BACKGROUND Vitamin D deficiency has been described in many diseases and indeed in the general population. However fewer reports have been published in young and healthy people. Vitamin D deficiency should not be found in medical students of the Canary Islands, because they have all the resources to avoid it. OBJECTIVE To estimate the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in a population of medic...

COLLECTING, understanding, and interpreting data are key skills that all students should master (8, 12, 22, 33). Research on graph interpretation and basic construction is extensive, and student difficulties, primarily in K-12 type settings, have been well documented [e.g., graph choice (30, 32, 45), labels for axes (30, 32), variables (45), and scaling axes (1, 7, 32, 34)]. Although many instr...

BACKGROUND School-based programs are important in addressing risky teenage sexual behavior. We implemented a sex education program using trained medical student volunteers. METHODS Medical students (n=30) implemented a seven-session curriculum, designed by medical students and faculty, to 7th and 8th grade students (n=310) at a local school. Middle school students completed pre- and post-asse...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the use of a local anesthesia (LA) simulation model in a facilitated small group setting before dental students administered an inferior alveolar nerve block (IANB) for the first time. For this pilot study, 60 dental students transitioning from preclinical to clinical education were randomly assigned to either an experimental group (N=30) that participated ...

The ciliate Paramecium caudatum possesses an excitable cell membrane whose action potentials (APs) modulate the trajectory of the cell swimming through its freshwater environment. While many stimuli affect the membrane potential and trajectory, students can use current injection and extracellular ionic concentration changes to explore how APs cause reversal of the cell's motion. Students examin...

Objective: This study aimed to identify health risk behaviors contributing to academic performance while controlling for other factors and investigated the relationship between academic performance and multiple simultaneously occurring predictors among public high school students in Rhode Island. Methods: The Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) is conducted in a representative sample of public sc...

OBJECTIVE One of the most important goals of orthodontic treatment is to create an esthetic, well balanced facial profile. However, the components of a well-balanced Iranian facial profile have not yet been established. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the anteroposterior lip position of the Iranian population and to compare the perception of orthodontists, dental students and orthodon...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effects of Project ALERT on adolescents' lifetime and 30-day use of cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, and inhalants. DESIGN Cluster randomized trial. SETTING Schools from 11 states were enrolled in 2 successive cohorts from 2004 to 2008. PARTICIPANTS All public schools in the United States that included grades 6 through 8 and enrolled at least 100 students in sixth...

Though postawakening cortisol is considered to be altered under chronic stress prospective studies proving this assumption is missing, so far. Furthermore, there is some uncertainty which aspects of postawakening cortisol alterations are strongest related to stress. The present study thus analyzed the cortisol concentration at awakening itself (0 min), the cortisol awakening response (CAR; i.e....

PURPOSE To date, no studies in the literature have examined student delivery of team-based learning (TBL) modules in the classroom. We aimed to assess student perceptions of a student-led TBL elective. METHODS Third-year pharmacy students were assigned topics in teams and developed learning objectives, a 15-minute mini-lecture, and a TBL application exercise and presented them to student coll...