Faculty Bibliography

As have many institutions, the New York University School of Medicine (NYUSM) has instituted curriculum revisions that allow for increased independent study but impose significant time constraints on laboratory courses. Challenged by decreased laboratory time, we sought creative solutions for our histology course, 'Cell Biology of Tissues and Organs,' using computer- and Web-based materials. While these solutions have facilitated independent study, they have not fostered the subtler lessons learned in the laboratory, such as communication skills and team approaches to learning. To retain these elements and enrich our course, we focused on increasing student participation in the laboratory through unit reviews presented by students, student-generated comprehensive reviews, and practice exams. The active engagement of students in the learning process has resulted in a more exciting laboratory experience for all

This article describes software that implements a new tool to administer study questions using the World Wide Web (WWW or Web). The software allows free text answers by the student in addition to the more common check-boxes that indicate selections from a list. The unique feature of this software is that a high level of sophistication can be programmed to generate complex responses to the student. The software is implemented as a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) program that uses a script programmed by the instructor to direct the analysis of the answer the student provides and to construct a response appropriate to that answer. An anonymous log is kept of each student answer so that the performance of the analysis script can be evaluated and the script itself changed or corrected as required. The design criteria for study questions and the value of short responses versus free text in teaching aids such as study questions are discussed

Study questions challenge a student's knowledge of a topic. They reinforce the knowledge s/he has of the topic and guide him/her to identify and fill in those areas where knowledge is weak. They provide a very effective tool for learning, but are "expensive" in time for the student to answer and for the faculty to respond to. To meet these issues we have developed a software framework to administer study questions using the web. Student responses sent to the server by a web form are analyzed according to script on the server and appropriate answers returned. An anonymous log is kept of each student response so that the analysis script can be debugged and refined. Our preliminary experience with a pilot program as part of the first year medical school Histology course is described here

MDPP is a fully featured general-purpose image processing package primarily written to support research in structural biology using data gathered by electron microscopy. It has focused on the analysis of images using Fourier techniques, particularly periodic plane-layer and helical structures, but has extensive tools for other processing options (e.g., point-counting, image quantitation, DNA sequencing, and display). Three-dimensional reconstruction methods are supported, including iterative deconvolution schemes for light micrographs. The basic program is command line-driven, but the user can choose to write sophisticated command scripts and use a menu-driven full-screen or Motif interface to call them. Color images are supported with both color palette and RGB options. Extensive documentation is accessible from within the program as online HELP and also as HTML. Care has been taken to support interfaces to other image processing packages, e.g., MacIntosh applications via the TIFF image format, and other EM-targeted image processing packages. The paper provides an overview of the program, its design, and implementation and outlines future plans for software development. Some general issues concerning image processing program design are discussed

The field of electron microscopy applied to structural biology has made significant progress in the last 5 years, with many labs attempting the solution of ever more challenging problems. This work has demanded significant new resources for the computational analysis of the data collected from the microscope. The purpose of this paper is to review briefly the state of the art in image processing of microscope data and to serve as an introduction to this special issue of the journal

This article describes the implementation of a suite of computer programs to manage and provide access to a database containing the electronic documents that constitute the NIH-Guide that is distributed by the NIH on a weekly basis. The software consists of a management program that reads, processes, and stores the incoming documents and performs erratum updates on existing documents; an alerting program that sends selected information to users who have registered their information needs; a viewer that can be used on the local computer to read these documents; and a World-Wide-Web (WWW) server that can distribute the guide to computers that run WWW client software. The design of the documentation annotations, the management software, and the WWW server are expected to constitute valuable models for similar projects in the future