Wac'inyeya: Hope Among American Indian Youth.

This article examines what gives American Indian youth hope. The project included 56 rural tribal youth in focus groups across a Northern Plains reservation. The participants completed a Youth Personal Balance Tool to provide perspective on the balance according to a medicine wheel model of their lives.

Principles and popularity: the interplay of moral norms and descriptive norms in the context of volunteerism.

Can a moral norm be manipulated and if so, how does a manipulated moral norm interact with a descriptive norm to impact on behavioural intentions? The present research addressed these questions in three studies. Study 1a and 1b demonstrated the validity of a manipulation designed to activate a moral norm for volunteer activity. In Study 2, activating a moral norm for volunteering strengthened intentions to volunteer and inhibited intentions to conform to a descriptive norm.

The PD-1/PD-L1 axis modulates the natural killer cell versus multiple myeloma effect: a therapeutic target for CT-011, a novel monoclonal anti-PD-1 antibody.

T-cell expression of programmed death receptor-1 (PD-1) down-regulates the immune response against malignancy by interacting with cognate ligands (eg, PD-L1) on tumor cells; however, little is known regarding PD-1 and natural killer (NK) cells. NK cells exert cytotoxicity against multiple myeloma (MM), an effect enhanced through novel therapies. We show that NK cells from MM patients express PD-1 whereas normal NK cells do not and confirm PD-L1 on primary MM cells.

Effects of induction with novel agents versus conventional chemotherapy on mobilization and autologous stem cell transplant outcomes in multiple myeloma.

Multiple myeloma (MM) is the top indication for high-dose chemotherapy (HDC) with autologous stem cell transplantation (SCT), a strategy which improves progression-free survival and potentially overall survival (OS). Novel induction regimens incorporating the immunomodulatory (IMID) agents, such as thalidomide and lenalidomide and the proteosome inhibitor bortezomib improve response rates and survival for newly diagnosed patients. Recent data temper enthusiasm for these treatments by illustrating difficulty in some circumstances with mobilizing CD34(+) hematopoietic stem cells for subsequent HDC/SCT.

What makes a caseload (un)manageable? School-based speech-language pathologists speak.

Purpose: Large caseload sizes and a shortage of speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are ongoing concerns in the field of speech and language. This study was conducted to identify current mean caseload size for school-based SLPs, a threshold at which caseload size begins to be perceived as unmanageable, and variables contributing to school-based SLPs' feelings of caseload manageability.

Method: Approximately 2,000 public-school-based SLPs from across the country were solicited to participate in an online, Web-based survey between April and May of 2007.

Accumulation of free ADP-ribose from mitochondria mediates oxidative stress-induced gating of TRPM2 cation channels.

TRPM2 is a member of the transient receptor potential melastatin-related (TRPM) family of cation channels, which possesses both ion channel and ADP-ribose hydrolase functions. TRPM2 has been shown to gate in response to oxidative and nitrosative stresses, but the mechanism through which TRPM2 gating is induced by these types of stimuli is not clear. Here we show through structure-guided mutagenesis that TRPM2 gating by ADP-ribose and both oxidative and nitrosative stresses requires an intact ADP-ribose binding cleft in the C-terminal nudix domain.

Regulation of vertebrate cellular Mg2+ homeostasis by TRPM7.

TRPM7 is a polypeptide with intrinsic ion channel and protein kinase domains whose targeted deletion causes cells to experience growth arrest within 24 hr and eventually die. Here, we show that while TRPM7's kinase domain is not essential for activation of its channel, a functional coupling exists such that structural alterations of the kinase domain alter the sensitivity of channel activation to Mg(2+). Investigation of the relationship between Mg(2+) and the cell biological role of TRPM7 revealed that TRPM7-deficient cells become Mg(2+) deficient, that both the viability and proliferation of TRPM7-deficient cells are rescued by supplementation of extracellular Mg(2+), and that the capacity of heterologously expressed TRPM7 mutants to complement TRPM7 deficiency correlates with their sensitivity to Mg(2+).

NUDT9, a member of the Nudix hydrolase family, is an evolutionarily conserved mitochondrial ADP-ribose pyrophosphatase.

We have recently characterized the protein product of the human NUDT9 gene as a highly specific ADP-ribose (ADPR) pyrophosphatase. We now report an analysis of the human NUDT9 gene and its potential alternative transcripts along with detailed studies of the enzymatic properties and cell biological behavior of human NUDT9 protein. Our analysis of the human NUDT9 gene and twenty-two distinct cloned NUDT9 transcripts indicates that the full-length NUDT9 alpha transcript is the dominant form, and suggests that an alternative NUDT9 beta transcript occurs as the result of a potentially aberrant splice from a cryptic donor site within the first exon to the splice acceptor site of exon 2.