Sexual Pressure and Safer Sex Behaviors among Women Who Have Sex with Women and Women Who Have Sex with Men

Purpose: Women who experience sexual pressure are less likely to use condoms and other safer sexual behaviors despite having knowledge of or intentions to do so (Fair & Vanyur, 2011). This may be one reason women disproportionately contract sexually transmitted infections (STIs; CDC, 2010). What is not known is if sexual pressure and safer sexual behaviors differ between women who have sex with women (WSW) and women who have sex with men (WSM). The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between sexual pressure and safer sex behaviors among these women. Method: This exploratory study is a secondary analysis of a larger study examining the psychometric properties of a new instrument assessing sexual risk. Sample: Women (N = 349; 18 – 32 yrs.) participated. Procedure: After IRB approval, all undergraduate women attending OSU were sent an advertisement for the parent study. Interested women contacted the PI and were sent information and a link to register for the study. On the study site women answered questions about their eligibility, completed an electronic informed consent, and responded to a series of questionnaires assessing their sexual risk and demographic information. Women, 2-weeks later, were invited back to complete the questionnaires for test-retest reliability for the parent study with a 98% return rate. For this analysis, the relationship between three single-item questions regarding perceived pressure to engage in sexual activity and a composite score of safer sex behaviors (DiIorio’s Safer Sex Behavior Questionnaire) will be analyzed from the initial data. Difference by sub-group (WSM and WSW) of the major study variables of sexual pressure and safer sex will also be examined. Results: Moderate levels of sexual pressure and safer sex behaviors were experienced in both groups. WSW and WSM had no significant differences in levels of safer sex behaviors. The only difference in sexual pressure was having sex before ready; WSW were significantly more likely to do so. In general, sexual pressure variables related to each other and are negatively associated with safer sex behaviors. Conclusions: More research is required to better understand the sexual behaviors of WSW to tailor interventions for this population. Practitioners need to be aware of that both groups need interventions to counteract sexual pressure. Development and testing of interventions that focus on assertive communication skills are needed to empower women in sexual health decision-making.No embarg

Evaluation of harmonic motion elastography and acousto-optic imaging for monitoring lesion formation by high intensity focused ultrasound

Malignant or benign tumors may be ablated with high‐intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU). This technique, known as focused ultrasound surgery (FUS), has been actively investigated for decades, but slow to be implemented and difficult to control due to lack of real‐time feedback during ablation. Two methods of imaging and monitoring HIFU lesions during formation were implemented simultaneously, in order to investigate the efficacy of each and to increase confidence in the detection of the lesion. The first, Acousto‐Optic Imaging (AOI) detects the increasing optical absorption and scattering in the lesion. The intensity of a diffuse optical field in illuminated tissue is mapped at the spatial resolution of an ultrasound focal spot, using the acousto‐optic effect. The second, Harmonic Motion Imaging (HMI), detects the changing stiffness in the lesion. The HIFU beam is modulated to force oscillatory motion in the tissue, and the amplitude of this motion, measured by ultrasound pulse‐echo techniques, is influenced by the stiffness. Experiments were performed on store‐bought chicken breast and freshly slaughtered bovine liver. The AOI results correlated with the onset and relative size of forming lesions much better than prior knowledge of the HIFU power and duration. For HMI, a significant artifact was discovered due to acoustic nonlinearity. The artifact was mitigated by adjusting the phase of the HIFU and imaging pulses. A more detailed model of the HMI process than previously published was made using finite element analysis. The model showed that the amplitude of harmonic motion was primarily affected by increases in acoustic attenuation and stiffness as the lesion formed and the interaction of these effects was complex and often counteracted each other. Further biological variability in tissue properties meant that changes in motion were masked by sample‐to‐sample variation. The HMI experiments predicted lesion formation in only about a quarter of the lesions made. In simultaneous AOI/HMI experiments it appeared that AOI was a more robust method for lesion detection.Bernard M. Gordon Center for Subsurface and Imaging Systems (CenSSIS) via the NSF ERC award number EEC‐9986821

Information Warfare and the Future of Conflict

The goal of the Future of Information Warfare Threatcasting Project was to explore the coming decade’s emerging technological and cultural trends and envision plausible future threats from multiple perspectives. The project sought to illuminate emerging areas of strategic threat and potential investment, particularly relating to the proliferation of emerging intelligences, technologies, and systems that could considerably change the nature of the battlefield by 2028 and beyond. In three Threatcasting Workshops a select group of practitioners from across multiple domains (security, academia, media, and technology) worked to envision these futures and explore what actions should be taken now to counter future IW threats. The final goal was to operationalize the finding for the Army and to determine what actions could be taken to disrupt, mitigate, and recover from these future threats.https://digitalcommons.usmalibrary.org/aci_books/1039/thumbnail.jp

Making Migrants: Policy Communities and Immigration Policymaking in South Korea

In less than a decade, South Korea transformed from a country of non-immigration with exclusionary citizenship policies to an avowed “multicultural society” with sweeping immigration reforms. Dominant approaches to immigration liberalization claim that states extend rights to migrants either according to international norms, elite calculations, or civil society mobilization. However, these explanations cannot account for Korea’s differential expansion of rights to different migrants. Korea has extended legal protections to migrant workers as a response to human rights advocacy, but restricted stay to short periods via its control-oriented guest worker program. Overseas Koreans receive different residency and work permission in Korea depending on their country of origin. And the state has created a novel migrant category—marriage migrants, or persons who immigrate for the express purpose of marrying a Korean national—and elevated this group as the outsized beneficiaries of social welfare programs and entitlements, some which surpass those available to Korean citizens. To explain these variations, this dissertation builds on studies of policy communities and takes a disaggregated approach to analyzing South Korea’s immigration policymaking. Rather than assume policymakers or civil society actors are united in their interests or frames vis-à-vis immigration policies, this dissertation explores how the meso-level interactions among bureaucrats, private sector firms, NGOs, think tanks, academics, and migrant groups shape debates, agendas, and outcomes regarding immigrant policies in different issue areas. As a result, South Korea, like other industrialized democracies, has made not one immigration policy, but several types of immigration policies targeting specific migrant groups and policy issues. Based on archival research, public documents, and ten months of immersive fieldwork in the greater Seoul metropolitan area from 2017 to 2019, this dissertation demonstrates how policy community dynamics can produce restrictive policies for some migrants while simultaneously expanding rights and social benefits for others

Gerichtliche Schatzkammer/ Das ist/ Newer Grundvester Proceß/ unnd Richterlicher Klagspiegel : darinnen das gantze Gerichtliche Recht/ Was an Hoch und Nider Gerichten/ jedweder Richter ... so vor Gericht zu handeln haben/ wissen sollen/ gleichsam in einem Spiegel zu sehen unnd zu lehrnen ...

Erstlich durch ... Sebastian Brandt ... beschriebe