Nursing Students’ Perception of the Stigma of Mental Illness

Background: Mental health disorders are highly prevalent in the U.S. Nursing students’ perceptions regarding the stigma of mental illness will impact the quality of care delivered and the patients’ outcomes. Method: Data was collected from 64 sophomore students. Five open ended questions were distributed to the students during the first class. All the surveys were collected by a volunteer student and were placed in the instructor’s mailbox in a sealed envelope. Results: The results revealed three categories: students ‘perceptions of the causes of mental illness stigmatization, their own perception of mental illness, and their perception on how to break the cycle of stigmatization of mental illness. Conclusion: Nursing students provided insightful perceptions regarding the causes of the stigma and possible interventions. Collaborative efforts to break the stigma of mental illness include: education, acceptance, increasing awareness, and better portrayal in the media

Suppression of backward scattering of Dirac fermions in iron pnictides Ba(Fe1−x_{1-x}Rux_xAs)2_2

We report electronic transport of Dirac cones when Fe is replaced by Ru, which has an isoelectronic electron configuration to Fe, using single crystals of Ba(Fe$_{1-x}$Ru$_x$As)$_2$. The electronic transport of parabolic bands is shown to be suppressed by scattering due to the crystal lattice distortion and the impurity effect of Ru, while that of the Dirac cone is not significantly reduced due to the intrinsic character of Dirac cones. It is clearly shown from magnetoresistance and Hall coefficient measurements that the inverse of average mobility, proportional to cyclotron effective mass, develops as the square root of the carrier number (n) of the Dirac cones. This is the unique character of the Dirac cone linear dispersion relationship. Scattering of Ru on the Dirac cones is discussed in terms of the estimated mean free path using experimental parameters.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, To be published in Phys. Rev.

Structural study on hole-doped superconductors Pr1-xSrxFeAsO

The structural details in Pr1-xSrxFeAsO (1111) superconducting system are analyzed using data obtained from synchrotron X-ray diffraction and the structural parameters are carefully studied as the system is moving from non-superconducting to hole-doped superconducting with the Sr concentration. Superconductivity emerges when the Sr doping amount reaches 0.221. The linear increase of the lattice constants proves that Sr is successfully introduced into the system and its concentration can accurately be determined by the electron density analyses. The evolution of structural parameters with Sr concentration in Pr1-xSrxFeAsO and their comparison to other similar structural parameters of the related Fe-based superconductors suggest that the interlayer space between the conducting As-Fe-As layer and the insulating Pr-O-Pr layer is important for improving Tc in the hole-doped (1111) superconductors, which seems to be different from electron-doped systems.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures, 1 tabl

Rapamycin inhibits ALDH activity, resistance to oxidative stress, and metastatic potential in murine osteosarcoma cells

Osteosarcoma (OS) is the most common primary malignancy of bone. Mortality is determined by the presence of metastatic disease, but little is known regarding the biochemical events that drive metastases. Two murine OS cell lines, K7M2 and K12, are related but differ significantly in their metastatic potentials: K7M2 is highly metastatic whereas K12 displays much less metastatic potential. Using this experimental system, the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway has been implicated in OS metastasis. We also discovered that aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH, a stem cell marker) activity is higher in K7M2 cells than K12 cells. Rapamycin treatment reduces the expression and enzymatic activity of ALDH in K7M2 cells. ALDH inhibition renders these cells more susceptible to apoptotic death when exposed to oxidative stress. Furthermore, rapamycin treatment reduces bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP2) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) gene expression and inhibits K7M2 proliferation, migration, and invasion in vitro. Inhibition of ALDH with disulfiram correlated with decreased mTOR expression and activity. In conclusion, we provide evidence for interaction between mTOR activity, ALDH activity, and metastatic potential in murine OS cells. Our work suggests that mTOR and ALDH are therapeutic targets for the treatment and prevention of OS metastasis. © 2013 Xiaodong Mu et al

Rapamycin inhibits ALDH activity, resistance to oxidative stress, and metastatic potential in murine osteosarcoma cells

Osteosarcoma (OS) is the most common primary malignancy of bone. Mortality is determined by the presence of metastatic disease, but little is known regarding the biochemical events that drive metastases. Two murine OS cell lines, K7M2 and K12, are related but differ significantly in their metastatic potentials: K7M2 is highly metastatic whereas K12 displays much less metastatic potential. Using this experimental system, the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway has been implicated in OS metastasis. We also discovered that aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH, a stem cell marker) activity is higher in K7M2 cells than K12 cells. Rapamycin treatment reduces the expression and enzymatic activity of ALDH in K7M2 cells. ALDH inhibition renders these cells more susceptible to apoptotic death when exposed to oxidative stress. Furthermore, rapamycin treatment reduces bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP2) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) gene expression and inhibits K7M2 proliferation, migration, and invasion in vitro. Inhibition of ALDH with disulfiram correlated with decreased mTOR expression and activity. In conclusion, we provide evidence for interaction between mTOR activity, ALDH activity, and metastatic potential in murine OS cells. Our work suggests that mTOR and ALDH are therapeutic targets for the treatment and prevention of OS metastasis. © 2013 Xiaodong Mu et al

Notch signaling is associated with ALDH activity and an aggressive metastatic phenotype in murine osteosarcoma cells

Osteosarcoma (OS) is the most common primary malignancy of bone, and pulmonary metastatic disease accounts for nearly all mortality. However, little is known about the biochemical signaling alterations that drive the progression of metastatic disease. Two murine OS cell populations, K7M2 and K12, are clonally related but differ significantly in their metastatic phenotypes and therefore represent excellent tools for studying metastatic OS molecular biology. K7M2 cells are highly metastatic, whereas K12 cells display limited metastatic potential. Here we report that the expression of Notch genes (Notch1, 2, 4) are up-regulated, including downstream targets Hes1 and Stat3, in the highly metastatic K7M2 cells compared to the less metastatic K12 cells, indicating that the Notch signaling pathway is more active in K7M2 cells. We have previously described that K7M2 cells exhibit higher levels of aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) activity. Here we report that K7M2 cell ALDH activity is reduced with Notch inhibition, suggesting that ALDH activity may be regulated in part by the Notch pathway. Notch signaling is also associated with increased resistance to oxidative stress, migration, invasion, and VEGF expression in vitro. However, Notch inhibition did not significantly alter K7M2 cell proliferation. In conclusion, we provide evidence that Notch signaling is associated with ALDH activity and increased metastatic behavior in OS cells. Both Notch and ALDH are putative molecular targets for the treatment and prevention of OS metastasis. © 2013 Mu, Isaac, Greco, Huard and Weiss

Rapamycin inhibits ALDH activity, resistance to oxidative stress, and metastatic potential in murine osteosarcoma cells

Osteosarcoma (OS) is the most common primary malignancy of bone. Mortality is determined by the presence of metastatic disease, but little is known regarding the biochemical events that drive metastases. Two murine OS cell lines, K7M2 and K12, are related but differ significantly in their metastatic potentials: K7M2 is highly metastatic whereas K12 displays much less metastatic potential. Using this experimental system, the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway has been implicated in OS metastasis. We also discovered that aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH, a stem cell marker) activity is higher in K7M2 cells than K12 cells. Rapamycin treatment reduces the expression and enzymatic activity of ALDH in K7M2 cells. ALDH inhibition renders these cells more susceptible to apoptotic death when exposed to oxidative stress. Furthermore, rapamycin treatment reduces bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP2) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) gene expression and inhibits K7M2 proliferation, migration, and invasion in vitro. Inhibition of ALDH with disulfiram correlated with decreased mTOR expression and activity. In conclusion, we provide evidence for interaction between mTOR activity, ALDH activity, and metastatic potential in murine OS cells. Our work suggests that mTOR and ALDH are therapeutic targets for the treatment and prevention of OS metastasis. © 2013 Xiaodong Mu et al

Relating Leptogenesis to Low Energy Flavor Violating Observables in Models with Spontaneous CP Violation

In the minimal left-right symmetric model, there are only two intrinsic CP violating phases to account for all CP violation in both the quark and lepton sectors, if CP is broken spontaneously by the complex phases in the VEV's of the scalar fields. In addition, the left- and right-handed Majorana mass terms for the neutrinos are proportional to each other due to the parity in the model. This is thus a very constrained framework, making the existence of correlations among the CP violation in leptogenesis, neutrino oscillation and neutrinoless double beta decay possible. In these models, CP violation in the leptonic sector and CP violation in the quark sector are also related. We find, however, that such connection is rather weak due to the large hierarchy in the bi-doublet VEV required by a realistic quark sector.Comment: RevTeX4, 21 pages; v2: references added, version to appear in Phys. Rev.