Passive Bystanders Research Articles

Museums and climate change From passive bystander to agent of change

Museums and climate change From passive bystander to agent of change

Large eustachian valve fostering paradoxical thromboembolism: passive bystander or serial partner in crime?

Catheter-based closure of patent foramen ovale (PFO) is more effective than medical therapy in the prevention of recurrent stroke[1]. It is likely that a proportion of patients evaluated for potential transcatheter PFO closure has actually different anatomical variants particularly common in the right atrium such as eustachian valve, Chiari network, Thebesian valve and Crista Terminalis. Notably, the eustachian valve may represent an increased risk factor for left circulation thromboembolism beyond that associated with PFO size and shunting. Such patients may benefit the most from percutaneous closure procedure.

Christian pyrexia and education fever: female empowerment in the late Chosŏn dynasty

ABSTRACT ‘Christian pyrexia’ and ‘education fever’ have contributed greatly to the empowerment of women in Korea and helped with the transformation of Korean society more broadly. This article begins with an overview of the Confucian gender constructs and delimiting social expectations of women in the pre-modern period. It then focuses on the changing socio-political landscape in the late nineteenth century, which set the stage for the arrival of Protestant missionaries, who would transform the educational system. Han’gŭl, the ‘vulgar’ script of women, was soon the evangelising tool of the Protestants who established various institutions to educate ‘modern’ Korean girls and women. This radically transformed their place in society, from passive bystanders in a history that had ignored them. The fever for Christianity, linked with education as a tool for equality amidst the burgeoning of nationalism, was palpable in schools set up in Korea as the dark period of Japanese rule drew near.

Addressing a Trapped High-Energy Water: Design and Synthesis of Highly Potent Pyrimidoindole-Based Glycogen Synthase Kinase-3β Inhibitors.

In small molecule binding, water is not a passive bystander but rather takes an active role in the binding site, which may be decisive for the potency of the inhibitor. Here, by addressing a high-energy water, we improved the IC50 value of our co-crystallized glycogen synthase kinase-3β (GSK-3β) inhibitor by nearly two orders of magnitude. Surprisingly, our results demonstrate that this high-energy water was not displaced by our potent inhibitor (S)-3-(3-((7-ethynyl-9H-pyrimido[4,5-b]indol-4-yl)(methyl)amino)piperidin-1-yl)propanenitrile ((S)-15, IC50 value of 6 nM). Instead, only a subtle shift in the location of this water molecule resulted in a dramatic decrease in the energy of this high-energy hydration site, as shown by the WaterMap analysis combined with microsecond timescale molecular dynamics simulations. (S)-15 demonstrated both a favorable kinome selectivity profile and target engagement in a cellular environment and reduced GSK-3 autophosphorylation in neuronal SH-SY5Y cells. Overall, our findings highlight that even a slight adjustment in the location of a high-energy water can be decisive for ligand binding.

Plagiarismand its paradoxes

Dealing with plagiarism can be seen as a track race where the speed is infinitely increasing. Participants in the race are students and faculty, but also software developers, university administrators, academic developers and libraries – with authors as passive bystanders. In this setting, the technological opportunities for manipulating other people’s work are always miles ahead of the available tools for detecting plagiarism. Moreover, with the introduction of AI in the academic world, plagiarism itself is becoming a muddled category. Consider for example software like Keenious that is being promoted to and via university libraries. This software is introduced with the following teaser: “Writing a paper? Planning an essay? Searching for references can waste hours of your time”. But as Keenious “analyses your entire text and browses through millions of articles, papers, and studies on the web to find the most relevant information in seconds”, you can “say goodbye to hours of manual research.”With programs like this the need to search, read and not least engage with difficult text material disappears. Using algorithms, the most “relevant” references can be produced and sprinkled across the text like cake decoration. In contrast to classical plagiarism, however, the problem is not the absence of references but rather the opposite. As an effect, papers will be produced that are difficult to grade and even more difficult to provide with meaningful feedback. Indeed, it could be argued that for many digital tools the amount of work that is saved in the short term often returns in more complicated forms; in this case for the teacher who is expected to offer meaningful feedback to products that are half-way machine-generated. Inside this landscape, offering moral pep-talks for students where plagiarism is presented as a kind of theft arguably misses the target. In this roundtable we will discuss these developments from various professional perspectives, including a reconsideration of the notion of plagiarism itself.

Learning Together About Racism

Learning Together About Racism

Limited utility of the HScore in detecting secondary haemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis in COVID‐19

Limited utility of the HScore in detecting secondary haemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis in COVID‐19

To Live in Peace: Women Ex‐combatants in Burundi and Northern Uganda Envision Psychosocial Well‐being

AbstractContemporary studies show that women play multiple roles in armed conflict. Only rarely are they passive bystanders or victims. Women are often part of the events that lead to armed conflict, and they may engage in combat. They have also led peace movements that have ended conflict. Nevertheless, the multiple roles that women play in war and peace are oftentimes not recognized, and their experiences, beyond victimhood, have been disregarded in post‐conflict reconstruction. Drawing upon research with conflict‐affected women, this paper focuses on how women ex‐combatants in Burundi and Northern Uganda conceptualize and operationalize psychosocial well‐being and articulate the specific contributions they can make to the peacetime community.

Heart Allograft Quilty Lesions are Associates with a Tolerant Gene Profile and Normal Allograft Function

Purpose Quilty lesions (lymphoid aggregates) are frequently encountered in heart allograft biopsies without morphologic evidence of rejection. However, their biologic nature and precise function remains unclear. Previously, in 42 cardiac allograft biopsies, we demonstrated that the presence of Foxp3+ innate and TGF- β+ adaptive regulatory lymphocytes in Quilty lesions (QL) are associated with higher allograft acceptance. In the current study, we aimed to characterize immunomodulatory pathways associated with QL by measuring mRNA expression. Methods Endomyocardial biopsies of heart allograft from nine patients were included in this study, four with unremarkable endomyocardium (control group) and five with at least one QL (Quilty group). No acute T-cell or antibody mediated rejection was present histologically in any of these specimens. Total RNA was extracted from formalin fixed paraffin tissue. Multiplexed mRNA measurement was performed using the nCounter system (NanoString Technologies, Seattle, WA), and data were analyzed with nSolver software (NanoString Technologies, Seattle, WA). Results Of 771 gene mRNA levels measured in the NanoString Transplant Immunology Panel, 274 were upregulated in the QL group over the control group, with approximately one third related to adaptive immunity and 5% to innate immunity. Higher levels of mRNA expression in the QL group were also shown in pathways for hematopoiesis (11%), cytokine (9%), chemokine (7%), cell-extracellular matrix interaction (7%), and apoptosis & cell cycle regulation (5%). More specifically, the mRNA expression of TH2 tolerance-associated immunity markers, including Foxp3, TGF-β, and CTLA4, were higher in the Quilty group (2.82, 1.42, and 3.97 fold increase, respectively, with p Conclusion Heart allografts with QL have dominant adaptive immunity related mRNA expression with significantly higher expression of TH2 tolerant immunity markers. These data suggest that QL, far from passive bystanders, may serve an immunomodulatory role in cardiac allografts. The presence of intra-allograft regulatory T-lymphocyte related signaling in QL may help to reduce the risk of rejection and foster allograft acceptance.

Framing of Youth as a high-risk population in Canadian disaster news media

Community disaster risk reduction practices have been tested repeatedly in the past decade. In Canada, for example, Ottawa-Gatineau and cities across Alberta have experienced numerous disasters, garnering widespread media coverage. Along with their families, youth were impacted by these disasters, but they also contributed to the response and recovery efforts in their communities. In this paper, we present a critical discourse analysis of the journalistic coverage of five Canadian disasters, including the Alberta floods (2013), Fort McMurray wildfires (2016), Ottawa-Gatineau flooding (2017 and 2019), and the Ottawa-Gatineau tornadoes (2018). This study is part of a broader project focused on the representation of high-risk populations in disaster-media. In this paper we discuss how disaster-media portrays youth, and their contributions to disaster preparedness, response and recovery. We inductively analyzed 259 articles across the five disasters to identify and document the patterns of discourse in news media around youth in a disaster context. Our findings reveal that the Canadian disaster news media framed youth using fives lenses: 1) the vulnerable status of youth; 2) youth as passive bystanders; 3) adult-centered narratives in media coverage of disasters: children as a burden on adults; 4) youth as active agents – jumping into adulthood; and 5) youth as a ‘legitimizing criteria’ in disaster response. The results of our study point to a need for a shift in the framing of youth in disasters to highlight their assets and actual/potential roles in disaster risk reduction efforts. Media can help to shift the narrative around youth by avoiding reductive, one-dimensional representation of youth as vulnerable victims.

Thrombocytopenia in Virus Infections.

Thrombocytopenia, which signifies a low platelet count usually below 150 × 109/L, is a common finding following or during many viral infections. In clinical medicine, mild thrombocytopenia, combined with lymphopenia in a patient with signs and symptoms of an infectious disease, raises the suspicion of a viral infection. This phenomenon is classically attributed to platelet consumption due to inflammation-induced coagulation, sequestration from the circulation by phagocytosis and hypersplenism, and impaired platelet production due to defective megakaryopoiesis or cytokine-induced myelosuppression. All these mechanisms, while plausible and supported by substantial evidence, regard platelets as passive bystanders during viral infection. However, platelets are increasingly recognized as active players in the (antiviral) immune response and have been shown to interact with cells of the innate and adaptive immune system as well as directly with viruses. These findings can be of interest both for understanding the pathogenesis of viral infectious diseases and predicting outcome. In this review, we will summarize and discuss the literature currently available on various mechanisms within the relationship between thrombocytopenia and virus infections.

Men, masculinities, and gender‐based violence: The broadening scope of recent research

AbstractMen's relationships to gender‐based violence (GBV) have long been an area of sociological inquiry, but until recently men have primarily been framed as perpetrators of violence against women. More recently, research on men and GBV has broadened to include studying men as victims/survivors, as investigators and law enforcement officers, as passive or active bystanders, and as allies in working to address this social problem. We review this research in an effort to bridge these divergent bodies of work; we identify methodological trends and gaps in existing research, make recommendations for improved theoretical and methodological robustness, and suggest that research perspectives on men and GBV have shifted over time as wider understandings of gender and masculinities become more hopeful and more inclusive. While we see optimism and promise in new directions of GBV research, we urge ongoing research to retain the wisdoms and critical perspectives that marked the beginnings of GBV inquiry.

Audit as Accountability: Technical Authority and Expertise in the Governance of Private Financing for Development

The paper examines the emergence of a new landscape of international development finance that is blurring traditional boundaries between public and private resources for meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other global public goods (GPGs). In the SDG financing ecosystem, private actors are no longer passive bystanders in the development process but as active contributors to and investors in development projects and programmes. The paper argues that the emerging ‘private turn’ in the architecture of development finance represents a technology of governance that is rooted in the assemblage of international development policy and practice. This regime constitutes an emerging complex and often problematic framework of organising and managing countries’ access to external finance and establishing their terms of engagement with the broader global economy.

Expanding on prior conceptualizations of teacher noticing

While recent research demonstrates that teacher noticing is a core construct of teaching, it also raises new questions about this construct. Here, we offer an expanded framework that addresses three key questions. Specifically, we suggest that attending involves not only selecting particular features of instruction to observe, but also disregarding aspects of classroom interactions that are less consequential. In addition, we propose that a stance of inquiry about observed phenomena is central to drawing inferences about observed phenomena. Finally, we extend the boundaries of teacher noticing to include shaping, the act of creating interactions that provide increased opportunities to attend to and interpret noteworthy mathematical interactions. In other words, teachers are not simply passive bystanders in the act of noticing, rather they shape interactions to gain access to additional information to allow for further observation and interpretation of student thinking.

Molecular Biology of Eosinophils: Introduction.

The eosinophil is an enigmatic cell with a continuing ability to fascinate. A considerable history of research endeavor on eosinophil biology stretches from the present time back to the nineteenth century. Perhaps one of the most fascinating aspects of the eosinophil is how accumulating knowledge has changed the perception of its function from passive bystander, modulator of inflammation, to potent effector cell loaded with histotoxic substances through to more recent recognition that it can act as both a positive and negative regulator of complex events in both innate and adaptive immunity. This book consists of chapters written by experts in the field of eosinophil biology that provide comprehensive clearly written protocols for techniques designed to underpin research into the function of the eosinophil in health and disease.

CYBERAGGRESSION: THE EFFECT OF PARENTAL MONITORING ON BYSTANDER ROLES

The digital world has created new opportunities for aggression through cyberaggression. Despite growing research interest in cyberaggression, little is known about the various bystander roles in the digital interaction. This paper examines the effect of parental monitoring practices (parental restriction, youth disclosure, and parental solicitation) on five bystander roles: aggressor-supporter, defender, help-seeker, outsider, and passive bystander. Data were derived from self-report questionnaires answered by a sample of 501 adolescents in Israel. The findings indicate that adolescents who share their experiences of cyberaggression with their parents are more likely than others to defend the cybervictim. Interaction effects were found between adolescent gender, installing warning applications, parent gender, and the aggressor-supporter role. Boys whose parents installed warning applications and whose fathers monitored their online activities were positively associated with the aggressor-supporter role, while girls who were higher aggressor-supporter reported that their parents used warning applications but did not monitor their online activities. The discussion focuses on the theoretical and practical implications of the effectiveness of parental monitoring on the cyberaggression bystander’s role.

Commentary: Right ventricular dysfunction after cardiac surgery: Machine learning to teach us what we already know?

Most pharmacologic and technologic advances over the past decades to address heart failure have focused on the left ventricle, while allowing the right ventricle (RV) to be a passive bystander. However, most surgeons who perform complex cardiovascular surgery with prolonged ischemic times have been humbled time and again by RV dysfunction postcardiotomy. Despite improvements in myocardial protection, RV failure, when it occurs, carries significant morbidity1,2 and is a feared complication after cardiac surgery.

Crossing boundaries: Interplay between the immune system and oligodendrocyte lineage cells

Oligodendrocytes and their progenitors are glial cells in the central nervous system, which have been mainly implicated with the homeostatic roles of axonal myelin ensheathment but serve as targets of the peripheral immune system attack in the context of diseases like multiple sclerosis. This view of oligodendroglia as passive bystanders with no immunological properties was first challenged in the 1980s when it was reported that the cytokine interferon γ could induce the gene expression of the major histocompatibility complexes (MHC) class I and II. While the physiological role of this induction was controversial for decades to follow, recent studies suggest that oligodendroglia survey their environment, respond to a larger array of cues and can indeed exert immunomodulatory functions, which are particularly relevant in the context of neurodegeneration and demyelinating diseases. The alternative functionality of oligodendroglia not only regulates immune cell responses, but also hinders remyelination, and might thereby be key to understanding MS disease pathology and promoting regeneration after immune-mediated demyelination.

Anybody watching? How others affect helpful actions.

A new study by Havlik et al. (Science Advances, 6(28), eabb4205, 2020) reveals that rats are less likely to help a conspecific in need in the presence of passive bystanders, but that they are more likely to help when there are active bystanders that engage in helping. This study highlights the social skills of rats and the role of bystanders on cooperation, raising a range of interesting questions that should be explored both theoretically and empirically.

Why someone did not stop them? Aversive racism and the responsibility of bystanders

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine whether the impact of persistent racial bias, discrimination and racial violence is facilitated by otherwise well-intentioned individuals who fail to act or intercede. Utilizing the aversive racism framework, the need to move beyond awareness raising to facilitate behavioral changes is discussed. Examining the unique lens provided by the aversive racism framework and existing research, the bystander effect provides important insights on recent acts of racial violence such as the murder of Mr. George Floyd. Some promise is shown by the work on effective bystander behavior training and highlights the need for shared responsibility in preventing the outcomes of racial violence and discrimination to create meaningful and long-lasting social change.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses literature based on the aversive racism framework together with the literature on the bystander effect to understand the factors, conditions and consequences for lack of intervention when the victim is African American. This paper also provides evidence and theory-based recommendations for strategies to change passive bystanders into active allies.FindingsThe use of the aversive racism framework provides a powerful lens to help explain the inconsistencies in the bystander effect based on the race of the victim. The implications for intervention models point to the need for behavioral and competency-based approaches that have been shown to provide meaningful change.Practical implicationsSeveral different approaches to address incidents of racial aggression and violence have been developed in the past. However, given the principles of aversive racism, a unique approach that considers the inconsistencies between self-perceptions and actions is needed. This sets a new agenda for future research and meaningful behavioral intervention programs that seek to equip bystanders to intercede in the future.Social implicationsThe need to address and provide effective strategies to reduce the incidence of racial aggression and violence have wide-ranging benefits for individuals, communities and society.Originality/valueBy connecting the aversive racism framework to the bystander effect, the need for different models for developing responsive and active bystanders can be more effectively outlined.