Medicinal chemistry is a specialized, scientific discipline. Computational chemistry and structure-based drug design constitute important themes in the education of medicinal chemists. This problem-based task is associated with structure-based drug design lectures. It requires students to use computational techniques to investigate conformational…

Objective: To determine health care provider needs related to pediatric obesity management in rural California and to explore strategies to improve care through telehealth. Methods: Cross-sectional survey of health care providers who treated children and adolescents at 41 rural clinics with existing telehealth connectivity. Results: Most of the…

This paper reviews the medical (salutogenic) effect of interventions that aim to improve quality of life. Review of studies where the global quality of life in chronically ill patients was improved independently of subjective and objective factors (like physical and mental health, yearly income, education, social network, self-esteem, sexual…

Underlying recent developments in health care and new treatments for disease are advances in basic medical sciences. This edition of "Webwatch" focuses on sites dealing with basic medical sciences, with particular attention given to physiology. There is a vast amount of information on the web related to physiology. The sites that are included here…

A current trend in physiology education involves the use of clinical vignettes to demonstrate the importance of knowing normal physiology to appreciate pathophysiology. Although laudable, in effect, such tactics promote the so-called "disease" model of medicine while at the same time suggesting that the only utility for the knowledge of physiology…

The American Academy of Dermatology (2008) reports that our students will experience 80% of their lifetime exposure to the Sun by the time they are 18. Further, research has demonstrated that continued exposure to the Sun's ultraviolet rays can lead to skin aging, sunburn, immune suppression, ocular melanoma, cataracts, corneal burns, and even…

The term "antibiotic" was first proposed by Vuillemin in 1889 but was first used in the current sense by Walksman in 1941. An antibiotic is defined as a "derivative produced by the metabolism of microorganisms that possess antibacterial activity at low concentrations and is not toxic to the host." In this article, the author describes how…

Objective: To determine the degree to which the medical humanities have been integrated into the fields of internal medicine and psychiatry, the authors assessed the presence of medical humanities articles in selected psychiatry and internal medicine journals from 1950 to 2000. Methods: The journals searched were the three highest-ranking…

This paper reports that a large-scale, multinational attempt in Europe to rank humanities journals has set off a revolt. In a protest letter, some journal editors have called it "a dangerous and misguided exercise." The project has also started a drumbeat of alarm in this country, as U.S.-based scholars begin to grasp the implications…

We used collaborative group testing in a veterinary physiology course (65 students) to test the hypothesis that all students (e.g., high-performing and low-performing students of each group) benefit from collaborative group testing. In this format, students answered questions in the traditional format as individuals. Immediately after completing…

ACT has been a leader in measuring college and career readiness trends since 1959. Each August, they release "The Condition of College & Career Readiness" (www.act.org/newsroom/data/2014), their annual report on the progress of the ACT-tested graduating class relative to college readiness. Nationally, 57% of the 2014 graduating class…

Concept mapping is a technique used to provide a visual representation of an individual's ideas about a concept or set of related concepts. This paper describes a concept mapping tool using a photograph association technique (CoMPAT) that is considered to be a novel way of eliciting children's ideas. What children at 11 years of age know about…

In the fall of 2005, Tulane University responded to Katrina's devastation by undertaking a significant re-envisioning of the university's mission and strategy. Tulane needed to survive financially without sacrificing the core academic strengths that have drawn so many students to them: a holistic undergraduate experience that leverages the…

Context: The contribution that international medical graduates (IMGs) make to reducing the rural-urban maldistribution of physicians in the United States is unclear. Quantifying the extent of such "gap filling" has significant implications for planning IMG workforce needs as well as other state and federal initiatives to increase the numbers of…

A PUBMED search for "mathematical models in medicine" shows more than 15,000 articles covering almost every field of medicine. We designed a course with the goal of developing the students' skills in computerized data analysis and mathematical modelling, as well as enhancing their ability to read and interpret mathematical data analysis. The study…