The Health of Aging Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Adults in California

Examines rates of diabetes, hypertension, poor mental health, physical disability, and fair or poor self-reported health status among homosexual adults ages 50 to 70 compared with their heterosexual peers. Recommends enhancing policies and practices

High rates of HIV testing despite low perceived HIV risk among African-American sexually transmitted disease patients.

In the current diagnosis-based, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention climate, previous testing among persons at elevated HIV risk has cost and efficacy implications, as it signals continued behavioral risk, limited HIV knowledge or overuse of services. This study sought to determine the proportion of African Americans newly seeking sexually transmitted disease (STD) diagnosis who previously had obtained HIV counseling and testing. This was a clinic-based, cross-sectional survey of African-American adults (N=408) seeking STO diagnosis at a public STD clinic located in a high-HIV and STD prevalence city in the U.S. south. Eighty-four percent of respondents had previously obtained HIV counseling and testing: 68% had previously obtained care at the clinic. Sixty-five percent of respondents perceived themselves as having low or no HIV risk. Seventy-two percent correctly answered > or = 3 of 4 HIV knowledge items. Although diagnosis-based HIV prevention initiatives promote HIV counseling and testing for both primary and secondary HIV prevention, these findings suggest that many African-American STD patients remain at risk following testing. Future research should explore how the counseling portion of standard HIV counseling and testing influences subsequent knowledge, attitudes, risk perceptions and behaviors

Towards a Critical Race Methodology in Algorithmic Fairness

We examine the way race and racial categories are adopted in algorithmic fairness frameworks. Current methodologies fail to adequately account for the socially constructed nature of race, instead adopting a conceptualization of race as a fixed attribute. Treating race as an attribute, rather than a structural, institutional, and relational phenomenon, can serve to minimize the structural aspects of algorithmic unfairness. In this work, we focus on the history of racial categories and turn to critical race theory and sociological work on race and ethnicity to ground conceptualizations of race for fairness research, drawing on lessons from public health, biomedical research, and social survey research. We argue that algorithmic fairness researchers need to take into account the multidimensionality of race, take seriously the processes of conceptualizing and operationalizing race, focus on social processes which produce racial inequality, and consider perspectives of those most affected by sociotechnical systems.Comment: Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAT* '20), January 27-30, 2020, Barcelona, Spai

Perceived Everyday Racism, Residential Segregation, and HIV Testing Among Patients at a Sexually Transmitted Disease Clinic

Objectives. More than one quarter of HIV-infected people are undiagnosed and therefore unaware of their HIV-positive status. Blacks are disproportionately infected. Although perceived racism influences their attitudes toward HIV prevention, how racism influences their behaviors is unknown. We sought to determine whether perceiving everyday racism and racial segregation influence Black HIV testing behavior

Analytical and numerical investigation of escape rate for a noise driven bath

We consider a system-reservoir model where the reservoir is modulated by an external noise. Both the internal noise of the reservoir and the external noise are stationary, Gaussian and are characterized by arbitrary decaying correlation functions. Based on a relation between the dissipation of the system and the response function of the reservoir driven by external noise we numerically examine the model using a full bistable potential to show that one can recover the turn-over features of the usual Kramers' dynamics when the external noise modulates the reservoir rather than the system directly. We derive the generalized Kramers' rate for this nonequilibrium open system. The theoretical results are verified by numerical simulation.Comment: Revtex, 25 pages, 5 figures. To appear in Phys. Rev.

Climate change adaptation and cross-sectoral policy coherence in southern Africa

To be effective, climate change adaptation needs to be mainstreamed across multiple sectors and greater policy coherence is essential. Using the cases of Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia, this paper investigates the extent of coherence in national policies across the water and agriculture sectors and to climate change adaptation goals outlined in national development plans. A two-pronged qualitative approach is applied using Qualitative Document Analysis of relevant policies and plans, combined with expert interviews from non-government actors in each country. Findings show that sector policies have differing degrees of coherence on climate change adaptation, currently being strongest in Zambia and weakest in Tanzania. We also identify that sectoral policies remain more coherent in addressing immediate-term disaster management issues of floods and droughts rather than longer-term strategies for climate adaptation. Coherence between sector and climate policies and strategies is strongest when the latter has been more recently developed. However to date, this has largely been achieved by repackaging of existing sectoral policy statements into climate policies drafted by external consultants to meet international reporting needs and not by the establishment of new connections between national sectoral planning processes. For more effective mainstreaming of climate change adaptation, governments need to actively embrace longer-term cross-sectoral planning through cross-Ministerial structures, such as initiated through Zambia’s Interim Climate Change Secretariat, to foster greater policy coherence and integrated adaptation planning

Multi-wavelength observations of the energetic GRB 080810: detailed mapping of the broadband spectral evolution

GRB 080810 was one of the first bursts to trigger both Swift and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. It was subsequently monitored over the X-ray and UV/optical bands by Swift, in the optical by ROTSE and a host of other telescopes and was detected in the radio by the VLA. The redshift of z= 3.355 +/- 0.005 was determined by Keck/HIRES and confirmed by RTT150 and NOT. The prompt gamma/X-ray emission, detected over 0.3-10^3 keV, systematically softens over time, with E_peak moving from ~600 keV at the start to ~40 keV around 100 s after the trigger; alternatively, this spectral evolution could be identified with the blackbody temperature of a quasithermal model shifting from ~60 keV to ~3 keV over the same time interval. The first optical detection was made at 38 s, but the smooth, featureless profile of the full optical coverage implies that this originated from the afterglow component, not the pulsed/flaring prompt emission. Broadband optical and X-ray coverage of the afterglow at the start of the final X-ray decay (~8 ks) reveals a spectral break between the optical and X-ray bands in the range 10^15 - 2x10^16 Hz. The decay profiles of the X-ray and optical bands show that this break initially migrates blueward to this frequency and then subsequently drifts redward to below the optical band by ~3x10^5 s. GRB 080810 was very energetic, with an isotropic energy output for the prompt component of 3x10^53 erg and 1.6x10^52 erg for the afterglow; there is no evidence for a jet break in the afterglow up to six days following the burst.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, 4 in colour. Accepted for publication in MNRA

Simultaneous measurement of the ratio B(t->Wb)/B(t->Wq) and the top quark pair production cross section with the D0 detector at sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV

We present the first simultaneous measurement of the ratio of branching fractions, R=B(t->Wb)/B(t->Wq), with q being a d, s, or b quark, and the top quark pair production cross section sigma_ttbar in the lepton plus jets channel using 0.9 fb-1 of ppbar collision data at sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV collected with the D0 detector. We extract R and sigma_ttbar by analyzing samples of events with 0, 1 and >= 2 identified b jets. We measure R = 0.97 +0.09-0.08 (stat+syst) and sigma_ttbar = 8.18 +0.90-0.84 (stat+syst)} +/-0.50 (lumi) pb, in agreement with the standard model prediction.Comment: submitted to Phys.Rev.Letter

Blame, Symbolic Stigma and HIV Misconceptions are Associated with Support for Coercive Measures in Urban India

This study was designed to examine the prevalence of stigma and its underlying factors in two large Indian cities. Cross-sectional interview data were collected from 1,076 non-HIV patients in multiple healthcare settings in Mumbai and Bengaluru, India. The vast majority of participants supported mandatory testing for marginalized groups and coercive family policies for PLHA, stating that they “deserved” their infections and “didn’t care” about infecting others. Most participants did not want to be treated at the same clinic or use the same utensils as PLHA and transmission misconceptions were common. Multiple linear regression showed that blame, transmission misconceptions, symbolic stigma and negative feelings toward PLHA were significantly associated with both stigma and discrimination. The results indicate an urgent need for continued stigma reduction efforts to reduce the suffering of PLHA and barriers to prevention and treatment. Given the high levels of blame and endorsement of coercive policies, it is crucial that such programs are shaped within a human rights framework