Harnessing Competency Based Medical Education: Early Clinical Exposure by Live Patient Demonstration in Integrated Preclinical Undergraduate Curriculum

Introduction: Early Clinical Exposure, a teaching-learning methodology, promotes exposure of medical students to patients in the first professional year, orienting them towards clinical environment and helping them to correlate their theoretical knowledge with real life situations. Aim: The study aimed to generate understanding of a clinical setup early in undergraduate medical training, address student perception by learning temporomandibular joint anatomy and introduce the concept of integration of basic and clinical sciences. Methodology: A randomized controlled trial of 100 first year medical students was performed. After a conventional lecture of all students, they were randomly divided into two groups of 50 students each. Control group was taught by the conventional cadaveric demonstrations whereas study group by Early Clinical Exposure using live subject demonstration at the department of Dentistry. Both groups were assessed by a pre- and a post-test in the form of multiple choice questions. Post-interventional feedback (5 point Likert scale) was taken from the study group. The scores were statistically assessed by paired and unpaired Student‘t’ test and feedback was evaluated by Chi Square Goodness of fit test.Results: Post test scores of the study group were significantly greater (7.48 ± 0.83) as compared to the control group (5.78 ± 1.02). In regards to the student perception, the responses favoured an extremely positive impact of Early Clinical Exposure. Conclusion: Early Clinical Exposure proves to be an effective integration tool and a successful learning adjunct to enhance the performance of fresh medical entrants thus helping them to become competent practitioners. Keywords: Early Clinical Exposure, Integration, Medical Education, Competency Based Medical Education, Temporomandibular Joint, Anatomy, Dentistr

Seeking to Learn versus Seeking to Teach: Network Position and Timely Electronic Documentation in Healthcare Practice

Timely documentation of administered medications is enabled by electronic medical records (EMR) systems, but also made more difficult due to increased task interdependencies in EMR-enabled medication administration practice. We investigate how clinicians can use their advice networks to accomplish timely EMR documentation. We consider the novel social structures through which nurses actively solicit advice (“seeking-to-learn” network) versus actively contribute unsolicited insights (“seeking-to-teach” network) in the course of patient-care work. Results from 2-level hierarchical linear modeling showed that while clinicians are better off “seeking-to-learn” from positions of brokerage/gatekeeping over requests for advice (betweenness centrality), they are better off “seeking-to-teach” from positions where their indirect contacts are within relatively close reach (closeness centrality) and their direct contacts are highly influential or popular (Bonacich Power centrality). Our study contributes by providing a more nuanced conceptualization of advice networks as a novel way of addressing a major information systems issue in healthcare

What Affects Citation Counts in MIS Research Articles? An Empirical Investigation

In academe, the scientific impact of a given research article is measured by the number of citations that article has garnered. More citations for an article mean that more researchers have read and used the contents of that article in aiding research. Because of this, some research institutions consider the scientific impact of the works of a researcher in promotion and tenure decisions. Moreover, evaluating the causes of citations can help the community of researchers in a field gain insight into the values and direction of the field. Therefore, an investigation into the causes of citations is valuable to both individual researchers seeking to further their careers and also to the community of researchers at large. This study looks at two types of independent variables in determining the causes of IS article citations: universalistic variables (specific to the scientific contribution of the article) and particularistic variables (specific to the author and/or structure of the paper). Regression analysis finds that while both universalistic and particularistic variables influence the degree to which a paper is cited, particularistic variables are more influential in the IS field

Quantum phase retrieval of a Rydberg wave packet using a half-cycle pulse

A terahertz half-cycle pulse was used to retrieve information stored as quantum phase in an $N$-state Rydberg atom data register. The register was prepared as a wave packet with one state phase-reversed from the others (the "marked bit"). A half-cycle pulse then drove a significant portion of the electron probability into the flipped state via multimode interference.Comment: accepted by PR

Hyracks: A flexible and extensible foundation for data-intensive computing

Abstract—Hyracks is a new partitioned-parallel software plat-form designed to run data-intensive computations on large shared-nothing clusters of computers. Hyracks allows users to express a computation as a DAG of data operators and connec-tors. Operators operate on partitions of input data and produce partitions of output data, while connectors repartition operators’ outputs to make the newly produced partitions available at the consuming operators. We describe the Hyracks end user model, for authors of dataflow jobs, and the extension model for users who wish to augment Hyracks ’ built-in library with new operator and/or connector types. We also describe our initial Hyracks implementation. Since Hyracks is in roughly the same space as the open source Hadoop platform, we compare Hyracks with Hadoop experimentally for several different kinds of use cases. The initial results demonstrate that Hyracks has significant promise as a next-generation platform for data-intensive applications. I

Optimally shaped terahertz pulses for phase retrieval in a Rydberg atom data register

We employ Optimal Control Theory to discover an efficient information retrieval algorithm that can be performed on a Rydberg atom data register using a shaped terahertz pulse. The register is a Rydberg wave packet with one consituent orbital phase-reversed from the others (the ``marked bit''). The terahertz pulse that performs the decoding algorithm does so by by driving electron probability density into the marked orbital. Its shape is calculated by modifying the target of an optimal control problem so that it represents the direct product of all correct solutions to the algorithm.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

AsterixDB: A Scalable, Open Source BDMS

AsterixDB is a new, full-function BDMS (Big Data Management System) with a feature set that distinguishes it from other platforms in today's open source Big Data ecosystem. Its features make it well-suited to applications like web data warehousing, social data storage and analysis, and other use cases related to Big Data. AsterixDB has a flexible NoSQL style data model; a query language that supports a wide range of queries; a scalable runtime; partitioned, LSM-based data storage and indexing (including B+-tree, R-tree, and text indexes); support for external as well as natively stored data; a rich set of built-in types; support for fuzzy, spatial, and temporal types and queries; a built-in notion of data feeds for ingestion of data; and transaction support akin to that of a NoSQL store. Development of AsterixDB began in 2009 and led to a mid-2013 initial open source release. This paper is the first complete description of the resulting open source AsterixDB system. Covered herein are the system's data model, its query language, and its software architecture. Also included are a summary of the current status of the project and a first glimpse into how AsterixDB performs when compared to alternative technologies, including a parallel relational DBMS, a popular NoSQL store, and a popular Hadoop-based SQL data analytics platform, for things that both technologies can do. Also included is a brief description of some initial trials that the system has undergone and the lessons learned (and plans laid) based on those early "customer" engagements