There are currently 89 pharmacy programs in the United States, and each is confronted with evaluating a large number of applicants each year. Given the importance of producing effective professionals for the health and wellbeing of the public, selecting top-quality students who will master their training is of critical importance. The Pharmacy College Admission Test (PCAT) is a standardized test used by pharmacy programs to select students. The PCAT is considered by most pharmacy programs and in 2003 was required by 51 pharmacy programs as a piece of information for making admissions decisions. 1 The PCAT has been used since 1974 but not without controversy. Opinions are mixed about its effectiveness. Some scholars have variously argued either in favor of or against the use of the PCAT. 2 Positions against the PCAT run counter to the stance of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) which endorses the use of PCAT scores as a part of pharmacy admissions decisions. 3 This mix of opinions is understandable given the range of validity study findings reported in the literature.Correlations between PCAT scores and GPA have ranged from a low of r = -0.09 4 to a high of r = 0.68. 4 Unfortunately, many of the validity studies have employed small samples from programs with highly selective admissions policies. Of critical importance is the predictive validity of the PCAT, the validity of alternative predictors (ie, prepharmacy grades and the SAT), and the investigation of the sources of correlation variability across studies. Addressing all of these issues is the objective of this study.The PCAT was first used on a national level in 1975. 5 In the fall of 2004, some of its content and structure was altered. The PCAT now includes an essay portion. The verbal section now contains sentence completion items and no longer specifically tests one's knowledge of antonyms. The biology section now includes items intended to assess knowledge of microbiology, and the quantitative section now includes precalculus and calculus. The number of verbal, biology, and reading comprehension items has been increased while the quantitative and chemistry sections have been reduced. Overall, the total number of multiple-choice items has decreased from approximately 300 multiple-choice items to 280.These changes notwithstanding, the PCAT continues to be a measure of ability and knowledge with multiplechoice items spread across the following 5 domains: ver- Objectives. Compare the validity of the Pharmacy College Admission Test (PCAT) and prepharmacy grade point average (GPA) in predicting performance in pharmacy school and professional licensing examinations. Methods. To quantitatively aggregate results across previous studies of the validity of the PCAT, the Hunter and Schmidt psychometric meta-analytic method was used. Relevant research articles were gathered from multiple databases. Correlations between the PCAT and GPAs or individual course grades were the most commonly presented data. Results. The PCAT and prepharmacy GPA were...

Cell loss contributes to the pathogenesis of many inherited and acquired human diseases. We have developed a system to conditionally ablate cells of any lineage and developmental stage in the mouse by regulated expression of the diphtheria toxin A (DTA) gene by using tetracyclineresponsive promoters. As an example of this approach, we targeted expression of DTA to the hearts of adult mice to model structural abnormalities commonly observed in human cardiomyopathies. Induction of DTA expression resulted in cell loss, fibrosis, and chamber dilatation. As in many human cardiomyopathies, transgenic mice developed spontaneous arrhythmias in vivo, and programmed electrical stimulation of isolated-perfused transgenic hearts demonstrated a strikingly high incidence of spontaneous and inducible ventricular tachycardia. Affected mice showed marked perturbations of cardiac gap junction channel expression and localization, including a subset with disorganized epicardial activation patterns as revealed by optical action potential mapping. These studies provide important insights into mechanisms of arrhythmogenesis and suggest that conditional lineage ablation may have wide applicability for studies of disease pathogenesis.

We describe the summative assessment of role-play scenarios that we previously developed to teach central topics in the responsible conduct of research (RCR) to graduate students in science and engineering. Interviews with role-play participants, with participants in a case discussion training session, and with untrained students suggested that role-playing might promote a deeper appreciation of RCR by shifting the focus away from wanting to simply "know the rules." We also present the results of a think-aloud case analysis study and describe the development of a behaviorally-anchored rating scale (BARS) to assess participants' case analysis performance.