ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: The quality of the Educational environment is a key determinant of a student centred curriculum. Evaluation of the educational environment is an important component of programme appraisal. In order to conduct such evaluation use of a comprehensive, valid and reliable instrument is essential. One of most widely used ...

Sáez de Villarreal, E, Requena, B, and Cronin, JB. The effects of plyometric training on sprint performance. A meta-analysis. J Strength Cond Res 26(2): 575-584, 2012-The purpose of this meta-analysis was to attempt to gain a clear picture of the magnitude of sprint performance improvements expected after chronic plyometric training ...

Microfluidics allows the manipulation of small quantities of reagents in a high-throughput manner and is therefore highly amenable to single cell characterization and more generally to digital analysis, with applications in fields as varied as genomics, diagnostics, directed evolution, and drug screening. The growing place of microfluidics in biology laboratories ...

Quality of substitution voicing-i.e., phonation with a voice that is not generated by the vibration of two vocal folds-cannot be adequately evaluated with routinely used software for acoustic voice analysis that is aimed at 'common' dysphonias and nearly periodic voice signals. The AMPEX analysis program (Van Immerseel and Martens) has ...

BACKGROUND & AIMS:: As double balloon enteroscopy (DBE) programs continue to be established, further research is needed to assess their financial impact. We evaluated actual financial outcomes and compared them with estimated return on investment (ROI) projections for DBE. METHODS:: We retrospectively compared the predicted and actual financial results for ...

In June and July 2006 a team of outside experts arrived in Yei, Southern Sudan through an AID project to provide support to a local agricultural development project. The team brought evaluation, agricultural marketing and financial management expertise to the in-country partners looking at steps to rebuild the economy of ...

Objective: This paper was based on case study research at the Swedish Mail Service Division and it addresses learning time to sort mail at new districts and means to support the learning process on an individual as well as organizational level. Participants: The study population consisted of 46 postmen and ...

The purpose of this study is to describe the use of the Ergonomic Analysis of Work (EAW) in the process of rehabilitating workers, insured by the National Institute of Social Security (INSS) in Brazil, and to conduct a brief analysis of the instrument used by this body. Information obtained from ...

The construction industry continues to experience high rates of musculoskeletal injuries despite the widespread promotion of ergonomic solutions. Participatory ergonomics (PE) has been suggested as one approach to engage workers and employers for reducing physical exposures from work tasks but a systematic review of participatory ergonomics programs showed inconclusive results.. ...

Multiwfn is a multifunctional program for wavefunction analysis. Its main functions are: (1) Calculating and visualizing real space function, such as electrostatic potential and electron localization function at point, in a line, in a plane or in a spatial scope. (2) Population analysis. (3) Bond order analysis. (4) Orbital composition ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: The role of deliberate practice in medical students' development from novice to expert was examined for preclinical skill training. METHODS: Students in years 1-3 completed 34 Likert type items, adapted from a questionnaire about the use of deliberate practice in cognitive learning. Exploratory factor analysis and reliability analysis ...

Abstract Objective. to analyze the psychometric properties of the Brazilian Portuguese version of the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) in terms of its internal consistency, scores distribution, concurrent and discriminant validity, and factorial analysis in a sample of university students and social anxiety disorder (SAD) cases and non-cases. Methods. A sample ...

PURPOSE: This study aimed to investigate Internet use patterns and Internet addiction among young adult university students and to examine the correlation between excessive Internet use and dissociative symptoms. METHODS: The study was conducted among 1034 students, aged between 18 and 27 years. Internet Addiction Scale, Dissociative Experiences Scale, and ...

The objective of this study is to verify the difference in professors' perception of students' feelings before and after an explanatory presentation on the theme. This is an exploratory study using a primary source, and a quantitative approach with 13 Nursing and Medicine professors. A vide showing student images was ...

Aims and objectives.  This study presents a cost-utility analysis that compared medium- vs. high-fidelity human patient simulation manikins in nursing education. The analysis sought to determine whether the extra costs associated with high-fidelity manikins can justify the differences, if any, in the outcomes of clinical reasoning, knowledge acquisition and student ...

OBJECTIVE: Courses in the Advanced Trauma Life Support are a well-accepted concept throughout the world for training in the emergency treatment of polytraumatized patients. Switzerland, a multilingual country with a long tradition of multidisciplinary collaboration in trauma care, introduced its first student courses in 1998. Unlike some countries where the ...

Medical Education 2011: 45: 894-904 OBJECTIVES  Critical incident analysis (CIA) is one of the strategies frequently used to facilitate reflective learning. It involves the thorough description and analysis of an authentic and experienced event within its specific context. However, CIA has also been described as having the potential to expose ...

Purpose Student radiographers must possess certain abilities to progress in their training; these can be assessed in various ways. Bandura's social cognitive theory identifies self-efficacy as a key psychological construct with regard to how people adapt to environments where new skills are developed. Use of this construct is common in ...

To assess undergraduate helmet use attitudes and behaviors in accordance with the theory of planned behavior (TPB). We predicted helmet wearers and nonwearers would differ on our subscales. Participants (N=414, 69% female, 84% white) completed a survey. Principal component analysis and reliability analysis guided the creation of subscales. Group differences ...

Background: This paper presents a software package for quantitative evaluation of heart rate variability (HRV), heart rate turbulence (HRT), and T-wave alternans (TWA) from ECG recordings. The software has been developed for the purpose of scientific research rather than clinical diagnosis.<br /> Material/Methods: The software is written in Matlab Mathematical ...

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to determine the cost-effectiveness of knee arthroscopy and anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction. METHODS: Retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data from a single-surgeon, institutional review board-approved outcomes registry included 2 cohorts: surgically treated knee arthroscopy and ACL reconstruction patients. Our outcome measure is ...

OBJECTIVE: Develop scales to assess the impact of the Cooking with a Chef program on several psychosocial constructs. METHODS: Cross-sectional design in which parents and caregivers were recruited from child care settings (Head Start, faith-based, public elementary schools), and cooks were recruited from church and school kitchens. Analysis involved descriptive ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Professionalism development is influenced by the informal and hidden curriculum. The primary objective of this study was to better understand this experiential learning in the setting of the Emergency Department (ED). Secondarily, the study aimed to explore differences in the informal curriculum between Emergency Medicine (EM) and Internal ...

To apply a Mokken Scale Procedure in developing a hierarchical cross-national scale to measure xenophobia, a pool of 30 xenophobia-related items was collected from several sources and modified using established unidimensional criteria. The survey was administered to 608 undergraduate students in the USA, 193 undergraduate students in The Netherlands, and ...

Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) can be a powerful analytic tool for assessing the value of health care interventions when used in conjunction with efficacy, safety, and other supporting data in an evidence-based decision making environment. CEA is commonly defined in terms of the comparison of costs, expressed in monetary units, with ...

Abstract The limit of about 5% for reliable quantification of jitter in sustained vowels of dysphonic voices-a widely accepted guideline-deserves critical analysis. The present study pertains to the effect of experience and training on the perceptual (visual) capability of correctly identifying periods in (highly) perturbed signals, and to a comparison ...

This article describes my initial psychotherapy experience with a psychologist who combined a client-centered/rational-emotive approach, my existential analysis with Rollo May, and then concludes briefly portraying my current Jungian analysis. I explain how I came to each of these experiences, what I learned from them, and the limitations I have ...

In this research, problem solving skills of university students are examined in the factors of sex and class. In this research problem solving inventory that is improved by Heppner and Petersen (1982) is applied to the students that are training 1. and 4. class 58 female 86 male at Selcuk ...

In today's challenging healthcare environment, clinicians need to understand the fundamentals of financial analysis, which are the underpinnings of their clinical programs, especially when seeking administrative support for new initiatives. The business plan for new clinical program initiatives is composed of diverse elements such as the mission statement, market and ...

The present study aims to analyze the psychometric properties of the student form (Grades 7 to 12) of the Social Skills Questionnaire authored by Gresham and Elliott (1990), on a sample of Portuguese adolescents. Participants included 573 students, both female and male, aged 14 to 19. Reliability was assessed through ...

Abstract This paper is a report of a study to examine the influence of demographic, learning behavior and learning performance variables on learning outcomes of baccalaureate nursing students within a blended learning environment. A cross-sectional survey was conducted using the self-structured demographic questionnaire, case analysis attitude scale (CAAS), the case ...

OBJECTIVE: In German inpatient psychosomatics per diem lump sums will be introduced as reimbursement rates by 2013. It was the aim to calculate total inpatient costs per case for the psychosomatic treatment of patients with anorexia nervosa and to identify cost predictors. METHOD: The sample comprised of 127 inpatients. Cost ...

Using a population approach, we investigated whether a group health education program exerted a preventive effect on checkup items at five years later. Workers turning 35 years old before the initial implementation of the program were entered in the control group (n = 422) and those turning 35 years on ...

Benefit-cost and risk analyses associated with agency rule making are required by presidential order and are reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). This White House oversight of agency regulatory analysis means that OIRA's work, though primarily analytic, competes daily with ...

No cost-effectiveness evaluation of pit and fissure sealants has ever been carried out in Quebec. The objective of this study was to simulate a publicly funded program of pit and fissure administration, either in the public or private sectors, and compare these hypothetical situations with the current one, i.e., a ...

Phenotypic analysis of Neurospora crassa knockout (KO) mutants was used as a vehicle to introduce students to laboratory research. The availability of gene deletion strains was the impetus for the development of a program designed to introduce beginning science students to basic microbiology, genetics, microscopy and beginning bioinformatics. The goal ...

PURPOSE: To elaborate a procedure of metaphonological evaluation, and to characterize the performance of students with developmental dyslexia, learning disabilities and learning difficulties and good readers in this evaluation. METHODS: Metaphonological abilities tests were elaborated based on the necessary skills for reading and writing development. Participants were 134 students from ...

The article deals with the problem of economical analysis of public health activities at mass gatherings. After presentation of elementary review of basic economical approaches to cost analysis author tries to analyze applicability of those methods to planning of mass gatherings. Difficulties in comparability of different events and lack of ...

In this study, we determined the specificity of a low frequency taekwondo training programme on physical fitness levels in adolescent females who receive limited physical education instruction (i.e. 2 days per week). Major components of physical fitness assessed were: skeletal muscle fitness (hand grip strength, bent arm hang, standing long ...

The San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) uses the Language and Literacy Assessment Rubric (LALAR) as the secondary measurement required by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act to measure English proficiency of English language learners (ELLs). In this analysis, the Rasch model is used to identify whether the LALAR ...

This study evaluates the impact of an independent postmidterm question analysis exercise on the ability of students to answer subsequent exam questions on the same topics. It was conducted in three sections (∼400 students/section) of introductory biology. Graded midterms were returned electronically, and each student was assigned a subset of ...

A successful laboratory experience provides the foundation for student success, creating active participation in the learning process. Here, we describe a new approach that emphasizes research, inquiry and problem solving in a year-long biochemistry experience. The first semester centers on the purification, characterization, and analysis of a novel fusion protein ...

The evolution of territorial behavior requires that the benefits of territoriality outweigh the costs. The costs are primarily those of territorial defense against encroaching neighbors or against floaters seeking to establish their own territory. One way to reduce the cost of defense might be to restrict serious conflict to encounters ...

Agri-environmental measures are payments to farmers to reduce environmental risks or to preserve cultivated landscapes. These measures are codified in European Union regulations. Poor spatial targeting is one of the major causes of low cost-effectiveness in agri-environmental measures. Existing studies on spatial targeting focus primarily on selected individual measures; hence, ...

OBJECTIVES: Healthcare policy makers and payers require cost-effectiveness evidence to inform their treatment funding decisions. Thus, in 2008, the United Kingdom's National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence analyzed the cost effectiveness of spinal cord stimulation (SCS) compared with conventional medical management (CMM) and with reoperation and recommended approval of ...

BACKGROUND: Despite the huge cost of the program, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has maintained a policy that cost-effectiveness is not considered in national coverage determinations (NCDs). OBJECTIVE: To assess whether an implicit cost-effectiveness threshold exists and to determine if economic evidence has been considered in previous ...

A cost-effectiveness analysis of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) program suggests that Board certification is less cost-effective than a range of alternative approaches for raising student achievement, including comprehensive school reform, class size reduction, a 10% increase in per pupil expenditure, the use of value-added statistical methods ...

We describe here two open-ended laboratory investigations for an undergraduate laboratory course that uses students' DNA as templates for quantitative real-time PCR and for traditional PCR followed by RFLP analysis. Students are captivated by the immediacy of the application and the relevance of the genotypes and traits, lactase persistence or ...

An article published in this Journal argued that New Zealand does not apply a cost-effectiveness threshold because medicines are funded within a fixed budget and because cost-effectiveness is only one of nine criteria that inform decisions. This Comment has explained that, from a theoretical perspective, the cost-effectiveness threshold model is ...

as a Radiologist providing teaching for medical students and junior doctors, I have spent time devising lesson plans. It is vital to know the aims and objectives prior to teaching sessions in order that the students benefit as much as possible. This article describes a lesson plan for interpretation of ...