Children’s experiences of domestic violence and abuse: siblings’ accounts of relational coping

This article explores how young people see their relationships, particularly their sibling relationships, in families affected by domestic violence, and how relationality emerges in their accounts as a resource to build an agentic sense of self. The ‘voice’ of children is largely absent from domestic violence literature, which typically portrays them as passive, damaged and relationally incompetent. Children’s own understandings of their relational worlds are often overlooked, and consequently existing models of children’s social interactions give inadequate accounts of their meaning-making-in-context. Drawn from a larger study of children’s experiences of domestic violence and abuse, this paper uses two case studies of sibling relationships to explore young people’s use of relational resources, for coping with violence in the home. The paper explores how relationality and coping intertwine in young people’s accounts, and disrupts the taken for granted assumption that children’s ‘premature caring’ or ‘parentification’ is (only) pathological in children’s responses to domestic violence. This has implications for understanding young people’s experiences in the present, and supporting their capacity for relationship building in the future

A stochastic model for wound healing

We present a discrete stochastic model which represents many of the salient features of the biological process of wound healing. The model describes fronts of cells invading a wound. We have numerical results in one and two dimensions. In one dimension we can give analytic results for the front speed as a power series expansion in a parameter, p, that gives the relative size of proliferation and diffusion processes for the invading cells. In two dimensions the model becomes the Eden model for p near 1. In both one and two dimensions for small p, front propagation for this model should approach that of the Fisher-Kolmogorov equation. However, as in other cases, this discrete model approaches Fisher-Kolmogorov behavior slowly.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figure

Towards the Physical Instantiation of Virtual People and Components in Physical Mixed-Reality Tele-Presence Environments

Interaction between virtual and physical worlds is an area of growing importance as technology increases the amount of virtualization in our lives. However, to-date, most of this work has focused on translating the physical world into a virtual representation, with little attention being paid to instantiating the virtual in the physical world. This paper addresses this latter issue. In particular we examine how a virtual student can be given a presence in a real smart classroom in order to have better interaction with local students within a shared environment. In this 'work-in-progress' (concept) paper, we propose a novel augmented-reality based approach that identifies and synchronises the remote and local environmental states (people and environment) so as to provide a more naturalistic mixed reality shared environment

The Development of a Faith Community Nursing Intervention to Promote Health across the Life Span

Purpose: To report the development of a faith community nursing intervention to promote health across the life span. Studies by Callaghan (2003, 2005, 2006), that investigated the relationships among self-care agency, self-care self-efficacy, and health-promoting self-care behaviors, support the importance of spiritual growth on older adults’, adults’, and adolescents’ initiative and responsibility for self-care. This report will focus on applying these results and the research evidence that supports the integration of these concepts in the development of a health promotion intervention. Procedures: Data was merged from Callaghan’s studies (2003, 2005, 2006) in order to investigate to what extent do self-care agency and self-care self-efficacy explain health-promoting self-care behaviors across the life span. The sample consisted of 870 subjects with ages ranging from 14 to 98 years. The instrumentation included the following scales: Exercise of Self-Care Agency, Self-Rated Abilities for Health Practices, Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile II, demographic questionnaire. The data was analyzed using a canonical correlation statistic. Findings: A significant canonical variate with a canonical correlation of .81 (p \u3c .001) accounting for 65% of the variance explained was identified. The canonical loadings identified all of the study variables as significantly contributing to this variate. Conclusions: The study results support the integration of the concepts of self-care agency, self-care self-efficacy, and health-promoting self-care behaviors in the development of a faith community nursing intervention to promote health across the life span. The development of an intervention based on this evidence is presented

Inhibition of the multidrug resistance P-glycoprotein: Time for a change of strategy?

P-glycoprotein (P-gp) is a key player in the multidrug-resistant phenotype in cancer. The protein confers resistance by mediating the ATP-dependent efflux of an astonishing array of anticancer drugs. Its broad specificity has been the subject of numerous attempts to inhibit the protein and restore the efficacy of anticancer drugs. The general strategy has been to develop compounds that either compete with anticancer drugs for transport or act as direct inhibitors of P-gp. Despite considerable in vitro success, there are no compounds currently available to "block" P-gp-mediated resistance in the clinic. The failure may be attributed to toxicity, adverse drug interaction, and numerous pharmacokinetic issues. This review provides a description of several alternative approaches to overcome the activity of P-gp in drug-resistant cells. These include 1) drugs that specifically target resistant cells, 2) novel nanotechnologies to provide high-dose, targeted delivery of anticancer drugs, 3) compounds that interfere with nongenomic transfer of resistance, and 4) approaches to reduce the expression of P-gp within tumors. Such approaches have been developed through the pursuit of greater understanding of resistance mediators such as P-gp, and they show considerable potential for further application. Copyright © 2014 by The American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics

Implementing Faith Community Nursing Interventions to Promote Healthy Behaviors in Adults

Purpose: To report the implementation of faith community nursing interventions to promote healthy behaviors in adults. Callaghan (2015) reported the development of this intervention, which was based on previous studies that support the importance of spiritual growth on the initiative and responsibility for self-care across the life span (Callaghan, 2003, 2005, 2006). The intervention also included strategies to increase self-efficacy of healthy behaviors. The results of three separate implementations of the health promotion intervention are presented in this report. Procedures: Three health promotion programs were implemented over a five year period (2010 – 2015). These programs were offered for the following populations/settings: families consisting of adolescents, adults, and/or older adults in a faith community; nursing students in a university community; older adults in an urban community. The outcomes of the programs were measured by the Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile II (HPLPII) scale using paired t-Tests to test the hypothesis that post-intervention scores would be higher than the pre-intervention scores. Findings: The mean scores of participants in the health promotion programs all increased from pre-intervention to post-intervention. Significant differences were found in the nursing student and the older adult samples. Conclusions: The results of these studies suggest that faith community nursing-led health promotion interventions that focus on spiritual growth as the foundation of health as well as use self-efficacy enhancing strategies can increase participants’ practice of healthy behaviors. These programs also give faith community nurses an opportunity to expand practice beyond the walls of their faith communities