Health Behavior Change Interventions for Teenage and Young Adult Cancer Survivors: A Systematic Review

PURPOSE: It is important that teenage and young adult (TYA) cancer survivors adopt a healthy lifestyle, since health vulnerabilities associated with their diagnosis and treatment may be exacerbated by poor health behaviors. This review aims to synthesize the current literature on health behavior change interventions created specifically for TYA-aged cancer survivors. METHOD: MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, and CINAHL databases were searched for studies investigating interventions targeting one or more health behaviors, including: physical activity, diet, smoking cessation, and alcohol consumption. Studies were eligible for review if the study population were defined as TYA cancer survivors and the mean age of the sample was younger than 30 years of age. RESULTS: Twelve studies were identified, of which nine were randomized controlled trials. Physical activity was the most commonly targeted health behavior. Six of the 12 interventions included within this review were successful in changing health behavior. Due to the heterogeneity of intervention characteristics, the relationship between intervention efficacy or outcome and intervention content, delivery mode, or theoretical framework was not discernible. Nevertheless, trends emerged relating to the delivery and content of health behavior interventions designed specifically for TYA cancer survivors. CONCLUSION: More research is required to identify the most effective means of promoting health behavior change among the TYA cancer survivor population. Specifically, future research should focus on providing evidence of the efficiency and feasibility of interventions that use online technologies to facilitate remote intervention delivery and peer support

Variable-rate application of fertiliser – A tool for improving farm systems and environmental performance?

Nitrogenous fertilisers – especially urea – are key inputs into many farming systems. In New Zealand, increasing restrictions on nitrogen application on pastures means there is an urgent need to ensure that it is used effectively. One technology that has been developed that may contribute to this challenge is variable-rate application (VRA) of fertiliser. This trial used VRA technology to apply N fertiliser as a function of the pasture mass present at the time of application. The effect of VRA of N fertiliser on pasture production on five farms over one season was examined, and the impact of those changes on farm system metrics, including environmental performance, was estimated. Averaged over all five farms, there was no statistically significant difference between VRA and blanket-rate application of fertiliser on pasture production. However, one farm did show a significant difference. Although the absolute difference was small, this suggested that VRA could be a useful tool in addressing the challenge of driving better farm performance with reduced environmental impact

Vacuolin-1 potently and reversibly inhibits autophagosome-lysosome fusion by activating RAB5A

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Massive Field Stars and the Stellar Clustering Law

The distribution of N*, the number of OB stars per association or cluster, appears to follow a universal power-law form $N*^{-2}$ in the local Universe. We evaluate the distribution of N* in the Small Magellanic Cloud using recent broadband optical and space-ultraviolet data, with special attention to the lowest values of N*. We find that the power-law distribution in N* continues smoothly down to N*=1. This strongly suggests that the formation of field massive stars is a continuous process with those in associations, and that the field stars do not originate from a different star formation mode. Our results are consistent with the model that field massive stars represent the most massive members in groups of smaller stars, as expected if the clustering law applies to much lower masses as is expected from the stellar initial mass function (IMF). These results are consistent with the simultaneous existence of a universal IMF and a universal clustering law. Jointly, these laws imply that the fraction of field OB stars typically ranges from about 35% to 7% for most astrophysical situations, with an inverse logarithmic dependence on the most populous cluster, and hence, on galaxy size and/or star formation rate. There are important consequences for global feedback effects in galaxies: field stars should therefore contribute proportionately to the volume of the warm ionized medium, and equal relative contributions by superbubbles of all sizes to the interstellar porosity are expected.Comment: Accepted by AJ. 13 pages, 9 figures in 11 files, uses emulateapj.st

The non-coding landscape of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma

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Gravitino dark matter in the constrained next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model with neutralino next-to-lightest superpartner

The viability of a possible cosmological scenario is investigated. The theoretical framework is the constrained next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model (cNMSSM), with a gravitino playing the role of the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP) and a neutralino acting as the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP). All the necessary constraints from colliders and cosmology have been taken into account. For gravitino we have considered the two usual production mechanisms, namely out-of equillibrium decay from the NLSP, and scattering processes from the thermal bath. The maximum allowed reheating temperature after inflation, as well as the maximum allowed gravitino mass are determined.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figure

Spontaneous breaking of SU(3) to finite family symmetries: a pedestrian's approach

Non-Abelian discrete family symmetries play a pivotal role in the formulation of models with tri-bimaximal lepton mixing. We discuss how to obtain symmetries such as A4, semidirect product of Z7 and Z3, and Delta(27) from an underlying SU(3) gauge symmetry. Higher irreducible representations are required to achieve the spontaneous breaking of the continuous group. We present methods of identifying the required vacuum alignments and discuss in detail the symmetry breaking potentials.Comment: 21 page

Accreting Black Holes

This chapter provides a general overview of the theory and observations of black holes in the Universe and on their interpretation. We briefly review the black hole classes, accretion disk models, spectral state classification, the AGN classification, and the leading techniques for measuring black hole spins. We also introduce quasi-periodic oscillations, the shadow of black holes, and the observations and the theoretical models of jets.Comment: 41 pages, 18 figures. To appear in "Tutorial Guide to X-ray and Gamma-ray Astronomy: Data Reduction and Analysis" (Ed. C. Bambi, Springer Singapore, 2020). v3: fixed some typos and updated some parts. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1711.1025