Reputation strength as a determinant of faculty employment: a test of the step-down thesis among clinical psychology doctoral programs

This study tested the folkloristic belief that doctoral degree recipients who pursue academic careers typically wind up at institutions ranked lower in prestige than the institutions at which they trained (the step-down thesis). We used a database of faculty members in 150 clinical psychology doctoral programs accredited by the American Psychological Association, and compared each faculty member's training institution with the current employing institution on three distinct reputation ranking systems: The Center (University of Florida, Gainesville) for overall university reputation, the National Research Council (Washington, DC) for doctoral degree department reputation, and the news magazine, U.S. News and World Report ranking for clinical psychology training program reputation. Although support for the step-down thesis was found across all three ranking systems, a disproportionately large number of professors were also observed to move laterally in terms of their employing institution's reputation.     

Faculty Publication Rates and the Science–Practice Divide in Clinical Psychology

This commentary points out serious areas for concern in the assessment of faculty productivity as reported by Stewart, Roberts, and Roy (2007). Matters of measurement are especially problematic when ranking subjects rather than calculating group trends or testing the relationships among variables. Beyond measurement issues are broader questions about the value of using faculty publication counts to assess clinical psychology programs. An alternate and perhaps more meaningful approach to program quality could focus on student outcomes rather than faculty outcomes, and clinical and scientific measures of quality.     

Computer-assisted dynamic integration of multiple medical thesauruses.

We have previously described a user-interactive rule-based computer program (Dyna-SaurI) designed for dynamic thesaurus integration, and demonstrated its efficacy on integrating dermatological subsets of the MeSH and SNOMED thesauruses. In the present study, we have refined our rules for merging and mapping multiple thesauruses and tested these rules. We then applied them with a set of optimized parameters to the integration of a third thesaurus, a subset of the International Coding Index for Dermatology, with the Integrated MeSH-SNOMED thesaurus. The parameter changes resulted in improved ranking of more specific and conceptually closer terms.     

Demoting redundant features to improve the discriminatory ability in cancer data

The identification of a set of relevant but not redundant features is an important first step in building predictive and diagnostic models from biomedical data sets. Most commonly, individual features are ranked in terms of a quality criterion, out of which the best (first) k features are selected. However, feature ranking methods do not sufficiently account for interactions and correlations between the features. Thus, redundancy is likely to be encountered in the selected features. We present a new algorithm, termed Redundancy Demoting (RD), that takes an arbitrary feature ranking as input, and improves this ranking by identifying redundant features and demoting them to positions in the ranking in which they are not redundant. Redundant features are those that are correlated with other features and not relevant in the sense that they do not improve the discriminatory ability of a set of features. Experiments on two cancer data sets, one melanoma image data set and one lung cancer microarray data set, show that our algorithm greatly improves the feature rankings provided by the methods information gain, ReliefF and Student’s t-test in terms of predictive power.     

Impact factor rankings for sleep research journals between 2005 and 2018

Impact factors and ranking lists of research journals are very often used to judge our career achievements and progression by employers and granting bodies. However, a comprehensive list for the interdisciplinary field of sleep research does not currently exist because our journals tend to be placed into discipline‐specific lists that do not cope well with our historic interdisciplinarity, which embraces many core disciplines. We aimed to build a ranking list specifically for sleep research journals based on the journal impact factor and the google scholar H₅ indices. We then searched for all sleep journals given an impact factor by Thomson Reuters from 2005 to 2018 and all journals given a current H₅ index by Google Scholar. We provide a ranking list specifically for sleep journals that might be useful for researchers to cite when providing context in their applications for employment, promotion and funding.     

A new approach to the computer-assisted quantitative analysis of nuclear shape

In recent years, researchers have explored the use of computer-assisted morphometric analysis to evaluate nuclear shape. Most of these studies use nuclear shape factors which are based on circumference/surface measurement ratios, such as variations of the nuclear contour index, the form factor, and the nuclear roundness factor. Here we present a new method for the objective evaluation of nuclear shape, involving a simple computer-assisted determination of nuclear area (N) divided by the area of a rectangular figure (F) with sides tangent to the nuclear margin and parallel to the frame of a video monitor. Following calculation of N/F for individual nuclei, our method generates statistical parameters for quantitating nuclear irregularity directly at the population level: the mean N/F ratio; standard deviation; and coefficient of variation. Our use of surface/surface measurement ratios makes our method independent of both magnification and nuclear size. Our method is applied first to normal lymphocytes and neutrophils to manifest the parameters for nuclear irregularity which are generated by our method. The sensitivity of our method is demonstrated using lymphoblasts from patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Our objective ranking of nuclear irregularity for 20 cases of ALL correlates well with the subjective ranking of two pathologists. Because our method scores irregularity on a population basis and independently of other morphological criteria, it is compatible for use with the French-American-British (FAB) classification system (1981) for ALL.     

First-year residents' performances compared with their medical school class ranks as determined by three ranking systems.

Difficulties encountered with deans' letters have prompted residency directors to rely on performance indicators, including class rank, that indicate the comparative positions of applicants. However, the validity of class rank as a predictor of performance in residency is not well established. The present investigation studied the relationship of class ranks to residents' performances, the systems of class ranking that correlated with residents' performances, and procedures that strengthened the relationship between ranking information and residents' performances. Three systems of class ranking are described. With each system, the authors used the same study group of 124 graduates (classes of 1986 and 1987) from a midwestern medical school with a baccalaureate-M.D. degree program; by 1991, each graduate had completed his or her first year of residency. All three systems were reliable for assignment of class rank. All three systems showed modest correlations with residents' performances. Multiple regression analysis revealed that a weighted combination of clinical performance measures bore the strongest relationship to performances in residency. Thus, the authors conclude that the formal computational ranking of students is not essential for the generation of reliable and valid deans' letters that can predict residents' performances. An in-depth evaluation that includes comparative information based on statistically generated formulas, as well as information based on personal qualities, may be a superior alternative.     

Reference genes evaluated for use in infectious pancreatic necrosis virus real-time RT-qPCR assay applied during different stages of an infection

The stability of 6 reference genes, 18S, β-actin, RPS20, eEF1α, G6PDH and GAPDH, was examined in tissues from Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) and Chinook salmon embryo cells (CHSE-214). The main objective of this study was to determine the most suitable reference genes for use for the normalisation of data in quantitative real-time RT-qPCR assays conducted on infected tissues. The tissue samples selected for analysis were taken from head kidney and pylorus and collected at different time points during a challenge experiment with infectious pancreatic necrosis virus (IPNV). The stability of some of the reference genes was also studied in infected CHSE-214 cells. The ranking of the genes examined was carried out using the geNorm program. This program determines the most stable genes from a set of genes tested in a given cDNA sample. The stability of the reference genes varied in different tissues and in the cell line at different stages of infection with IPNV. This study demonstrated that tissue-specific combinations of reference genes must be used to normalise real time data for use for the quantitation of IPNV.     

On the query reformulation technique for effective MEDLINE document retrieval

Improving the retrieval accuracy of MEDLINE documents is still a challenging issue due to low retrieval precision. Focusing on a query expansion technique based on pseudo-relevance feedback (PRF), this paper addresses the problem by systematically examining the effects of expansion term selection and adjustment of the term weights of the expanded query using a set of MEDLINE test documents called OHSUMED. Implementing a baseline information retrieval system based on the Okapi BM25 retrieval model, we compared six well-known term ranking algorithms for useful expansion term selection and then compared traditional term reweighting algorithms with our new variant of the standard Rocchio’s feedback formula, which adopts a group-based weighting scheme. Our experimental results on the OHSUMED test collection showed a maximum improvement of 20.2% and 20.4% for mean average precision and recall measures over unexpanded queries when terms were expanded using a co-occurrence analysis-based term ranking algorithm in conjunction with our term reweighting algorithm (p-value < 0.05). Our study shows the behaviors of different query reformulation techniques that can be utilized for more effective MEDLINE document retrieval.     

Validation study of the LAMBDA model for predicting the BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation carrier status of North American Ashkenazi Jewish women

LAMBDA is a model that estimates the probability an Ashkenazi Jewish (AJ) woman carries an ancestral BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation from her personal and family cancer history. LAMBDA is relevant to clinical practice, and its implementation does not require a computer. It was developed principally from Australian and UK data. We conducted a validation study using 1286 North American AJ women tested for the mutations 185delAG and 5382insC in BRCA1 and 6174delT in BRCA2. Most had a personal or family history of breast cancer. We observed 197 carriers. The area under the receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve (a measure of ranking) was 0.79 [95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.77-0.81], similar to that for the model-generating data (0.78; 95% CI = 0.75-0.82). LAMBDA predicted 232 carriers (18% more than observed; p = 0.002) and was overdispersed (p = 0.009). The Bayesian computer program BRCAPRO gave a similar area under the ROC curve (0.78; 95% CI = 0.76-0.80), but predicted 367 carriers (86% more than observed; p < 0.0001), and was substantially overdispersed (p < 0.0001). Therefore, LAMBDA is comparable to BRCAPRO for ranking AJ women according to their probability of being a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation carrier and is more accurate than brcapro which substantially overpredicts carriers in this population.     

Six years of occult blood screening in an urban public hospital: concepts, methods, and reflections on approaches to reducing avoidable mortality among black Americans.

While early cancer detection is frequently overused in high socioeconomic status communities, opportunities for early detection often are overlooked by practitioners serving lower income and minority populations. Review of our patient records in 1980 revealed that only 13% of patients had a record of a rectal examination, and less than 1% had either proctoscopy or fecal occult blood testing. Our program has made a dramatic impact on colorectal cancer detection, performing 8192 fecal occult blood tests in the first 5 1/2 years of our program. As with other programs, stage of cancer is greatly influenced by fecal occult blood testing, with 0 modified Dukes' stage D compared to 33% for the hospital registry, and 35% stage A compared to 0 for the registry. Compliance with diagnostic evaluation has been excellent (89.6%). The program has allowed for increased communication between patients and staff. Education about diet and other prevention has been institutionalized. Patients see our nurses as their advocates and openly express their fears and concerns about their health and health care. We began our fecal occult blood testing program at a time when it was considered the "standard of care" although randomized clinical trial proof was, and is, incomplete. This program provides evidence that "standard of care" is feasible in the public sector.     

Investing in research: the impact of one academic health center's research grant program.

External research funding provides the core support for a medical center's research enterprise, and is a major or sole criterion for comparing and ranking institutions. Most grant programs are sufficiently competitive that awards are not granted without the availability of preliminary data. Therefore, institutions may find it necessary to supplement external research funds, particularly as matching funds or as seed funds. The authors report their experience at the University of Minnesota Academic Health Center with two internal grant programs, a seed grant program and an interdisciplinary/intercollegiate Faculty Research Development (FRD) grant program. Seed grants are one-year, one-time $25,000 awards to investigators to initiate a new direction in research or to develop innovative projects allowing faculty to expand into new research areas. FRD grants are one-time $200,000 awards for a one- to three-year project that support innovative interdisciplinary and interscholastic research with a high potential for future grants.The authors based their analysis of program outcomes on investigators' self-reports of subsequent external grants and peer-reviewed publications stemming from the initial grants. Six annual cycles of the seed grant program (1998-2003) yielded a financial return on investment (ROI) of 560%. Five annual cycles of the FRD grant program (1998-2002) yielded an ROI of 237%. The authors conclude that the AHC grant program has been successful in generating external research funds (primarily National Institutes of Health) and publications; stimulating risk-taking; and developing interdisciplinary and intercollegiate collaboration. They plan to continue the AHC grant program and recommend similar programs to other institutions.     

Education research at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Maastricht: fostering the interrelationship between professional and education practice.

An academic department of education serving the entire university and a strategic choice by the Faculty of Medicine to support educational innovation through education research are the historical cornerstones of the education research program of the University of Maastricht. Over the years, the department's initial exclusive research focus on the evaluation of problem-based learning has widened to include theory-based applied research covering the broad domain of education. The program focuses on themes: the learning of students and teachers, characteristics of powerful learning environments, and assessment and evaluation of learning and teaching. Although modest in terms of resources, the program is firmly anchored within the Faculty's organizational structure. Educational relevance and professional alignment are the most prominent determinants of the success of the program. These features sustain the institutional mission of educational excellence as well as the high ranking of the Faculty of Medicine's medical training program among the training programs of the Netherlands' medical schools. A break in this self-perpetuating mechanism--due either to internal politics or to staffing problems--forms the main risk factor for the continuation of the department.     

Comparison between immunopotency tests and specific active or passive acquired resistance against Mycobacterium tuberculosis in mice induced with three different preparations of BCG pasteur vaccine.

Tests, exploring hallmarks of cell-mediated immunity (CMI), were used in order to compare immunogenecity of same numbers of viable units from three different preparations of BCG vaccine derived from the same strain. Specific and non-specific cellular immune responses were assessed by several tests including, active and adoptive acquired resistance to Mycobacterium tuberculosis, local and systemic granuloma formation. BCG persistence in the spleen, delayed type hypersensibility (DTH) to tuberculin, immunopotentiation of DTH to sheep red blood cells, increase resistance to Listeria monocytogenes infection and occurrence of non-specific in vitro immunodepression. The ranking order of the three preparations concerning the active specific acquired resistance to tuberculosis did correlate well the ranking established for all immunopotency tests used in our study, however differences in acquired resistance were small as compared to differences observed for immunopotency tests. Moreover, adoptive transfer of same number of lymphoid cells from immune donors gave a different ranking order; the well dispersed fresh frozen (FF) vaccine being more able to induce higher adoptive protection as compared to the mechanically dispersed preparations. All these results clearly demonstrated that BCG could not be considered as single entity and that the test based on acquired resistance to M. tuberculosis or in vivo or in vitro hallmarks of CMI cannot be used as standard procedures.     

Design of a DICOM image-based program for estimating patient exposure dose in computed tomography.

During the past decade, there has been a notable worldwide increase in the number of computed tomographic (CT) examinations. Since the radiation exposure to the patient during CT examinations is relatively high, it is important to optimize the dose so that it is set as low as possible but remains consistent with the required diagnostic image quality. Therefore we have developed a Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) image-based program that calculates organ dose and effective dose values corresponding to tube current modulation. The values for primary radiation were derived from manufacturer specifications with international recommendations and from reference values (ICRP publication 60). Based on these values, organ doses can be computed by the program for arbitrary scan protocols in conventional and in spiral CT. In contrast to similar programs for CT dose assessment, our developed program can perform automatic extraction of the scan protocols from the DICOM tag. Users can easily reproduce and recalculate values by loading DICOM data without the requirement for time-consuming work. Additionally, further extensions are planned to our developed software.     

Participation in a premedical summer program for underrepresented-minority students as a predictor of academic performance in the first three years of medical school: two studies.

PURPOSE: To determine whether the performances of underrepresented minority students in the Medical Education and Development Program (MEDP) at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) School of Medicine (a structured, nine-week summer premedical program that simulates the medical school's first year curriculum) predicted their academic performances in the first three years of medical school. METHOD: These two studies looked separately at the predictive value of students' rankings (top quarter or top half) within their MEDP cohorts. The first study involved 165 students who had participated in the MEDP from 1981 to 1990 and who then matriculated at UNC-CH. Using backward elimination logistic regression models, the author determined whether those rankings and other, more traditional academic performance predictors predicted three types of academic difficulty during the first two years of medical school: (1) required participation in summer review; (2) deceleration; and (3) dismissal. The predictive validity of each regression model was assessed by calculating the sensitivity and the positive predictive value. The second study involved 135 students who had participated in the MEDP from 1981 to 1990 and who had finished their third-year clinical clerkships at UNC-CH. Forty-four of those students had taken the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) Part II examination. Using Spearman correlations, the Student t test, and the chi-square test, the author determined the simple relationships among MEDP ranking, traditional premedical academic predictors, and third-year clinical performance (as measured by clerkship grades and NBME scores). The author determined the best predictors of third-year clinical performance using stepwise backward-elimination linear regression models. RESULTS: In both studies, a student's ranking within his or her MEDP cohort was the strongest, if not the only, predictor of medical school academic performance. CONCLUSION: These studies suggest that structured summer premedical programs such as UNC-CH's MEDP are quite good at determining whether participants will be able to handle the academic rigors of medical school.     

Survey of cadaveric donors to a body donation program: 1978–1993

Body donation files from the Department of Anatomy at Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine were reviewed from the 569 donors used in our program from 1978–1993. The data were entered into a computerized database to evaluate the characteristics of people who have contributed to the body donation program for cadaveric dissection. The purpose of this review was to reveal a profile of the people who have contributed to our program and enable us to identify any deficiencies or disproportionate representation of donors which can be used when targeting future applicants. Donors to our program were predominantly male (58%), although there was a clear trend for increasing numbers of females over the latter period of the program. Donors were almost exclusively white (98%) with an average age at death of 73 years (range 18–98 years). The combination cardiovascular (46%), cancer (27%), and pulmonary dysfunction (16%) accounted for nearly all deaths of our donors. Approximately half of the donors (49%) were married and they completed an average of 12.5 years of education. The typical donor bequested at, or near, the time of death. From these data we conclude that certain characteristics of our donors can be primarily attributable to the population base of our sample. Other characteristics, for example, gender, age at death of females, and educational level, show marked departures from population values and suggest some unique attributes of our donors. Bequests to our body donation program do not appear to represent a long-term plan, but rather a decision made just prior to death. © 1996 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Haplotype and missing data inference in nuclear families

Determining linkage phase from population samples with statistical methods is accurate only within regions of high linkage disequilibrium (LD). Yet, affected individuals in a genetic mapping study, including those involving cases and controls, may share sequences identical-by-descent stretching on the order of 10s to 100s of kilobases, quite possibly over regions of low LD in the population. At the same time, inferring phase from nuclear families may be hampered by missing family members, missing genotypes, and the noninformativity of certain genotype patterns. In this study, we reformulate our previous haplotype reconstruction algorithm, and its associated computer program, to phase parents with information derived from population samples as well as from their offspring. In applications of our algorithm to 100-kb stretches, simulated in accordance to a Wright-Fisher model with typical levels of LD in humans, we find that phase reconstruction for 160 trios with 10% missing data is highly accurate (>90%) over the entire length. Furthermore, our algorithm can estimate allelic status for missing data at high accuracy (>95%). Finally, the input capacity of the program is vast, easily handling thousands of segregating sites in > or = 1000 chromosomes.     

A computer model for the study of segregation in reciprocal translocation carriers: application to 20 new cases

We report on a computer program that, given the breakpoints and the chromosomes involved in a translocation, generates all the possible imbalanced gametes, calculates their corresponding imbalances, and arranges them in order of increasing imbalance. When compared to current, more cumbersome criteria from the literature, both methods agreed on 196 cases of 199 (greater than 98%). When compared to observed data from families with aneuploid offspring, both our program and the other reported methods yield a rate of accurate prediction of 87%. The use of the program is illustrated in 20 new translocations from our laboratory. The possible influence of crossing over in meiosis I in altering the gamete that is most likely to be passed to aneuploid live births is discussed.