School Professional Needs to Support Student Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic

School closures due to COVID-19 left students in Michigan without physical access to school mental health professionals (SMHPs) and other supports typically available in schools. This report examines the needs of SMHPs across Michigan during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic and how those needs informed programming and resources provided by a University of Michigan school mental health training and implementation program. In April 2020, a web-based survey asking about student and SMHP mental health was sent to 263 SMHPs who had previously participated in this program. 155 SMHPs (58.9%) responded. Nearly half of SMHPs reported their students’ most pressing needs were support for self-care, anxiety, depression, and traumatic stress. Some SMHPs also met screening criteria themselves for depression and/or anxiety. This survey provided an overview of SMHPs’ concerns early in the COVID-19 pandemic and drove development of new COVID-19-related resources designed to support SMHPs

The tobacco industry’s challenges to standardised packaging : A comparative analysis of issue framing in public relations campaigns in four countries

Tobacco industry public relations campaigns have played a key role in challenges to standardised cigarette packaging. This paper presents a comparative analysis of industry campaigns in Australia and the United Kingdom, which have implemented standardised packaging legislation; Canada, where policy has been adopted but not yet implemented; and the Netherlands, which has considered, but not enacted regulation. Campaigns were identified via Google searches, tobacco industry websites, media coverage, government submissions and previous research; analysis focused on issue framing and supporting evidence. Public relations campaigns in all case study countries drew on similar frames - the illicit trade in tobacco products, the encroaching 'nanny state', lack of evidence for the effectiveness of standardised packaging, a slippery slope of regulation, and inherent threats to intellectual property rights. These claims were supported by industry research, front groups and commissioned reports by accountancy firms, but were not with verifiable research. Independent evidence that contradicted industry positions was overlooked. Similarities in structure and content of public relations campaigns in countries that have enacted or considered regulation points to a strategic co-ordinated approach by cigarette manufacturers. Countries considering standardised packaging policy can expect powerful opposition from the tobacco industry. Tobacco control communities and policy makers can learn from previous experience, and share best practise in countering industry arguments

GENRE, IDENTITY, AND INSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY AT THE PARIS OPÉRA IN THE “AGE OF GLUCK,” 1770–1781

365 pagesIn January 1770, the Académie Royale de Musique—more colloquially known as the Paris Opéra—inaugurated its theatre, having lost its original home to a fire in 1762. This new theatre, the first in Paris built specifically for operatic productions, would also meet a fiery end just over a decade later, in June 1781. The lifespan of this theatre frames one of the most tumultuous periods in French operatic history. This decade saw six different administrations, ranging from an authoritarian entrepreneur to self-governance by the performers themselves, each of which employed various tactics to achieve their artistic goals. Under the guidance of these administrations, the Opéra underwent a radical shift in its repertoire and programming. Long considered old-fashioned in its maintenance of operas up to a century old, by decade’s end the Opéra had largely abandoned its ancient works and embraced newly composed operas. The Opéra also shifted its programming from repeated performances of a single opera to near-daily variety, with the number of different works performed over the course of a single season trebled by the end of the decade. These quite radical shifts in French operatic culture have gone largely overlooked due to their convergence with the arrival of Christoph Gluck in 1774. While Gluck plays an important part in the history of this period—his arrival in Paris signaled the end of the Paris Opéra’s isolation from mainstream European operatic practice—his works have dominated the discourse, obfuscating both the contributions of other composers and the context of the institution itself. Combatting the notion that Gluck was the driving force behind these systemic shifts in late eighteenth-century French opera, this dissertation approaches the period from an institutional perspective. I examine the goals and limitations of each administration and argue that the directors, far more than individual composers, had a direct impact on the works that appeared on stage, how they were presented to the audience, and what constituted a “French” opera. I approach the repertoire of the Opéra on a quotidian basis, focusing on the interplay of operas over the course of a season rather than the theatre’s most celebrated works. This approach sheds light on relatively unknown composers and operas that are deserving of more in-depth study and draws attention to genres beyond the tragédie lyrique that have received limited attention. It is only through examining the institutional operations and comprehensive repertoire of the Opéra that we can understand how it functioned, both as a for-profit artistic venture that needed to please its paying audience, as well as a site of national identity

Antitumor Immunity and Dietary Compounds

The mechanisms by which natural dietary compounds exert their antitumor effects have been the focus of a large number of research efforts in recent years. Induction of apoptosis by inhibition of cell proliferative pathways is one of the common means of cell death employed by these dietary compounds. However, agents that can activate an antitumor immune response in addition to a chemotherapeutic effect may be useful adjuvants or alternative therapies for the treatment of cancer. The focus of this review is to highlight representative dietary compounds, namely Withania somnifera, Panax ginseng, curcumin and resveratrol with special emphasis on their antitumor immune mechanism of action. Each of these dietary compounds and their sources has a history of safe human use as food or in herbal medicine traditions, potentially making them ideal therapeutics. Here we report the recent advances in the cellular immune mechanisms utilized by these compounds to induce antitumor immunity. Taken together, these findings provide a new perspective for exploiting novel dietary compounds as chemoimmunotherapeutic anti-cancer agents

Chronic thoracic spinal cord injury impairs CD8+ T-cell function by up-regulating programmed cell death-1 expression

Chronic spinal cord injury (SCI) induces immune depression in patients, which contributes to their higher risk of developing infections. While defects in humoral immunity have been reported, complications in T-cell immunity during the chronic phase of SCI have not yet been explored. To assess the impact of chronic SCI on peripheral T-cell number and function we used a mouse model of severe spinal cord contusion at thoracic level T9 and performed flow cytometry analysis on the spleen for T-cell markers along with intracellular cytokine staining. Furthermore we identified alterations in sympathetic activity in the spleen of chronic SCI mice by measuring splenic levels of tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) and norepinephrine (NE). To gain insight into the neurogenic mechanism leading to T-cell dysfunction we performed in vitro NE stimulation of T-cells followed by flow cytometry analysis for T-cell exhaustion marker. Chronic SCI impaired both CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell cytokine production. The observed T-cell dysfunction correlated with increased expression of programmed cell death 1 (PD-1) exhaustion marker on these cells. Blocking PD-1 signaling in vitro restored the CD8+ T-cell functional defect. In addition, we showed that chronic SCI mice had higher levels of splenic NE, which contributed to the T-cell exhaustion phenotype, as PD-1 expression on both CD4+ and CD8+ T-cells was up-regulated following sustained exposure to NE in vitro. These studies indicate that alteration of sympathetic activity following chronic SCI induces CD8+ T-cell exhaustion, which in turn impairs T-cell function and contributes to immune depression. Inhibition of the exhaustion pathway should be considered as a new therapeutic strategy for chronic SCI-induced immune depression

Chronic spinal cord injury attenuates influenza virus-specific antiviral immunity

BACKGROUND: Individuals suffering from spinal cord injury (SCI) are at higher risk for respiratory-related viral infections such as influenza. In a previous study (Zha et al., J Neuroinflammation 11:65, 2014), we demonstrated that chronic spinal cord injury caused impairment in CD8(+)T cell function with increased expression of the immunosuppressive protein, programmed cell death 1 (PD-1). The present study was undertaken to establish whether chronic SCI-induced immune deficits would affect antiviral immunity directed against primary and secondary infections. METHODS: Six to seven weeks following a SCI contusion at thoracic level T9, mice were infected intranasally with influenza virus. Virus-specific immunity was analyzed at various time points post-infection and compared to uninjured controls. RESULTS: We report that chronic thoracic SCI impairs the ability of the animals to mount an adequate antiviral immune response. While all uninjured control mice cleared the virus from their lungs by day 10 post-infection, a significant number (approximately 70 %) of chronic SCI mice did not clear the virus and succumbed to infection-induced mortality. This was attributed to severe deficits in both virus-specific antibody production and CD8(+) T cell response in injured mice after primary infection. We also determined that previously acquired humoral immunity was maintained after spinal cord injury as vaccination against influenza A prior to injury-protected mice from a homologous viral challenge. In contrast, prior immunization did not protect mice from a heterotypic challenge with a different strain of influenza virus. CONCLUSIONS: Taken together, our data demonstrate that chronic SCI attenuates virus-specific humoral and cellular immunity during the establishment of primary response and impairs the development of memory CD8(+) T cells. In contrast, B cell memory acquired through vaccination prior to SCI is preserved after injury which demonstrates that antigen-specific memory cells are refractory following injury. Our study defines important parameters of the deficits of chronic SCI-induced immune depression during a viral respiratory infection. Our objective is to better understand the mechanisms of spinal cord injury-induced immune depression with the goal of developing more effective therapies and reduce mortality due to complications from influenza and other infections. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12974-016-0574-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Microsatellite primer development for the seagrass Zostera nigricaulis (Zosteraceae)

Seagrasses are marine angiosperms with a worldwide distribution that form conspicuous beds in nearshore habitats. Despite being universally recognised as a foundation species that performs a number of important ecosystems functions (incl. sediment stabilisation, facilitation of biodiversity, nutrient cycling and carbon sequestration), global seagrass habitats are in decline. Resilience-the ability to recover from disturbance without switching to an alternative state-is paramount to the maintenance and persistence of seagrass habitats. Genetic diversity is a key component of seagrass resilience and contributes to an understanding of population structure, connectivity between populations, and reproductive strategies. Microsatellite primers were developed to investigate the resilience of the seagrass Zostera nigricaulis, which dominates subtidal habitats in the bays of south-eastern Australia. We also tested for cross-amplification of markers between Z. nigricaulis and previously developed markers for the sympatric species Z. muelleri to assess their applicability for use in assessing patterns of genetic diversity, population structure, and mating system. Using next-generation sequencing we isolated 11 novel microsatellite loci for Z. nigricaulis, 8 of which were polymorphic for the samples tested. Allelic diversity ranged from 1 to 8. None of the primer pairs developed for Z. nigricaulis cross-amplified in Z. muelleri; but 14 of 24 primer pairs previously developed for Z. muelleri amplified clearly in Z. nigricaulis samples with six of these showing polymorphism. The results demonstrate the applicability of the Z. nigricaulis microsatellite primers for use in the study of population genetics and limited cross-amplification with Z. muelleri