“How am I supposed to feel?”: Social Support and Black Mothers’ Infant Feeding Decisions

Background: Many of the adverse health outcomes that breastfeeding protects against disparately affect black mothers and children; however, black mothers are the least likely racial group in the U.S. to breastfeed. Black mothers have indicated that breastfeeding barriers include a lack of social support. Qualitative studies examining such breastfeeding barriers often focus on women who have unsuccessfully breastfed and fail to define the experiences of women who have successfully breastfed. This study aims to identify the impacts of social support on the infant feeding decisions of black women with varying levels of breastfeeding success. Methods: Twenty-five black women were interviewed in mini-focus groups and were recruited according to three categorizations of breastfeeding duration: formula-fed only, breastfed for ≤3 months, or breastfed for ≥4 months. Focus group questions addressed mothers’ perceptions, attitudes, intentions, experiences, and perceived barriers and facilitators regarding infant feeding practices. Group interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and then analyzed specific to social support using a grounded theory approach. Results: Mothers in all three breastfeeding categorizations reported experiences with tangible, emotional, and informational support from members across sectors of their social networks. Additionally, mothers reported dissonance between informational support received and their personal infant feeding intentions as well as a need for increased social support regardless of infant feeding method. Conclusions: This study provides an in-depth analysis of social support as a facilitator and barrier to infant feeding decisions for black mothers. Given the findings, it is suspected that experiences with social support are integral to women’s infant feeding decisions.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/gradposters/1083/thumbnail.jp

Lower Bound of Multipartite Concurrence Based on Sub-quantum State Decomposition

We study the entanglement of tripartite quantum states and provide analytical lower bound of concurrence in terms of the concurrence of sub-states. The lower bound may improve all the existing lower bounds of concurrence. The approach is generalized to arbitrary dimensional multipartite systems.Comment: 5 page

Entanglement Property and Monogamy Relation of Gerneralized Mixed W

We introduce a new class of multipartite entangled mixed states with pure state decompositions of generalized W states, similar to Schmidt-correlated states having generalized GHZ states in the pure state decomposition. The entanglement and separability properties are studied according to PPT operations. Monogamy relations linked to these states are also investigated.Comment: 8 page

The Potential Roles of Long Noncoding RNAs (lncRNA) in Glioblastoma Development

Long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) may contribute to the initiation and progression of tumor. In this study, we first systematically compared lncRNA and mRNA expression between glioblastoma and paired normal brain tissues using microarray data. We found 27 lncRNA and 82 mRNA significantly upregulated in glioblastoma, as well as 198 lncRNA and 285 mRNA significantly downregulated in glioblastoma. We identified 138 coexpressed lncRNA–mRNA pairs from these differentially expressed lncRNA and genes. Subsequent pathway analysis of the lncRNA-paired genes indicated that EphrinB–EPHB, p75-mediated signaling, TNFα/NF-κB, and ErbB2/ErbB3 signaling pathways might be altered in glioblastoma. Specifically, lncRNA RAMP2-AS1 had significant decrease of expression in glioblastoma tissues and showed coexpressional relationship with NOTCH3, an important tumor promoter in many neoplastic diseases. Our follow up experiment indicated that (i) an overexpression of RAMP2-AS1 reduced glioblastoma cell proliferation in vitro and also reduced glioblastoma xenograft tumors in vivo; (ii) NOTCH3 and RAMP2-AS1 coexpression rescued the inhibitory action of RAMP2-AS1 in glioblastoma cells; and (iii) RNA pull-down assay revealed a direct interaction of RAMP2-AS1 with DHC10, which may consequently inhibit, as we hypothesize, the expression of NOTCH3 and its downstream signaling molecule HES1 in glioblastoma. Taken together, our data revealed that lncRNA expression profile in glioblastoma tissue was significantly altered; and RAMP2-AS1 might play a tumor suppressive role in glioblastoma through an indirect inhibition of NOTCH3. Our results provided some insights into understanding the key roles of lncRNA–mRNA coregulation in human glioblastoma and the mechanisms responsible for glioblastoma progression and pathogenesis. Mol Cancer Ther; 15(12); 2977–86. ©2016 AACR

Inequalities Detecting Quantum Entanglement for 2⊗d2\otimes d Systems

We present a set of inequalities for detecting quantum entanglement of $2\otimes d$ quantum states. For $2\otimes 2$ and $2\otimes 3$ systems, the inequalities give rise to sufficient and necessary separability conditions for both pure and mixed states. For the case of $d>3$, these inequalities are necessary conditions for separability, which detect all entangled states that are not positive under partial transposition and even some entangled states with positive partial transposition. These inequalities are given by mean values of local observables and present an experimental way of detecting the quantum entanglement of $2\otimes d$ quantum states and even multi-qubit pure states.Comment: 6 page