A Faculty-Led, Community-Building Program That Enhances Student-Faculty Connections within Biology.

Connections between students and faculty on campus may influence students' sense of belonging, and a greater sense of belonging has a positive effect on student success. We developed a low-cost, faculty-led program of community-building events and implemented the program in the biology department at a small liberal-arts institution with the goal of improving students' sense of community. Student responses to surveys indicated that the majority of students felt connected to faculty and students in the department; however, Black or African American students initially felt a lower level of connection to faculty than did white students.

Developing a flexible learning activity on biodiversity and spatial scale concepts using open-access vegetation datasets from the National Ecological Observatory Network.

Biodiversity is a complex, yet essential, concept for undergraduate students in ecology and other natural sciences to grasp. As beginner scientists, students must learn to recognize, describe, and interpret patterns of biodiversity across various spatial scales and understand their relationships with ecological processes and human influences. It is also increasingly important for undergraduate programs in ecology and related disciplines to provide students with experiences working with large ecological datasets to develop students' data science skills and their ability to consider how ecological processes that operate at broader spatial scales (macroscale) affect local ecosystems.

Future Doctors' Perceptions about Incorporating Nutrition into Standard Care Practice.

Objective: The increasing prevalence of chronic disease has been largely attributed to long-term poor nutrition and lifestyle choices. This study investigates the attitudes of our future physicians toward nutrition and the likelihood of incorporating nutrition principles into current treatment protocols.

Methods: Setting: The setting of this study was an Australian university medical school.

Risk assessment of student performance in the International Foundations of Medicine Clinical Science Examination by the use of statistical modeling.

Purpose: The primary aim of this study was to assess the predictive validity of cumulative grade point average (GPA) for performance in the International Foundations of Medicine (IFOM) Clinical Science Examination (CSE). A secondary aim was to develop a strategy for identifying students at risk of performing poorly in the IFOM CSE as determined by the National Board of Medical Examiners' International Standard of Competence.

Methods: Final year medical students from an Australian university medical school took the IFOM CSE as a formative assessment.

Size dependency of post-disturbance recovery of multi-stemmed resprouting trees.

In frequently burned ecosystems, many plants persist by repeated resprouting from basal or belowground buds. This strategy requires that plants reach a balance between biomass loss and recovery, which depends on the shape of the relationship between pre- and post-fire size. Previous analyses of this relationship, however, have focused on the size of the largest stem, which ignores the importance of the multi-stem growth habit that is common in pyrogenic ecosystems.

Size-dependent enhancement of water relations during post-fire resprouting.

In resprouting species, fire-induced topkill causes a reduction in height and leaf area without a comparable reduction in the size of the root system, which should lead to an increase in the efficiency of water transport after fire. However, large plants undergo a greater relative reduction in size, compared with small plants, so we hypothesized that this enhancement in hydraulic efficiency would be greatest among large growth forms. In the ecotone between long-leaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.

Global benchmarking of medical student learning outcomes? Implementation and pilot results of the International Foundations of Medicine Clinical Sciences Exam at The University of Queensland, Australia.

Objective: To report pilot results for international benchmarking of learning outcomes among 426 final year medical students at the University of Queensland (UQ), Australia.

Methods: Students took the International Foundations of Medicine (IFOM) Clinical Sciences Exam (CSE) developed by the National Board of Medical Examiners, USA, as a required formative assessment. IFOM CSE comprises 160 multiple-choice questions in medicine, surgery, obstetrics, paediatrics and mental health, taken over 4.

The university of queensland medical leadership program: a case study.

Changes in modern healthcare's provision, complexity, and workforce demands provide a compelling rationale for an increasing emphasis on leadership development at all levels of training within the medical profession. Undergraduate medical education has traditionally focused on the development of clinical acumen with little emphasis on the development of leadership skills or on the operational and systemic issues surrounding healthcare delivery. Incorporating leadership education and competencies presents a number of challenges to medical schools, including defining the subject area, determining the specific skills and knowledge bases that should constitute the basis of the program, and optimizing training to be integrated into the existing clinical curriculum.

Models of hormone resistance in vitro and in vivo.

Estrogen receptor (ER)-positive MCF-7 breast cancer cell lines can be used both in vitro and in vivo to create anti-hormone resistance. Estrogen withdrawal in vitro results in spontaneous growth of MCF-7 cells. Similarly, culture in the selective ER modulators (SERMs) tamoxifen and raloxifene, can result in SERM resistance.

Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma agonists promote TRAIL-induced apoptosis by reducing survivin levels via cyclin D3 repression and cell cycle arrest.

Tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) is a promising cancer therapy that preferentially induces apoptosis in cancer cells. However, many neoplasms are resistant to TRAIL by mechanisms that are poorly understood. Here we demonstrate that human breast cancer cells, but not normal mammary epithelial cells, are dramatically sensitized to TRAIL-induced apoptosis and caspase activation by peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARgamma) agonists of the thiazolidinedione (TZD) class.

A mechanism of drug resistance to tamoxifen in breast cancer.

Drug resistance to tamoxifen (Tam) is a significant clinical problem but the mechanism through which this occurs remains elusive. We have developed a number of xenograft models of Tam-stimulated growth that model breast cancer progression using estrogen receptor positive MCF-7 or T47D breast cancer cells. When estrogen-stimulated T47D:E2 tumors are treated long term with Tam, Tam-stimulated tumors develop (T47D:Tam) that are stimulated by both estrogen and Tam.

Structure-function relationships of the raloxifene-estrogen receptor-alpha complex for regulating transforming growth factor-alpha expression in breast cancer cells.

Amino acid Asp-351 in the ligand binding domain of estrogen receptor alpha (ERalpha) plays an important role in regulating the estrogen-like activity of selective estrogen receptor modulator-ERalpha complexes. 4-Hydroxytamoxifen is a full agonist at a transforming growth factor alpha target gene in situ in MDA-MB-231 human breast cancer cells stably transfected with the wild-type ERalpha. In contrast, raloxifene (Ral), which is also a selective estrogen receptor modulator, is a complete antiestrogen in this system.