Exploring the Potential of the Web-Based Virtual World of Second Life to Improve Substance Abuse Treatment Outcomes

Provides an overview of Second Life, an Internet-based virtual world, and summarizes discussions among addiction recovery experts about integrating virtual reality into behavioral treatment as a way to teach patients new responses to real environments

Reducing the Individual, Institutional and Societal Harms from Student Drug Use

[EN] Drug use among higher education students can cause harm to the individual, their institution, and the wider society. Academic performance, physical and mental health, institutional reputation, crime and unemployment can all be impacted by student drug use. Tackling this is a challenge, and is often compounded by limited student health and counselling capacity and the student’s reluctance or unwillingness to seek support. Digital brief interventions have shown promise in reducing harm from substance use, and provide an opportunity to meet students where they are, delivering always-on, confidential support and intervention. However, limited interventions for drug use are available for students, and many struggle with engagement and retention. Our team have developed a novel brief intervention, using best practices in digital intervention development, and behavioural change to overcome some of these challenges. We describe the development of our intervention and discuss how implementation could result in tangible benefits to the individual, institution, and society.Dick, S.; Dillon, B.; Vasiliou, V.; Davoren, M.; Dockray, S.; Heavin, C.; Linehan, C.... (2021). Reducing the Individual, Institutional and Societal Harms from Student Drug Use. En 7th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd'21). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 465-472. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAd21.2021.13060OCS46547

Changing the Wheels on a Moving Car: Leveraging a Content Management System to Develop an Extensible Digital Intervention

Drug use among higher education students is a pertinent public health issue, with around a quarter of students reporting current use of an illicit drug. MyUSE is an algorithmic, digitally delivered intervention aimed at reducing harms from drug use among higher education students. While many digital interventions around this topic exist, previous work has failed to employ behavioral science in a systematic way. MyUSE focuses on user-centered design (UCD), targeting relevant behavioral changes which are translated into digitally delivered components. This paper describes the challenges of working in an interdisciplinary project team and presents the software-based solutions applied to overcome them. The methodology described demonstrates how sharing the implementation workload can promote synergistic interdisciplinary work in parallel. By providing a flexible centralized platform to manage content and ideas, certain technical requirements become clearly defined and addressed

A new clinical algorithm embedded in a contextual behavior change intervention for higher education student drug use

Illicit drug use among higher education populations is a recognized public health issue. Brief personalized digital behavior change interventions with targeted harm-reduction can facilitate immediate support for this population. To make the intervention tailored to students’ needs, we built a clinical algorithm, informed by relevant behavior change theories and with system design features. Given the lack of previously relevant harm-reduction at student population level, functioning with the use of an algorithm, the aim of this work is twofold. We firstly explain how we developed the clinical algorithm using an empirical data synthesis approach. Secondly, we illustrate how the algorithm is implemented within the first prototype of an intervention named MyUSE, by providing an example on how the clinical algorithm is used to allocate users into different personalized intervention components. The prototype is currently in its final development phase and subsequent work will focus on examining its usability, feasibility, and effectiveness

'To live and die [for] Dixie': Irish civilians and the Confederate States of America

Around 20,000 Irishmen served in the Confederate army in the Civil War. As a result, they left behind, in various Southern towns and cities, large numbers of friends, family, and community leaders. As with native-born Confederates, Irish civilian support was crucial to Irish participation in the Confederate military effort. Also, Irish civilians served in various supporting roles: in factories and hospitals, on railroads and diplomatic missions, and as boosters for the cause. They also, however, suffered in bombardments, sieges, and the blockade. Usually poorer than their native neighbours, they could not afford to become 'refugees' and move away from the centres of conflict. This essay, based on research from manuscript collections, contemporary newspapers, British Consular records, and Federal military records, will examine the role of Irish civilians in the Confederacy, and assess the role this activity had on their integration into Southern communities. It will also look at Irish civilians in the defeat of the Confederacy, particularly when they came under Union occupation. Initial research shows that Irish civilians were not as upset as other whites in the South about Union victory. They welcomed a return to normalcy, and often 'collaborated' with Union authorities. Also, Irish desertion rates in the Confederate army were particularly high, and I will attempt to gauge whether Irish civilians played a role in this. All of the research in this paper will thus be put in the context of the Drew Gilpin Faust/Gary Gallagher debate on the influence of the Confederate homefront on military performance. By studying the Irish civilian experience one can assess how strong the Confederate national experiment was. Was it a nation without a nationalism

Security that matters: critical infrastructure and objects of protection

Critical infrastructure protection is prominently concerned with objects that appear indispensable for the functioning of social and political life. However, the analysis of material objects in discussions of critical infrastructure protection has remained largely within the remit of managerial responses, which see matter as simply passive, a blank slate. In security studies, critical approaches have focused on social and cultural values, forms of life, technologies of risk or structures of neoliberal globalization. This article engages with the role of "things" or of materiality for theories of securitization. Drawing on the materialist feminism of Karen Barad, it shows how critical infrastructure in Europe neither is an empty receptacle of discourse nor has "essential" characteristics; rather, it emerges out of material-discursive practices. Understanding the securitization of critical infrastructure protection as a process of materialization allows for a reconceptualization of how security matters and its effects

A Missense Variant in PTPN22 is a Risk Factor for Drug-induced Liver Injury

Background & Aims We performed genetic analyses of a multiethnic cohort of patients with idiosyncratic drug-induced liver injury (DILI) to identify variants associated with susceptibility. Methods We performed a genome-wide association study of 2048 individuals with DILI (cases) and 12,429 individuals without (controls). Our analysis included subjects of European (1806 cases and 10,397 controls), African American (133 cases and 1,314 controls), and Hispanic (109 cases and 718 controls) ancestry. We analyzed DNA from 113 Icelandic cases and 239,304 controls to validate our findings. Results We associated idiosyncratic DILI with rs2476601, a nonsynonymous polymorphism that encodes a substitution of tryptophan with arginine in the protein tyrosine phosphatase, nonreceptor type 22 gene (PTPN22) (odds ratio [OR] 1.44; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.28–1.62; P = 1.2 × 10–9 and replicated the finding in the validation set (OR 1.48; 95% CI 1.09–1.99; P = .01). The minor allele frequency showed the same effect size (OR > 1) among ethnic groups. The strongest association was with amoxicillin and clavulanate-associated DILI in persons of European ancestry (OR 1.62; 95% CI 1.32–1.98; P = 4.0 × 10–6; allele frequency = 13.3%), but the polymorphism was associated with DILI of other causes (OR 1.37; 95% CI 1.21–1.56; P = 1.5 × 10–6; allele frequency = 11.5%). Among amoxicillin- and clavulanate-associated cases of European ancestry, rs2476601 doubled the risk for DILI among those with the HLA risk alleles A*02:01 and DRB1*15:01. Conclusions In a genome-wide association study, we identified rs2476601 in PTPN22 as a non-HLA variant that associates with risk of liver injury caused by multiple drugs and validated our finding in a separate cohort. This variant has been associated with increased risk of autoimmune diseases, providing support for the concept that alterations in immune regulation contribute to idiosyncratic DILI

The factorial invariance of the CES-D during adolescence: are symptom profiles for depression stable across gender and time?

This study examined the factorial invariance of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies of Depression Scale (CES-D) across gender and time during adolescence. The factor structure of the CES-D was compared at four annual measurement waves in a community sample of 2650 Australian adolescents. Confirmatory factor analyses showed that the factor structure of the CES-D was generally invariant across gender and time. However, gender differences were found on three items: for all waves the item 'I had crying spells' was a stronger indicator for depressive affect in females than males. On the final three waves the item 'people were unfriendly' loaded significantly higher on the factor 'Interpersonal Relations' for males than females. On Wave 2 and 3 males interpreted the item 'everything I did was an effort' with a positive connotation, whereas females interpret it with a negative association. These gender-differences are discussed from both a theoretical and a methodological perspective.Marjolein Verhoeven, Michael G. Sawyer and Susan H. Spenc