Listening to the Voice of Intimate Partner Violence Victims from Internet Discussion Forums

Human trafficking and Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) are all about power and control. Human trafficking is more likely to happen among vulnerable population, such the abused victims of IPV. Understanding the voice of IPV victims can facilitate successful trafficking prevention and intervention programs. China is at the early stage of developing comprehensive national and local laws to protect victims. The agencies and other social resources are not able to fully meet IPV victims’ needs. Public awareness and victims’ self awareness about IPV are weak, especially about non-physical abuse. There are still conflicting thoughts between whether IPV is a community affair rather than a closed door affair and the responsibility of perpetrators rather than victims. The tactics and patterns of the perpetrator are not widely known by the public. Data about human trafficking is hard to gather. There is little literature is about the Asian, specifically Chinese victims. Internet discussion forums are a convenient medium for IPV victims to exchange information and to rehabilitate from past trauma. This paper will address a plan on how to collect data from some Chinese internet discussion forums about the victims’ voice and patterns of online informal peer support. The dialogs among internet users in a specific discussion forum will be analyzed. The data will explore cultural differences, family norm, or other safety concerns of victims. These data will be helpful for victim advocates to provide victim-centered service to victims in China, Chinese immigrants who are suffering IPV in US, and may also be helpful for future intervention plans to best empower Chinese victims. Download button links to PDF version. PowerPoint slides attached below as Additional file

USING DALE CARNEGIE’S PRINCIPLES TO TEACH NURSING INFORMATICS ONLINE DURING A PANDEMIC

Abstract The coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic makes it vital for nursing students to have access to online education. Carnegie’s principles can engage students and decrease their stress in the learning process. Dale Carnegie’s principles were used as a teaching strategy by the same instructor in one of the two text-based online asynchronous courses on nursing informatics in the summers of 2020 and 2021. Students (n = 108) were randomly divided into two different sessions by the university’s registrar’s office. Students’ final grades and feedback to the two online evaluation surveys on course and faculty at the end of the semester were collected and analyzed. Students’ final grades and ratings on the course evaluation survey in Session 1 (93.84, 4.42) that incorporated Dale Carnegie's principles were significantly higher than those in Session 2 (96.22, 3.86, p < 0.01). Students’ ratings on the faculty evaluation survey in Session 1 (4.47) were also higher than those in Session 2 (3.8), although not significant (p = 0.16). There were more positive and fewer negative comments in Session 1 than in Session 2 in both surveys. Dale Carnegie’s principles provide an engaging method to teach graduate nursing students about nursing informatics. A positive learning environment created by Carnegie’s principles helps instructors increase students’ satisfaction and learning outcomes during stressful times

Orf Virus: A New Class of Immunotherapy Drugs

Orf is one of the most widespread viral diseases worldwide, usually benign and self-limiting, and mainly affects not only sheep and goats, but also various other ruminants and mammals. The causative agent, orf virus (ORFV) is a member of the genus parapoxvirus, owing to its zoonotic importance and ability to cross-infect other species sporadically. ORFV encodes virulence and immunomodulatory factors that interfere with host inflammatory effect and antiviral immune mechanisms and induces a transient and complex cytokine response, initially represented by Th1-related cytokines followed by Th2-related cytokines. The ORFV has evolved several mechanisms to survive in the presence of the immune system, resulting in repeated infections. Currently, ORFV has been developed as vaccines in veterinary field. The unique host immune escape ability obtained by ORFV has made it one of the important candidates for prevention and treatment of various diseases (including chronic viral diseases, tumor, and liver fibrosis)

Deciphering Asthma Biomarkers with Protein Profiling Technology

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease of the airways, resulting in bronchial hyperresponsiveness with every allergen exposure. It is now clear that asthma is not a single disease, but rather a multifaceted syndrome that results from a variety of biologic mechanisms. Asthma is further problematic given that the disease consists of many variants, each with its own etiologic and pathophysiologic factors, including different cellular responses and inflammatory phenotypes. These facets make the rapid and accurate diagnosis (not to mention treatments) of asthma extremely difficult. Protein biomarkers can serve as powerful detection tools in both clinical and basic research applications. Recent endeavors from biomedical researchers have developed technical platforms, such as cytokine antibody arrays, that have been employed and used to further the global analysis of asthma biomarker studies. In this review, we discuss potential asthma biomarkers involved in the pathophysiologic process and eventual pathogenesis of asthma, how these biomarkers are being utilized, and how further testing methods might help improve the diagnosis and treatment strain that current asthma patients suffer

Neoantigen-based cancer vaccination using chimeric RNA-loaded dendritic cell-derived extracellular vesicles

Cancer vaccines critically rely on the availability of targetable immunogenic cancer-specific neoepitopes. However, mutation-based immunogenic neoantigens are rare or even non-existent in subgroups of cancer types. To address this issue, we exploited a cancer-specific aberrant transcription-induced chimeric RNA, designated A-Pas chiRNA, as a possible source of clinically relevant and targetable neoantigens. A-Pas chiRNA encodes a recently discovered cancer-specific chimeric protein that comprises full-length astrotactin-2 (ASTN2) C-terminally fused in-frame to the antisense sequence of the 18th intron of pregnancy-associated plasma protein-A (PAPPA). We used extracellular vesicles (EVs) from A-Pas chiRNA-transfected dendritic cells (DCs) to produce the cell-free anticancer vaccine DEXA-P . Treatment of immunocompetent cancer-bearing mice with DEXA-P inhibited tumour growth and prolonged animal survival. In summary, we demonstrate for the first time that cancer-specific transcription-induced chimeric RNAs can be exploited to produce a cell-free cancer vaccine that induces potent CD8+ T cell-mediated anticancer immunity. Our novel approach may be particularly useful for developing cancer vaccines to treat malignancies with low mutational burden or without mutation-based antigens. Moreover, this cell-free anticancer vaccine approach may offer several practical advantages over cell-based vaccines, such as ease of scalability and genetic modifiability as well as enhanced shelf life