HIV risk: is it possible to dissuade people from having unsafe sex?

The cumulative number of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections worldwide has reached 60 million in little over 30 years. HIV continues to spread despite a detailed understanding of the manner in which it spreads and measures which can prevent spread. Some governments have been highly successful in containing the spread of HIV through blood products and from mother to child and among injecting drug users. Lack of political will, lack of resources or challenges to widely accepted scientific evidence have held back similar interventions in other countries. It has proved much more difficult to reduce the sexual transmission of HIV in both high and low income countries. A wide range of strategies has been identified but it remains unclear which strategies deserve priority and what methods of promoting them have the greatest effect.There is ample evidence that awareness of HIV and changes in sexual behaviour have occurred widely but the penetration of information remains poor in some vulnerable groups especially adolescents and women in poorer countries. Further obstacles face those who have information about the risk.The subordinate position of women and a desire for large families are important obstacles to condom negotiation and use. Urbanization, poverty, conflict and declining public services all exacerbate unsafe sexual behaviour.We argue that so-called ‘structural’ interventions directed at these wider contexts of unsafe behaviour merit greater attention. Such approaches have the added benefit of being less susceptible to ‘risk compensation’ which has the potential to undermine strategies directed at reducing the transmission efficiency of HIV

Sexually transmitted infection risk exposure among black and minority ethnic youth in northwest London: findings from a study translating a sexually transmitted infection risk-reduction intervention to the UK setting.

OBJECTIVES: Young black women are disproportionately affected by sexually transmitted infections (STI) in the UK, but effective interventions to address this are lacking. The Young Brent Project explored the nature and context of sexual risk-taking in young people to inform the translation of an effective clinic-based STI reduction intervention (Project SAFE) from the USA to the UK. METHODS: One-to-one in-depth interviews (n = 37) and group discussions (n = 10) were conducted among men and women aged 15-27 years from different ethnic backgrounds recruited from youth and genitourinary medicine clinic settings in Brent, London. The interviews explored the context within which STI-related risks were assessed, experienced and avoided, the skills needed to recognise risk and the barriers to behaviour change. RESULTS: Concurrent sexual partnerships, mismatched perceptions and expectations, and barriers to condom use contributed to STI risk exposure and difficulties in implementing risk-reduction strategies. Women attempted to achieve monogamy, but experienced complex and fluid sexual relationships. Low risk awareness, flawed partner risk assessments, negative perceptions of condoms and lack of control hindered condom use. Whereas men made conscious decisions, women experienced persuasion, deceit and difficulty in requesting condom use, particularly with older partners. CONCLUSIONS: Knowledge of STI and condom use skills is not enough to equip young people with the means to reduce STI risk. Interventions with young women need to place greater emphasis on: entering and maintaining healthy relationships; awareness of risks attached to different forms of concurrency and how concurrency arises; skills to redress power imbalances and building self-esteem

Diplomatic Gifts on Henri III\u27s Visit to Venice in 1574

Appendix 1 (pp. 101-6) translated from the French by Pamela J. Warner

Non-symmetric liquid crystal dimer containing a carbohydrate-based moiety

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Effects of glaucoma and snoring on cerebral oxygenation in the visual cortex: a study using functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS)

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of snoring and glaucoma on the visual Haemodynamic Response (HDR) using functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS). Methods: We recruited 8 glaucoma patients (aged 56-79), 6 habitual snorers (aged 26-61) and 10 healthy control participants (aged 21-78). Glaucoma patients were of varying subtypes and under care of ophthalmologists. Prior to testing visual acuity, blood pressure, heart rate and a medical history were taken. HDRs were recorded over the primary visual cortex (V1) using a reversing checkerboard paradigm. Results & Discussion: All participants showed the characteristic increase of Oxyhaemoglobin concentration ([HbO]) and decrease of Deoxyhaemoglobin concentration ([HbR]) during visual stimulation (p < 0.001, η2 = 0.78). Despite this, there were signifi cant group differences with a large effect size (η2 = 0.28). During visual stimulation normal participants had greater [HbO] compared to snorers and glaucoma patients (p < 0.01). Both glaucoma patients and snorers presented with comparable HDR for [HbO] and [HbR] in V1. Importantly, during visual stimulation, the increased [HbO] in glaucoma patients correlated well with their visual fi elds and self-reported activities of daily living (r = -0.98, r = -0.82, p < 0.05). Both glaucoma patients and snorers presented with an attenuated HDR in V1. Our results suggest a possible vascular link between these conditions

The challenges of technological innovation in HIV

The challenges of transferring biomedical advances and non-biomedical technological innovations in HIV prevention and treatment to the field, are a theme of this year’s XVII International AIDS Conference. In the HIV field, innovations are often understood in exclusively biomedical or psychosocial terms. Related to these understandings are well-worn disciplinary distinctions. Thus vaccines and drug treatments are typically understood as biotechnological. They are seen as the proper preserve of laboratory studies and clinical trials that are charged with the creation of biotechnologies to protect human bodies from HIV infection or reduce damaging effects when infection has occurred. By contrast, innovations in safer-sex campaigns and other forms of behavioural prevention are generally considered the mainstay of the social sciences. Research from these fields is intended to provide insights into the beliefs and practices that might inform policy and programmes aimed at individual behaviours. Interdisciplinary collaborations generally involve social-science study of human experiences of and responses to biomedical phenomena. Good examples are the studies of adherence to HIV antiretroviral drug treatments and studies of the effect of antiretrovirals on concepts of risk and risk behaviours. In such studies, the innovation is often taken to be separate from the individuals that participate in it. The goal is to understand how the initiative affects or is experienced by participants

Nematic twist-bend phase with nanoscale modulation of molecular orientation

A state of matter in which molecules show a long-range orientational order and no positional order is called a nematic liquid crystal. The best known and most widely used (for example, in modern displays) is the uniaxial nematic, with the rod-like molecules aligned along a single axis, called the director. When the molecules are chiral, the director twists in space, drawing a right-angle helicoid and remaining perpendicular to the helix axis; the structure is called a chiral nematic. Here using transmission electron and optical microscopy, we experimentally demonstrate a new nematic order, formed by achiral molecules, in which the director follows an oblique helicoid, maintaining a constant oblique angle with the helix axis and experiencing twist and bend. The oblique helicoids have a nanoscale pitch. The new twist-bend nematic represents a structural link between the uniaxial nematic (no tilt) and a chiral nematic (helicoids with right-angle tilt)

Navigating Car Attitudes: An Analysis of Transportation Habits, Environmental Views, and Demographics

Transportation plays a crucial part in the daily lives of people and society worldwide. Our study examined the transportation habits and environmental attitudes of both Gettysburg College students and individuals across the United States. We conducted a comparative analysis using a sample from students on campus and a national sample collected from the crowdsourcing platform, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Additionally, we compared our findings with two similar studies completed by an Environmental Studies capstone nine years ago. We calculated each respondent\u27s environmental score to gauge environmental attitudes, derived explicitly from their answers to five of the 24 survey questions. Next, we developed our research questions: How do transportation habits, demographics, and environmental attitudes compare to the data collected in 2014? How do the transportation habits, demographics, and environmental attitudes compare between Gettysburg College and the United States? To investigate this, we surveyed roughly 10% of the Gettysburg College student population, 236 students, and 188 individuals on Amazon\u27s Mechanical Turk. Our findings reveal that Gettysburg College students exhibit lower environmental concerns than the national sample. Furthermore, our research indicates Mechanical Turk respondents with higher environmental scores are more inclined to consider purchasing an electric vehicle than those with lower scores. Regarding demographics in relation to residency, the Gettysburg College sample reveals a correlation between respondents who reside in a suburban area and a lack of public transportation use. The Mechanical Turk sample also demonstrates a correlation between residing in an urban area and an increased use of public transportation. Future studies should strive for a larger sample size with an equal gender distribution