Altered signaling through the TCR is currently showing promise for immunotherapy. However, the molecular mechanisms are not completely understood. Therefore, we investigated whether varying the strength of TCR engagement in various human T cells would yield different second messenger responses. The kinetics and duration of extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) activation, central to multi...

This paper brings understanding to the ethical dimensions of human health research conducted in the context of contaminated sites. Principle-based ethical analysis, complemented with virtuous traits of character, aid in bringing clarity to recommendations for actions following research. Epidemiology is the discipline for conducting health research not only because of its methodological foundati...

In this report I present hierarchical parallel Markov models for the creation of interactive social agents for video games and entertainment. The approach extends existing, popular character technologies for social, communicative interaction. First, adding the knowledge of temporal interaction structure enables natural language interaction on a time scale much longer than current chatterbot tec...

BACKGROUND Childhood cancer may radically change the daily lives of young survivors, particularly in school. Depending on the sense they derive from the experience of illness, survivors may go through profound transformations in the way they approach life. METHODS This exploratory study reports on school engagement of cancer survivors by examining their perceptions of benefits and burdens in ...

Hypertension (HTN) is the most common chronic disease in the U.S., and the standard model of office-based care delivery has yielded suboptimal outcomes, with approximately 50% of affected patients not achieving blood pressure (BP) control. Poor population-level BP control has been primarily attributed to therapeutic inertia and low patient engagement. New models of care delivery utilizing patie...

The paper discusses the role of argumentative competencies for the achievement of patient engagement through communication in doctor-patient consultations. The achievement of patient engagement is being proposed by recent studies as a condition that can facilitate in particular patient adherence, which involves behavior change. One obstacle to behavior change that has been observed is reactance...

PURPOSE Primary care needs new models to facilitate advance care planning conversations. These conversations focus on preferences regarding serious illness and may involve patients, decision makers, and health care providers. We describe the feasibility of the first primary care-based group visit model focused on advance care planning. METHODS We conducted a pilot demonstration of an advance ...

eHealth interventions are recognized to have a tremendous potential to promote patient engagement. To date, the majority of studies examine the efficacy of eHealth in enhancing clinical outcomes without focusing on patient engagement in its specificity. This paper aimed at reviewing findings from the literature about the use of eHealth in engaging patients in their own care process. We undertoo...

There is renewed interest in patient engagement in clinical and research settings, creating a need for documenting and publishing lessons learned from efforts to meaningfully engage patients. This article describes early lessons learned from the development of OCHIN's Patient Engagement Panel (PEP). OCHIN supports a national network of more than 300 community health centers (CHCs) and other pri...

As interactive robots become an increasingly expressive medium that we can use in applications as varied as entertainment or education, insight into details of human-robot interaction becomes more necessary. This study uses a social presence scale to show how robots compare to humans and animated characters during interactions with subjects and discusses the implications of these findings. The ...