from HD 189733b is best matched by models that do not include an atmospheric temperature inversion. Taken together, these two studies provide initial observational support for the idea that hot Jupiter atmospheres diverge into two classes, in which a thermal inversion layer is present for the more strongly irradiated objects.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures, accepted to the Astrophysical Journal, minor revision