Evolution of Preprofessional Pharmacy Curricula

Objectives. To examine changes in preprofessional pharmacy curricular requirements and trends, and determine rationales for and implications of modifications. Methods. Prerequisite curricular requirements compiled between 2006 and 2011 from all doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) programs approved by the Accreditation Council of Pharmacy Education were reviewed to ascertain trends over the past 5 years. An online survey was conducted of 20 programs that required either 3 years of prerequisite courses or a bachelor’s degree, and a random sample of 20 programs that required 2 years of prerequisites. Standardized telephone interviews were then conducted with representatives of 9 programs. Results. In 2006, 4 programs required 3 years of prerequisite courses and none required a bachelor’s degree; by 2011, these increased to 18 programs and 7 programs, respectively. Of 40 programs surveyed, responses were received from 28 (70%), 9 (32%) of which reported having increased the number of prerequisite courses since 2006. Reasons given for changes included desire to raise the level of academic achievement of students entering the PharmD program, desire to increase incoming student maturity, and desire to add clinical sciences and experiential coursework to the pharmacy curriculum. Some colleges and schools experienced a temporary decrease in applicants. Conclusions. The preprofessional curriculum continues to evolve, with many programs increasing the number of course prerequisites. The implications of increasing prerequisites were variable and included a perceived increase in maturity and quality of applicants and, for some schools, a temporary decrease in the number of applicants

CHMP1A encodes an essential regulator of BMI1-INK4A in cerebellar development

Charged multivesicular body protein 1A (CHMP1A; also known as chromatin-modifying protein 1A) is a member of the ESCRT-III (endosomal sorting complex required for transport-III) complex but is also suggested to localize to the nuclear matrix and regulate chromatin structure. Here, we show that loss-of-function mutations in human CHMP1A cause reduced cerebellar size (pontocerebellar hypoplasia) and reduced cerebral cortical size (microcephaly). CHMP1A-mutant cells show impaired proliferation, with increased expression of INK4A, a negative regulator of stem cell proliferation. Chromatin immunoprecipitation suggests loss of the normal INK4A repression by BMI in these cells. Morpholino-based knockdown of zebrafish chmp1a resulted in brain defects resembling those seen after bmi1a and bmi1b knockdown, which were partially rescued by INK4A ortholog knockdown, further supporting links between CHMP1A and BMI1-mediated regulation of INK4A. Our results suggest that CHMP1A serves as a critical link between cytoplasmic signals and BMI1-mediated chromatin modifications that regulate proliferation of central nervous system progenitor cells

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Essential Case Studies In Public Health: Putting Public Health into Practice

Essential Case Studies in Public Health: Putting Public Health into Practice is a unique compilation of twenty-one cases based on real life events and problems. Written by over forty public health faculty members and practitioners, these cases vividly illustrate how professionals across various disciplines tackle public health challenges. Covering a wide range of topics and issues from HPV vaccines as school entry requirements to implementing community-based water systems in rural Honduran communities to a mumps epidemic in Iowa, this text helps students apply a wide range of knowledge and skills relevant to public health outbreak investigation, policy analysis, regulatory decision-making and more. Suitable as a stand-alone text or as an adjunct to any introductory public health text, this collection of engaging case studies provides students with the opportunity to synthesize and apply each of the five components of the “Public Health 101” curriculum framework: the public health approach; tools of population health; disease: determinants, impacts, and interventions; healthcare and public health systems; and special areas of public health focus. Selected cases can be readily applied to courses across the curriculum.https://hsrc.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/books/1028/thumbnail.jp

Evolution of Preprofessional Pharmacy Curricula

Objectives. To examine changes in preprofessional pharmacy curricular requirements and trends, and determine rationales for and implications of modifications. Methods. Prerequisite curricular requirements compiled between 2006 and 2011 from all doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) programs approved by the Accreditation Council of Pharmacy Education were reviewed to ascertain trends over the past 5 years. An online survey was conducted of 20 programs that required either 3 years of prerequisite courses or a bachelor’s degree, and a random sample of 20 programs that required 2 years of prerequisites. Standardized telephone interviews were then conducted with representatives of 9 programs. Results. In 2006, 4 programs required 3 years of prerequisite courses and none required a bachelor’s degree; by 2011, these increased to 18 programs and 7 programs, respectively. Of 40 programs surveyed, responses were received from 28 (70%), 9 (32%) of which reported having increased the number of prerequisite courses since 2006. Reasons given for changes included desire to raise the level of academic achievement of students entering the PharmD program, desire to increase incoming student maturity, and desire to add clinical sciences and experiential coursework to the pharmacy curriculum. Some colleges and schools experienced a temporary decrease in applicants. Conclusions. The preprofessional curriculum continues to evolve, with many programs increasing the number of course prerequisites. The implications of increasing prerequisites were variable and included a perceived increase in maturity and quality of applicants and, for some schools, a temporary decrease in the number of applicants

Evolution of Preprofessional Pharmacy Curricula

Seiring dengan perkembangan teknologi secara massal, memungkinkan hadirnya komunitas-komunitas virtual yaitu sekumpulan masyarakat lokal yang mendunia. Komunitas virtual terdiri dari sekumpulan individu dunia maya yang memiliki minat yang sama terhadap suatu bidang. Barstard merupakan salah satu komunitas yang terbilang aktif menggunakan instagram sebagai media penyebaran informasinya. Foto dan video yang diunggah merupakan bentuk komunikasi nonverbal yang dilengkapi komunikasi verbal dalam bentuk caption, komentar, lokasi dan hashtag. Dalam penelitian ini dilakukan penelitian dengan pendekatan kualitatif. Riset kualitatif bertujuan untuk menjelaskan fenomena dengan sedalam-dalamnya melalui pengumpulan data sedalam-dalamnya. Penelitian ini menggunakan jenis penelitian Etnografi Virtual, sebuah metodologi penelitian yang mengharuskan peneliti melakukan penelitian secara online dan offline untuk mendapatkan data yang valid. Berdasarkan hasil penelitian dan pembahasan diketahui bahwa konsep diri anggota Lady Barstard secara Fisik menilai dirinya keren, secara Psikologis merasa percaya diri dan faktor yang mempengaruhi konsep dirinya adalah teman-teman dan komunitas yang berperan sebagai generalized others

Center for the Advancement of Pharmacy Education 2013 Educational Outcomes

An initiative of the Center for the Advancement of Pharmacy Education (formerly the Center for the Advancement of Pharmaceutical Education) (CAPE), the CAPE Educational Outcomes are intended to be the target toward which the evolving pharmacy curriculum should be aimed. Their development was guided by an advisory panel composed of educators and practitioners nominated for participation by practitioner organizations. CAPE 2013 represents the fourth iteration of the Educational Outcomes, preceded by CAPE 1992, CAPE 1998 and CAPE 2004 respectively. The CAPE 2013 Educational Outcomes were released at the AACP July 2013 Annual meeting and have been revised to include 4 broad domains, 15 subdomains, and example learning objectives