Impacts Of An Artist Residency Program Informed By Social Action Art Therapy

This research explores the impact of a three day Artist Residency Program at a K-8th public school on a Native American Reservation. The program is evaluated through a lens of Social Action Art Therapy and aims to uncover how this program impacted a community— including teachers, students, and parents, and facilitators. The researcher examined social action literature, social action art literature, social action art therapy literature, as well as social action with Native Americans literature. The researcher used a qualitative approach, specifically an Inquisitive Case study, in which data was collected through the researchers notes. These notes then informed the creation of a survey that was given to teachers as well as the Artist Residency program facilitators. Next, the researcher conducted interviews for further examination of the impact. All the data was placed into an organizing table in which four main themes and three minor themes emerged. The resulting data themes include: 1) Art illuminated the students Native American Hoopa identity and culture, 2) art increased student participation, facilitated storytelling, and conversations about the student’s feelings and art provided a sense of agency, 3) art created and strengthened bonds among the students, teachers, parents and facilitators and facilitators were seen as role models for the students, and 4) the facilitator’s desire to be involved in similar art therapy social action projects increased as they were personally and professionally impacted by the Artist Residency Program. Three minor themes include: a) Some teachers found new ways to integrate art in their classroom, b) the foreign art medium choice increased risk taking, engagement, creativity as well as provided students with new skills, c) some changes noted, more time needed to see larger change. These themes were then examined in the context of art therapy social action literature and findings suggested positive impacts of the social action art therapy informed Artist Residency program

An artificial neural network approach for modelling the ward atmosphere in a medical unit

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) have been developed, implemented and tested on the basis of a four-year-long experimental data set, with the aim of analyzing the performance and clinical outcome of an existing medical ward, and predicting the effects that possible readjustments and/or interventions on the structure may produce on it. Advantages of the ANN technique over more traditional mathematical models are twofold: on one hand, this approach deals quite naturally with a large number of parameters/variables, and also allows to identify those variables which do not play a crucial role in the system dynamics; on the other hand, the implemented ANN can be more easily used by a staff of non-mathematicians in the unit, as an on-site predictive tool. As such, the ANN model is particularly suitable for the case study. The predictions from the ANN technique are then compared and contrasted with those obtained from a generalized kinetic approach previously proposed and tested by the authors. The comparison on the two case periods shows the ANN predictions to be somewhat closer to the experimental values. However, the mean deviations and the analysis of the statistical coefficients over a span of multiple years suggest the kinetic model to be more reliable in the long run, i.e., its predictions can be considered as acceptable even on periods that are quite far away from the two case periods over which the many parameters of the model had been optimized. The approach under study, referring to paradigms and methods of physical and mathematical models integrated with psychosocial sciences, has good chances of gaining the attention of the scientific community in both areas, and hence of eventually obtaining wider diffusion and generalization.

Implementing the Massachusetts Child Trauma Project (MCTP) to Improve Services for Children with Complex Trauma in Child Welfare: Phase I Needs and Readiness Assessment

MCTP seeks to improve placement stability and outcomes for children with complex trauma in the care of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) by creating a sustainable capacity for providing evidence-based trauma interventions within provider agencies, and trauma-informed practices within DCF

Angiosarcoma Mimicking Rhinophyma

We report the case of a 61-year-old man showing persistent erythematous macules, plaques, and partially confluent nodules with irregular borders, developed on his nose for one year. During that time the patient underwent several dermatological consultations, and all produced the same diagnosis: rhinophyma. So antibiotic and steroid treatment was carried out without any improvement while the lesions kept growing. When the patient came to our observation, physical examination revealed large, infiltrative, oedematous, erythematous plaques and rare nodules, with superficial telangiectatic vessels. Cervical lymphadenopathy was not detectable. Routine laboratory analysis was normal. Punch biopsy was performed, and histopathology and immunohistochemical studies were consistent with cutaneous angiosarcoma. This is the report of a face angiosarcoma with an unusual and very deceptive clinical presentation

Toward Improved Characterization of Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells for Use in Cellular Therapies: A Regulatory Science Perspective

Cellular therapies hold great potential to treat a variety of medical conditions. Product characterization of cellular therapies is particularly difficult, as they pose regulatory challenges due to donor heterogeneity and a lack of standard lot release tests that can reliably predict in vivo outcomes. In particular, multipotent stromal cells, also called mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), are potentially valuable as a cellular therapy due to their regenerative capacity and immunosuppressive function. Due to the required expansion and inherent heterogeneity of MSCs, quantitative approaches capable of measuring differentiation capacity and immunosuppressive function between donors and passages on a per cell basis are needed. To address this unmet need, a sample set of human MSCs comprised of eight donors was created, cultured to early and late passages, and novel quantitative bioassays were established capable of measuring adipogenic and osteogenic differentiation on a per cell basis, as well as an in vitro assay to measure immunosuppressive function. Based on existing bioassays, MSCs demonstrate a decrease in overall proliferative potential and colony forming unit capacity, while expression of hallmark MSC surface markers remain unchanged. Utilizing automated microscopy techniques, adipogenic and osteogenic differentiation potential was quantified on a per cell basis, allowing us to directly assess the role of donor variability and in vitro culture on MSC function. Overall, donor variability and a decrease in differentiation potential with passage was demonstrated based on these quantitative assays. Since culture-expanded MSCs increase in cell size, this parameter was utilized to enrich for small cells, which demonstrated that the small cell population is more stem-like based on these applied quantitative bioassays. Lastly, immunosuppressive function of human MSCs on murine-derived clonal T cells was assessed utilizing a novel in vitro xenogeneic model system. Human MSCs can inhibit murine T cell activation, rendering this an ideal system to assess immunosuppressive function of MSCs in vitro. In conclusion, novel methods were established to quantify MSC function, and these findings were correlated with other previously-established quantitative bioassays to better understand the role of donor variability and passaging on MSC potency. Taken together, these quantitative approaches provide valuable tools to measure MSC quality, and supports continued efforts to improve characterization strategies for cellular therapies

A case report of a rare intramuscular granular cell tumor

Background: Granular cell tumors (GCTs) were firstly described by Weber in 1854 and 70 years later by Abrikossoff and classified as benign tumors. Originally considered muscle tumors, they have been identified as neural lesions, due to their close association with nerve and to their immunohystochemical characteristics. GCTs are uncommon tumors and they may arise in any part of the body; they have been mainly observed in tongue, chest wall and upper extremities; less frequent sites are larynx, gastrointestinal tract, breast, pituitary stalk and the female anogenital region. Here we report a case of GCT showing an uncommon localization such as the upper third of the right rectus muscle of the abdominal wall. Case presentation: A 45 year-old woman of Caucasian origin presented to the surgeon with a 6-month history of light pain in the upper third of the abdominal wall. Radiological exams (Ultrasonography, Computed Tomography and Contrast magnetic resonance imaging) showed a localized in the right rectus abdominis muscle. After excision, histological and immunohystochemical analysis, with the support of electron microscopy, allowed making diagnosis of granular cell tumor. Discussion: After fist description by Abrikosoff in 1926 of GCT like mesenchymal tumor of unknown origin, in recent years immunohystochemical techniques definitely demonstrated the histogenetic derivation of GCT from Schwann cells. Granular cell tumors are rare, small, slow-growing, solitary and painless subcutaneous nodules which behave in a benign fashion, but can have a tendency to recur; in rare cases they can metastasize, when they became malignant; there are some clinical and histological criteria to suspect the malignance of this tumor. Conclusion: It is important that clinicians, radiologists and pathologists are aware of the clinical presentation and histopathology of GCT for appropriate management, counselling and follow-up. In our case we had a complete radiological, morphological and immunohystochemical characterization of the lesion and a definitive diagnosis of benignity confirmed by electron microscopy

Efects of Probiotics in decreasing the adverse effects of the eradication treatment for Helicobacter Pylori

Carta el editorRevisión por pare