A novel way to increase the likelihood of hiring high quality medical educators

BACKGROUND: In recent years, medical and physician assistant (PA) education has moved towards a competency based model. This model encourages teaching students to “know how” to use what they learn in practice rather than simply gain a large knowledge base. This allows students to garner a deeper understanding of the material. Active learning strategies such as flipped classroom and interactive learning, have gained great support in recent years. These models have helped further the ability of universities to move towards these competency based education models. At the core of these newer teaching and learning modalities are the instructors themselves. They play a vital role in not only what a student learns, but how well they learn it. LITERATURE REVIEW: A literature review highlights both the importance of hiring quality instructors as well as the importance of their ability to fulfill these new teaching models. There have been numerous studies on how effective teaching influences a student’s performance in the classroom. To date, there has not been any research on how to increase the probability of hiring an effective instructor from day one. PROPOSED PROJECT: The objective of this study is to develop a tool that would help employers screen for potentially less qualified candidates. The proposed tool is a questionnaire that would be filled out by potential employees and would raise a red flag if a potentially concerning answer choice was selected. The validity of this questionnaire will be tested by comparing current physician assistant didactic and clinical instructors’ scores on the questionnaire, to their respective student evaluations. CONCLUSION: It is predicted that a “red flag” score on/this questionnaire will correlate with poor instructor scores on student evaluations. Successful validation and deployment of this tool would allow students to be instructed by the best possible instructors, bettering their education

Metabolic and demographic feedbacks shape the emergent spatial structure and function of microbial communities

Microbes are predominantly found in surface-attached and spatially structured polymicrobial communities. Within these communities, microbial cells excrete a wide range of metabolites, setting the stage for interspecific metabolic interactions. The links, however, between metabolic and ecological interactions (functional relationships), and species spatial organization (structural relationships) are still poorly understood. Here, we use an individual-based modelling framework to simulate the growth of a two-species surface-attached community where food (resource) is traded for detoxification (service) and investigate how metabolic constraints of individual species shape the emergent structural and functional relationships of the community. We show that strong metabolic interdependence drives the emergence of mutualism, robust interspecific mixing, and increased community productivity. Specifically, we observed a striking and highly stable emergent lineage branching pattern, generating a persistent lineage mixing that was absent when the metabolic exchange was removed. These emergent community properties are driven by demographic feedbacks, such that aid from neighbouring cells directly enhances focal cell growth, which in turn feeds back to neighbour fecundity. In contrast, weak metabolic interdependence drives conflict (exploitation or competition), and in turn greater interspecific segregation. Together, these results support the idea that species structural and functional relationships represent the net balance of metabolic interdependencies

Sustainability-guided promotion of renewable electricity generation

In recent years, the threat of global climate change, high fuel import dependence, and rapidly rising electricity demand levels have intensified the quest for more sustainable energy systems. This in turn has increased the need for policy makers to promote electricity generation from renewable energy sources. Guaranteed prices coupled with a buy-back obligation for electricity fed into the grid is a popular renewables promotion instrument, especially in Europe. More recently, driven mainly by electricity market liberalisation efforts, quota targets for the share of renewables in combination with tradable ‘green’ certificates (TGC) have received considerable attention. TGC offer a greater theoretical potential for economic efficiency gains, due to price competition and the greater flexibility assigned to the obliged parties. While guaranteed prices and TGC schemes support the operation of renewable energy technology systems, bidding schemes for renewable energy generation capacity are used to raise economic efficiency on the plant construction side. All of these policy instruments suffer from the shortcoming that they do not explicitly account for the often widely varying environmental, social and economic impacts of the technologies concerned. In this paper, we propose a methodology for the design of renewable energy policy instruments that is based on integrated assessment. In particular, we argue that using participatory multicriteria evaluation as part of the design of renewable energy promotion policies would make it possible: (1) to differentiate the level of promotion in a systematic and transparent manner according to their socio-ecological economic impact, and (2) to explicitly account for the preferences of stakeholders. A further problem of existing TGC and bidding schemes is that diversity of supply could be severely diminished, if few low-cost technologies were allowed to dominate the renewable energy market. To ensure a certain diversity of technologies, our scheme suggests the use of different technology bands for technologies that are relatively homogeneous with respect to their maturity

Attitudes of incumbent regimes to a renewable energy transition: a case study of Queensland, Australia

Transitions to renewable energy (RE) have been the subject of considerable debate in both academic and policy circles (Geels, Research Policy 31(8/9):1257–1274, 2002). In this study, we examine documents at both state and federal level to ascertain whether key stakeholders, such as mining, business, utilities and the energy sector, are concerned with, and effectively planning for, a renewable energy transition. It is critical to examine their views, since powerful stakeholders can strengthen, or undermine, the commitment of government to a renewable energy transition. The literature shows quite clearly that government policies are critical in transitions, for instance policies can spur private investment and influence actors’ perceptions of the risk-reward equation (Wüstenhagen and Menichetti, Energy Policy 40:1–10, 2012). We highlight the assumptions, narratives and tensions that underlie an energy transition. As a theoretical basis for this research, the lens of ‘social acceptance’, including socio-political, community and market acceptance, is employed (Wüstenhagen, Wolsink, and Bürer, Energy Policy 35(5):2683–2691, 2007). The study evaluates social acceptance of renewable energy on a continuum ranging from ‘not accepted’, ‘moving towards acceptance’, and ‘high acceptance’ where responses are progressive and innovative. Although scholars note that owners of fossil fuels are a powerful lobby group and are able to obstruct ambitious climate policy quite effectively because they are well-organised and their business models are based on the use of cheap fossil fuels (Edenhofer and Flachsland, Global Trends 2013. Development and Peace Foundation, Bonn, pp. 53–72; Hall and Taplin, Australian Journal of Social Issues 43(3):359–379, 2008), this study found that there is a certain level of social acceptance for an energy transition. Key stakeholders—mining, utilities, energy and the business sector—support an integrated climate and energy policy to help Australia meets its commitments under the Paris agreement

Effects of Agricultural Intensification on Soil Biodiversity and Implications for Ecosystem Functioning: A Meta-Analysis

Environmental perturbations such as agricultural intensification may alter soil biodiversity in a manner that affects ecosystem functioning, but links are not well quantified. With this review we ask: (1) “How does agricultural intensification affect soil biodiversity?” and (2) “How do such changes in soil biodiversity affect ecosystem function?” We used meta-analysis to quantify responses across studies. Our results indicate that agricultural intensification can significantly alter soil biodiversity, with negative impacts of synthetic N fertilization on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal (AMF) and faunal diversity, and positive effects on fungal- and microbial functional diversity. Bacterial diversity increased with low synthetic N input rates (\u3c 150 kg N ha− 1 year− 1), with organic N inputs, and when application duration was \u3e 5 years, suggesting that agricultural management practices that promote soil organic matter (SOM) accumulation and retention enhance bacterial biodiversity. Tillage negatively impacted soil faunal and bacterial diversity, but did not affect AMF, fungal or functional diversity, and organic farming relative to conventional farming did not affect soil biodiversity. Biodiversity manipulation studies indicate that changes in soil biodiversity affect ecosystem process rates, although manipulated biodiversity levels tend to exaggerate biodiversity losses and possibly overestimate consequences for ecosystem functioning relative to measured biodiversity losses from environmental perturbations. There is a need for more studies that evaluate how losses in soil biodiversity following environmental perturbations directly affect ecosystem functioning. Advances in analytical techniques to identify soil organisms and an increase in soil biodiversity manipulation experiments should help solidify links between environmental changes, soil biodiversity and ecosystem functioning