Are online support groups always beneficial? A qualitative exploration of the empowering and disempowering processes of participation within HIV/AIDS-related online support groups

BACKGROUND: Human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is one of the leading concerns in healthcare. Individuals living with HIV/AIDS are often confronted with tremendous physical and psychosocial challenges. Online support groups can provide a valuable source of information, advice and support, and a medium through which individuals living with HIV/AIDS can interact with each other and share their experiences. However, very little is known about how online support group might promote empowerment and the potential disadvantages associated with online support group use among individuals living with HIV/AIDS. OBJECTIVES: The present study explored the potential empowering and disempowering processes, and empowering outcomes of online support group use among individuals with HIV/AIDS. DESIGN, SETTINGS, PARTICIPANTS: A total of 115 HIV-positive online support group members were recruited from HIV-related online support groups. They completed an online survey exploring their experiences of online support group use. RESULTS: Thematic analysis revealed six empowering processes arising from use of online support groups: exchanging information, sharing experiences, connecting to others, encountering emotional support, finding recognition and understanding, and helping others. Six empowering outcomes were identified: increased optimism, emotional well-being, social well-being, being better informed, improved disease management, and feeling confident in the relationship with physicians. Potentially disempowering processes were also identified which included: being unable to connect physically, inappropriate behaviour online, declining real life relationships, and information overload and misinformation. CONCLUSION: Findings suggest ways through which individuals with HIV/AIDS may be empowered although some problematic features specific to the online context may also be present

Comprehensive lung injury pathology induced by mTOR inhibitors

Molecular Targets in Oncology[Abstract] Interstitial lung disease is a rare side effect of temsirolimus treatment in renal cancer patients. Pulmonary fibrosis is characterised by the accumulation of extracellular matrix collagen, fibroblast proliferation and migration, and loss of alveolar gas exchange units. Previous studies of pulmonary fibrosis have mainly focused on the fibro-proliferative process in the lungs. However, the molecular mechanism by which sirolimus promotes lung fibrosis remains elusive. Here, we propose an overall cascade hypothesis of interstitial lung diseases that represents a common, partly underlying synergism among them as well as the lung pathogenesis side effects of mammalian target of rapamycin inhibitors

Beteiligung neurogener Entzuendungsprozesse am Pathomechanismus chronischer Schmerzsyndrome Detaillierte Beschreibung der Ergebnisse

SIGLEAvailable from TIB Hannover: F95B1553+a / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekBundesministerium fuer Forschung und Technologie (BMFT), Bonn (Germany)DEGerman

New privacy results on synchronized RFID authentication protocols against tag tracing

Many RFID authentication protocols with randomized tag response have been proposed to avoid simple tag tracing. These protocols are symmetric in common due to the lack of computational power to perform expensive asymmetric cryptography calculations in low-cost tags. Protocols with constantly changing tag key have also been proposed to avoid more advanced tag tracing attacks. With both the symmetric and constant changing properties, tag and reader re-synchronization is unavoidable as the key of a tag can be made desynchronized with the reader due to offline attacks or incomplete protocol runs. In this paper, our contribution is to classify these synchronized RFID authentication protocols into different types and then examine their highest achievable levels of privacy protections using the privacy model proposed by Vaudenay in Asiacrypt 2007 and later extended by Ng et al. in ESORICS 2008. Our new privacy results show the separation between weak privacy and narrow-forward privacy in these protocols, which effectively fills themissing relationship of these two privacy levels in Vaudenay’s paper and answer the question raised by Paise and Vaudenay in ASIACCS 2008 on why they cannot find a candidate protocol that can achieve both privacy levels at the same time. We also show that forward privacy is impossible with these synchronized protocols