According to the census data published by the government in 2016, 92% of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region population is ethnic Chinese, while the number of ethnic minorities increased significantly by around 70% over the past decade. Enhancing the youth’s intercultural sensitivity is becoming critical. Although many of the schools start to provide intercultural sensitivity training as extra‐curriculum activities, students often find them unattractive while teachers question their effectiveness. In this paper, we present a virtual reality enabled approach for enhancing the youth’s intercultural sensitivity. The objective is to design and develop an approach that can benefit from using virtual reality to deliver the instructional materials, making the learning more effective. A total number of three different virtual reality learning scenarios have been created, covering topics such as views of marriage and family, religious beliefs, and language barrier. The empirical study found significantly increase of intercultural sensitivity among the 67 qualified participants after joining the session. The calculated linear regression model also suggested that the participants’ perceived motivation from the virtual reality learning content positively contributed to the intercultural sensitivity increase, while interestingly the perceived enjoyment during the virtual reality exposure may negatively affected the learning outcomes.

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Abstract. Metastatic lung cancer is a leading cause of mortality and has a mortality rate of ≥90%. Isolinderalactone (ILL) is a sesquiterpene lactone compound that has been used in traditional Chinese medicine. Research has demonstrated that ILL has anti-inflammatory and anti-proliferative properties; however, to the best of our knowledge, studies investigating whether ILL can inhibit lung cancer cell metastasis have not been conducted. In the present study, 1-10 µM ILL was applied in the culturing of the A549 lung cancer cell line to investigate the effects of ILL on the invasion and migration of lung cancer cells, including whether the possible mechanisms of ILL are associated with the expression of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-2 and NME/NM23 nucleoside diphosphate kinase 1 (NM23-H1) genes. The results of the present study indicated that ILL inhibited the invasion and migration of the A549 cancer cells and exhibited a dose-response association. ILL also significantly inhibited the protein expression and activity of MMP-2 (P<0.05), exhibiting a trend similar to that of its invasion-and migration-associated properties. Further research revealed that ILL significantly increased the expression of NM23-H1 protein and inhibited the expression of β-catenin protein (P<0.05). The results of the present study is, to the best of our knowledge, the first to confirm that ILL can inhibit the invasion and migration of A549 cancer cells, with the possible mechanisms potentially involving the inhibition of MMP-2 and β-catenin protein expression resulting from the up regulation of NM23-H1 expression. IntroductionCancer is a leading cause of mortality; ~8.2 million people worldwide succumbed to cancer-associated mortality in 2012, with lung cancer accounting for ~1.59 million cases of mortality, or ~20% of the total (1). Lung cancer cell metastasis is a primary cause of mortality and those that experience it have a mortality rate of ≥90% (2). When it metastasizes, lung cancer has a 95% chance of affecting local lymph nodes and an 80% chance of affecting other organs (3,4). Thus, in clinical terms, the overall 5-year survival rate from the time of diagnosis to mortality for patients with lung cancer undergoing treatment is only 10-15% (5). Cancer cell metastasis is a complex multistep process involving invasion and migration (6-8). Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) are zinc/calcium-dependent endopeptidases involved in the degradation of the extracellular matrix, two examples of which are MMP-2 and -9 (7,9). MMP-2 is a notable factor in the development of tumor metastasis (7,10). MMP-2 is highly expressed in malignant tumors and serves a key role in cancer invasion and angiogenesis (7,11). The inhibition of MMP-2 is, therefore, an effective strategy for preventing tumor cell metastasis (11,12). The NME/NM23 nucleoside diphosphate kinase 1 (NM23) gene was first identified in the murine melanoma cell line exhibiting high metastatic activity; increasing the expression of this gene may also reduce the metastatic activity of tumor cel...

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