A combined microfinance and training intervention can reduce HIV risk behaviour in young female participants.

OBJECTIVE: To assess effects of a combined microfinance and training intervention on HIV risk behavior among young female participants in rural South Africa. DESIGN: : Secondary analysis of quantitative and qualitative data from a cluster randomized trial, the Intervention with Microfinance for AIDS and Gender Equity study. METHODS: Eight villages were pair-matched and randomly allocated to receive the intervention. At baseline and after 2 years, HIV risk behavior was assessed among female participants aged 14-35 years. Their responses were compared with women of the same age and poverty group from control villages. Intervention effects were calculated using adjusted risk ratios employing village level summaries. Qualitative data collected during the study explored participants' responses to the intervention including HIV risk behavior. RESULTS: After 2 years of follow-up, when compared with controls, young participants had higher levels of HIV-related communication (adjusted risk ratio 1.46, 95% confidence interval 1.01-2.12), were more likely to have accessed voluntary counseling and testing (adjusted risk ratio 1.64, 95% confidence interval 1.06-2.56), and less likely to have had unprotected sex at last intercourse with a nonspousal partner (adjusted risk ratio 0.76, 95% confidence interval 0.60-0.96). Qualitative data suggest a greater acceptance of intrahousehold communication about HIV and sexuality. Although women noted challenges associated with acceptance of condoms by men, increased confidence and skills associated with participation in the intervention supported their introduction in sexual relationships. CONCLUSIONS: In addition to impacts on economic well being, women's empowerment and intimate partner violence, interventions addressing the economic and social vulnerability of women may contribute to reductions in HIV risk behavior

What makes for prize-winning television?

We investigate the determinants of success in four international television awards festivals between 1994 and 2012. We find that countries with larger markets and greater expenditure on public broadcasting tend to win more awards, but that the degree of concentration in the market for television and rates of penetration of pay-per-view television are unrelated to success. These findings are consistent with general industrial organisation literature on quality and market size, and with media policy literature on public service broadcasting acting as a force for quality. However, we also find that ‘home countries’ enjoy a strong advantage in these festivals, which is not consistent with festival success acting as a pure proxy for television quality

Nonstandard Analysis and Shock Wave Jump Conditions in a One-Dimensional Compressible Gas

Nonstandard analysis is a relatively new area of mathematics in which infinitesimal numbers can be defined and manipulated rigorously like real numbers. This report presents a fairly comprehensive tutorial on nonstandard analysis for physicists and engineers with many examples applicable to generalized functions. To demonstrate the power of the subject, the problem of shock wave jump conditions is studied for a one-dimensional compressible gas. It is assumed that the shock thickness occurs on an infinitesimal interval and the jump functions in the thermodynamic and fluid dynamic parameters occur smoothly across this interval. To use conservations laws, smooth pre-distributions of the Dirac delta measure are applied whose supports are contained within the shock thickness. Furthermore, smooth pre-distributions of the Heaviside function are applied which vary from zero to one across the shock wave. It is shown that if the equations of motion are expressed in nonconservative form then the relationships between the jump functions for the flow parameters may be found unambiguously. The analysis yields the classical Rankine-Hugoniot jump conditions for an inviscid shock wave. Moreover, non-monotonic entropy jump conditions are obtained for both inviscid and viscous flows. The report shows that products of generalized functions may be defined consistently using nonstandard analysis; however, physically meaningful products of generalized functions must be determined from the physics of the problem and not the mathematical form of the governing equations

Molecular Recognition of Insulin by a Synthetic Receptor

The discovery of molecules that bind tightly and selectively to desired proteins continues to drive innovation at the interface of chemistry and biology. This paper describes the binding of human insulin by the synthetic receptor cucurbit[7]uril (Q7) in vitro. Isothermal titration calorimetry and fluorescence spectroscopy experiments show that Q7 binds to insulin with an equilibrium association constant of 1.5 × 106 M−1 and with 50−100-fold selectivity versus proteins that are much larger but lack an N-terminal aromatic residue, and with \u3e1000-fold selectivity versus an insulin variant lacking the N-terminal phenylalanine (Phe) residue. The crystal structure of the Q7·insulin complex shows that binding occurs at the N-terminal Phe residue and that the N-terminus unfolds to enable binding. These findings suggest that site-selective recognition is based on the properties inherent to a protein terminus, including the unique chemical epitope presented by the terminal residue and the greater freedom of the terminus to unfold, like the end of a ball of string, to accommodate binding. Insulin recognition was predicted accurately from studies on short peptides and exemplifies an approach to protein recognition by targeting the terminus

Core handling and processing for the WAIS Divide ice-core project

On 1 December 2011 the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) Divide ice-core project reached its final depth of 3405 m. The WAIS Divide ice core is not only the longest US ice core to date, but is also the highest-quality deep ice core, including ice from the brittle ice zone, that the US has ever recovered. The methods used at WAIS Divide to handle and log the drilled ice, the procedures used to safely retrograde the ice back to the US National Ice Core Laboratory (NICL) and the methods used to process and sample the ice at the NICL are described and discussed

VORTEX: Physics-Driven Data Augmentations Using Consistency Training for Robust Accelerated MRI Reconstruction

Deep neural networks have enabled improved image quality and fast inference times for various inverse problems, including accelerated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) reconstruction. However, such models require a large number of fully-sampled ground truth datasets, which are difficult to curate, and are sensitive to distribution drifts. In this work, we propose applying physics-driven data augmentations for consistency training that leverage our domain knowledge of the forward MRI data acquisition process and MRI physics to achieve improved label efficiency and robustness to clinically-relevant distribution drifts. Our approach, termed VORTEX, (1) demonstrates strong improvements over supervised baselines with and without data augmentation in robustness to signal-to-noise ratio change and motion corruption in data-limited regimes; (2) considerably outperforms state-of-the-art purely image-based data augmentation techniques and self-supervised reconstruction methods on both in-distribution and out-of-distribution data; and (3) enables composing heterogeneous image-based and physics-driven data augmentations. Our code is available at https://github.com/ad12/meddlr.Comment: Accepted to MIDL 202

Core handling and processing for the WAIS Divide ice-core project

On 1 December 2011 the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) Divide ice-core project reached its final depth of 3405 m. The WAIS Divide ice core is not only the longest US ice core to date, but is also the highest-quality deep ice core, including ice from the brittle ice zone, that the US has ever recovered. The methods used at WAIS Divide to handle and log the drilled ice, the procedures used to safely retrograde the ice back to the US National Ice Core Laboratory (NICL) and the methods used to process and sample the ice at the NICL are described and discussed

Phenyl Saligenin Phosphate Induced Caspase-3 and c-Jun N-Terminal Kinase Activation in Cardiomyocyte-Like Cells

At present, little is known about the effect(s) of organophosphorous compounds (OPs) on cardiomyocytes. In this study we have investigated the effects of phenyl saligenin phosphate (PSP), two organophosphorothioate insecticides (diazinon and chlorpyrifos) and their acutely toxic metabolites (diazoxon and chlorpyrifos oxon) on mitotic and differentiated H9c2 cardiomyoblasts. OP-induced cytotoxicity was assessed by monitoring MTT reduction, LDH release and caspase-3 activity. Cytotoxicity was not observed with diazinon, diazoxon or chlorpyrifos oxon (48 h exposure; 200 μM). Chlorpyrifos-induced cytotoxicity was only evident at concentrations >100 μM. In marked contrast, PSP displayed pronounced cytotoxicity towards mitotic and differentiated H9c2 cells. PSP triggered the activation of JNK1/2, but not ERK1/2, p38 MAPK or PKB, suggesting a role for this pro-apoptotic protein kinase in PSP-induced cell death. The JNK1/2 inhibitor SP 600125 attenuated PSP-induced caspase-3 and JNK1/2 activation, confirming the role of JNK1/2 in PSP-induced cytotoxicity. Fluorescently labelled PSP (dansylated PSP) was used to identify novel PSP binding proteins. Dansylated PSP displayed cytotoxicity towards differentiated H9c2 cells. 2D-gel electrophoresis profiles of cells treated with dansylated PSP (25 μM) were used to identify proteins fluorescently labelled with dansylated PSP. Proteomic analysis identified tropomyosin, heat shock protein β-1 and nucleolar protein 58 as novel protein targets for PSP. In summary, PSP triggers cytotoxicity in differentiated H9c2 cardiomyoblasts via JNK1/2-mediated activation of caspase-3. Further studies are required to investigate whether the identified novel protein targets of PSP play a role in the cytotoxicity of this OP, which is usually associated with the development of OP-induced delayed neuropathy

Voice and Agency: Empowering women and girls for shared prosperity

This document presents Voice and Agency: Empowering women and girls for shared prosperity is a major new report by the World Bank that shines a spotlight on the value of voice and agency, the patterns of constraints that limit their realization, and the associated costs, not only to individual women but to their families, communities, and societies. It highlights promising policies and interventions, and it identifies priority areas where further research and more and better data and evidence are needed. Underlining that agency has both intrinsic and instrumental, concrete value, this report puts advancing women's voice and agency squarely on the international development agenda