Photo: Smoky Mountain Medican Marijuana

Close to a hundred people rallied on Sunday afternoon in support of medical marijuana at the third Smoky Mountain medical marijuana rally. Medical marijuana supporters marched from the downtown area along west State of Franklin Road before rallying at the University Parkway intersection. The group rallied for hours with colorful signs and advocacy chants as cars honked with support as they passed by.

The rally was explanatory of the cannabis culture, said Bailey Reed, an ETSU senior studying political science and womens studies. With passion, groups of families, veterans, children, students, activists, elderly and much more showed support for the legalization of marijuana.

That sense of community banded many different people with a wide variety of medical conditions together to advocate their right to choose to medicate with marijuana.

This is because cannabis and marijuana helps the community, Reed said. The rally was important to me because it showed me how much the community supports the growing knowledge of how this plant might help out humanity.

Many people rallied to advocate not only because of personal medical conditions that benefit from marijuana, but many came to advocate for their children, parents, other family members and friends.

This affects me because, not only do I see the potential of this drug, but my mother has epilepsy and could use cannabis oil to dull the effect of her seizures, said Ben Schaller, leader of ETSU environmental student group ECO. Its crazy that we live in a world that can make medicine illegal under false ideas.

The rally gave marijuana supporters a chance to talk about the potential benefits of the cannabis plant that range from medicinal, economical and environmental.

This climate is very suitable for growing cannabis a lot of money could be made here in East Tennessee, Schaller said. Im very interested to see an organic market grow from these grass roots. To quote one of the lead organizers there, this is going to happen, the only question is when.

Representatives from various marijuana advocacy organizations came prepared to spread knowledge and gather more support for the cause.

Originally posted here:
Community rallies for legalization of medical marijuana

Residency locations revealed to medical students on 'Match Day'

By Keith McCord

March 20th, 2015 @ 9:30pm

Having trouble viewing the video? Try disabling any ad blocking extensions currently running on your browser.

SALT LAKE CITY Medical students around the nation found out about the next phase of their professional careers Friday.

It's called "Match Day," where fourth-year students and future doctors open their match envelope to find out where they will live and work while completing their residency over the next few years.

Your fate and future individually and collectively lies on this table in unopened letters. That is very bizarre, said Dr. Dale Hall, president of the School of Medicine Alumni Association.

The 74 students 30 women and 44 men are among the thousands of medical students across the country that open the letters at the same time, which in Utah was 10 a.m.

You're matched into 65 different programs in 23 different specialties, said Dr. Vivian Lee, dean of the University of Utah School of Medicine. Youll be going to 27 different states.

The students submit applications to several hospitals relating to their field of study, but they don't know exactly where they'll go until they open the envelope surrounded by family and friends.

Visit link:
Residency locations revealed to medical students on 'Match Day'

Get ready for the 2015 Lawrence school board general election on April 7 by reading up on the candidates and comparing their answers to a Journal-World questionnaire.

Mary Loveland and Marcel Harmon, two candidates with experience serving on the Lawrence school board, beat out their two other opponents in the primary election for the open two-year term on the district's governing body. They will go head to head in the general election.

Also on the ballot will be seven other candidates vying for four other seats for four-year terms. A primary election was not needed to narrow down that field.

Read up on all the candidates below, and find more information about the school board and city commission elections at LJWorld.com/vote2015.

Profiles:

Marcel Harmon, 46, first joined the board in September 2014 as an appointee following the resignation of Adina Morse. He works for an engineering firm, M.E. Group. He served on the Kansas Next Generation Science Standard Review Committee.

Mary Loveland, 66, served on the school board from 1987 to 2003 and again from 2007 to 2011. She has worked as an organizer for youth sports leagues and served on boards for the Kansas University Alumni Association and the Kansas Memorial Union.

Questionnaires:

Marcel Harmon

Mary Loveland

The rest is here:
2015 Lawrence school board election: Final candidate profiles, questionnaires

A student committee will contribute to the Corporations Young Alumni Trustee selection process for the first time since the position was created in 2008.

The group of students will critique and augment a list of candidates already considered by the Corporation, said Alex Drechsler 15, who has served on the Undergraduate Council of Students and the Undergraduate Finance Board in previous years.

The Graduate Student Council and the Alpert Medical School Student Council will each nominate one student from their respective schools to join three undergraduates on the committee, which is scheduled to convene after spring break and deliver its recommendations by the Corporations May meeting.

UCS interviewed undergraduate applicants Sunday following an extensive application, said UCS President Maahika Srinivasan 15. One of the most determining factors for this particular selection committee is a good understanding of what the Corporation actually does and what role a Young Alumni Trustee would serve on the Corporation, and that takes a little bit of nuance.

The misperception seems to be that the Corporation is the end all they make all of the decisions and (they are) implemented by the administration but thats not true at all, Srinivasan said. The administration creates the policy and the Corporation is a little bit of a sounding board.

President Christina Paxson P19 confirmed the inclusion of one young alum on the Corporation March 6 and said that the position would reflect student input, Drechsler said. He and Srinivasan presented proposals for increasing student engagement with the Corporation at its February meeting, when Paxson approved a proposed student input process to test run this year.

We are thinking of (this committee) as transitional, and were very open to thinking of other ways, and maybe more involved ways, for students to engage in the selection of the Young Alumni Trustee, Paxson said.

Paxson and Executive Vice President for Planning and Policy Russell Carey 91 MA06, in conjunction with the Governance and Nominations Committee, will review the student committees role after Commencement, Srinivasan said. Srinivasan will debrief with the student committees undergraduates at the end of the process to determine next steps towards permanence and making sure that they felt valued in the process, she added.

In response to student perception that the process of nominating Corporation members is secretive, Carey said that it is an internal process common to many governing boards. With the student committee, the idea is to bring more (student) input into the process, he said, calling it a step in a direction that is engaging and inclusive.

Young alums are selected like any other trustee, Carey said. It is a full Corporation decision, but they rely heavily on the Trustee Vacancies Committee, which develops candidate pools, he added.

Excerpt from:
Young Alumni Trustee selection to include students

Atlanta, GA (PRWEB) March 16, 2015

African American women have higher death rates from breast cancer than do white women. Veena Rao, Ph.D., researcher, professor and co-director of the Cancer Biology Program in the department of OB/GYN at Morehouse School of Medicine, has pointed to multiple factors that contribute to the increased vulnerability of African American women, such as barriers to testing and quality of treatment. Leading medical researchers, including University of Washington geneticist and Lasker Laureate Mary-Claire King, highlight additional factors undetected inherited mutations and now recommend offering genetic testing for all women at about age 30. Dr. King will make a free, public address at the Morehouse School of Medicine on March 19, to discuss Inherited Breast Cancer: From Gene Discovery to Public Health.

Dr. Kings discovery in 1990 of the BRCA1 breast cancer gene demonstrated a mechanism of inherited cancer and proved that gene mutations could predict vulnerability to the disease.

A 2013 study of inherited predisposition to breast cancer among African American women by Dr. King and Dr. Olufunmilayo Olopade, director of The Center for Clinical Cancer Genetics, at the University of Chicago, found that 22 percent of African American breast cancer patients inherited a damaging mutation in BRCA1 or BRCA2 or another breast cancer gene. Women carrying a mutation of BRCA1 or BRCA2 have a greater than 80 percent lifetime risk of developing breast cancer, as compared with 11% for women without mutations.

Recently, Dr. King showed that women with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations had elevated risk for breast cancer, even if they have no family history of the disease. Therefore, she recommends that BRCA1 and BRCA2 testing be made available to all women.

I believe that every woman should be offered testing of BRCA1 and BRCA2 at about age 30 as part of routine medical care, said Dr. King. About half of women who inherit mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes have no family history of breast or ovarian cancer and have no idea that they are carrying cancer-causing mutations. Affordable, accessible early detection is a public health priority for saving lives.

While some within the medical community voice caution that universal screening could lead to anxiety for some women, King and Olopade focus on the benefits. Having a genetic mutation doesnt mean youre definitely going to get cancer, Dr. Olopade told NPR last September. Women at greater risk should work with their doctors closely to make decisions about the best approach to reducing their chances of developing breast cancer.

Within the African American community, access to mammograms and other testing, as well as follow-up care continues to be a challenge. Disparities in availability of breast cancer care is a profound public health concern.

On March 19, Dr. King will give a special lecture, co-sponsored by the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation and the Morehouse School of Medicine. In September 2014, the Lasker Foundation awarded Dr. King its prestigious Special Achievement Award in Medical Science for her bold, imaginative, and diverse contributions to medical science and human rights.

For more information on the availability of genetic screening in the Atlanta area, please see:

See the original post:
Dr. Mary- Claire King to speak at Morehouse School of Medicine on how genetic screening for all women can lower risk ...

While attending high school in his native Colombia, Carlos Mena-Hurtado used to frequently drop in on his older brother Alvaro, who was studying medicine at the University of Antioquia, the nations top medical school and one of the oldest in South America. All of that time in his brothers classes convinced Mena-Hurtado, the son of a social worker and an English teacher, to apply. Though it was a challenge to land one of 40 spots available for 5,000 applicants to the prestigious institution, he was accepted. It was the beginning of a whats become a distinguished career in cardiology.

Cardiology started to grow on me during med school, said Mena-Hurtado, speaking in his office at Yale School of Medicine. What I liked about it was the fact that you can do quick interventions that would change patient outcomes. As he was completing his medical school education in Medelln, he applied for a scholarship that would allow him to continue his training through a series of rotations at institutions outside of his university. One of the possible institutions was Yale.

Yet the young doctor had doubts. It was a long shot, he recalled. I was from a developing country, at a public university, and didnt speak English fluently. So it wasnt necessarily the easiest thing to do.

The best rotation

Mena-Hurtado took the first step, which involved passing board examinations to qualify as a foreign medical student. In the fall of 1999, he worked in a small community hospital in a remote area of Colombia, which was a requirement in his country for having received a free medical education. At the facility, which had only four in-patient beds, Mena-Hurtado typically treated children with respiratory illness or mothers in labor. While he was on-call one night, he heard a knock on the door.

When I opened the door, it was a bunch of armed men asking for the physician on call. I said, Why? And they said, We need that person. So when youre in Colombia and something like that happens, you know you are being taken, he explained.

Dr. Carlos Mena-Hurtado

In Colombia, plagued for decades by revolutionary movements such as the FARC and ELN, kidnappings were not uncommon. That night, Mena-Hurtado understood that he and his best friend, also a physician, were seized because they had valuable medical skills. He later learned that his captors had recently been in a confrontation with the Colombian army, suffering injuries that required medical attention.

Over the course of his captivity, Mena-Hurtado applied his clinical skills to treating the wounded, sick children, and pregnant women in the guerrilla camps. I had the training, he recalled. The problem is that there were not many resources.

Go here to see the original:
From Colombia to Yale cardiology: Dr. Carlos Mena-Hurtado

AMHERST, Mass., March 11, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --The Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is ranked #11 in the Financial Times ranking of all online MBA programs worldwide, and #7 out of all US Schools.

Isenberg is one of the oldest accredited online MBA programs in the United States with nearly 1300 enrolled students. "In the past 12 years, we have helped thousands of medical doctors, engineers and other working professionals enrich their understanding of business management and reach their career objectives," remarked Mark A. Fuller, Dean of the Isenberg School of Management. "This new top ranking reflects how successful we are at bringing our rigorous curriculum to students who can't be in a classroom full time."

Data for the rankings are collected from participating schools and by alumni who graduated from the programs in 2011.Alumni responses inform six ranking criteria such as "salary today" and "aims achieved" and criteria specific to their online experience: "program delivery" and "online interaction." The full rankings, released this week, are published at http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/rankings.

In breaking down the details of the survey, Financial Times ranks Isenberg #5 worldwide on the metric "salary today," with alumni survey participants reporting $131,661 average salary three years after graduation, and #4 worldwide on "program delivery rank" which covers the extent to which alumni rate the online delivery of live teaching sessions, other teaching materials and online exams. Isenberg is also ranked #5 on the Financial Times survey "value for money" metric, which calculates alumni salaries, scholarships, fees and other costs as reported by graduates.

This is the first time Isenberg has been ranked by the Financial Times. Isenberg MBA has also recently been ranked #12 Online and #16 Part-time nationwide by U.S. News & World Report 2015.

"It's important to note that online is just a different delivery system. This is the same accredited curriculum and you earn the same degree as our on-campus students," states says John Wells, Associate Dean of Professional Programs. "What makes Isenberg different is that our professors have had 12 years of experience understanding how to best engage our online students and help them succeed."

For more information about Isenberg's Online MBA program admissions visit http://www.isenberg.umass.edu/info

About Isenberg School of Management:

Founded in 1947, the Isenberg School of Management on the University of Massachusetts flagship Amherst campus has 42,000 alumni in 72 countries. Isenberg offers its AACSB-accredited courses to 4,500 students on campus, online, and in blended formats.The School's 3,200 undergraduates major in core business disciplines including accounting, finance, management, marketing, operations & information management, as well as industry specialties such as hospitality & tourism management and sport management.Over 1,300 students are enrolled in the Isenberg MBA and they can focus their studies in Health Care Administration, Entrepreneurship, Finance and Marketing.

For more information, visit http://www.Isenberg.umass.edu

See the original post here:
Isenberg School of Management Online MBA ranked #11 in the World by Financial Times

As a teenager, Brendan Alleyne picked up an unwanted label high school dropout.

Eleven years later, he earned a far more impressive title doctor.

One things certain about Dr. Brendan Alleyne. The 28-year-old Amherst native has taken the less-traveled path, from high school dropout to plastic-surgery resident at the internationally acclaimed Cleveland Clinic. Along the way, hes earned degrees from Erie Community College, the University at Buffalo and Case Western Reserve University Medical School.

That success has led Erie Community College to name Alleyne one of the schools six Distinguished Alumni for this year. All six will be honored at the Celebrate ECC event inside the colleges City Campus atrium from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday.

As accomplished as Brendan is, hes a perfect example of what we do at ECC, college President Jack Quinn said. We literally change lives, almost every day and every semester. He stands for what ECC is all about.

Alleynes life story chronicles a meteoric rise in academic circles.

Its not that he ever was a bad student. He wanted to be a doctor, and he earned top honors grades at both Amherst middle and high schools, until one awful day in the middle of his sophomore year.

Like many other really bright high school students, Alleyne found a close buddy, who became a friendly academic rival; they prodded each other to do well academically. One middle school teacher even gave them high school-level exams, to push them.

Then in January 2003, in the middle of sophomore year, Alleynes friend was killed when he was struck by a vehicle on Millersport Highway, while running with the schools track team.

The next day, Alleyne remembers walking by his friends empty desk in every class. Suddenly, he started wondering what he was accomplishing in school.

View original post here:
Dropout-turned-doctor is among group of six alumni to be honored by ECC

March 11, 2015, 4 a.m.

THE DUX of Dubbo High School in 1974 is returning to the city after serving as a world-class paediatrician, teacher and academic.

Macquarie University Vice-Chancellor Professor S Bruce Dowton. Photo contributed.

THE DUX of Dubbo High School in 1974 is returning to the city after serving as a world-class paediatrician, teacher and academic.

Professor S Bruce Dowton will be the guest speaker at a cocktail reception for Western NSW alumni of the University of Sydney on Thursday, March 12.

On Tuesday more than 90 people had signalled their intention to attend the event to be hosted by the University of Sydney's School of Rural Health in Moran Drive.

Among them will be senior doctors who still remember Professor Dowton's first career steps.

"He is remembered locally for his scientific experiments while still a junior student, investigating antibiotic properties in soil micro-organisms, antibiotic-resistant bacterial mutants and the ionising effect of X-rays, among other interests," a spokeswoman for the School of Rural Health said.

"No one doubted that he was headed for an interesting scientific career."

The spokeswoman said in 1973 the University of Sydney Science Foundation for Physics awarded the future professor a scholarship to the 16th International Science School.

Go here to see the original:
Renowned paediatrician returns to the city

Published February 18, 2015

Donors and alumni of Saint Louis University are up in arms over a proposed sculpture honoring a protest on school grounds against police brutality.

The plan has led those opposed to the art project to launch a petition demanding plans for the monument be shelved according to the College Fix.

The higher education blog also reports that students are divided on the issue and that a campus forum will be held later this week.

Last October, protestors refused to leave the St. Louis campus and end their demonstration, which was intended to extend the Ferguson, Mo. protests of the previous summer.

Demonstrators flew upside-down American flags and gave speeches and teach-ins on topics like "conscious awakening, systematic oppression, white supremacy, and students' responsibility to the community."

In order to get the protestors to leave, University President Fred Pestello agreed to a list of 13 demands, including that a monument be installed on the quad.

The demands came from the coalition of protestors which included Tribe X, the Metro St. Louis Coalition for Inclusion and Equality, and the Black Student Alliance.

The proposed monument is described as a sculpture slated to fulfill the demand of "mutually agreed upon artwork" and capturing "the spirit and importance of the demonstration and encampment at Saint Louis University on October 13-18, 2014," according to a statement released by the university.

There was no indication of the sculpture's size or what form it might take.

Read more:
St. Louis University alumni protest planned sculpture honoring demonstrations