When They See Someone Who Is Poor, They Step on Them : The Social Determinants of Health Among Survivors of Sex Trafficking in Cambodia

Social determinants of health (SDH) are defined as the non-medical yet health-affecting conditions of a person’s life. They include such considerations as working conditions, discrimination, and access to health services. The aim of this study was to explore the SDH impacting those who have survived sex trafficking in Cambodia. This study employed a mixed methods, secondary analysis, focusing on 52 survivors of sex trafficking in the Butterfly Longitudinal Research Project from 2010 through 2019. Participants described myriad social determinants of health, including: gender, age, relationship status (marriage), ethnicity, national identification documentation (statelessness), social class, formal education, vocational training, occupation, and monthly income. The negative impacts of these social determinants of health included: poor access to basic needs of food and clean water, unstable housing, low education rates, worsening physical health, depression, and suicidal ideation, along with long unresolved STI-like symptoms. As these are multidisciplinary issues, the study concludes with recommendations for remedial actions to be taken by multidisciplinary stakeholders, namely government agencies, healthcare professionals, and survivor aftercare service providers

Ancient DNA Identification of Early 20th Century Simian T-Cell Leukemia Virus Type 1

The molecular identification of proviruses from ancient tissues (and particularly from bones) remains a contentious issue. It can be expected that the copy number of proviruses will be low, which magnifies the risk of contamination with retroviruses from exogenous sources. To assess the feasibility of paleoretrovirological studies, we attempted to identify proviruses from early 20th century bones of museum specimens while following a strict ancient DNA methodology. Simian T-cell leukemia virus type 1 sequences were successfully obtained and authenticated from a Chlorocebus pygerythrus specimen. This represents the first clear evidence that it will be possible to use museum specimens to better characterize simian and human T-tropic retrovirus genetic diversity and analyze their origin and evolution, in greater detail

Deteksi Antibodi terhadap Virus Newcastle Disease pada Burung Trucukan (Pycnonotus goiavier)

Burung trucukan (Pycnonotus goiavier) merupakan salah satu burung liar yang sering dipelihara karena kicauannyayang merdu. Infeksi ND dapat berupa infeksi yang akut atau kronis yang menyerang burung trucukan dan jenis burunglainnya. Burung liar merupakan salah satu sumber virus ND yang dapat menyebarkan virus ke unggas peliharaan.Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui titer antibodi terhadap penyakit tetelo pada burung trucukan liar. Sampel yangdigunakan adalah serum darah dari 50 ekor burung trucukan liar. Parameter yang diamati adalah titer antibodi dalamserum berdasarkan metode Hirst menggunakan uji Haemagglutination Inhibition (HI) untuk melihat titer antibodi. Untukmenghitung titer virus maka uji Haemaglutination (HA) dilakukan sebelumnya. Untuk memastikan titer antigen yangdigunakan adalah 4HAU dilkukan juga back titrasi sehingga didapatkan nilai virus optimal yang akan dipakai pada uji HI.Hasil penelitian menunjukkan 45 dari 50 sampel (90%) mempunyai antibodi positif terhadap ND, dengan titer berkisar 21-29. Berdasarkan hasil yang diperoleh dapat disimpulkan bahwa 90% burung trucukan di Kabupaten Aceh Besar sudahpernah terpapar ND, tetapi hanya 80% yang memiliki titer antibodi yang dapat melingdungi terhadap serangan virus ND.Oleh sebab itu dapat disimpulkan bahwa burung trucukan liar dengan titer antibodi yang protektif berarti sudah pernahterpapar virus ND sebelumnya akan berpotensi sebagai pembawa virus yang dapat ditularkan ke unggas peliharaanmasyarakat di sekitarnya

Laboratory Evaluation of a Manure Additive for Mitigating Gas and Odor Releases from Layer Hen Manure

Manure additives are widely used to mitigate gas and odor emissions from manure or improve manure properties. However, the reported effectiveness of some manure additive products has been mixed and most of the studies on poultry manure have been on chemical additives. A laboratory study was conducted to evaluate an enzyme-based commercial manure additive for its potential reductions of ammonia (NH3), carbon dioxide (CO2), hydrogen sulfide (H2S), and odor releases from layer hen manure. Eight 122-cm tall and 38-cm diameter reactors, four treated with the additive and four control, were studied for 38 days with manure from commercial layer hen houses. The reactors were initially filled with 66-cm height manure followed by weekly additions of 5 cm each. Ventilation air was supplied to the reactor headspace to simulate winter ventilation rates in layer hen houses. Concentrations of NH3, CO2, and H2S in the reactor exhaust air were measured with gas analyzers for 10 minutes, six times daily. Odor intensity was assessed by a trained odor panel. Open-headspace tests were also conducted to corroborate the observations in the reactor study. Study results showed that the average 4-reactor group mean release rates ± standard deviations of NH3 were 17.5 ± 14.3 and 20.1 ± 12.6 µg s–1 from the control and treated groups, respectively. Those of CO2 were 1091 ± 149 µg s–1 from the control and 1143 ± 217 µg s–1 from the treated groups. Release of H2S from the reactors could not be detected. The odor intensities were 3.5 ± 0.3 and 3.4 ± 0.3 before and after the additive spray, respectively. Application of the additive onto the manure did not demonstrate an effect on the releases of NH3 (P = 0.41), CO2 (P \u3e 0.23), and odor (P \u3e 0.71)

Region of magnetic dominance near a rotating black hole

This is a brief contribution in which a simplified criterion of the relevance of the test-particle approximation describing motion of material near a magnetized black hole is discussed. Application to processes of the dissipative collimation of astronomical jets (as proposed by de Felice and Curir, 1992) is mentioned.Comment: 11 pages, to appear in General Relativity and Gravitation, also available (with additional illustrations) at http://otokar.troja.mff.cuni.cz/user/karas/au_www/karas/papers.ht

The structure of black hole magnetospheres. I. Schwarzschild black holes

We introduce a multipolar scheme for describing the structure of stationary, axisymmetric, force-free black-hole magnetospheres in the ``3+1'' formalism. We focus here on Schwarzschild spacetime, giving a complete classification of the separable solutions of the stream equation. We show a transparent term-by-term analogy of our solutions with the familiar multipoles of flat-space electrodynamics. We discuss electrodynamic processes around disk-fed black holes in which our solutions find natural applications: (a) ``interior'' solutions in studies of the Blandford-Znajek process of extracting the hole's rotational energy, and of the formation of relativistic jets in active galactic nuclei and ``microquasars'', and, (b) ``exterior'' solutions in studies of accretion disk dynamos, disk-driven winds and jets. On the strength of existing numerical studies, we argue that the poloidal field structures found here are also expected to hold with good accuracy for rotating black holes, except for maximum possible rotation rates. We show that the closed-loop exterior solutions found here are not in contradiction with the Macdonald-Thorne theorem, since these solutions, which diverge logarithmically on the hole's horizon $\cal H$, apply only to those regions which exclude $\cal H$.Comment: 6 figures. Accepted for publication by MNRA

Thermal Control of Spin Excitations in the Coupled Ising-Chain Material RbCoCl₃

We have used neutron spectroscopy to investigate the spin dynamics of the quantum (S = 1/2) antiferromagnetic Ising chains in RbCoCl3. The structure and magnetic interactions in this material conspire to produce two magnetic phase transitions at low temperatures, presenting an ideal opportunity for thermal control of the chain environment. The high-resolution spectra we measure of two-domain-wall excitations therefore characterize precisely both the continuum response of isolated chains and the "Zeeman-ladder" bound states of chains in three different effective staggered fields in one and the same material. We apply an extended Matsubara formalism to obtain a quantitative description of the entire dataset, Monte Carlo simulations to interpret the magnetic order, and finite-temperature density-matrix renormalization-group calculations to fit the spectral features of all three phases

Molecular Tweezers with Varying Anions: A Comparative Study

Selective binding of the phosphate-substituted molecular tweezer 1a to protein lysine residues was suggested to explain the inhibition of certain enzymes and the aberrant aggregation of amyloid petide Aβ42 or α-synuclein, which are assumed to be responsible for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, respectively. In this work we systematically investigated the binding of four water-soluble tweezers 1a−d (substituted by phosphate, methanephosphonate, sulfate, or O-methylenecarboxylate groups) to amino acids and peptides containing lysine or arginine residues by using fluorescence spectroscopy, NMR spectroscopy, and isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC). The comparison of the experimental results with theoretical data obtained by a combination of QM/MM and ab initio 1H NMR shift calculations provides clear evidence that the tweezers 1a−c bind the amino acid or peptide guest molecules by threading the lysine or arginine side chain through the tweezers’ cavity, whereas in the case of 1d the guest molecule is preferentially positioned outside the tweezer’s cavity. Attractive ionic, CH-π, and hydrophobic interactions are here the major binding forces. The combination of experiment and theory provides deep insight into the host−guest binding modes, a prerequisite to understanding the exciting influence of these tweezers on the aggregation of proteins and the activity of enzymes