Virtual Faculty and Peer Mentoring to Promote Social Belonging among Minoritized Physical Therapist and Nursing Students.

Minoritized health sciences students report experiencing social isolation and discrimination, and cite the lack of faculty representation as barriers to their success. While virtual mentoring can increase sense of belonging and connectedness, these effects have not been examined in minoritized health sciences students. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether virtual mentoring from faculty and peers could decrease social isolation and promote social belonging among minoritized first-year physical therapy and nursing students.

Endotoxin-induced acute lung injury requires interaction with the liver.

Clinical and laboratory data indicate that the liver plays an important role in the incidence, pathogenesis, and outcome of acute lung injury/acute respiratory distress syndrome. To distinguish direct effects of endotoxin on the lungs from liver-dependent effects during the early phase of the response to endotoxemia, we used an in situ perfused piglet preparation in which only the ventilated lung or both the lung and liver could be included in a blood perfused circuit. We monitored pulmonary vascular resistance, oxygenation, neutrophil count, lung edema as reflected by wet-dry weights of lung tissue, perfusate concentrations of TNF-alpha, IL-6, and 8-isoprostane (a marker of oxidative stress), and activation of the transcription factor (NF-kappaB) in lung tissue before and for 2 h after endotoxin.

Prevention of NF-kappaB activation in vivo by a cell-permeable NF-kappaB inhibitor peptide.

The NF-kappaB/Rel transcription factor family plays a central role in coordinating the expression of a variety of genes that regulate stress responses, immune cell activation, apoptosis, proliferation, differentiation, and oncogenic transformation. Interventions that target the NF-kappaB pathway may be therapeutic for a variety of pathologies, especially immune/inflammatory diseases. Using membrane translocating sequence (MTS) technology, we developed a cell-permeable dominant inhibitor of NF-kappaB activation, termed IkappaBalpha-(DeltaN)-MTS.