Asian Americans’ Cancer Information Seeking, Fatalistic Belief, and Perceived Risk: Current Status and Relationships with Cancer Prevention and Detection Behaviors

This study pursues four research goals: (1) to examine Asian Americans and Asian ethnic groups’ (i.e., Chinese, Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese) information seeking, fatalistic belief, and perceived risk of cancer, in comparison to non-Hispanic Whites; (2) to identify characteristics of Asian Americans who seek cancer information, hold fatalistic cancer belief, and perceive cancer risk; (3) to assess cancer prevention and detection behavior gaps between Asian Americans and Whites, and (4) to explore whether such gaps can be explained by cancer information seeking, fatalistic belief, and perceived risk. Data from 2011-2014 Health Information National Trends Surveys (HINTS) were analyzed. Asian Americans and most Asian ethnic groups were less likely to seek cancer information and perceive their cancer risk as lower than Whites. However, Asian Americans were less likely to hold some fatalistic beliefs (i.e., everything causes cancer, there are too many cancer prevention recommendations) than Whites. Asian Americans’ odds of engaging in breast cancer screening, physical activity, vegetable intake, and sun protection increased when cancer information seeking, fatalistic belief, and perceived risk of cancer were controlled

Parking functions on toppling matrices

Let $\Delta$ be an integer $n \times n$-matrix which satisfies the conditions: $\det \Delta\neq 0$, $\Delta_{ij}\leq 0\text{ for }i\neq j,$ and there exists a vector ${\bf r}=(r_1,\ldots,r_n)>0$ such that ${\bf r}\Delta \geq 0$. Here the notation ${\bf r}> 0$ means that $r_i>0$ for all $i$, and ${\bf r}\geq {\bf r}'$ means that $r_i\geq r'_i$ for every $i$. Let $\mathscr{R}(\Delta)$ be the set of vectors ${\bf r}$ such that ${\bf r}>0$ and ${\bf r}\Delta\geq 0$. In this paper, $(\Delta,{\bf r})$-parking functions are defined for any ${\bf r}\in\mathscr{R}(\Delta)$. It is proved that the set of $(\Delta,{\bf r})$-parking functions is independent of ${\bf r}$ for any ${\bf r}\in\mathscr{R}(\Delta)$. For this reason, $(\Delta,{\bf r})$-parking functions are simply called $\Delta$-parking functions. It is shown that the number of $\Delta$-parking functions is less than or equal to the determinant of $\Delta$. Moreover, the definition of $(\Delta,{\bf r})$-recurrent configurations are given for any ${\bf r}\in\mathscr{R}(\Delta)$. It is proved that the set of $(\Delta,{\bf r})$-recurrent configurations is independent of ${\bf r}$ for any ${\bf r}\in\mathscr{R}(\Delta)$. Hence, $(\Delta,{\bf r})$-recurrent configurations are simply called $\Delta$-recurrent configurations. It is obtained that the number of $\Delta$-recurrent configurations is larger than or equal to the determinant of $\Delta$. A simple bijection from $\Delta$-parking functions to $\Delta$-recurrent configurations is established. It follows from this bijection that the number of $\Delta$-parking functions and the number of $\Delta$-recurrent configurations are both equal to the determinant of $\Delta$

Toward a unified interpretation of quark and lepton mixing from flavor and CP symmetries

We discussed the scenario that a discrete flavor group combined with CP symmetry is broken to $Z_2\times CP$ in both neutrino and charged lepton sectors. All lepton mixing angles and CP violation phases are predicted to depend on two free parameters $\theta_{l}$ and $\theta_{\nu}$ varying in the range of $[0, \pi)$. As an example, we comprehensively study the lepton mixing patterns which can be derived from the flavor group $\Delta(6n^2)$ and CP symmetry. Three kinds of phenomenologically viable lepton mixing matrices are obtained up to row and column permutations. We further extend this approach to the quark sector. The precisely measured quark mixing angles and CP invariant can be accommodated for certain values of the free parameters $\theta_{u}$ and $\theta_{d}$. A simultaneous description of quark and lepton flavor mixing structures can be achieved from a common flavor group $\Delta(6n^2)$ and CP, and accordingly the smallest value of the group index $n$ is $n=7$.Comment: 40 pages, 8 figure

A resonance interpretation for the nonmonotonic behavior of the phi-photoproduction cross section near threshold

We study whether the nonmonotonic behavior found in the differential cross section of the phi-meson photoproduction near threshold can be described by a resonance. The resonant contribution is evaluated by using an effective Lagrangian approach. We find that, with the assumption of a J^P=3/2^- resonance with mass of 2.10 \pm 0.03 GeV and width of 0.465 \pm 0.141 GeV, LEPS data can indeed be well described. The ratio of the helicity amplitudes A_1/2/A_3/2 calculated from the resulting coupling constants differs in sign from that of the known D13(2080). We further find that the addition of this postulated resonance can substantially improve the agreement between the existing theoretical predictions and the recent omega photoproduction data if a large value of the OZI evading parameter x_OZI = 12 is assumed for the resonance.Comment: Contribution to the Proceedings of BARYONS'10 - International conference on the structure of baryons, Dec. 7-11, 2010, Osaka, Japa