Smarter Law Study Habits: An Empirical Analysis of Law Learning Strategies and Relationship with Law GPA

Non-empirical law school study advice that emphasizes reading and briefing cases and memorizing rules, without frequent self-testing and formative self-assessment leads to a “law school learning trap.” Law students fall into a law school learning trap by focusing on memorization of cases and rules for class preparation, putting off “practice” application of the law as exam preparation. Law students and legal educators misjudge the power of testing as a learning tool, and instead rely on non-empirical, anecdotal resources to guide law student study methods. A legal educator teamed up with an educational psychologist with a particular interest in pedagogical psychology, the study of how students learn, to create a unique Law Student Study Habits Survey to better understand how law students learn. Their groundbreaking empirical research from the Law Student Study Habit Survey shows that practice application of the law through self-testing, self-quizzing, and elaborative strategies positively correlates with academic success in law school, while reading and briefing cases, weak critical reading skills, and rote memorization of rules without practice applying the law negatively correlates with academic success in law school. Both legal educators and law students need to incorporate testing and formative assessment as a study and learning strategy to learn each new topic, not just for exam preparation. Self-testing and formative assessment are not only critical for success in law school, but help students develop successful learning strategies for the bar exam and as lifelong learners in law practice

Nonadditive Genetic Effects in Animal Behavior

Heritabilities, commonly used to predict evolutionary potential, are notoriously low for behaviors. Apart from strong contributions of environmental variance in reducing heritabilities, the additive genetic components can be very low, especially when they are camouflaged by nonadditive genetic effects. We first report the heritabilities of courtship traits in founder‐flush and control populations of the housefly (Musca domestica L.). We estimated the heritability of each male and female display through the regression of the courtships involving daughters and sons (with randomly selected mates) onto the “midparental” courtship values of their parents. Overall, the average heritability was significantly higher for the parent‐daughter assays than for the parent‐son assays. We attributed the low (even negative) heritabilities to genotype‐by‐environment interactions whereby the male’s behavior is influenced by the “environment” of his mating partner’s preferences for the display, generating epistasis through indirect genetic effects. Moreover, bottlenecked lines had up to 800% of the heritability of the controls, suggesting “conversion” of additive genetic variance from nonadditive components. Second, we used line‐cross assays on separate populations that had been selected for divergence in mating behavior to identify dominance and epistasis through heterosis and outbreeding depression in courtship. Finally, our literature review confirms the prevalence of such low heritabilities (i.e., a conservative mean of 0.38) and nonadditive genetics in other behavioral repertoires (64% of the studies). We conclude that animal behavior is especially prone to the gamut of quantitative genetic complexities that can result in negative heritabilities, negative selection responses, inbreeding depression, conversion, heterosis, and outbreeding depression

Bioinformatics solutions for confident identification and targeted quantification of proteins using tandem mass spectrometry

Proteins are the structural supports, signal messengers and molecular workhorses that underpin living processes in every cell. Understanding when and where proteins are expressed, and their structure and functions, is the realm of proteomics. Mass spectrometry (MS) is a powerful method for identifying and quantifying proteins, however, very large datasets are produced, so researchers rely on computational approaches to transform raw data into protein information. This project develops new bioinformatics solutions to support the next generation of proteomic MS research. Part I introduces the state of the art in proteomic bioinformatics in industry and academia. The business history and funding mechanisms are examined to fill a notable gap in management research literature, and to explain events at the sponsor, GlaxoSmithKline. It reveals that public funding of proteomic science has yet to come to fruition and exclusively high-tech niche bioinformatics businesses can succeed in the current climate. Next, a comprehensive review of repositories for proteomic MS is performed, to locate and compile a summary of sources of datasets for research activities in this project, and as a novel summary for the community. Part II addresses the issue of false positive protein identifications produced by automated analysis with a proteomics pipeline. The work shows that by selecting a suitable decoy database design, a statistically significant improvement in identification accuracy can be made. Part III describes development of computational resources for selecting multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) assays for quantifying proteins using MS. A tool for transition design, MRMaid (pronounced „mermaid‟), and database of pre-published transitions, MRMaid-DB, are developed, saving practitioners time and leveraging existing resources for superior transition selection. By improving the quality of identifications, and providing support for quantitative approaches, this project brings the field a small step closer to achieving the goal of systems biology.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Writing Arguments in STEM

A team of faculty at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, curated the contents to support instructors teaching first-year courses in critical thinking and communication

Driven to distraction : a prospective controlled study of a simulated ward round experience to improve patient safety teaching for medical students

Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank The Clinical Skills Managed Educational Network for its financial support, without which this research would not have taken place. Ethics approval Ethics approval for this research study was sought and granted from the University of Aberdeen's College and Ethics Research Board (Application No. CERB/2013/1/837). All participants in the study gave informed written consent before taking part in the research. Data sharing statement The research was carried out as part of a Masters in Medical Education degree. The Masters dissertation includes extensive study data—whereas this article contains the most pertinent quantitative data. The full Masters thesis is available from the University of DundeePeer reviewedPostprin