Resistance to chemotherapy in a childhood cancer

Non-rhabdomyosarcoma soft tissue sarcomas (NRSTS) make up about 8% of all childhood cancers. The cause(s) of these tumors is not known. Despite treatments, including surgery and chemotherapy, the tumors frequently return and spread to other sites in the body. Carmen Torres-Zárate and collaborators at the Instituto Nacional de Pediatíra and Universidad Autónoma de México, in Mexico City, Mexico, studied the possible reason for the recurrence of NRSTS, with a focus on the enzymes that perform drug metabolism in many tissues in the body.

Read More
Autoethnographic reflections on composing (and being composed by) an academic career: Cultivating and navigating inner compasses within institutional terrains

Informed by intellectual pursuits, academic journeys are as experiential as they are conceptual, responsive to encounters with people and ideas that shape our thinking and being. While grounded within my specific circumstances and the domains of music, the arts, and qualitative research in the social sciences, the issues addressed in this article underlie academic trajectories across disciplinary and geographical cultures.

Read More
Subjective, but very much real, cognitive decline in older adults

People with subjective cognitive decline are twice more likely to develop dementia compared to those who do not experience cognitive decline. A better understanding of their early, subtle, functional decline will support dementia prevention efforts, because dementia is characterized by decline in both cognitive abilities and everyday functioning.

Read More
5 Tips for Getting your Article through Peer Review Quickly and Successfully

After putting an exhausting amount of time and effort into researching and writing your research, spending more time preparing your article for submission and peer review can fall by the wayside. Taking the time to polish your work and to ensure appropriate journal selection and compliance with journal guidelines and requirements can have a major impact on a timely and successful peer review.

Read More
Testing Theories of Goal Progress within Online Learning

Online educational platforms like Coursera and Khan Academy make education accessible by allowing learners to progress at their own pace within opt-in and on-demand structures. An advantage of this online learning setting is that we can track learner activity within different courses, including watching lectures and taking quizzes, and look at how the motivation to consume course content varies over time. Using data from thousands of learners across four introductory online business courses, we wanted to investigate three main questions in our research: (1) Do any distinctive patterns or “learning styles” emerge? (2) How do different learning styles relate to important downstream outcomes such as final performance and enrollment in additional courses on the platform? (3) Are there any differences in behavior between learners who had paid or not paid for the option of a course certificate?

Read More
Marketplaces of Misinformation: A Study of How Vaccine Misinformation Is Legitimized on Social Media

Misinformation and conspiracy theories about vaccines spread through social media and shape how people make health decisions. Our latest work addresses these questions by identifying how vaccine misinformation that originates in books sold via online marketplaces gets legitimized and spread through social media.

Read More
The Transformative Potential of Entrepreneurship for Women Living in Poverty

There are hundreds-of-millions of women entrepreneurs in the world who live in poverty and run micro-enterprises to meet their own basic needs, and that of their customers. Their impact in low-income communities around the world is profound and pervasive. Yet – there is very little that we understand about the lives of these women-entrepreneurs - a situation that my research aims to remedy.

Read More
Rise Up: Understanding Youth Social Entrepreneurs and Their Ecosystems

Youth are a powerful force for positive change in the world. A growing number of young people who care about a wide array of issues—gun reform, climate change, education, racial justice, health care, and voting rights—are rising up to take action on these vital social issues and, in doing so, shaping their own and society’s collective future. Across the globe, young people are growing impatient with inaction; they will not allow ignorance and inertia to win. Following the tradition of youth-led movements that have changed the world by fighting for civil rights in the United States, eradicating corruption in Brazil, and ending dictatorships around the world, youth changemakers are taking positive action to create societal change. They are working to accomplish a mission codified by our research partner, Future Coalition—a youth-founded and youth-led social action organization— to make the future a better, safer, and more just place for everyone.

Read More