The Kepler Mission is searching for Earth-size planets orbiting solar-like stars by simultaneously observing >160,000 stars to detect sequences of transit events in the photometric light curves. The Combined Differential Photometric Precision (CDPP) is the metric that defines the ease with which these weak terrestrial 1 See http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/discoveries/

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: The diversifying US population of children necessitates assessing the diversity of the pediatric academic workforce and its level of cultural competency training. Such data are essential for workforce and educational policies.

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BackgroundMedications to treat and prevent chronic disease have substantially reduced morbidity and mortality; however, their diffusion has been uneven. Little is known about prescribing of chronic disease medications by nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs), despite their increasingly important role as primary care providers. Thus, we sought to conduct an exploratory analysis to examine prescribing of new chronic disease medications by NPs and PAs compared to primary care physicians (PCPs).MethodsWe obtained prescribing data from IMS Health’s Xponent™ on all NPs, PAs, and PCPs in Pennsylvania regularly prescribing anticoagulants, antihypertensives, oral hypoglycemics, and/or HMG-Co-A reductase inhibitors pre- and post-introduction of five new drugs in these classes that varied in novelty (i.e., dabigatran, aliskiren, sitagliptin or saxagliptin, and pitavastatin). We constructed three measures of prescriber adoption during the 15-month post-FDA approval period: 1) any prescription of the medication, 2) proportion of prescriptions in the class for the medication, and 3) time to adoption (first prescription) of the medication.ResultsFrom 2007 to 2011, the proportion of antihypertensive prescriptions prescribed by NPs and PAs approximately doubled from 2.0 to 4.2 % and 2.2 to 4.9 %, respectively. Similar trends were found for anticoagulants, oral hypoglycemics, and HMG-Co-A reductase inhibitors. By 2011, more PCPs had prescribed each of the newly approved medications than NPs and PAs (e.g., 44.3 % vs. 18.5 % vs. 20 % for dabigatran among PCPs, NPs, and PAs). Across all medication classes, the newly approved drugs accounted for a larger share of prescriptions in the class for PCPs followed by PAs, followed by NPs (e.g., dabigatran: 4.9 % vs. 3.2 % vs. 2.8 %, respectively). Mean time-to-adoption for the newly approved medications was shorter for PCPs compared to NPs and PAs (e.g., dabigatran, 7.3 vs. 8.2 vs. 8.5 months; P all medications <0.001).ConclusionsPCPs were more likely to prescribe each of the newly approved medications per each measure of drug adoption, regardless of drug novelty. Differences in the rate and speed of drug adoption between PCPs, NPs, and PAs may have important implications for care and overall costs at the population level as NPs and PAs continue taking on a larger role in prescribing.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12913-016-1569-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Background: This study aimed to understand the relationship between knowledge level and behavior on breast care in Chinese students, so as to provide strategies for improving the health education of breast care and subsequently for aiding in breast cancer prevention. Materials and Methods: A self-designed questionnaire was used to evaluate breast care knowledge level and characterize related behavior. Correlation analysis was conducted for the knowledge level and behavior. The study was carried out using 597 female undergraduate students in medical and non-medical colleges in Wuhu, China. Results: The average score of breast care knowledge was 5.32±1.68 (5.62±1.68 and 5.00±1.68 for medical and non-medical students, respectively), with a greater score value for sophomores (5.59±1.72) than freshmen (5.18±1.65). The average score of breast care behavior was 2.21±1.13, again with a greater value in sophomores (2.37±1.15) than freshmen (2.21±1.13). A significant positive correlation (r=0.231, p<0.01) between knowledge scores and behavior scores was observed. In addition, various factors, including paying attention to breast care information, receiving breast self-examination guidance, TV program and Internet, were found to influence breast care knowledge. Conclusions: In general, female undergraduate students lack of self-awareness of breast care with a low rate of breast self-examination. It is necessary to carry out health education to improve early detection of breast cancer.

In February 2020, China’s Ministry of Education and Ministry of Science and Technology issued an official Opinion discouraging the use of the Science Citation Index (SCI) as a framework for the assessment of research performance. There is a need to assess the origin of the new policy, and how it will reshape cultures and practices of scientific knowledge production in China. We suggest that while concerns over the quality of research and conduct of scientists are at play, a deeper reason underlying the government’s adoption of a more cautious stance towards SCI is wider social controversy around what system of research assessment is best suited to social development and wellbeing in China. However, failing to continue to engage in international publication and collaboration would be self-defeating for China. We propose three recommendations for reforming scientific evaluation in China: diversity of criteria, autonomy of scientific evaluation, and quality of peer-review.

This article reports on a project that delivers distance training to rural health care professionals. Traveling to provide training on information-seeking skills to rural health professionals is time consuming and costly. In addition to face-to-face training, the University of South Alabama Biomedical Library's SAMNet project seeks to deliver multimedia training to rural health care professionals. The project uses information technology to package training courses combining PowerPoint slides and video instructions. This article describes the rationale, training module design and development, and the information technology and software used in the project. Multimedia packaged distance training courses provide a practical alternative to on-site training for rural health care professionals. It enables librarians to provide training without traveling long distance, thus saving time and money. Additionally, rural health care professionals may access the modules at a time convenient to them and proceed at a pace suitable to their learning style.

One of the trends in human-computer interaction (HCI) is that its increasing focus on social issues. Crowds are frequent social phenomena in society. Understanding the psychology behind crowd interaction and behavior not only forms a meaningful contribution to HCI, but also a significant contribution to the field of crowd management. This paper developed a set 13 crowd emotional feelings and investigated their relation with 11 action (behavioral) tendencies in both event and non-event crowd situations. The results are expected to be relevant for designing selfreport software to support the interactions between crowd managers and crowd members.