Harnessing Hollywood Hype: Film Marketing Meets the Challenges and Opportunities of the 21st Century

Marketing is a vital commercial activity and source of competitive advantage within the Hollywood film industry, serving to create, circulate and translate symbolic meaning around a film and its ancillary products, construct and target key audience segments, guide audience expectations and viewing choices, and mitigate financial risk. Marketers thus play an increasingly central role in all stages of the filmmaking process. To examine the often overlooked structures and practices of Hollywood’s marketing arm, this study adopts a media industry studies approach, employing interviews, fieldwork, and textual analysis to explore the social, technological, organizational, economic, and spatial forces that shape the contemporary context of Hollywood marketing materials’ creation. In the early 21st century, Hollywood studios face profound challenges and opportunities wrought by the dual forces of globalization and digitization. In response, marketers have developed a novel view of their audience: as increasingly global and empowered. Globalization and digitization are thus treated as centrifugal forces, diffusing production and meaning-making capabilities across geographic space and media platforms, and threatening the centralized control traditionally held by Hollywood studios. Marketers are incentivized to embrace these decentralizing forces and the cultural labor now provided by third party marketing agencies, international distributors, and audiences. However, Hollywood studios’ institutional inertia, risk aversion, and inclination to maintain firm control of their marketing messages and intellectual property preclude a whole-hearted embrace of these changes. Studio marketers thus act with deep ambivalence toward these outside players, attempting to capitalize on their cultural labor while simultaneously acting to circumscribe their power

Transplacental Transmission of Leishmania infantum as a Means for Continued Disease Incidence in North America

Dogs are a favored feeding source for sand flies that transmit human L. infantum infection. Zoonotic visceral leishmaniasis (ZVL) is an emerging problem in some U.S. dog breeds, with over 20% of at-risk Foxhounds infected. Although classically Leishmania is transmitted by infected sand flies which exist in the United States, no role has yet been determined for vector-borne transmission. Means of ongoing L. infantum transmission in U.S. dogs is unknown. Possibilities include transplacental and horizontal/venereal transmission. Aims for this study were to establish whether transplacental transmission occurred in Leishmania-infected U.S. dogs and determine the effect of this transmission on immune recognition of Leishmania. This novel report describes wide-spread infection as identified by kqPCR in 8 day-old pups born to a naturally-infected, seropositive U.S. dog with no travel history. This is the first report of transplacental transmission of L. infantum in naturally-infected dogs in North America. Evidence that mom-to-pup transmission of ZVL may continue disease in an otherwise non-endemic region has significant implications on current control strategies for ZVL. Determining frequency of vertical transmission and incorporating canine sterilization with vector control may have a more significant impact on ZVL transmission to people in endemic areas than current control efforts

Augmented TLR2 Expression on Monocytes in both Human Kawasaki Disease and a Mouse Model of Coronary Arteritis

BACKGROUND: Kawasaki disease (KD) of unknown immunopathogenesis is an acute febrile systemic vasculitis and the leading cause of acquired heart diseases in childhood. To search for a better strategy for the prevention and treatment of KD, this study compared and validated human KD immunopathogenesis in a mouse model of Lactobacillus casei cell wall extract (LCWE)-induced coronary arteritis. METHODS: Recruited subjects fulfilled the criteria of KD and were admitted for intravenous gamma globulin (IVIG) treatment at the Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital from 2001 to 2009. Blood samples from KD patients were collected before and after IVIG treatment, and cardiovascular abnormalities were examined by transthoracic echocardiography. Wild-type male BALB/c mice (4-week-old) were intraperitoneally injected with LCWE (1 mg/mL) to induce coronary arteritis. The induced immune response in mice was examined on days 1, 3, 7, and 14 post injections, and histopathology studies were performed on days 7 and 14. RESULTS: Both human KD patients and LCWE-treated mice developed coronary arteritis, myocarditis, valvulitis, and pericarditis, as well as elevated plasma levels of interleukin (IL)-2, IL-6, IL-10, monocyte chemoattractant protein (MCP)-1, and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α in acute phase. Most of these proinflammatory cytokines declined to normal levels in mice, whereas normal levels were achieved in patients only after IVIG treatment, with a few exceptions. Toll-like receptor (TLR)-2, but not TLR4 surface enhancement on circulating CD14+ monocytes, was augmented in KD patients before IVIG treatment and in LCWE-treated mice, which declined in patients after IVIG treatment. CONCLUSION: This result suggests that that not only TLR2 augmentation on CD14+ monocytes might be an inflammatory marker for both human KD patients and LCWE-induced CAL mouse model but also this model is feasible for studying therapeutic strategies of coronary arteritis in human KD by modulating TLR2-mediated immune activation on CD14+ monocytes

Long-term microdystrophin gene therapy is effective in a canine model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is an incurable X-linked muscle-wasting disease caused by mutations in the dystrophin gene. Gene therapy using highly functional microdystrophin genes and recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) vectors is an attractive strategy to treat DMD. Here we show that locoregional and systemic delivery of a rAAV2/8 vector expressing a canine microdystrophin (cMD1) is effective in restoring dystrophin expression and stabilizing clinical symptoms in studies performed on a total of 12 treated golden retriever muscular dystrophy (GRMD) dogs. Locoregional delivery induces high levels of microdystrophin expression in limb musculature and significant amelioration of histological and functional parameters. Systemic intravenous administration without immunosuppression results in significant and sustained levels of microdystrophin in skeletal muscles and reduces dystrophic symptoms for over 2 years. No toxicity or adverse immune consequences of vector administration are observed. These studies indicate safety and efficacy of systemic rAAV-cMD1 delivery in a large animal model of DMD, and pave the way towards clinical trials of rAAV-microdystrophin gene therapy in DMD patients

Canine cancer immunotherapy studies: linking mouse and human

Despite recent major clinical breakthroughs in human cancer immunotherapy including the use of checkpoint inhibitors and engineered T cells, important challenges remain, including determining the sub-populations of patients who will respond and who will experience at times significant toxicities. Although advances in cancer immunotherapy depend on preclinical testing, the majority of in-vivo testing currently relies on genetically identical inbred mouse models which, while offering critical insights regarding efficacy and mechanism of action, also vastly underrepresent the heterogeneity and complex interplay of human immune cells and cancers. Additionally, laboratory mice uncommonly develop spontaneous tumors, are housed under specific-pathogen free conditions which markedly impacts immune development, and incompletely model key aspects of the tumor/immune microenvironment. The canine model represents a powerful tool in cancer immunotherapy research as an important link between murine models and human clinical studies. Dogs represent an attractive outbred combination of companion animals that experience spontaneous cancer development in the setting of an intact immune system. This allows for study of complex immune interactions during the course of treatment while also directly addressing long-term efficacy and toxicity of cancer immunotherapies. However, immune dissection requires access to robust and validated immune assays and reagents as well as appropriate numbers for statistical evaluation. Canine studies will need further optimization of these important mechanistic tools for this model to fulfill its promise as a model for immunotherapy. This review aims to discuss the canine model in the context of existing preclinical cancer immunotherapy models to evaluate both its advantages and limitations, as well as highlighting its growth as a powerful tool in the burgeoning field of both human and veterinary immunotherapy

The business of evangelism: A phenomenological study of frustration and attrition among Christian evangelists

The Business of Evangelism: A Phenomenological Study of Frustration and Attrition Among Christian Evangelists uses the phenomenological methodology to examine two related phenomena in the Christian faith. The call of a person to the ministry of evangelism is required by the Bible and is considered a high privilege for anyone in that ministry. Without it church growth and the Christian faith itself could not proliferate or maintain themselves. Nevertheless, the frustrations of working in evangelism are many and some of those called to the evangelism ministry find them overwhelming. The survey of Senior Pastors in very successful churches primarily within the tough Northern Virginia ministry area is executed to collect information from excellent evangelical ministers, identify the felt experiences of their frustrations and resulting attrition, analyze the characteristics of these experiences and evaluate their impact on the ministers involved. These ministers are generally senior pastors, have a minimum of a master's degree and have been serving in the ministry for more than 30 years. They come from several evangelical denominations and have been pastor of churches both nationally and internationally. They currently lead very successful Southern Baptist churches in the Northern Virginia area. Lists of characteristics of their frustrations and their feelings regarding attrition are included in the findings of this phenomenological study