The Changing Narratives of Death, Dying, and HIV in the United Kingdom

Death and infection were closely linked from the start of the HIV epidemic, until successful treatments became available. The initial impact of mostly young, gay men dying from HIV was powerful in shaping UK responses. Neoliberal discourses developed at the same time, particularly focusing on how citizens (rather than the state) should take responsibility to improve health. Subsequently “successful ageing” became an allied discourse, further marginalising death discussions. Our study reflected on a broad range of meanings around death within the historical UK epidemic, to examine how dying narratives shape contemporary HIV experiences. Fifty-one participants including people living with HIV, professionals, and activists were recruited for semistructured interviews. Assuming a symbolic interactionist framework, analysis highlighted how HIV deaths were initially experienced as not only traumatic but also energizing, leading to creativity. With effective antiretrovirals, dying changed shape (e.g., loss of death literacy), and better integration of palliative care was recommended

Digital Mis/Disinformation and Public Engagment with Health and Science Controversies: Fresh Perspectives from Covid-19

Digital media, while opening a vast array of avenues for lay people to effectively engage with news, information and debates about important science and health issues, have become a fertile land for various stakeholders to spread misinformation and disinformation, stimulate uncivil discussions and engender ill-informed, dangerous public decisions. Recent developments of the Covid-19 infodemic might just be the tipping point of a process that has been long simmering in controversial areas of health and science (e.g., climate-change denial, anti-vaccination, anti-5G, Flat Earth doctrines). We bring together a wide range of fresh data and perspectives from four continents to help media scholars, journalists, science communicators, scientists, health professionals and policy-makers to better undersand these developments and what can be done to mitigate their impacts on public engagement with health and science controversies

Ageing with HIV

Applying Fraser’s inequalities framework to our UK-based HIV and Later Life (HALL) study, we show that, for the growing population of older people living with HIV (PLWH), HIV intersects with ethnicity, sex, sexuality, stigma, and ageism to produce bivalent identities. These shape their experience of ageing with HIV and intersect with economic factors, the social status order, and statutory policy to subject them to socioeconomic and cultural injustices only roughly captured by Fraser’s three domains of inequality. Under recognition, the stigmatization of HIV and its exacerbation by normative ageist expectations threaten social relationships. Under resources, older PLWH’s disproportionate financial disadvantage, linked to interrupted work histories, uncertain migration status, and recent changes to benefits on which PLWH are disproportionately reliant and whose new criteria disadvantage them, make access to support from others living with HIV and from HIV organizations even more essential for mental health and wellbeing. Finally, under representation, stigma and homophobia in care settings may undermine the quality of long-term care, and defunding of HIV organizations and welfare benefit changes via neo-liberal policies and austerity measures create political disenfranchisement and barriers to social participation. Thus, Fraser’s clear-cut domains imperfectly capture factors undermining underlying causes of older PLWH’s disadvantage: HIV-specific supports (resources) established to compensate for difficulties emanating from Fraser’s recognition and resources domains are increasingly threatened by agents operating within Fraser’s representation domain. Our conclusion considers other sources of older PLWH’s underrepresentation: their waning participation in activism and advocacy on their own behalf, and inadequate attention by non-HIV organizations

Multi-epoch Doppler tomography and polarimetry of QQ Vul

We present multi-epoch high-resolution spectroscopy and photoelectric polarimetry of the long-period polar (AM Herculis star) QQ Vul. The blue emission lines show several distinct components, the sharpest of which can unequivocally be assigned to the illuminated hemisphere of the secondary star and used to trace its orbital motion. This narrow emission line can be used in combination with Nai-absorption lines from the photosphere of the companion to build a stable long-term ephemeris for the star: inferior conjunction of the companion occurs at HJD = 244 8446.4710(5)+E×0. d 15452011(11). The polarization curves are dissimilar at different epochs, thus supporting the idea of fundamental changes of the accretion geometry, e.g. between one- and two-pole accretion modes. The linear polarization pulses display a random scatter by 0.2 phase units and are not suitable for the determination of the binary period. The polarization data suggest that the magnetic (dipolar) axis has a co-latitude of 23 ◦ , an azimuth of −50 ◦, and an orbital inclination between 50 ◦ and 70 ◦. Doppler images of blue emission and red absorption lines show a clear separatio

Topology of the polarization field in ferroelectric nanowires from first principles

The behaviour of the cross-sectional polarization field is explored for thin nanowires of barium titanate from first-principles calculations. Topological defects of different winding numbers have been obtained, beyond the known textures in ferroelectric nanostructures. They result from the inward accommodation of the polarization patterns imposed at the surface of the wire by surface and edge effects. Close to a topological defect the polarization field orients out of the basal plane in some cases, maintaining a close to constant magnitude, whereas it virtually vanishes in other cases.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

How older people living with HIV narrate their quality of life: Tensions with quantitative approaches to quality-of-life research

This article draws on life-history interviews with older (aged 50+) people living with HIV in England to uncover the interpretive practices in which they engaged as they evaluated their own quality of life (QoL). Our paper highlights the distinctive insights that biographical and narrative approaches can bring to QoL research. While accounts of subjectively ‘poor’ QoL were relatively straightforward and unequivocally phrased, accounts of subjectively ‘good’ and ‘OK’ QoL were produced using complex interpretive and evaluative practices. These practices involved biographical reflection and contextualization, with participants weighing up and comparing their current lives’ ‘pros’ and ‘cons’, their own lives with the lives of others, and their present lives with lives they had imagined having at the time of interview. Thus, ‘good’ and ‘OK’ QoL were constructed using practical, relational, and interpretive work – features of QoL analytically unavailable in quantitative data gathered through standardised measures (including our own survey data collected from these same participants). Our findings underscore the uneasy fit between QoL’s quantitative measurement and its subjective understandings and evaluations, on the one hand, and the interpretive work that goes into achieving these understandings and evaluations, on the other

Infecciones Respiratorias en el Enfermo Inmunodeprimido

El paciente inmunodeprimido se define como aquel que presenta un déficit congénito o adquirido de su respuesta inmune, integrada por neutrófilos e inmunidad humoral y celu- lar. El sistema defensivo del niño puede verse seriamente comprometido por un amplio abanico de situaciones congénitas y adquiridas ..

Design and Performance Evaluation of a Directional Telescopic Microphone for Enhanced Environmental Sound Capture

A directional telescopic microphone is composed of two parts. One is the pick-up circuit made up of 34 different length aluminum tubes to respond in a specific frequency. The use of a sensitive FET mic is to pick up a sound from a direction. The signal from the FET mic will be feed to the microphone preamplifier in order to amplify the signal. The Equalization and Attenuation circuit is responsible for the balancing and boosting the low and high frequency. The pick-up signal can be easily recordedto a device through the recording unit or can be heard through the speaker, driven by a power amplifier in order to set up the signal. The main purpose of the gadget is to be used in an environmental study. This can pick up sound that was not normally heard by human ear in a specify distance