Challenges to Teaching Credibility Assessment in Contemporary Schooling

Part of the Volume on Digital Media, Youth, and CredibilityThis chapter explores several challenges that exist to teaching credibility assessment in the school environment. Challenges range from institutional barriers such as government regulation and school policies and procedures to dynamic challenges related to young people's cognitive development and the consequent difficulties of navigating a complex web environment. The chapter includes a critique of current practices for teaching kids credibility assessment and highlights some best practices for credibility education

Coming of Age Online

Presentation slidesToday’s connected teenagers are habitual multitaskers, effortlessly blending their uses of information and communication technologies. But teens’ ease with technology does not always mean they make wise choices about what they say, do, or find online. This session addresses the consequences of coming of age online, focusing on two major issues of concern to librarians as well as the general public – open access to content and the nature of adolescent development

Maternal Alcohol Consumption During Pregnancy and Physical Outcomes up to 5 Years of Age: A Longitudinal Study

Aim To examine whether alcohol exposure in pregnancy affects weight and head circumference (HC) at birth and 5 years, and whether these effects are independent of cigarette exposure in pregnancy and social disadvantage. Study design The Mater-University Study of Pregnancy (MUSP) involves a prospective cohort of 8556 mothers who were enrolled at first antenatal visit. The quantity and frequency of alcohol consumption in early and late pregnancy and a measure of binge drinking in early pregnancy were recorded. Weight and HC were measured on children seen at birth and at 5 years. Level of cigarette use in early pregnancy and maternal age and level of education and family income were also measured. Results Light and moderate alcohol consumption in early or later pregnancy had no independent effects on weight or HC at birth or 5 years. Binge drinking in early pregnancy was not associated with restricted HC, and there was no effect modification by concurrent cigarette use in early pregnancy. An apparent effect of alcohol in late pregnancy on birth weight was due to confounding by cigarette use, with social risk being an independent predictor. Conclusion Alcohol ingestion up to moderate levels in pregnancy was not associated with deficits in either weight or HC at birth or at 5 years

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