University Education in a Postmodern Era: Building a Narrative Ethic of Civil Communication in the Classroom

This project responds to the question: How can educators quell communicative classroom incivilities (CI) that are currently harming teaching and learning? Sources of CI in a postmodern United States university classroom involve: student entitlement, lack of institutional support for a growing contingent faculty, and incongruent values about appropriate classroom communication. Unlike preceding historical time periods that maintained a shared communicative ethic stemming from antiquity to modernity, postmodernity presents an unprecedented challenge to teaching and learning where there can be no assumed shared ethic of appropriate communicative classroom communication. Postmodernity as an age of coexisting and contentious narratives, this project argues for professors to proactively and appropriately establish an ethic of communicative civility within their classroom. \u3c\u3c\u3

Gene Therapy for Cardiovascular Disease

The last decade has seen substantial advances in the development of gene therapy strategies and vector technology for the treatment of a diverse number of diseases, with a view to translating the successes observed in animal models into the clinic. Perhaps the overwhelming drive for the increase in vascular gene transfer studies is the current lack of successful long-term pharmacological treatments for complex cardiovascular diseases. The increase in cardiovascular disease to epidemic proportions has also led many to conclude that drug therapy may have reached a plateau in its efficacy and that gene therapy may represent a realistic solution to a long-term problem. Here, we discuss gene delivery approaches and target diseases

Effect of hemofiltration filter adsorption on circulating IL-6 levels in septic rats

INTRODUCTION: Hemofiltration may modulate the inflammatory response in sepsis through a variety of mechanisms. We sought to distinguish clearance from adsorption as the principal mechanism responsible for reducing circulating IL-6 levels with hemofiltration. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Nine hours after cecal ligation and puncture in 18 adult male Sprague–Dawley rats, we divided the rats into three groups (6 animals each) and placed groups 2 and 3 on a hemofiltration circuit connected between the right carotid artery and femoral vein using an AN69 membrane. In the hemofiltration group (group 2), ultrafiltrate was replaced with lactated Ringer's solution; in the recirculation group (group 3), the ultrafiltrate was reinfused into the animal. A sham group (group 1) had an arteriovenous circuit inserted but no hemofiltration. Blood was obtained for measurement of IL-6 and tumor necrosis factor (TNF) at the start of hemofiltration and after 5 and 11 hours of treatment. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: IL-6 levels increased only in the sham-treated animals (20.4 ± 11.3 at baseline to 62.3 ± 16.8 pg/ml at 11 hours, P = 0.03) (differences between groups 1 and 2, P = 0.015, and groups 1 and 3, P = 0.028). TNF levels were highly variable but not significantly different among the three groups. CONCLUSION: Hemofiltration-associated reductions in circulating IL-6 levels appear to be secondary to adsorption of mediators to the filter membrane. We do not know whether this is due to direct adsorption of IL-6 per se or to the absorption of other mediators with secondary downregulation of IL-6 production or release. In addition, we could not exclude an interaction between adsorption and hemofiltration

Toxin-Based Therapeutic Approaches

Protein toxins confer a defense against predation/grazing or a superior pathogenic competence upon the producing organism. Such toxins have been perfected through evolution in poisonous animals/plants and pathogenic bacteria. Over the past five decades, a lot of effort has been invested in studying their mechanism of action, the way they contribute to pathogenicity and in the development of antidotes that neutralize their action. In parallel, many research groups turned to explore the pharmaceutical potential of such toxins when they are used to efficiently impair essential cellular processes and/or damage the integrity of their target cells. The following review summarizes major advances in the field of toxin based therapeutics and offers a comprehensive description of the mode of action of each applied toxin