Weaving quality improvement and patient safety skills into all levels of medical training: an annotated bibliography.

With the launching of the Liaison Committee on Medical Education’s new accreditation Standard ED-19-A in July 2013, a new era in quality improvement/patient safety (QI/PS) has begun. Core curriculum of medical schools must now include multidisciplinary teamwork; that is, inclusion of practitioners and/or students from other health professions. This Standard ED-19-A is harmonious with the earlier Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education’s (ACGME) Competency IV.A.5.c., which calls for QI to be integrated into residents’ training curricula. Residents need to be able to determine their strengths and deficiencies. ACGME requires residents to systematically analyze practice using QI methods; to incorporate formative evaluation feedback into daily practice; to locate, appraise, and assimilate evidence from scientific studies related to their patients’ health problems; and to participate in the education of patients and families. ACGME also specifies that residents use information technology to optimize their learning

Rescaling Relations between Two- and Three-dimensional Local Porosity Distributions for Natural and Artificial Porous Media

Local porosity distributions for a three-dimensional porous medium and local porosity distributions for a two-dimensional plane-section through the medium are generally different. However, for homogeneous and isotropic media having finite correlation-lengths, a good degree of correspondence between the two sets of local porosity distributions can be obtained by rescaling lengths, and the mapping associating corresponding distributions can be found from two-dimensional observations alone. The agreement between associated distributions is good as long as the linear extent of the measurement cells involved is somewhat larger than the correlation length, and it improves as the linear extent increases. A simple application of the central limit theorem shows that there must be a correspondence in the limit of very large measurement cells, because the distributions from both sets approach normal distributions. A normal distribution has two independent parameters: the mean and the variance. If the sample is large enough, LPDs from both sets will have the same mean. Therefore corresponding distributions are found by matching variances of two- and three-dimensional local porosity distributions. The variance can be independently determined from correlation functions. Equating variances leads to a scaling relation for lengths in this limit. Three particular systems are examined in order to show that this scaling behavior persists at smaller length-scales.Comment: 15 PostScript figures, LaTeX, To be published in Physica

Predictability of Self-Organizing Systems

We study the predictability of large events in self-organizing systems. We focus on a set of models which have been studied as analogs of earthquake faults and fault systems, and apply methods based on techniques which are of current interest in seismology. In all cases we find detectable correlations between precursory smaller events and the large events we aim to forecast. We compare predictions based on different patterns of precursory events and find that for all of the models a new precursor based on the spatial distribution of activity outperforms more traditional measures based on temporal variations in the local activity.Comment: 15 pages, plain.tex with special macros included, 4 figure

Genetic Diversity of Dahongjun The Commercially Important 'Big Red Mushroom" From Southern China

The genus Russula is among the most numerous and complex mushroom genera. They form symbiotic associations with a variety of plants such as pines, oaks, spruce, and birches and play vital roles in forest ecosystem. Species in this genus are widely distributed throughout the world, from the tropics to subtropics, temperate regions, and the arctic zone. Intensive studies on this genus have been carried out on European and North American Russula. However, there are very few studies on Asian Russula. In southwestern China the favorable climate stimulates the production of a large population of Russula. A wild mushroom commonly called "dahongjun" or the "big red mushroom" by the locals, has been harvested, consumed and/or exported as an exotic food for many years. Although ecologically and economically important, very little is known about this mushroom, including its basic ecology and population genetic structure. In this study, we investigated the genetic diversity and geographic structure of dahongjun using sequences of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) regions of the ribosomal RNA gene cluster. We found that this exotic mushroom contained at least three divergent lineages, with one corresponding to the recently described Russula griseocarnosa and two others likely representing closely related novel species within the genus Russula. Both phylogenetic and population genetic analyses suggested that dahongjun populations were geographically structured and gene flow among regions were limited. We also estimated the size of the genets for one Russula lineage by comparing haplotypes derived from four different DNA markers. Small genets suggest that sexual reproduction is likely more dominant than clonal reproduction in dahongjing. We found that the size of dahongjun genets ranged from 30cm to less than 3m, and widespread recombination within a local population. This result was consistent with the findings from other Russula species. Our study provided the first insights into the diversity and population biology of this endemic gourmet mushroom in southern China. This work serves as a great referencing resource on conducing conservation practices for wild Russula.Master of Science (MS