Background: Older adults who live alone are less physically and emotionally healthy and report higher levels of depression relative to those who do not live alone. Suicide is the most problematic health issue reported by older adults who live alone. In particular, vulnerable older adults who live alone experience difficulty obtaining self-care and medical services; therefore, early detection of depression is difficult, and there are few opportunities to implement suicide prevention strategies in this population. In addition, social support for depression is an important factor affecting illness and economic vulnerability in older adults who live alone. Purpose: This study aimed to examine the relationship between depression and suicidal ideation in vulnerable older Korean adults with hypertension and to explore the mediating effect of social support on this relationship. Methods: The study used a cross-sectional design. Vulnerable older adults who were 65 years old or older with hypertension and who received home visit services from a public health center were invited to participate. The participants completed structured questionnaires, including the 15-item Short-Form Geriatric Depression Scale, 12-item Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, and 19-item Scale for Suicidal Ideation, and provided information regarding their demographic characteristics, health status, and economic status. Descriptive and correlation analyses were performed to examine the correlations among these variables. The three-step regression analysis method proposed by Baron and Kenny was used to examine the mediating effect of social support. Results: The mean depression, social support, and suicidal ideation scores of participants were 23.64 (± 2.04), 35.94 (± 15.40), and 7.80 (± 7.73), respectively. In addition, depression was negatively correlated with social support ( r = −.27) and positively correlated with suicidal ideation ( r = .21), whereas social support was negatively correlated with suicidal ideation ( r = −.35). Social support mediated the relationship between depression and suicidal ideation ( Z = 2.69). Conclusions: Social support was identified as an important variable for older adults with chronic illness who lived alone. Interventions that include social support hold the potential to reduce depression and suicidal ideation in this population.

The National Hospice and Palliative Care (NHPC) registry is a nationwide database that systematically collects information on terminally ill cancer patients receiving inpatient hospice care. From 2018 to 2020, a total of 47,911 patients were enrolled into the NHPC registry from the hospitals providing inpatient hospice care. The NHPC database mainly consists of sociodemographic and clinical information of the registered patients. Among these patients, approximately 75% of them were 60 years or older, and the ratio of males to females was 1:1.41. Lung, liver, colorectal, pancreas, and gastric cancer made up nearly 90% of the cancer sites among the registered patients. Upon first-ever admission to the hospice ward, around 80% of the patients were aware of their terminal illness. About half of the patients had mild pain at the time of the first-ever admission to the hospice ward and the duration of hospice care was 14 days (interquartile range [IQR] 6 days to 30 days) in 2019 and 2020. The NHPC registry is aimed to provide national statistics on inpatient hospice care to assist health policy making.

Tris(1-phenyl-κC1-pyrazolato-κN2)iridium (Ir(ppz)3) was prepared and its luminescence properties were investigated for the application to organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs). The photoluminescence (PL) spectra of Ir(ppz)3 in dichloromethane showed a peak at 437 nm at room temperature. The luminescent lifetime of an Ir(ppz)3 film doped in CBP was found to be 218 ns, which indicated that its emission is phosphorescent. OLEDs were fabricated with doped films of Ir(ppz)3 in several hosts, and the electroluminescence (EL) peak was observed at 450 nm. The luminance of OLEDs was pure blue, with the CIE coordinates of x = 0.158, y = 0.139 at 100 cd/m2, but luminous efficiencies were low since the LUMO of Ir(ppz)3 is higher than those of the hosts used.

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Grifola frondosa has been used as an herbal medicine for the treatment of cancer, diabetes mellitus and high blood pressure. In this study, functional polysaccharide was obtained from Grifola frondosa using four different extraction methods: hot water(HwFP), homogenize(HgFP), acid(AcFP), and alkali(AlFP) extraction methods. The effects of these extracts on KB and HepG2 cell lines were then examined for any anti-cancer activity. Alkaline extraction produced a yield of 0.175% and the total sugar content of the extract was 54.97%. We were able to confirm that the polysaccharide extracts from the mushroom produce an anti-cancer effect. The cytotoxicity of AlFP and AcFP against HepG2 cells were 22.86% and 28.88%, respectively, and the cytotoxicity of AlFP against the KB cell lines was 47.76% at a concentration of 1,000 ㎍/㎖. Therefore, these results suggest that the optimum method for extracting functional polysaccharides from G. frondosa is the alkali extraction method.