Self-efficacy for coping with cancer in a multiethnic sample of breast cancer patients: Associations with barriers to pain management and distress

Objectives This study examined the interrelations of self-efficacy for coping with cancer, perceived barriers to pain management, distress, and pain outcomes in a multiethnic sample of breast cancer patients. The extent to which ethnicity (Black, Latina, or White), language (English or Spanish), and level of education and income predicted these variables was also assessed. Methods Participants were breast cancer patients with persistent pain (N=87) who were recruited from oncology clinics in New York City. Patients completed an assessment battery that included measures of self-efficacy for coping with cancer, barriers to pain management, distress, and pain outcomes. Results Greater self-efficacy for coping with cancer was associated with older age, less time since diagnosis, and less distress. In addition, less self-efficacy for seeking and understanding medical information, Spanish language preference, and greater distress predicted greater barriers to pain management. Average pain severity was higher among Spanish-speaking individuals and those with lower incomes. Discussion Findings point to the potential importance of self-efficacy for seeking and understanding medical information and perceived barriers to pain management in understanding the psychologic well-being of breast cancer patients with pain, especially those who are Spanish-speaking

Hardy's inequality for functions vanishing on a part of the boundary

We develop a geometric framework for Hardy's inequality on a bounded domain when the functions do vanish only on a closed portion of the boundary.Comment: 26 pages, 2 figures, includes several improvements in Sections 6-8 allowing to relax the assumptions in the main results. Final version published at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11118-015-9463-

Bitter gourd, Momordica charantia L., breeding lines differ in secondary metabolite content according to market type

Bitter gourd, Momordica charantia L., is an important commercial cucurbitaceous vegetable of enormous medicinal value in Asia because of its secondary metabolite content. We report here the characterization and evaluation of open-pollinated (OP) edible South Asian and Southeast Asian types of bitter gourd breeding lines, developed at the World Vegetable Center, for horticultural traits (11 OP) and secondary metabolites (10 OP) and their comparisons with commercial OP and F1 hybrid cultivars. Marketable yields of South Asian and Southeast Asian type breeding lines were comparable to the OP ‘BARI Karella 1’ and the hybrid ‘Benteng’, respectively.The bitter gourd cultivars and breeding lines included in this study exhibited specific patterns for five secondary metabolites (saponins, carotenoids, chlorophyll a and b, and vitamin C): in general the two cultivars and South Asian type breeding lines contained higher levels of secondary metabolites, e.g. carotenoids, than the Southeast Asian bitter gourd breeding lines.Some of these bitter gourd lines will be released to Asian home and school gardeners after conducting multi-location trials across Asia to improve vegetable consumption as a main task of bitter gourd breeding

Worker remittances and the global preconditions of ‘smart development’

With the growing environmental crisis affecting our globe, ideas to weigh economic or social progress by the ‘energy input’ necessary to achieve it are increasingly gaining acceptance. This question is intriguing and is being dealt with by a growing number of studies, focusing on the environmental price of human progress. Even more intriguing, however, is the question of which factors of social organization contribute to a responsible use of the resources of our planet to achieve a given social result (‘smart development’). In this essay, we present the first systematic study on how migration – or rather, more concretely, received worker remittances per GDP – helps the nations of our globe to enjoy social and economic progress at a relatively small environmental price. We look at the effects of migration on the balance sheets of societal accounting, based on the ‘ecological price’ of the combined performance of democracy, economic growth, gender equality, human development, research and development, and social cohesion. Feminism in power, economic freedom, population density, the UNDP education index as well as the receipt of worker remittances all significantly contribute towards a ‘smart overall development’, while high military expenditures and a high world economic openness are a bottleneck for ‘smart overall development’

Annexin A6 modulates TBC1D15/Rab7/StARD3 axis to control endosomal cholesterol export in NPC1 cells

Cholesterol accumulation in late endosomes is a prevailing phenotype of Niemann-Pick type C1 (NPC1) mutant cells. Likewise, annexin A6 (AnxA6) overexpression induces a phenotype reminiscent of NPC1 mutant cells. Here, we demonstrate that this cellular cholesterol imbalance is due to AnxA6 promoting Rab7 inactivation via TBC1D15, a Rab7-GAP. In NPC1 mutant cells, AnxA6 depletion and eventual Rab7 activation was associated with peripheral distribution and increased mobility of late endosomes. This was accompanied by an enhanced lipid accumulation in lipid droplets in an acyl-CoA:cholesterol acyltransferase (ACAT)-dependent manner. Moreover, in AnxA6-deficient NPC1 mutant cells, Rab7-mediated rescue of late endosome-cholesterol export required the StAR-related lipid transfer domain-3 (StARD3) protein. Electron microscopy revealed a significant increase of membrane contact sites (MCS) between late endosomes and ER in NPC1 mutant cells lacking AnxA6, suggesting late endosome-cholesterol transfer to the ER via Rab7 and StARD3-dependent MCS formation. This study identifies AnxA6 as a novel gatekeeper that controls cellular distribution of late endosome-cholesterol via regulation of a Rab7-GAP and MCS formation