Pre-incarceration police harassment, drug addiction and HIV risk behaviours among prisoners in Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan: results from a nationally representative cross-sectional study.

INTRODUCTION: The expanding HIV epidemic in Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan is concentrated among people who inject drugs (PWID), who comprise a third of prisoners there. Detention of PWID is common but its impact on health has not been previously studied in the region. We aimed to understand the relationship between official and unofficial (police harassment) detention of PWID and HIV risk behaviours. METHODS: In a nationally representative cross-sectional study, soon-to-be released prisoners in Kyrgyzstan (N=368) and Azerbaijan (N=510) completed standardized health assessment surveys. After identifying correlated variables through bivariate testing, we built multi-group path models with pre-incarceration official and unofficial detention as exogenous variables and pre-incarceration composite HIV risk as an endogenous variable, controlling for potential confounders and estimating indirect effects. RESULTS: Overall, 463 (51%) prisoners reported at least one detention in the year before incarceration with an average of 1.3 detentions in that period. Unofficial detentions (13%) were less common than official detentions (41%). Optimal model fit was achieved (X (2)=5.83, p=0.44; Goodness of Fit Index (GFI) GFI=0.99; Comparative Fit Index (CFI) CFI=1.00; Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) RMSEA=0.00; PCLOSE=0.98) when unofficial detention had an indirect effect on HIV risk, mediated by drug addiction severity, with more detentions associated with higher addiction severity, which in turn correlated with increased HIV risk. The final model explained 35% of the variance in the outcome. The effect was maintained for both countries, but stronger for Kyrgyzstan. The model also holds for Kyrgyzstan using unique data on within-prison drug injection as the outcome, which was frequent in prisoners there. CONCLUSIONS: Detention by police is a strong correlate of addiction severity, which mediates its effect on HIV risk behaviour. This pattern suggests that police may target drug users and that such harassment may result in an increase in HIV risk-taking behaviours, primarily because of the continued drug use within prisons. These findings highlight the important negative role that police play in the HIV epidemic response and point to the urgent need for interventions to reduce police harassment, in parallel with interventions to reduce HIV transmission within and outside of prison

Variable trust in public health messaging during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Southeast Alaska

Public health messaging in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic has been variable in effectiveness. Different levels of governmental institutions have different goals and methods; it is unclear how messaging from these disparate levels is received, trusted, and implemented. We investigate the degrees of trust of Alaska Native and non-Alaska Native people in Southeast Alaska for the U.S. federal, Alaska state, and local Southeast Alaskan governments to parse how Southeast Alaskans feel about relative preparation, actions, and public health messaging. We use data collected in two waves of a regional survey: the first in April-June 2020, and the second in November 2020-February 2021. Results indicate that trust in the federal government was significantly lower than in the Alaska state government for each time period, and trust in both federal and state government significantly decreased between the two periods. Trust in the local governments of Southeast Alaska were significantly higher than both state and federal levels, and increased between the two survey waves, albeit insignificantly. We discuss potential drivers of these observations and outline how this can be leveraged for more comprehensive research into how relatively small communities with a large Native presence perceive public health messaging from different sources

Mercury's low-reflectance material: Constraints from hollows

Unusually low reflectance material, within which depressions known as hollows appear to be actively forming by sublimation, is a major component of Mercury's surface geology. The observation that this material is exhumed from depth by large impacts has the intriguing implication that the planet's lower crust or upper mantle contains a significant volatile-rich, low-reflectance layer, the composition of which will be key for developing our understanding of Mercury's geochemical evolution and bulk composition. Hollows provide a means by which the composition of both the volatile and non-volatile components of the low-reflectance material (LRM) can be constrained, as they result from the loss of the volatile component, and any remaining lag can be expected to be formed of the non-volatile component. However, previous work has approached this by investigating the spectral character of hollows as a whole, including that of bright deposits surrounding the hollows, a unit of uncertain character. Here we use high-resolution multispectral images, obtained as the MESSENGER spacecraft approached Mercury at lower altitudes in the latter part of its mission, to investigate reflectance spectra of inactive hollow floors where sublimation appears to have ceased, and compare this to those of the bright surrounding products and the parent material. This analysis reveals that the final lag after hollow-formation has a flatter spectral slope than that of any other unit on the planet and reflectance approaching that of more space-weathered parent material. This indicates firstly that the volatile material lost has a steeper spectral slope and higher reflectance than the parent material, consistent with (Ca,Mg) sulfides, and secondly, that the low-reflectance component of LRM is non-volatile and may be graphite

A Mercury Lander Mission Concept Study for the Next Decadal Survey

Mariner 10 provided our first closeup reconnaissance of Mercury during its three flybys in 1974 and 1975. MESSENGERs 20112015 orbital investigation enabled numerous discoveries, several of which led to substantial or complete changes in our fundamental understanding of the planet. Among these were the unanticipated, widespread presence of volatile elements (e.g., Na, K, S); a surface with extremely low Fe abundance whose darkening agent is likely C; a previously unknown landformhollows that may form by volatile sublimation from within rocks exposed to the harsh conditions on the surface; a history of expansive effusive and explosive volcanism; substantial radial contraction of the planet from interior cooling; offset of the dipole moment of the internal magnetic field northward from the geographic equator by ~20% of the planets radius; crustal magnetization, attributed at least in part to an ancient field; unexpected seasonal variability and relationships among exospheric species and processes; and the presence in permanently shadowed polar terrain of water ice and other volatile materials, likely to include complex organic compounds. Mercurys highly chemically reduced and unexpectedly volatile-rich composition is unique among the terrestrial planets and was not predicted by earlier hypotheses for the planets origin. As an end-member of terrestrial planet formation, Mercury holds unique clues about the original distribution of elements in the earliest stages of the Solar System and how planets (and exoplanets) form and evolve in close proximity to their host stars. The BepiColombo mission promises to expand our knowledge of this planet and to shed light on some of the mysteries revealed by the MESSENGER mission. However, several fundamental science questions raised by MESSENGERs pioneering exploration of Mercury can only be answered with in situ measurements from the planets surface

Triton Haze Analogs: The Role of Carbon Monoxide in Haze Formation

Triton is the largest moon of the Neptune system and possesses a thin nitrogen atmosphere with trace amounts of carbon monoxide and methane, making it of similar composition to that of the dwarf planet Pluto. Like Pluto and Saturn\u27s moon Titan, Triton has a haze layer thought to be composed of organics formed through photochemistry. Here, we perform atmospheric chamber experiments of 0.5% CO and 0.2% CH4 in N2 at 90 K and 1 mbar to generate Triton haze analogs. We then characterize the physical and chemical properties of these particles. We measure their production rate, their bulk composition with combustion analysis, their molecular composition with very high resolution mass spectrometry, and their transmission and reflectance from the optical to the near-infrared with Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) Spectroscopy. We compare these properties to existing measurements of Triton\u27s tenuous atmosphere and surface, as well as contextualize these results in view of all the small, hazy, nitrogen-rich worlds of our solar system. We find that carbon monoxide present at greater mixing ratios than methane in the atmosphere can lead to significantly oxygen- and nitrogen-rich haze materials. These Triton haze analogs have clear observable signatures in their near-infrared spectra, which may help us differentiate the mechanisms behind haze formation processes across diverse solar system bodies

Satellite sensor requirements for monitoring essential biodiversity variables of coastal ecosystems

The biodiversity and high productivity of coastal terrestrial and aquatic habitats are the foundation for important benefits to human societies around the world. These globally distributed habitats need frequent and broad systematic assessments, but field surveys only cover a small fraction of these areas. Satellite-based sensors can repeatedly record the visible and near-infrared reflectance spectra that contain the absorption, scattering, and fluorescence signatures of functional phytoplankton groups, colored dissolved matter, and particulate matter near the surface ocean, and of biologically structured habitats (floating and emergent vegetation, benthic habitats like coral, seagrass, and algae). These measures can be incorporated into Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs), including the distribution, abundance, and traits of groups of species populations, and used to evaluate habitat fragmentation. However, current and planned satellites are not designed to observe the EBVs that change rapidly with extreme tides, salinity, temperatures, storms, pollution, or physical habitat destruction over scales relevant to human activity. Making these observations requires a new generation of satellite sensors able to sample with these combined characteristics: (1) spatial resolution on the order of 30 to 100-m pixels or smaller; (2) spectral resolution on the order of 5 nm in the visible and 10 nm in the short-wave infrared spectrum (or at least two or more bands at 1,030, 1,240, 1,630, 2,125, and/or 2,260 nm) for atmospheric correction and aquatic and vegetation assessments; (3) radiometric quality with signal to noise ratios (SNR) above 800 (relative to signal levels typical of the open ocean), 14-bit digitization, absolute radiometric calibration \u3c2%, relative calibration of 0.2%, polarization sensitivity \u3c1%, high radiometric stability and linearity, and operations designed to minimize sunglint; and (4) temporal resolution of hours to days. We refer to these combined specifications as H4 imaging. Enabling H4 imaging is vital for the conservation and management of global biodiversity and ecosystem services, including food provisioning and water security. An agile satellite in a 3-d repeat low-Earth orbit could sample 30-km swath images of several hundred coastal habitats daily. Nine H4 satellites would provide weekly coverage of global coastal zones. Such satellite constellations are now feasible and are used in various applications

The fundamental connections between the Solar System and exoplanetary science

Over the past several decades, thousands of planets have been discovered outside our Solar System. These planets exhibit enormous diversity, and their large numbers provide a statistical opportunity to place our Solar System within the broader context of planetary structure, atmospheres, architectures, formation, and evolution. Meanwhile, the field of exoplanetary science is rapidly forging onward toward a goal of atmospheric characterization, inferring surface conditions and interiors, and assessing the potential for habitability. However, the interpretation of exoplanet data requires the development and validation of exoplanet models that depend on in situ data that, in the foreseeable future, are only obtainable from our Solar System. Thus, planetary and exoplanetary science would both greatly benefit from a symbiotic relationship with a two way flow of information. Here, we describe the critical lessons and outstanding questions from planetary science, the study of which are essential for addressing fundamental aspects for a variety of exoplanetary topics. We outline these lessons and questions for the major categories of Solar System bodies, including the terrestrial planets, the giant planets, moons, and minor bodies. We provide a discussion of how many of these planetary science issues may be translated into exoplanet observables that will yield critical insight into current and future exoplanet discoveries