Qualitative perspectives toward prostitution's perceived lifestyle addictiveness

Background and aims: The aim of the present study was to provide a phenomenological perspective of individuals who actively engage in street-level prostitution and identified a lifestyle addiction associated with their activities. Methods: We interviewed 25 women who were incarcerated in American county jails (at the time of interviews) for prostitution crimes. The transcripts were analyzed for themes that represented the shared consensus of the research participants. Results: Four negative psychological dynamics related to prostitution. First, participants described accounts of physical and emotional violence which they experienced at the hand of clients and others involved in the lifestyle. Second, interviewees explained an extreme dislike for their actions relating to and involving prostitution. These individuals did not describe themselves as being sexually addicted; sex was means to a desired end. Third, participants described how prostitution's lifestyle had evolved into something which they conceptualized as an addiction. As such, they did not describe themselves as feeling addicted to sex acts — but to lifestyle elements that accompanied prostitution behaviors. Finally, participants believed that freedom from prostitution's lifestyle would require social service assistance in order to overcome their lifestyle addiction. Conclusions: The results show that, although the prostitutes repeatedly and consistently used the term “addiction” when describing their lifestyles, they did not meet the DSM-IV-TR criteria for addiction. Rather, they shared many of the same psychological constructs as do addicts (e.g., feeling trapped, desiring escape, needing help to change), but they did not meet medical criteria for addictive dependence (e.g., tolerance or withdrawal)

Qualitative Perspectives Towards Prostitution\u27s Perceived Lifestyle Addictiveness

The aim of the present study was to provide a phenomenological perspective of individuals who actively engage in street-level prostitution and identified a lifestyle addiction associated with their activities. Methods: We interviewed 25 women who were incarcerated in American county jails (at the time of interviews) for prostitution crimes. The transcripts were analyzed for themes that represented the shared consensus of the research participants. Results: Four negative psychological dynamics related to prostitution. First, participants described accounts of physical and emotional violence which they experienced at the hand of clients and others involved in the lifestyle. Second, interviewees explained an extreme dislike for their actions relating to and involving prostitution. These individuals did not describe themselves as being sexually addicted; sex was means to a desired end. Third, participants described how prostitution’s lifestyle had evolved into something which they conceptualized as an addiction. As such, they did not describe themselves as feeling addicted to sex acts – but to lifestyle elements that accompanied prostitution behaviors. Finally, participants believed that freedom from prostitution’s lifestyle would require social service assistance in order to overcome their lifestyle addiction. Conclusions: The results show that, although the prostitutes repeatedly and consistently used the term “addiction” when describing their lifestyles, they did not meet the DSM-IV-TR criteria for addiction. Rather, they shared many of the same psychological constructs as do addicts (e.g., feeling trapped, desiring escape, needing help to change), but they did not meet medical criteria for addictive dependence (e.g., tolerance or withdrawal)

Ceiling effects in the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2 (MABC-2) suggest that non-parametric scoring methods are required

Initially designed to identify children's movement impairments in clinical settings, the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2 (MABC-2) is also widely used to evaluate children's movement in research. Standardised scores on the test are calculated using parametric methods under the assumption of normally-distributed data. In a pilot study with thirty five 8-10 year old children (i.e., in Age Band 2 of the MABC-2), we found that maximal performance was often reached. These ‘ceiling effects’ created distributions of scores that may violate parametric assumptions. Tests of normality, skew, and goodness-of-fit revealed this violation, most clearly on three of the eight sub-tests. A strong deviation from normality was again observed in a sample of 161 children (8-10 years, Experiment 1), however ceiling effects were reduced by modifying the scoring methods, and administering items designed for older children when maximal performance was reached. Experiment 2 (n=81, 7-10 years) further refined the administration and scoring methods, and again improved the distributions of scores. Despite reducing ceiling effects, scores remained non-parametrically distributed, justifying non-parametric analytic approaches. By randomly and repeatedly resampling from the raw data, we generated non-parametric reference distributions for assigning percentiles to each child's performance, and compared the results with the standardised scores. Distributions of scores obtained with both parametric and non-parametric methods were skewed, and the methods resulted in different rankings of the same data. Overall, we demonstrate that some MABC-2 item scores are not normally-distributed, and violate parametric assumptions. Changes in administering and scoring may partially address these issues. We propose that resampling or other non-parametric methods are required to create new reference distributions to which an individual child's performance can be referred. The modifications we propose are preliminary, but the implication is that a new standardisation is required to deal with the non-parametric data acquired with the MABC-2 performance test

The endorsement of cognitive distortions: comparing child pornography offenders and contact sex offenders

This study examined the endorsement of cognitive distortions in child pornography offenders (CPOs), using an established assessment tool, the Abel and Becker Cognition Scale. The scale was expanded to include cognitions specific to child pornography offending, extracted from Howitt and Sheldon’s Children and Sexual Activities Inventory (C&SA). Three samples of CPOs, child sex offenders and offenders with both offence types responded to the cognition items. An exploratory Principal Component Analysis suggested six main components of the scale. CPOs were significantly less likely to endorse these statements in general, and this was more pronounced on items that project blame onto the child or other people, describe a need for power and consider children as sexually active. The statements extracted from C&SA did not differentiate between the groups. These findings are discussed under consideration of the relationship between cognitive distortions and contact sex offending, and in reference to the general criticism concerning the definition and appropriate measurement of cognitive distortion

Impact of Health Insurance, ADAP, and Income on HIV Viral Suppression Among US Women in the Womenʼs Interagency HIV Study, 2006–2009

Implementation of the Affordable Care Act motivates assessment of health insurance and supplementary programs, such as the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) on health outcomes of HIV-infected people in the United States. We assessed the effects of health insurance, ADAP, and income on HIV viral load suppression

Improvement in children’s fine motor skills following a computerized typing intervention

Children spend a large proportion of their school day engaged in tasks that require manual dexterity. If children experience difficulties with their manual dexterity skills it can have a consequential effect on their academic achievement. The first aim of this paper was to explore whether an online interactive typing intervention could improve children’s scores on a standardised measure of manual dexterity. The second aim was to implement a serial reaction time tapping task as an index of children's finger movement learning, and to see whether performance on this task would improve after the intervention. Seventy-eight typically developing children aged between 8 and 10 were tested at their school on the pre-intervention Movement Assessment Battery for Children (2 nd edition; MABC-2) and tapping tasks. Twenty-eight of these children volunteered to be randomly allocated to the intervention or control group. Children in the intervention group had a choice of two online games to play at home over a period of four weeks, while the children in the control group were not given these games to play. The intervention and control groups were then re-tested on the MABC-2 manual dexterity and the tapping task. Children in the intervention group significantly improved their manual dexterity scores in the MABC-2 compared to the control group. On average, all children learnt the tapping sequence, however, there were no group differences and no effect of the intervention on the tapping task. These results have important implications for implementing a freely available, easy to administer, fun and interactive intervention to help children improve their manual dexterity skills

Retrospective screening of routine respiratory samples revealed undetected community transmission and missed intervention opportunities for SARS-CoV-2 in the United Kingdom.

In the early phases of the SARS coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, testing focused on individuals fitting a strict case definition involving a limited set of symptoms together with an identified epidemiological risk, such as contact with an infected individual or travel to a high-risk area. To assess whether this impaired our ability to detect and control early introductions of the virus into the UK, we PCR-tested archival specimens collected on admission to a large UK teaching hospital who retrospectively were identified as having a clinical presentation compatible with COVID-19. In addition, we screened available archival specimens submitted for respiratory virus diagnosis, and dating back to early January 2020, for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA. Our data provides evidence for widespread community circulation of SARS-CoV-2 in early February 2020 and into March that was undetected at the time due to restrictive case definitions informing testing policy. Genome sequence data showed that many of these early cases were infected with a distinct lineage of the virus. Sequences obtained from the first officially recorded case in Nottinghamshire - a traveller returning from Daegu, South Korea - also clustered with these early UK sequences suggesting acquisition of the virus occurred in the UK and not Daegu. Analysis of a larger sample of sequences obtained in the Nottinghamshire area revealed multiple viral introductions, mainly in late February and through March. These data highlight the importance of timely and extensive community testing to prevent future widespread transmission of the virus.Whole genome sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 was funded by COG-UK; COG-UK is supported by funding from the Medical Research Council (MRC) part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) and Genome Research Limited, operating as the Wellcome Sanger Institute

Paternal low protein diet perturbs inter-generational metabolic homeostasis in a tissue-specific manner in mice

The underlying mechanisms driving paternally-programmed metabolic disease in offspring remain poorly defined. We fed male C57BL/6 mice either a control normal protein diet (NPD; 18% protein) or an isocaloric low protein diet (LPD; 9% protein) for a minimum of 8 weeks. Using artificial insemination, in combination with vasectomised male mating, we generated offspring using either NPD or LPD sperm but in the presence of NPD or LPD seminal plasma. Offspring from either LPD sperm or seminal fluid display elevated body weight and tissue dyslipidaemia from just 3 weeks of age. These changes become more pronounced in adulthood, occurring in conjunction with altered hepatic metabolic and inflammatory pathway gene expression. Second generation offspring also display differential tissue lipid abundance, with profiles similar to those of first generation adults. These findings demonstrate that offspring metabolic homeostasis is perturbed in response to a suboptimal paternal diet with the effects still evident within a second generation

The state of the Martian climate

60°N was +2.0°C, relative to the 1981–2010 average value (Fig. 5.1). This marks a new high for the record. The average annual surface air temperature (SAT) anomaly for 2016 for land stations north of starting in 1900, and is a significant increase over the previous highest value of +1.2°C, which was observed in 2007, 2011, and 2015. Average global annual temperatures also showed record values in 2015 and 2016. Currently, the Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of lower latitudes

ACCESS-OM2 v1.0: a global ocean-sea ice model at three resolutions

We introduce ACCESS-OM2, a new version of the ocean–sea ice model of the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator. ACCESS-OM2 is driven by a prescribed atmosphere (JRA55-do) but has been designed to form the ocean–sea ice component of the fully coupled (atmosphere–land–ocean–sea ice) ACCESS-CM2 model. Importantly, the model is available at three different horizontal resolutions: a coarse resolution (nominally 1∘ horizontal grid spacing), an eddy-permitting resolution (nominally 0.25∘), and an eddy-rich resolution (0.1∘ with 75 vertical levels); the eddy-rich model is designed to be incorporated into the Bluelink operational ocean prediction and reanalysis system. The different resolutions have been developed simultaneously, both to allow for testing at lower resolutions and to permit comparison across resolutions. In this paper, the model is introduced and the individual components are documented. The model performance is evaluated across the three different resolutions, highlighting the relative advantages and disadvantages of running ocean–sea ice models at higher resolution. We find that higher resolution is an advantage in resolving flow through small straits, the structure of western boundary currents, and the abyssal overturning cell but that there is scope for improvements in sub-grid-scale parameterizations at the highest resolution