Bilingual Dual-Role Staff Interpreters in the Health Care Setting: Factors Associated With Passing a Language Competency Test

Although using trained interpreters can improve care for patients with limited English proficiency, using untrained interpreters may impair it. Without a valid language skills test for interpreters, it is difficult for health care organizations to identify bilingual staff who can serve in a dual role as interpreters. We hypothesized that individuals born outside the U.S. with a higher education level and prior interpreting training and reporting high confidence in interpreting abilities would be more likely to pass a test to function as a dual-role interpreter. We surveyed and tested 387 dual-role interpreters in a large, integrated health care organization. There was a positive association between the above factors and passing the test. Studies like these may help health care organizations to better screen dual-role interpreters. Until standards for interpreters are developed, anyone asked to function as an interpreter in a health care setting, including dual-role interpreters, should undergo testing

Sex, dating, passionate friendships, and romance: intimate peer relations among lesbian, gay, and bisexual adolescents

Book ChapterAlthough the raw number of adolescent romantic and sexual involvements is well documented, the actual experience and meaning of these relationships for adolescents receives little attention. As a result, these relationships are frequently classed together on the basis of surface similarities, despite important structural and functional differences. Attention to these differences, however, reveals how young men and women craft adaptive constellations of peer relationships to meet changing needs for intimacy and social support during the multiple transitions of adolescence. In this chapter we put forth a typology of intimate peer relationships based on the motives prompting adolescents to pursue them, their specific characteristics, and the functions they serve. We specify four varieties of adolescent relationships -- sexual relationships, dating relationships, passionate friendships, and romantic relationships -- representing prototypical combinations of some of the most salient motives, characteristics, and functions

IRF-3, IRF-5, and IRF-7 coordinately regulate the type I IFN response in myeloid dendritic cells downstream of MAVS signaling

Although the transcription factors IRF-3 and IRF-7 are considered master regulators of type I interferon (IFN) induction and IFN stimulated gene (ISG) expression, Irf3(-/-)×Irf7(-/-) double knockout (DKO) myeloid dendritic cells (mDC) produce relatively normal levels of IFN-β after viral infection. We generated Irf3(-/-)×Irf5(-/-)×Irf7(-/-) triple knockout (TKO) mice to test whether IRF-5 was the source of the residual induction of IFN-β and ISGs in mDCs. In pathogenesis studies with two unrelated positive-sense RNA viruses (West Nile virus (WNV) and murine norovirus), TKO mice succumbed at rates greater than DKO mice and equal to or approaching those of mice lacking the type I IFN receptor (Ifnar(-/-)). In ex vivo studies, after WNV infection or exposure to Toll-like receptor agonists, TKO mDCs failed to produce IFN-β or express ISGs. In contrast, this response was sustained in TKO macrophages following WNV infection. To define IRF-regulated gene signatures, we performed microarray analysis on WNV-infected mDC from wild type (WT), DKO, TKO, or Ifnar(-/-) mice, as well as from mice lacking the RIG-I like receptor adaptor protein MAVS. Whereas the gene induction pattern in DKO mDC was similar to WT cells, remarkably, almost no ISG induction was detected in TKO or Mavs(-/-) mDC. The relative equivalence of TKO and Mavs(-/-) responses suggested that MAVS dominantly regulates ISG induction in mDC. Moreover, we showed that MAVS-dependent induction of ISGs can occur through an IRF-5-dependent yet IRF-3 and IRF-7-independent pathway. Our results establish IRF-3, -5, and -7 as the key transcription factors responsible for mediating the type I IFN and ISG response in mDC during WNV infection and suggest a novel signaling link between MAVS and IRF-5

A longitudinal study of adolescents’ judgments of the attractiveness of facial symmetry, averageness and sexual dimorphism

Adolescents have been found to differ by age in their attraction to facial symmetry, averageness, and sexual dimorphism. However, it has not been demonstrated that attraction to these facial characters changes over time as a consequence of age-linked development. We aimed to extend previous cross-sectional findings by examining whether facial attractiveness judgments change over time during adolescence as a consequence of increasing age, in a within-subjects study of two cohorts of adolescents aged 11–16. Consistent with previous findings, we find that adolescents (often particularly females) judged faces with increased averageness, symmetry and femininity to be more attractive than original, asymmetric and masculine faces, respectively. However, we do not find longitudinal changes in face preference judgments across the course of a year, leading us to question the extent to which some of the previously reported differences in facial attractiveness judgments between younger and older adolescents were due to age-linked changes

Hypergraph models of biological networks to identify genes critical to pathogenic viral response

Background: Representing biological networks as graphs is a powerful approach to reveal underlying patterns, signatures, and critical components from high-throughput biomolecular data. However, graphs do not natively capture the multi-way relationships present among genes and proteins in biological systems. Hypergraphs are generalizations of graphs that naturally model multi-way relationships and have shown promise in modeling systems such as protein complexes and metabolic reactions. In this paper we seek to understand how hypergraphs can more faithfully identify, and potentially predict, important genes based on complex relationships inferred from genomic expression data sets. Results: We compiled a novel data set of transcriptional host response to pathogenic viral infections and formulated relationships between genes as a hypergraph where hyperedges represent significantly perturbed genes, and vertices represent individual biological samples with specific experimental conditions. We find that hypergraph betweenness centrality is a superior method for identification of genes important to viral response when compared with graph centrality. Conclusions: Our results demonstrate the utility of using hypergraphs to represent complex biological systems and highlight central important responses in common to a variety of highly pathogenic viruses

Classification of Dengue Fever Patients Based on Gene Expression Data Using Support Vector Machines

Background: Symptomatic infection by dengue virus (DENV) can range from dengue fever (DF) to dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF), however, the determinants of DF or DHF progression are not completely understood. It is hypothesised that host innate immune response factors are involved in modulating the disease outcome and the expression levels of genes involved in this response could be used as early prognostic markers for disease severity. Methodology/Principal Findings: mRNA expression levels of genes involved in DENV innate immune responses were measured using quantitative real time PCR (qPCR). Here, we present a novel application of the support vector machines (SVM) algorithm to analyze the expression pattern of 12 genes in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of 28 dengue patients (13 DHF and 15 DF) during acute viral infection. The SVM model was trained using gene expression data of these genes and achieved the highest accuracy of ,85% with leave-one-out cross-validation. Through selective removal of gene expression data from the SVM model, we have identified seven genes (MYD88, TLR7, TLR3, MDA5, IRF3, IFN-a and CLEC5A) that may be central in differentiating DF patients from DHF, with MYD88 and TLR7 observed to be the most important. Though the individual removal of expression data of five other genes had no impact on the overall accuracy, a significant combined role was observed when the SVM model of the two main genes (MYD88 and TLR7) was re-trained to include the five genes, increasing the overall accuracy to ,96%. Conclusions/Significance: Here, we present a novel use of the SVM algorithm to classify DF and DHF patients, as well as to elucidate the significance of the various genes involved. It was observed that seven genes are critical in classifying DF and DHF patients: TLR3, MDA5, IRF3, IFN-a, CLEC5A, and the two most important MYD88 and TLR7. While these preliminary results are promising, further experimental investigation is necessary to validate their specific roles in dengue disease

Testing for an effect of a mindfulness induction on child executive functions

Several sessions of mindfulness practice can exert positive gains for child executive functions (EF); however, the evidence for effects of a mindfulness induction, on EF for adults, is mixed and this effect has not been tested in children. The immediate effect of an age appropriate 3-min mindfulness induction on EF of children aged 4–7 years was tested. Participants (N = 156) were randomly assigned to a mindfulness induction or dot-to-dot activity comparison group before completing four measures of EF. A composite score for EF was calculated from summed z scores of the four EF measures. A difference at baseline in behavioural difficulties between the mindfulness induction and comparison group meant that data was analysed using a hierarchical regression. The mindfulness induction resulted in higher average performance for the composite EF score (M = 0.12) compared to the comparison group (M = − 0.05). Behavioural difficulties significantly predicted 5.3% of the variance in EF performance but participation in the mindfulness or comparison induction did not significantly affect EF. The non-significant effect of a mindfulness induction to exert immediate effects on EF fits within broader evidence reporting mixed effects when similar experimental designs have been used with adults. The findings are discussed with consideration of the extent to which methodological differences may account for these mixed effects and how mindfulness inductions fit within broader theoretical and empirical understanding of the effects of mindfulness on EF