The association of family and peer factors with tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use among Chilean adolescents in neighborhood context

Research on adolescent use of substances has long sought to understand the family factors that may be associated with use of different substances such as alcohol, tobacco and marijuana. However, scant attention has been focused on these questions in Latin American contexts, despite growing concerns about substance use among Latin American youth. Using data from a sample of 866 Chilean youth, we examined the relationship of family and neighborhood factors with youth substance abuse. We found that in a Latin American context access to substances is an important predictor of use, but that neighborhood effects differ for marijuana use as opposed to cigarettes or alcohol. Age of youth, family and peer relationships, and gender all play significant roles of substance use.The study findings provide additional evidence that the use of substances is complex whereby individual, family, and community influences must be considered jointly to prevent or reduce substance use among adolescents.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3249750/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3249750/Accepted manuscrip

Comics and human rights: an interview with the team behind Sogi’s Story

Professor Andrea Durbach is Director of the Australian Human Rights Centre in the Faculty of Law at UNSW, where she co­-directs projects on health and human rights, and transformative reparations and gender violence post-conflict. Andrea was Deputy Sex Discrimination Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission in 2011-2012. Jed Horner is a Project Director on health, sexual orientation and human rights at the Australian Human Rights Centre and a PhD candidate at UNSW. Previously, he worked as an external advisor to the New Zealand Human Rights Commission and Office of the Children’s Commissioner (Young Peoples Reference Group). Interview conducted by Andrew Small (@_ansmall), Lead Editor of the LSE Human Rights Blog

A New Kinematic Distance Estimator to the LMC

The distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) can be directly determined by measuring three of its properties, its radial-velocity field, its mean proper motion, and the position angle \phi_ph of its photometric line of nodes. Statistical errors of 2% are feasible based on proper motions obtained with any of several proposed astrometry satellites, the first possibility being the Full-Sky Astrometric Mapping Explorer (FAME). The largest source of systematic error is likely to be in the determination of \phi_ph. I suggest two independent methods to measure \phi_ph, one based on counts of clump giants and the other on photometry of clump giants. I briefly discuss a variety of methods to test for other sources of systematic errors.Comment: submitted to ApJ, 13 page

Chiral spin chain interfaces as event horizons

The interface between different quantum phases of matter can give rise to novel physics, such as exotic topological phases or non-unitary conformal field theories. Here we investigate the interface between two spin chains in different chiral phases. Surprisingly, the mean-field theory description of this interacting composite system is given in terms of Dirac fermions in a curved space-time geometry. In particular, the boundary between the two phases represents a black hole horizon. We demonstrate that this representation is faithful both analytically, by employing bosonisation to obtain a Luttinger liquid model, and numerically, by employing Matrix Product State methods. A striking prediction from the black hole equivalence emerges when a quench, at one side of the interface between two opposite chiralities, causes the other side to thermalise with the Hawking temperature for a wide range of parameters and initial conditions.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figure

The Influence of Knowledge Management on Business Value in IT Projects: A Theoretical Model

This paper develops a theoretical model to explain the relationships between knowledge management and business value in IT-enabled business projects. It draws upon a wide range of literatures including project management, management information systems, software engineering, organization and management theory, organizational behaviour and strategy. The overall model comprises two sub-models. The first shows how the alignment of three project-based knowledges directly influences business value. The second shows how four knowledge-based concepts, knowledge management, knowledge stock, enabling environment, and knowledge practices, combine to create the project-based knowledges. Together these two sub-models provide an overall model of the causal system through which knowledge management influences business value. This research makes contributions to the research into IT Projects by (1) integrating fragmented literatures which connect knowledge management and project success; and (2) proposing for discussion a predictive model in which knowledge management influences business value. It has the potential when further developed to clarify what project managers can do to manage knowledge in a systematic way

Exploring interacting chiral spin chains in terms of black hole physics

In this paper we explore the properties of a 1-dimensional spin chain in the presence of chiral interactions, focusing on the system's transition to distinct chiral phases for various values of the chiral coupling. By employing the mean field theory approximation we establish a connection between this chiral system and a Dirac particle in the curved spacetime of a black hole. Surprisingly, the black hole horizon coincides with the interface between distinct chiral phases. We examine the chiral properties of the system for homogeneous couplings and in scenarios involving position dependent couplings that correspond to black hole geometries. To determine the significance of interactions in the chiral chain we employ bosonization techniques and derive the corresponding Luttinger liquid model. Furthermore, we investigate the classical version of the model to understand the impact of the chiral operator on the spins and gain insight into the observed chirality. Our findings shed light on the behavior of the spin chain under the influence of the chiral operator, elucidating the implications of chirality in various contexts, including black hole physics.Comment: 18 pages, 12 figures,. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2212.1254