Measuring Implicit and Explicit Acceptability of Reinforcement Versus Punishment Interventions with Teachers Working in ABA Versus Mainstream Schools

This research aimed to develop the implicit relational assessment procedure (IRAP) as a measure of treatment acceptability and to assess teachers’ acceptability of reinforcement and punishment interventions in the presence of “good” and “bad” behaviors. Participants included 15 teachers trained in ABA (ABATs) who worked with children with developmental disabilities, and 15 teachers trained in mainstream primary education (MTs) who worked with typically developing children. On the IRAP, the ABAT group showed proreinforcement biases for all behaviors, while MTs showed a proreinforcement bias for good behavior but a propunishment bias for bad behavior. On explicit measures of acceptability, although both groups showed proreinforcement and antipunishment biases, the ABATs rated reinforcement as significantly more acceptable than the MTs; the ratings of punishment did not differ across the two groups. The research provides support for the IRAP as a measure of treatment acceptability

Hypoxia-Induced Modulation of Apoptosis and BCL-2 Family Proteins in Different Cancer Cell Types

Hypoxia plays an important role in the resistance of tumour cells to chemotherapy. However, the exact mechanisms underlying this process are not well understood. Moreover, according to the cell lines, hypoxia differently influences cell death. The study of the effects of hypoxia on the apoptosis induced by 5 chemotherapeutic drugs in 7 cancer cell types showed that hypoxia generally inhibited the drug-induced apoptosis. In most cases, the effect of hypoxia was the same for all the drugs in one cell type. The expression profile of 93 genes involved in apoptosis as well as the protein level of BCL-2 family proteins were then investigated. In HepG2 cells that are strongly protected against cell death by hypoxia, hypoxia decreased the abundance of nearly all the pro-apoptotic BCL-2 family proteins while none of them are decreased in A549 cells that are not protected against cell death by hypoxia. In HepG2 cells, hypoxia decreased NOXA and BAD abundance and modified the electrophoretic mobility of BIM(EL). BIM and NOXA are important mediators of etoposide-induced cell death in HepG2 cells and the hypoxia-induced modification of these proteins abundance or post-translational modifications partly account for chemoresistance. Finally, the modulation of the abundance and/or of the post-translational modifications of most proteins of the BCL-2 family by hypoxia involves p53-dependent and –independent pathways and is cell type-dependent. A better understanding of these cell-to-cell variations is crucial in order to overcome hypoxia-induced resistance and to ameliorate cancer therapy