Student Expenses in Residency Interviewing.

BACKGROUND: The student costs of residency interviewing are of increasing concern but limited current information is available. Updated, more detailed information would assist students and residency programs in decisions about residency selection. The study objective was to measure the expenses and time spent in residency interviewing by the 2016 graduating class of the University of Kansas School of Medicine and assess the impact of gender, regional campus location, and primary care application. METHODS: All 195 students who participated in the 2016 National Residency Matching Program (NRMP) received a 33 item questionnaire addressing interviewing activity, expenses incurred, time invested and related factors. Main measures were self-reported estimates of expenses and time spent interviewing. Descriptive analyses were applied to participant characteristics and responses. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and chi-square tests compared students by gender, campus (main/regional), and primary care/other specialties. Analyses of variance (ANOVA) on the dependent variables provided follow-up tests on significant MANOVA results. RESULTS: A total of 163 students (84%) completed the survey. The average student reported 38 (1-124) applications, 16 (1-54) invitations, 11 (1-28) completed interviews, and spent $3,500 ($20-$12,000) and 26 (1-90) days interviewing. No significant differences were found by gender. After MANOVA and ANOVA analyses, non-primary care applicants reported significantly more applications, interviews, and expenditures, but less program financial support. Regional campus students reported significantly fewer invitations, interviews, and days interviewing, but equivalent costs when controlled for primary care application. Cost was a limiting factor in accepting interviews for 63% and time for 53% of study respondents. CONCLUSIONS: Students reported investing significant time and money in interviewing. After controlling for other variables, primary care was associated with significantly lowered expenses. Regional campus location was associated with fewer interviews and less time interviewing. Gender had no significant impact on any aspect studied.

The biosphere rules.

Sustainability, defined by natural scientists as the capacity of healthy ecosystems to function indefinitely, has become a clarion call for business. Leading companies have taken high-profile steps toward achieving it: Wal-Mart, for example, with its efforts to reduce packaging waste, and Nike, which has removed toxic chemicals from its shoes. But, says Unruh, the director of Thunderbird's Lincoln Center for Ethics in Global Management, sustainability is more than an endless journey of incremental steps. It is a destination, for which the biosphere of planet Earth--refined through billions of years of trial and error--is a perfect model. Unruh distills some lessons from the biosphere into three rules: Use a parsimonious palette. Managers can rethink their sourcing strategies and dramatically simplify the number and types of materials their companies use in production, making recycling cost-effective. After the furniture manufacturer Herman Miller discovered that its leading desk chair had 200 components made from more than 800 chemical compounds, it designed an award-winning successor whose far more limited materials palette is 96% recyclable. Cycle up, virtuously. Manufacturers should design recovery value into their products at the outset. Shaw Industries, for example, recycles the nylon fiber from its worn-out carpet into brand-new carpet tile. Exploit the power of platforms. Platform design in industry tends to occur at the component level--but the materials in those components constitute a more fundamental platform. Patagonia, by recycling Capilene brand performance underwear, has achieved energy costs 76% below those for virgin sourcing. Biosphere rules can teach companies how to build ecologically friendly products that both reduce manufacturing costs and prove highly attractive to consumers. And managers need not wait for a green technological revolution to implement them.

The stereochemistry of the thermal cheletropic decarbonylation of 3-cyclopentenone as determined by multiphoton infrared photolysis/thermolysis.

There are two allowed pathways for the thermal cheletropic decarbonylation of 3-cyclopentenone. The stereochemistry of decarbonylation of an unconstrained derivative (trans,trans-2,5-dimethyl-3-cyclopentenone, 4) has been determined for the first time. Under conventional pyrolysis conditions, thermal rearrangements of the initial product (trans,trans-2,4-hexadiene, 5) occur at the high temperatures required for the decarbonylation. However, by using multiphoton infrared photolysis/thermolysis to initiate decarbonylation, it was shown that the initial products from thermal decarbonylation of 4 are solely carbon monoxide and stereospecifically 5. The stereochemistry of decarbonylation is thus disrotatory, in accord with prior theoretical studies. A survey of crystal structures reveals ground-state distortions along this reaction coordinate as well.