9,246 research outputs found

    Chapter 14: MD Anderson Publications and Publication Ethics

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    Dr. Goepfert has served on a number of editorial boards and is keenly interested in the educational dissemination of information critical to cancer research. In this section he talks about some of MD Anderson’s publications and also addresses some controversies with publication. He first raises the ethical issue of how authorship is assigned to a manuscript going out for publication. Today there are guidelines for assigning authorship, but twenty years ago, he explains, some department chairs at MD Anderson reviewed all manuscripts going for publication and insisted on being listed as first author of an article, whether they made any contribution to the research or not. Dr. Goepfert contrasts his own practice of putting his name on a paper only if he has contributed. Dr. Goepfert then shifts subjects and describes several MD Anderson educational publications, beginning with Cancer Bulletin, distributed free to all physicians across Texas.https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/2010/thumbnail.jp

    Benchmarking the performance of density functional theory and point charge force fields in their description of sI methane hydrate against diffusion Monte Carlo.

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    High quality reference data from diffusion Monte Carlo calculations are presented for bulk sI methane hydrate, a complex crystal exhibiting both hydrogen-bond and dispersion dominated interactions. The performance of some commonly used exchange-correlation functionals and all-atom point charge force fields is evaluated. Our results show that none of the exchange-correlation functionals tested are sufficient to describe both the energetics and the structure of methane hydrate accurately, while the point charge force fields perform badly in their description of the cohesive energy but fair well for the dissociation energetics. By comparing to ice [Formula: see text], we show that a good prediction of the volume and cohesive energies for the hydrate relies primarily on an accurate description of the hydrogen bonded water framework, but that to correctly predict stability of the hydrate with respect to dissociation to ice [Formula: see text] and methane gas, accuracy in the water-methane interaction is also required. Our results highlight the difficulty that density functional theory faces in describing both the hydrogen bonded water framework and the dispersion bound methane

    Diamond and beta-tin structures of Si studied with quantum Monte Carlo calculations

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    We have used diffusion quantum Monte Carlo (DMC) calculations to study the pressure-induced phase transition from the diamond to beta-tin structure in silicon. The calculations employ the pseudopotential technique and systematically improvable B-spline basis sets. We show that in order to achieve a precision of 1 GPa in the transition pressure the noncanceling errors in the energies of the two structures must be reduced to 30 meV/atom. Extensive tests on system size errors, nonlocal pseudopotential errors, basis-set incompleteness errors, and other sources of error, performed on periodically repeated systems of up to 432 atoms, show that all these errors together can be reduced to well below 30 meV/atom. The calculated DMC transition pressure is about 3-4 GPa higher than the accepted experimental range of values, and we argue that the discrepancy may be due to the fixed-node error inherent in DMC techniques

    Assessing the accuracy of quantum Monte Carlo and density functional theory for energetics of small water clusters

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    We present a detailed study of the energetics of water clusters (H2O)(n) with n <= 6, comparing diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) and approximate density functional theory (DFT) with well converged coupled-cluster benchmarks. We use the many-body decomposition of the total energy to classify the errors of DMC and DFT into 1-body, 2-body and beyond-2-body components. Using both equilibrium cluster configurations and thermal ensembles of configurations, we find DMC to be uniformly much more accurate than DFT, partly because some of the approximate functionals give poor 1-body distortion energies. Even when these are corrected, DFT remains considerably less accurate than DMC. When both 1- and 2-body errors of DFT are corrected, some functionals compete in accuracy with DMC; however, other functionals remain worse, showing that they suffer from significant beyond-2-body errors. Combining the evidence presented here with the recently demonstrated high accuracy of DMC for ice structures, we suggest how DMC can now be used to provide benchmarks for larger clusters and for bulk liquid water. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4730035

    Promise - Spring 2020

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    Rogers Award honors MD Anderson nursing assistant MD Anderson awards highest nursing honor Low-grade serous ovarian cancer survivor establishes research nonprofit Celebrity Chef Cooking Demo makes young cancer patients sous-chefs for a day Bob’s Encore: hope in the fight against pancreatic cancer Board of Visitors welcomes seven new members Board of Visitors awards highest distinction to longtime member A Conversation with a Living Legend raises 4millionBootWalkraises4 million Boot Walk raises 2 million for cancer research, education and prevention Get to know Advance Team’s Laura Nelson Cookbook author leaves her mark on gastric cancer researchhttps://openworks.mdanderson.org/promise/1001/thumbnail.jp

    Chapter 09: Creating a New Way of Conducting Research and Caring for Patients in a Changing Environment

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    In this chapter, Dr. Dmitrovsky provides an overview of how MD Anderson must operate in the new environment of research and healthcare economics. He begins by explaining that scientific endeavors traditionally rely on decisive discoveries by individual investigators that also reveal opportunities to development treatments. Today, he says, this process moves ahead via team- and interdisciplinary science, and the institution must educate the next generations of researchers in this way of conducting research. At the same time, MD Anderson must operate in a context of a flat NIH budget while responding to the new economics of the Affordable Care Act. Next, he notes that MD Anderson is supporting the education of the next generation by making investments in junior faculty with the R. Lee Clark Fellowship Program. He explains the award (juried by experts outside of MD Anderson). Next Dr. Dmitrovsky notes that reductions are being made to the length and complexity of informed consent forms so faculty can spend less time on paperwork and more time for their primary activities. He then speaks briefly about faculty recruitment and retention efforts. Then Dr. Dmitrovsky talks about strategies used to encourage interdisciplinary investigation. He speaks in detail about finding ways to provide team members with proper recognition for their contributions (when contribution is traditionally measured by first or last author status) and linking credit to faculty promotion. He also talks about empowering team members to initiate investigations and provides some examples.https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1641/thumbnail.jp

    Chapter 09: Strengthening Biomedical Editing Nationwide and Within MD Anderson

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    In this Chapter, first briefly notes his involvement with the Southwest Chapter of the American Medical Writer’s Association and the Council of Biology Editors (with a 22-year membership). He then explains that he had his biggest impact while he served on the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences and in the late 80s worked on the Editorial Certification Examination Development Committee. He describes the examination he helped create to certify competence for editors of biomedical articles and explains the significance of certification. He notes that the Department of Scientific Publications at MD Anderson uses its own battery of tests to evaluate editors’ abilities for abstract reasoning, grammar, and other skills and talents. Next, Mr. Pagel talks about his Department’s blog, “The Write Stuff,” and two significant projects: his role on the Historical Resources Center Steering Committee, and the development of panel discussions for the Department of Scientific Publications. To begin the discussion of the Steering Committee, he notes that Scientific Publications wrote The First Twenty Years, the first history of MD Anderson. Because of this association with the institution’s history, Mr. Pagel was asked to be part of the Steering Committee when the Historical Resources Center was formed and set as its first goal the publication of an updated institutional history. Mr. Pagel wanted the perspective to be broader than the first book, situating MD Anderson and cancer research in a larger context of other cancer institutions and the history of cancer research. Though not alone in holding this view, he says he had something to do with articulating it for the benefit of the Steering Committee. He describes how James Olsen was selected to be the author and notes other Steering Committee activities.https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/2275/thumbnail.jp

    E. Harold Shryock, MD

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    A teacher of the ages, administrator, author, lecturer, ambidextrous artist, trick cyclist, Chair of the Department of Anatomy, and Dean of the School of Medicine of Loma Linda University.All descriptions are taken verbatim from: Portraits of Honored Faculty by S. Wesley Kime, MD. Editor Raymond Herber, MD. (Loma Linda, Calif.: Alumni Association of School of Medicine of Loma Linda University, 2005) and are thus not up-to-date as to positions held or contributions made to Loma Linda University Health

    Chapter 09: Reflections on Dr. Clifton Mountain and Data Collection Roles at MD Anderson

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    Mrs. Hermes begins this chapter with memories of how much she enjoyed working for Dr. Mountain over the course of 25 years. He taught her how to think about data, she explains, and she was listed as an author on a number of publications on lung cancer [see examples below]. She explains that Dr. Mountain left MD Anderson in 1993, but she continued to work freelance for him. She recalls that he set up the first conference on mathematics at MD Anderson, early in his career sometime in the sixties. Next she comments on how the unique openness of Houston culture fit well with the bold visions that both R. Lee Clark and Eleanor MacDonald held for oncology. She says that her most important work was on Dr. Mountain’s staging system for lung cancer and she explains why staging the disease presented challenges. She confirms that she was always interested in the implications of basic research for clinical findings. She credits Eleanor MacDonald for helping her to develop her curiosity and questioning style.https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/2036/thumbnail.jp

    Quantum Monte Carlo calculations of the structural properties and the B1-B2 phase transition of MgO

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    We report diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) calculations on MgO in the rock-salt and CsCl structures. The calculations are based on Hartree-Fock pseudopotentials, with the single-particle orbitals entering the correlated wave function being represented by a systematically convergeable cubic-spline basis. Systematic tests are presented on system-size errors using periodically repeating cells of up to over 600 atoms. The equilibrium lattice parameter of the rocksalt structure obtained within DMC is almost identical to the Hartree-Fock result, which is close to the experimental value. The DMC result for the bulk modulus is also in good agreement with the experimental value. The B1-B2 transition pressure (between the rocksalt and CsCl structures) is predicted to be just below 600 GPa, which is beyond the experimentally accessible range, in accord with other predictions based on Hartree-Fock and density functional theories
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