Realizing the promise of EMRs. How a group of physicians in Texas moved forward on EMR and HIE at the same time.

North Texas Specialty Physicians (NTSP), an independent practice association based in Forth Worth, has been working with healthcare organizations across North Texas to build an HIE known as SandlotConnect. NTSP Executive Director Karen Van Wagner, Ph.D. lays out four key strategies that appear to have been successful in winning broad and sustained acceptance by clinicians.

Effects of response spacing on acquisition and retention of conditional discriminations.

Pigeons were exposed to a repeated acquisition procedure in which no delays were imposed and rate of responding was relatively high. They also were exposed to conditions in which delays were arranged between trials within chains or between completed chains, and rates of responding were lower. Number of trials, rate of reinforcement, difficulty of the discrimination, and motivating operations were held constant. Terminal accuracy was highest under the no-delay condition, in which rate of responding was highest. Effects of trial spacing on retention were mixed and depended on whether delays were imposed between trials within chains or between completed chains. These findings provide basic-research support for the rapid presentation of trials in direct instruction and for rate building in precision teaching.

Females' participation in psychopharmacology research as authors, editors, and subjects.

This study determined the involvement of women as first authors and other authors for every article published in Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior, and Psychopharmacology in 1991, 1996, 2001, and 2006. Their involvement as editors also was determined. Women's participation as authors, but not as editors, slightly increased over time. In 2006, 43% of first authors, 38% of other authors, and 24% of editors were women. The gender of subjects was examined for the same years and journals, but could not be determined for 6% and 9% of articles employing nonhuman and human subjects, respectively. In 2006, when subjects' gender could be determined, 77% of articles involving nonhuman subjects used only males, 9% only females, and 14% both males and females. In articles using human subjects in that same year, 17% involved only males, 6% only females, and 77% both males and females. Women researchers clearly make substantial contributions to the psychopharmacology literature, but are nonetheless underrepresented as editors. Findings regarding subjects indicate that there is growing recognition of the importance of gender as a determinant of drug effects, although the vast majority of nonhuman studies continue to involve only male subjects.