BACKGROUND African‐American women have had a lower incidence, yet higher mortality rate from breast cancer compared with White‐American women. African‐American women also have had a higher risk for early‐onset, high‐grade, node‐positive, and hormone receptor‐negative disease. Similar features have characterized hereditary breast cancer, prompting speculation that risk factors could be genetically transmitted. Further evaluation of this theory required the study of breast cancer among women from sub‐Saharan Africa because of their shared ancestry with African‐American women. METHODS Publications from 1988 to 2004 of English‐language literature on breast cancer in Africa were reviewed. RESULTS Women from sub‐Saharan Africa were found to have a low incidence of breast cancer. This was partly explained by a largely protective reproductive history, including late menarche, early menopause, high parity with prolonged breastfeeding, irregular menses, and fewer ovulatory cycles. The average age at diagnosis, however, was approximately 10 years younger than breast cancer patients of western nations, and disease stage distribution was shifted toward more advanced disease, which resulted in higher mortality rates. These features were found to be similar to data on breast cancer in African‐American women. Mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 have been reported in African‐American women, but the extent of the contribution of BRCA1 and BRCA2 to breast cancer burden in Africa was uncertain. Limited financial resources lead to suboptimal cancer data collection, as well as delayed diagnosis and treatment of many African breast cancer patients. CONCLUSIONS Parallels between breast cancer burdens of African‐American and sub‐Saharan–African women were provocative, indicating the need for further exploration of possible genetically transmitted features related to estrogen metabolism and/or breast cancer risk. Cancer 2005. © 2005 American Cancer Society.

Abstract:Recently, households have begun to adopt networking technologies to interconnect devices within the home. Yet little is known about the consequences for households of setting up and living with these complex networks, nor the impact of such technologies on the routines of the home. In this paper, we report findings from an empirical study of households containing complex networks of computer and audio/visual technologies. Our study finds that home networks require significant household effort not just to coordinate their use, but also their set up and maintenance. We also show how the coordination around networking has to be worked into the routines of the home and the householders.

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This paper presents a context-aware mobile recommender system, codenamed Magitti. Magitti is unique in that it infers user activity from context and patterns of user behavior and, without its user having to issue a query, automatically generates recommendations for content matching. Extensive field studies of leisure time practices in an urban setting (Tokyo) motivated the idea, shaped the details of its design and provided data describing typical behavior patterns. The paper describes the fieldwork, user interface, system components and functionality, and an evaluation of the Magitti prototype.

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Serosal pathologies including malignant mesothelioma (MM) can show features of osseous and/or cartilaginous differentiation although the mechanism for its formation is unknown. Mesothelial cells have the capacity to differentiate into cells with myofibroblast, smooth muscle and endothelial cell characteristics. Whether they can differentiate into other cell types is unclear. This study tests the hypothesis that mesothelial cells can differentiate into cell lineages of the embryonic mesoderm including osteoblasts and adipocytes. To examine this, a functional assay of bone formation and an adipogenic assay were performed in vitro with primary rat and human mesothelial cells maintained in osteogenic or adipogenic medium (AM) for 0–26 days. Mesothelial cells expressed increasing levels of alkaline phosphatase, an early marker of the osteoblast phenotype, and formed mineralized bone-like nodules. Mesothelial cells also accumulated lipid indicative of a mature adipocyte phenotype when cultured in AM. All cells expressed several key osteoblast and adipocyte markers, including osteoblast-specific runt-related transcription factor 2, and demonstrated changes in mRNA expression consistent with epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition. In conclusion, these studies confirm that mesothelial cells have the capacity to differentiate into osteoblast- and adipocyte-like cells, providing definitive evidence of their multipotential nature. These data strongly support mesothelial cell differentiation as the potential source of different tissue types in MM tumours and other serosal pathologies, and add support for the use of mesothelial cells in regenerative therapies.

Everyday systems and devices in the home are becoming smarter. In order to better understand the challenges of deploying an intelligent system in the home, we studied the experience of living with an advanced thermostat, the Nest. The Nest utilizes machine learning, sensing, and networking technology, as well as eco-feedback features. We conducted interviews with 23 participants, ten of whom also participated in a three-week diary study. Our findings show that while the Nest was well-received overall, the intelligent features of the Nest were not perceived to be as useful or intuitive as expected, in particular due to the system's inability to understand the intent behind sensed behavior and users' difficulty in understanding how the Nest works. A number of participants developed workarounds for the shortcomings they encountered. Based on our observations, we propose three avenues for future development of interactive intelligent technologies for the home: exception flagging, incidental intelligibility, and constrained engagement.

Abstract.What are the benefits and drawbacks of integrating health and wellness interventions into existing online social network websites? In this paper, we report on a case study of deploying the Three Good Things positive psychology exercise as a Facebook application. Our experience shows that embedding a wellness intervention in an existing social website is a viable option. In particular, we find adherence rates on par with or better than many other Internet-based wellness interventions. We also gained insights about users' privacy and audience concerns that inform the design of social networkbased wellness applications. Participants did not want all of their entries to be shared with all their Facebook friends, both because they did not want others to know some things and because they did not want to clutter others' newsfeeds. Users found it compelling, however, to interact with their friends around some "Good Things" they had posted.