Effects of graded versus ungraded individual readiness assurance scores in team-based learning: a quasi-experimental study.

Pre-class preparation is a crucial component of team-based learning (TBL). Lack of preparation hinders both individual learning and team performance during TBL. The purpose of the present study was to explore how the grading of the individual readiness assurance test (iRAT) can affect pre-class preparation, iRAT performance and performance in the end-of-year examination. Using a quasi-experimental design, Year 1 and 2 students' download frequency for their pre-class materials, performance on iRAT and examination were examined under two conditions; (1) under which the iRAT was graded and (2) under which the iRAT was ungraded. Medical students (N = 220) from three cohorts were included in the study. Differences between both conditions were tested by means of six separate ANCOVAs, using medical school entry test scores as the covariate to account for potential cohort effects. Results revealed that students were downloading more pre-class materials prior to their TBL sessions, and were performed significantly better on iRAT when their performance was graded, even after controlling for cohort effects. Analysis of covariance demonstrated that performance on iRAT also appeared to affect performance on their examination scores. The results of the study suggest that grading has a positive effect on students' iRAT scores. Implications for TBL are discussed.

Evaluation of an evidence-based medicine educational intervention in a regional medical campus.

BACKGROUND: Enhanced educational activities were developed by a regional medical campus (RMC) in order to incorporate evidence-based medicine (EBM) practice in the learning process of medical students. This study aimed to measure the effectiveness of these activities. METHODS: The experimental group was made up of third-year students from the RMC. The comparison group included students from the main campus of the medical school and another of its RMCs. The experimental group received additional training on EBM: one additional hour in class, plus skills development exercises throughout the semester. During the regular academic sessions, clinical questions requiring EBM literature searching skills were incorporated in the curriculum. Tests on knowledge and self-assessment of competencies were administered to all participants at the beginning and at the end of the semester. Data were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance and post hoc tests for within and between groups comparison. RESULTS: The Friedman test demonstrated a statistically significant effect of the intervention on knowledge (p <0.0001). The score of the knowledge test was significantly higher for the experimental group, when compared with baseline testing and with the comparison group (p <0.0001). Repeated measures analysis of variance demonstrated a statistically significant effect of the intervention on the score of the self-assessment of competencies (p=0.032). The score for the self-assessment of competencies was significantly higher for the experimental group when compared to baseline score (p <0.0001), but not with respect to the comparison group. CONCLUSION: Our study demonstrated the effectiveness of additional training and longitudinal integrated skills development leading to an increase in medical student knowledge and self-perception of competencies in EBM practice.

Overdispersed Spatial Patterning of Dominant Bunchgrasses in Southeastern Pine Savannas.

Spatial patterning is a key natural history attribute of sessile organisms that frequently emerges from and dictates potential for interactions among organisms. We tested whether bunchgrasses, the dominant plant functional group in longleaf pine savanna groundcover communities, are nonrandomly patterned by characterizing the spatial dispersion of three bunchgrass species across six sites in Louisiana and Florida. We mapped bunchgrass tussocks of >5.0 cm basal diameter in three [Formula: see text] plots at each site. We modeled tussocks as two-dimensional objects to analyze their spatial relationships while preserving sizes and shapes of individual tussocks. Tussocks were overdispersed (more regularly spaced than random) for all species and sites at the local interaction scale (<0.3 m). This general pattern likely arises from a tussock-centered, distance-dependent mechanism, for example, intertussock competition. Nonrandom spatial patterns of dominant species have implications for community assembly and ecosystem function in tussock-dominated grasslands and savannas, including those characterized by extreme biodiversity.

Implementation of team-based learning on a large scale: Three factors to keep in mind.

Team-based learning (TBL) is a structured form of small group learning that can be scaled up for delivery in large classes. The principles of successful TBL implementation are well established. TBL has become widely practiced in medical schools, but its use is typically limited to certain courses or parts of courses. Implementing TBL on a large scale, across different courses and disciplines, is the next logical step. The Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKCMedicine), a partnership between Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and Imperial College London, admitted its first students in 2013. This new undergraduate medical program, developed collaboratively by faculty at both institutions, uses TBL as its main learning and teaching strategy, replacing all face-to-face lectures. TBL accounts for over 60% of the curriculum in the first two years, and there is continued learning through TBL during campus teaching in the remaining years. This paper describes our experience of rolling out TBL across all years of the medical curriculum, focusing on three success factors: (1) "team-centric" learning spaces, to foster active, collaborative learning; (2) an e-learning ecosystem, seamlessly integrated to support all phases of the TBL process and (3) teaching teams in which experts in pedagogical process (TBL Facilitators) co-teach with experts in subject matter (Content Experts).

Data Driven Quality Improvement of Health Professions Education: Design and Development of CLUE - An Interactive Curriculum Data Visualization Tool.

Curriculum Mapping and dynamic visualization is quickly becoming an integral aspect of quality improvement in support of innovations which drive curriculum quality assurance processes in medical education. CLUE (Curriculum Explorer) a highly interactive, engaging and independent platform was developed to support curriculum transparency, enhance student engagement, and enable granular search and display. Reflecting a design based approach to meet the needs of the school's varied stakeholders, CLUE employs an iterative and reflective approach to drive the evolution of its platform, as it seeks to accommodate the ever-changing needs of our stakeholders in the fast pace world of medicine and medical education today. CLUE exists independent of institutional systems and in this way, is uniquely positioned to deliver a data driven quality improvement resource, easily adaptable for use by any member of our health care professions.

How livestock and flooding mediate the ecological integrity of working forests in Amazon River floodplains.

The contribution of working forests to tropical conservation and development depends upon the maintenance of ecological integrity under ongoing land use. Assessment of ecological integrity requires an understanding of the structure, composition, and function and major drivers that govern their variability. Working forests in tropical river floodplains provide many goods and services, yet the data on the ecological processes that sustain these services is scant. In flooded forests of riverside Amazonian communities, we established 46 0.1-ha plots varying in flood duration, use by cattle and water buffalo, and time since agricultural abandonment (30-90 yr). We monitored three aspects of ecological integrity (stand structure, species composition, and dynamics of trees and seedlings) to evaluate the impacts of different trajectories of livestock activity (alleviation, stasis, and intensification) over nine years. Negative effects of livestock intensification were solely evident in the forest understory, and plots alleviated from past heavy disturbance increased in seedling density but had higher abundance of thorny species than plots maintaining low activity. Stand structure, dynamics, and tree species composition were strongly influenced by the natural pulse of seasonal floods, such that the defining characteristics of integrity were dependent upon flood duration (3-200 d). Forests with prolonged floods ≥ 140 d had not only lower species richness but also lower rates of recruitment and species turnover relative to forests with short floods <70 d. Overall, the combined effects of livestock intensification and prolonged flooding hindered forest regeneration, but overall forest integrity was largely related to the hydrological regime and age. Given this disjunction between factors mediating canopy and understory integrity, we present a subset of metrics for regeneration and recruitment to distinguish forest condition by livestock trajectory. Although our study design includes confounded factors that preclude a definitive assessment of the major drivers of ecological change, we provide much-needed data on the regrowth of a critical but poorly studied ecosystem. In addition to its emphasis on the dynamics of tropical wetland forests undergoing anthropogenic and environmental change, our case study is an important example for how to assess of ecological integrity in working forests of tropical ecosystems.

Small-scale variation in fuel loads differentially affects two co-dominant bunchgrasses in a species-rich pine savanna.

Ecological disturbances frequently control the occurrence and patterning of dominant plants in high-diversity communities like C(4) grasslands and savannas. In such ecosystems disturbance-related processes can have important implications for species, and for whole communities when those species are dominant, yet mechanistic understanding of such processes remains fragmentary. Multiple bunchgrass species commonly co-dominate disturbance-dependent and species-rich pine savannas, where small-scale fuel heterogeneity may influence bunchgrass survival and growth following fires. We quantified how fire in locally varying fuel loads influenced dynamics of dominant C(4) bunchgrasses in a species-rich pine savanna in southeastern Louisiana, USA. We focused on two congeneric, co-dominant species (Schizachyrium scoparium and S. tenerum) with similar growth forms, functional traits and reproductive strategies to highlight effects of fuel heterogeneity during fires. In experimental plots with either reduced or increased fuels versus controls with unmanipulated fuels, we compared: 1) bunchgrass damage and 2) mortality from fires; 3) subsequent growth and 4) flowering. Compared to controls, fire with increased fuels caused greater damage, mortality and subsequent flowering, but did not affect post-fire growth. Fire with reduced fuels had no effect on any of the four measures. The two species responded differently to fire with increased fuels--S. scoparium incurred measurably more damage and mortality than S. tenerum. Logistic regression indicated that the larger average size of S. tenerum tussocks made them resistant to more severe burning where fuels were increased. We speculate that locally increased fuel loading may be important in pine savannas for creating colonization sites because where fuels are light or moderate, dominant bunchgrasses persist through fires. Small-scale heterogeneity in fires, and differences in how species tolerate fire may together promote shared local dominance by different bunchgrasses.

Does pyrogenicity protect burning plants?

Pyrogenic plants dominate many fire-prone ecosystems. Their prevalence suggests some advantage to their enhanced flammability, but researchers have had difficulty tying pyrogenicity to individual-level advantages. Based on our review, we propose that enhanced flammability in fire-prone ecosystems should protect the belowground organs and nearby propagules of certain individual plants during fires. We base this hypothesis on five points: (1) organs and propagules by which many fire-adapted plants survive fires are vulnerable to elevated soil temperatures during fires; (2) the degree to which burning plant fuels heat the soil depends mainly on residence times of fires and on fuel location relative to the soil; (3) fires and fire effects are locally heterogeneous, meaning that individual plants can affect local soil heating via their fuels; (4) how a plant burns can thus affect its fitness; and (5) in many cases, natural selection in fire-prone habitats should therefore favor plants that burn rapidly and retain fuels off the ground. We predict an advantage of enhanced flammability for plants whose fuels influence local fire characteristics and whose regenerative tissues or propagules are affected by local variation in fires. Our "pyrogenicity as protection" hypothesis has the potential to apply to a range of life histories. We discuss implications for ecological and evolutionary theory and suggest considerations for testing the hypothesis.

Multiple disturbances accelerate clonal growth in a potentially monodominant bamboo.

Organisms capable of rapid clonal growth sometimes monopolize newly freed space and resources. We hypothesize that sequential disturbances might change short-term clonal demography of these organisms in ways that promote formation of monotypic stands. We examined this hypothesis by studying the clonal response of Arundinaria gigantea (giant cane, a bamboo) to windstorm and fire. We studied giant cane growing in both a large tornado-blowdown gap and under forest canopy, in burned and unburned plots, using a split-block design. We measured density of giant cane ramets (culms) and calculated finite rates of increase (lamda) for populations of ramets over three years. Ramet density nearly doubled in stands subjected to both windstorm and fire; the high ramet densities that resulted could inhibit growth in other plants. In comparison, ramet density increased more slowly after windstorm alone, decreased after fire alone, and remained in stasis in controls. We predict that small, sparse stands of giant cane could spread and amalgamate to form dense, monotypic stands (called "canebrakes") that might influence fire return intervals and act as an alternative state to bottomland forest. Other clonal species may similarly form monotypic stands following successive disturbances via rapid clonal growth.

Tissue transglutaminase acylation: Proposed role of conserved active site Tyr and Trp residues revealed by molecular modeling of peptide substrate binding.

Transglutaminases (TGases) catalyze the cross-linking of peptides and proteins by the formation of gamma-glutamyl-epsilon-lysyl bonds. Given the implication of tissue TGase in various physiological disorders, development of specific tissue TGase inhibitors is of current interest. To aid in the design of peptide-based inhibitors, a better understanding of the mode of binding of model peptide substrates to the enzyme is required. Using a combined kinetic/molecular modeling approach, we have generated a model for the binding of small acyl-donor peptide substrates to tissue TGase from red sea bream. Kinetic analysis of various N-terminally derivatized Gln-Xaa peptides has demonstrated that many CBz-Gln-Xaa peptides are typical in vitro substrates with K(M) values between 1.9 mM and 9.4 mM, whereas Boc-Gln-Gly is not a substrate, demonstrating the importance of the CBz group for recognition. Our binding model of CBz-Gln-Gly on tissue TGase has allowed us to propose the following steps in the acylation of tissue TGase. First, the active site is opened by displacement of conserved W329. Second, the substrate Gln side chain enters the active site and is stabilized by hydrophobic interaction with conserved residue W236. Third, a hydrogen bond network is formed between the substrate Gln side chain and conserved residues Y515 and the acid-base catalyst H332 that helps to orient and activate the gamma-carboxamide group for nucleophilic attack by the catalytic sulphur atom. Finally, an H-bond with Y515 stabilizes the oxyanion formed during the reaction.