Characteristics of drug users who do or do not have care of their children

Aims - To compare the relative frequency of eight indicators of problem drug use and potentially adverse social circumstances in drug using parents and non-parents and to explore whether a profile based on these characteristics differs according to whether or not dependent children live with their drug-using parent. Design – The study utilises a 5-year national UK treatment monitoring system dataset. Sample – 61,425 users with, and 105,473 without dependent children accessing drug treatment services in England and Wales between January 1996 and December 2000. Measurements – Information about parenthood and children’s residence was routinely collected. Drug use and social circumstance indicators were daily heroin use, daily alcohol use, regular stimulant use, sharing of injecting equipment, living with another user, living alone, unstable accommodation, and criminal justice referral. Findings – There were clear differences between drug using parents according to where children live. Parents with children at home and non-parents showed fewer of the indicators than parents with children in care or elsewhere. Sixty-five percent of parents with none of the indicators lived with their children, compared to only 28% of those with three indicators and 9% of those with six or more indicators. Parents with children in care or living elsewhere showed the highest prevalence for each individual indicator. Conclusions – Drug using parents demonstrate a range of potentially unfavourable drug use behaviours and social circumstances but those whose children live with them use drugs less frequently and live in more favourable conditions than those whose children live elsewhere. Protective factors may operate in family situations while severe drug use and adverse social circumstances may result in a breakdown of family structures

Performing That Which Exceeds Us: Aesthetics of Sincerity and Obscenity During 'The Refugee Crisis'

Focusing on examples from theatre (On the Move festival, London International Festival of Theatre/Royal Court Theatre, London 2016), film (Gianfranco Rosi’s Fuoccoamare, 2016) and the visual arts (Ai Weiwei’s Safe Passage, Berlin 2016), this article proposes that in order to think through questions of efficacy and value of performance that seeks to engage with the pain of others, we must consider the interrelation of migration and excess. I explore the multiple meanings and performances of excess in artistic practice and interrogate the contradictions and potentialities that emerge in works that perform excess as a form of what Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou have defined as ‘political responsiveness’. In an attempt at understanding excess as a sensibility that underpins the ethics and politics of performance in response to the ‘refugee crisis’, the article focuses on two interrelated areas: the aesthetics of the sincere and the obscene. In doing so, I attempt to offer a way of thinking of the performance of ‘refugee crisis’ as excess in the logic of the neoliberal system, which perpetuates that system

Associations between cytokines, endocrine stress response, and gastrointestinal symptoms in autism spectrum disorder

PosterAutism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by impairments in social communication and abnormal repetitive behavior patterns. Recent studies have shown a strong association between ASD and gastrointestinal (GI) symptomatology. Some individuals with ASD show altered reactivity to stress, as well as altered immune markers, particularly stress responsive cytokines including TNF-alpha and IL-6. To assess potential relationships between GI symptoms and stress response, we examined whether GI symptoms are associated with increases in stress-associated endocrine markers and cytokines in ASD. We also conducted exploratory analyses the examine the relationship between IL-6, TNF-alpha, cortisol, and intelligence, as well as the effects of the presence or absence of co-occurring medical conditions on the relationship between IL-6, TNF-alpha, cortisol, and GI symptoms. Given the aforementioned findings, we expected to find positive relationships between GI symptoms and biomarkers of stress, including cortisol levels, IL-6, and TNF-alpha

The Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper (LunaH-Map) Mission

The Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper (LunaH-Map) mission will map hydrogen enrichments within permanently shadowed regions at the lunar south pole using a miniature neutron spectrometer. While hydrogen enrichments have been identified regionally from previous orbital missions, the spatial extent of these regions are often below the resolution of the neutron instruments that have flown on lunar missions. LunaH-Map will enter into an elliptical, low altitude perseline orbit which will enable the mission to spatially isolate and constrain the hydrogen enrichments within permanently shadowed regions. LunaH-Map will use a solid iodine ion propulsion system, X-Band radio communications through the NASA Deep Space Network, star tracker, C&DH and EPS systems from Blue Canyon Technologies, solar arrays from MMA Designs, LLC, mission design and navigation by KinetX. Spacecraft systems design, integration, qualification, test and mission operations are performed by Arizona State University

LunaH-Map: Revealing Lunar Water with a New Radiation Sensor Array

A new type of neutron and gamma-ray spectrometer called the Miniature Neutron Spectrometer (Mini-NS) has been developed, assembled, qualified and delivered as part of the Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper (LunaH-Map) cubesat mission. The LunaH-Map spacecraft is currently manifested as a secondary payload on the Space Launch System (SLS) Artemis-1 rocket. LunaH-Map will deploy from Artemis-1 and enter a low altitude perilune elliptical orbit around the Moon. The Mini-NS will measure the lunar epithermal neutron albedo, and measurements around perilune will be used to produce maps of hydrogen enrichments and depletions across the lunar South Pole region including both within and outside of permanently shadowed regions (PSRs). The Min-NS was designed to achieve twice the epithermal neutron count rate of the Lunar Prospector Neutron Spectrometer (LP-NS). The instrument response was characterized through the collection of pre-flight neutron counting data with a Cf-252 neutron source at Arizona State University across hundreds of power cycles, as well as across the expected temperature range. The instrument spatial response was characterized at the Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL) Neutron Free In-Air Facility. The LunaH-Map Mini-NS was designed to fit within the cubesat form-factor and uses two detectors with eight sensor heads that can be operated independently. For future missions with different science goals that can be achieved with epithermal neutron detection, the number of Mini-NS sensor heads can easily be modified without requiring a complete re-design and re-qualification

Lifestyle physical activity among urban Palestinians and Israelis: a cross-sectional comparison in the Palestinian-Israeli Jerusalem risk factor study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Urban Palestinians have a high incidence of coronary heart disease, and alarming prevalences of obesity (particularly among women) and diabetes. An active lifestyle can help prevent these conditions. Little is known about the physical activity (PA) behavior of Palestinians. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of insufficient PA and its socio-demographic correlates among urban Palestinians in comparison with Israelis.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>An age-sex stratified random sample of Palestinians and Israelis aged 25-74 years living in east and west Jerusalem was drawn from the Israel National Population Registry: 970 Palestinians and 712 Israelis participated. PA in a typical week was assessed by the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) questionnaire. Energy expenditure (EE), calculated in metabolic equivalents (METs), was compared between groups for moderate to vigorous-intensity physical activity (MVPA), using the Wilcoxon rank-sum test, and for domain-specific prevalence rates of meeting public health guidelines and all-domain insufficient PA. Correlates of insufficient PA were assessed by multivariable logistic modeling.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Palestinian men had the highest median of MVPA (4740 METs-min_*wk^-1) compared to Israeli men (2,205 METs-min_*wk^-1<it>p </it>< 0.0001), or to Palestinian and Israeli women, who had similar medians (2776 METs-min_*wk^-1). Two thirds (65%) of the total MVPA reported by Palestinian women were derived from domestic chores compared to 36% in Israeli women and 25% among Palestinian and Israeli men. A high proportion (63%) of Palestinian men met the PA recommendations by occupation/domestic activity, compared to 39% of Palestinian women and 37% of the Israelis. No leisure time PA was reported by 42% and 39% of Palestinian and Israeli men (<it>p </it>= 0.337) and 53% and 28% of Palestinian and Israeli women (<it>p </it>< 0.0001). Palestinian women reported the lowest level of walking. Considering all domains, 26% of Palestinian women were classified as insufficiently active versus 13% of Palestinian men (<it>p </it>< 0.0001) who did not differ from the Israeli sample (14%). Middle-aged and elderly and less educated Palestinian women, and unemployed and pensioned Palestinian men were at particularly high risk of inactivity. Socio-economic indicators only partially explained the ethnic disparity.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Substantial proportions of Palestinian women, and subgroups of Palestinian men, are insufficiently active. Culturally appropriate intervention strategies are warranted, particularly for this vulnerable population.</p

Amygdala Engagement in Response to Subthreshold Presentations of Anxious Face Stimuli in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders: Preliminary Insights

Current theoretical models of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have proposed that impairments in the processing of social/emotional information may be linked to amygdala dysfunction. However, the extent to which amygdala functions are compromised in ASD has become a topic of debate in recent years. In a jittered functional magnetic resonance imaging study, sub-threshold presentations of anxious faces permitted an examination of amygdala recruitment in 12 high functioning adult males with ASD and 12 matched controls. We found heightened neural activation of the amygdala in both high functioning adults with ASD and matched controls. Neither the intensity nor the time-course of amygdala activation differed between the groups. However, the adults with ASD showed significantly lower levels of fusiform activation during the trials compared to controls. Our findings suggest that in ASD, the transmission of socially salient information along sub-cortical pathways is intact: and yet the signaling of this information to structures downstream may be impoverished, and the pathways that facilitate subsequent processing deficient

Un/making difference through performance and mediation in contemporary Africa

This special issue of the Journal of African Cultural Studies grew out of a panel we organized at the European Conference on African Studies in Lisbon in June 2013. Our starting point was the observation of a massive revival of cultural and religious identities across the African continent, stretching from post-apartheid South Africa to Islamist groups in parts of West Africa. In the early twenty-first century, Africa appears to be witnessing a historical moment characterized by a resurgence of a politics of difference that, regardless of the heterogeneous forms in which it materializes, shares an uncanny ability to produce and sustain identities based on a politics of difference

Un/making difference through performance and mediation in contemporary Africa

This special issue of the Journal of African Cultural Studies grew out of a panel we organized at the European Conference on African Studies in Lisbon in June 2013. Our starting point was the observation of a massive revival of cultural and religious identities across the African continent, stretching from post-apartheid South Africa to Islamist groups in parts of West Africa. In the early twenty-first century, Africa appears to be witnessing a historical moment characterized by a resurgence of a politics of difference that, regardless of the heterogeneous forms in which it materializes, shares an uncanny ability to produce and sustain identities based on a politics of difference