Useless Med School Notes; Medical Education Through Mnemonics

BACKGROUND: The volume of content required for synthesis by medical students is immense and continues to grow as more insight and information is added to the existing compendium of medical knowledge. Mnemonics, memory palaces, and other visual memory aids have been used throughout history for assisting students and scholars in recalling information; offering an alternative to the practice of rote memorization. While technology has advanced and a shift towards paid-subscription services that offer pre-made mnemonics has gained great popularity among medical students, studies have shown that the act of creating the mnemonic in of itself serves as a powerful memory formation tool. OBJECTIVE: Through engaging students in social media platforms, this project aims to build a bank of mnemonics as well as engage users in the creation of their own mnemonics to facilitate richer and more interactive educational experiences. METHODS: Since its inception, this project has utilized instagram ® as a platform for social communication. Using the app GoodNotes ® as a drawing platform, images are created and then uploaded to instagram ® , where they are shared with the followers of the content. RESULTS: 250+ mnemonics have been created and posted to the platform, amassing over 1,100 followers. Each post averages 800+ views and 40-70 “likes” from followers. CONCLUSION: By increasing the reach of this social mnemonic service, this project intends to become a staple in assisting long-term memory formation for medical students. As the reach of this project continues to grow, it will provide opportunities to assess the impact and effectiveness of the various memory devices, as well as the power of influence that the project has on encouraging students to engage in the creation of their own visual means of learning

Potentiation Decay of Synapses and the Length Distributions of Synfire Chains Self-organized in Recurrent Neural Networks

Synfire chains are thought to underlie precisely-timed sequences of spikes observed in various brain regions and across species. How they are formed is not understood. Here we analyze self-organization of synfire chains through the spike-timing dependent plasticity (STDP) of the synapses, axon remodeling, and potentiation decay of synaptic weights in networks of neurons driven by noisy external inputs and subject to dominant feedback inhibition. Potentiation decay is the gradual, activity-independent reduction of synaptic weights over time. We show that potentiation decay enables a dynamic and statistically stable network connectivity when neurons spike spontaneously. Periodic stimulation of a subset of neurons leads to formation of synfire chains through a random recruitment process, which terminates when the chain connects to itself and forms a loop. We demonstrate that chain length distributions depend on the potentiation decay. Fast potentiation decay leads to long chains with wide distributions, while slow potentiation decay leads to short chains with narrow distributions. We suggest that the potentiation decay, which corresponds to the decay of early long-term potentiation of synapses (E-LTP), is an important synaptic plasticity rule in regulating formation of neural circuity through STDP

Future Developments in Low Temperature Detectors for CMB and Submm Astronomy

We summarize the wide range of current and upcoming developments in low temperature detectors for CMB and submillimeter astronomy. We discuss work in sensor development, photon coupling and filtering architectures, and polarimetry and how these tie to applications requirements

Egg Production in the Boxelder Bug \u3ci\u3eBoisea Trivittata\u3c/i\u3e (Hemiptera: Rhopalidae)

Boxelder bug females emerged from overwintering sites in the spring and rapidly provisioned eggs with yolk materials. Five discrete egg stages were identified based on egg size, protein content, and degree of chorion sclerotization. Females did not accumulate yolk materials into the egg until after melanization was completed, as unmelanized animals rarely possessed even stage 2 eggs. All adult females entering overwintering sites possessed only immature stage eggs (stage 1 and 2). The rate of egg vitellogenesis in the spring was rapid; a major change in numbers of more mature stage eggs (stage 3 and above) in the ovary occurred within approximately 6 days. Most mating pairs recovered in the field (92%, 12/13) possessed ovaries full of eggs in stages 3, 4 or 5. The remaining female contained only immature eggs of stage 1 and 2. This finding indicates that fully provisioned ovaries are not an absolute requirement for mating to occur. The signals that initiate vitellogenesis and control the movement of materials from fat body into eggs are unknown for the boxelder bug

Routing under Balance

We introduce the notion of balance for directed graphs: a weighted directed graph is $\alpha$-balanced if for every cut $S \subseteq V$, the total weight of edges going from $S$ to $V\setminus S$ is within factor $\alpha$ of the total weight of edges going from $V\setminus S$ to $S$. Several important families of graphs are nearly balanced, in particular, Eulerian graphs (with $\alpha = 1$) and residual graphs of $(1+\epsilon)$-approximate undirected maximum flows (with $\alpha=O(1/\epsilon)$). We use the notion of balance to give a more fine-grained understanding of several well-studied routing questions that are considerably harder in directed graphs. We first revisit oblivious routings in directed graphs. Our main algorithmic result is an oblivious routing scheme for single-source instances that achieve an $O(\alpha \cdot \log^3 n / \log \log n)$ competitive ratio. In the process, we make several technical contributions which may be of independent interest. In particular, we give an efficient algorithm for computing low-radius decompositions of directed graphs parameterized by balance. We also define and construct low-stretch arborescences, a generalization of low-stretch spanning trees to directed graphs. On the negative side, we present new lower bounds for oblivious routing problems on directed graphs. We show that the competitive ratio of oblivious routing algorithms for directed graphs is $\Omega(n)$ in general; this result improves upon the long-standing best known lower bound of $\Omega(\sqrt{n})$ given by Hajiaghayi, Kleinberg, Leighton and R\"acke in 2006. We also show that our restriction to single-source instances is necessary by showing an $\Omega(\sqrt{n})$ lower bound for multiple-source oblivious routing in Eulerian graphs. We also give a fast algorithm for the maximum flow problem in balanced directed graphs.Comment: To appear in STOC 201

Empowering Medical Professionals to Help Victims of Trafficking

Purpose: to provide commentary of two review articles that discuss the role of medical professionals in combating human trafficking: “Health Care Providers\u27 Training Needs Related to Human Trafficking: Maximizing the Opportunity to Effectively Screen and Intervene” by Isaac, Solak, and Giardino, and “Human Trafficking: What is the Role of the Health Care Provider?” by Crane and Moreno. Findings: Both articles provide a good introduction and explanation of the psychosocial and medical issues faced by many trafficking victims; however, they succeed only to varying degrees in describing all the gaps in the medical system and the vital next steps forward. Conclusion: The key next steps in the fight against human trafficking include: multidisciplinary teams need to improve coordination on all forms of human maltreatment; schools for all medical professions and social work need to significantly strengthen their curriculum on diagnosing and treating human maltreatment; and groups that provide training on human trafficking should partner with other agencies and organizations that provide training on child maltreatment and domestic violence