Homelessness as a Determinant of Health Disparities Between Young Gay and Bisexual Males in Chicago

There is limited research documenting health disparities between gay and bisexual males. This study aimed to examine the health behaviors and outcomes of young gay and bisexual males in Chicago, including substance use, mental health, and homelessness. Data was from a cross-sectional survey of 180 bisexual and gay males age 16-24. Bivariate results indicate that bisexual males experience higher rates of homelessness, daily marijuana use, depressive symptoms, lifetime gonorrhea and chlamydia. Logistic regression results reveal homelessness was significantly associated with marijuana use, gonorrhea, chlamydia, and depressive symptoms. Research on disparities within sexual minorities and homelessness are needed to better understand pathways

Development, Implementation and Evaluation of a Peer Review of Teaching (PRoT) Initiative in Nursing Education

For many years, an area of research in higher education has been emerging around the development and implementation of fair and effective peer evaluation programs. Recently, a new body of knowledge has developed regarding the development and implementation of fair and effective peer evaluation programs resulting in formative and summative evaluations. The purpose of this article is to describe the development, implementation, and evaluation of a peer review of teaching (PRoT) program for nursing faculty, initiated at one small comprehensive university in the northeastern United States. Pairs of nursing faculty evaluated each other’s teaching, syllabi, and course materials after collaborating in a pre-evaluation conference to discuss goals of the classroom visit. Qualitative data gathered in post project focus groups revealed that faculty found their modified PRoT process to be a mutually beneficial experience that was more useful, flexible and collegial, and less stressful than their previous evaluation process

Development, Implementation and Evaluation of a Peer Review of Teaching (PRoT) Initiative in Nursing Education

For many years, an area of research in higher education has been emerging around the development and implementation of fair and effective peer evaluation programs. Recently, a new body of knowledge has developed regarding the development and implementation of fair and effective peer evaluation programs resulting in formative and summative evaluations. The purpose of this article is to describe the development, implementation, and evaluation of a peer review of teaching (PRoT) program for nursing faculty, initiated at one small comprehensive university in the northeastern United States. Pairs of nursing faculty evaluated each other’s teaching, syllabi, and course materials after collaborating in a pre-evaluation conference to discuss goals of the classroom visit. Qualitative data gathered in post project focus groups revealed that faculty found their modified PRoT process to be a mutually beneficial experience that was more useful, flexible and collegial, and less stressful than their previous evaluation process

Neighborhood-level and individual-level correlates of cannabis use among young persons living with HIV/AIDS

In addition to individual characteristics, there may be a wide range of environmental or neighborhood stressors that contribute to elevated cannabis use in groups of youth living with HIV/AIDS (YLHIV); however, the effects of social disorganization on cannabis use in YLHIV to date have not been studied

Sex differences in the genetic architecture of cognitive resilience to Alzheimer\u27s disease.

Approximately 30% of elderly adults are cognitively unimpaired at time of death despite the presence of Alzheimer\u27s disease neuropathology at autopsy. Studying individuals who are resilient to the cognitive consequences of Alzheimer\u27s disease neuropathology may uncover novel therapeutic targets to treat Alzheimer\u27s disease. It is well established that there are sex differences in response to Alzheimer\u27s disease pathology, and growing evidence suggests that genetic factors may contribute to these differences. Taken together, we sought to elucidate sex-specific genetic drivers of resilience. We extended our recent large scale genomic analysis of resilience in which we harmonized cognitive data across four cohorts of cognitive ageing, in vivo amyloid PET across two cohorts, and autopsy measures of amyloid neuritic plaque burden across two cohorts. These data were leveraged to build robust, continuous resilience phenotypes. With these phenotypes, we performed sex-stratified [n (males) = 2093, n (females) = 2931] and sex-interaction [n (both sexes) = 5024] genome-wide association studies (GWAS), gene and pathway-based tests, and genetic correlation analyses to clarify the variants, genes and molecular pathways that relate to resilience in a sex-specific manner. Estimated among cognitively normal individuals of both sexes, resilience was 20-25% heritable, and when estimated in either sex among cognitively normal individuals, resilience was 15-44% heritable. In our GWAS, we identified a female-specific locus on chromosome 10 [rs827389, β (females) = 0.08, P (females) = 5.76 × 10-09, β (males) = -0.01, P(males) = 0.70, β (interaction) = 0.09, P (interaction) = 1.01 × 10-04] in which the minor allele was associated with higher resilience scores among females. This locus is located within chromatin loops that interact with promoters of genes involved in RNA processing, including GATA3. Finally, our genetic correlation analyses revealed shared genetic architecture between resilience phenotypes and other complex traits, including a female-specific association with frontotemporal dementia and male-specific associations with heart rate variability traits. We also observed opposing associations between sexes for multiple sclerosis, such that more resilient females had a lower genetic susceptibility to multiple sclerosis, and more resilient males had a higher genetic susceptibility to multiple sclerosis. Overall, we identified sex differences in the genetic architecture of resilience, identified a female-specific resilience locus and highlighted numerous sex-specific molecular pathways that may underly resilience to Alzheimer\u27s disease pathology. This study illustrates the need to conduct sex-aware genomic analyses to identify novel targets that are unidentified in sex-agnostic models. Our findings support the theory that the most successful treatment for an individual with Alzheimer\u27s disease may be personalized based on their biological sex and genetic context

The FLUXNET2015 dataset and the ONEFlux processing pipeline for eddy covariance data

The FLUXNET2015 dataset provides ecosystem-scale data on CO2, water, and energy exchange between the biosphere and the atmosphere, and other meteorological and biological measurements, from 212 sites around the globe (over 1500 site-years, up to and including year 2014). These sites, independently managed and operated, voluntarily contributed their data to create global datasets. Data were quality controlled and processed using uniform methods, to improve consistency and intercomparability across sites. The dataset is already being used in a number of applications, including ecophysiology studies, remote sensing studies, and development of ecosystem and Earth system models. FLUXNET2015 includes derived-data products, such as gap-filled time series, ecosystem respiration and photosynthetic uptake estimates, estimation of uncertainties, and metadata about the measurements, presented for the first time in this paper. In addition, 206 of these sites are for the first time distributed under a Creative Commons (CC-BY 4.0) license. This paper details this enhanced dataset and the processing methods, now made available as open-source codes, making the dataset more accessible, transparent, and reproducible.Peer reviewe

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Hydrogels for lentiviral Gene Delivery

Introduction: Gene delivery from hydrogel biomaterials provides a fundamental tool for a variety of clinical applications including regenerative medicine, gene therapy for inherited disorders and drug delivery. The high water content and mild gelation conditions of hydrogels support their use for gene delivery by preserving activity of lentiviral vectors and acting to shield vectors from any host immune response. Areas covered: Strategies to control lentiviral entrapment within and retention/release from hydrogels are reviewed. The authors discuss the ability of hydrogel design parameters to control the transgene expression profile and the capacity of hydrogels to protect vectors from (and even modulate) the host immune response. Expert opinion: Delivery of genetic vectors from scaffolds provides a unique opportunity to capitalize on the potential synergy between the biomaterial design for cell processes and gene delivery. Hydrogel properties can be tuned to directly control the events that determine the tissue response to controlled gene delivery, which include the extent of cell infiltration, preservation of vector activity and vector retention. While some design parameters have been identified, numerous opportunities for investigation are available in order to develop a complete model relating the biomaterial properties and host response to gene delivery