Assessment of Clinical Partner Violence Screening Tools

Objective: to compare the Women’s Experience with Battering Scale (WEB) with the Index of Spouse Abuse-Physical Scale (ISA-P) as screening tools to identify intimate partner violence (IPV). Methods: We conducted a large cross-sectional survey of women age 18 to 65 attending one of two family practice clinics from 1997 to 1998. All women completed both the WEB and the ISA-P and a telephone interview. We figured agreement estimates between the two tools, used stratified analyses to evaluate attributes of those more likely to screen as battered or physically assaulted, and compared associations between the WEB and ISA-P and a range of mental and physical health indicators known to be associated with IPV. Results: 18% of 1152 eligible women surveyed had experienced IPV in a current or most recent intimate rela-tionship with a male partner; 17% had been battered (WEB+), and 10% had been physically assaulted (ISA-P+). Had we used the ISA-P alone to assess IPV, we would have missed almost 45% of IPV. As anticipated, the ISA-P was more strongly associated with IPV-associated injuries and number of physician visits in the last year. The WEB was more strongly associated with self-perceived mental health, anxiety, depression, drug abuse, and low social support. Conclusion: Clinicians need validated screening tools to rapidly and reliably screen patients for IPV. Most screening tools assess physical violence and injury without considering the more chronic experience of battering and the psychological terror associated with this violence. The WEB may identify more abused women than tools measuring physical assaults

The springtime influence of natural tropical Pacific variability on the surface climate of the Ross Ice Shelf, West Antarctica: implications for ice shelf thinning

Observational records starting in the 1950s show West Antarctica is amongst the most rapidly warming regions on the planet. Together with increased intrusions of warm circumpolar deep water (CDW) onto the continental shelf due to local wind forcing (the primary mechanism in recent decades), this has resulted in enhanced surface and basal melting of floating ice shelves and an associated acceleration and thinning of West Antarctic outlet glaciers, increasing the rate of global sea level rise. In this study, it is shown that during the austral spring season, significant surface warming across West Antarctica has shifted westward to the Ross Ice Shelf in recent decades in response to enhanced cyclonic circulation over the Ross Sea. These circulation changes are caused by a Rossby wave train forced by increasing sea surface temperatures in the western tropical Pacific, which is tied to the springtime shift of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) to its negative phase after 1992. While the local wind trends enhance warm air advection and surface warming across the Ross Ice Shelf, the strong easterly component of the wind trends reduces the likelihood for intrusions of CDW onto the continental shelf in this region. This suggests that during spring there are competing mechanisms of surface and basal melting of the Ross Ice Shelf, both of which are closely tied to natural tropical Pacific decadal variability. Moreover, that the projected transition of the IPO back to its positive phase in the coming decade, though likely to reduce surface warming on the Ross Ice Shelf, could increase the risk of disintegration of Ross Sea ice shelves due to increased intrusions of CDW and enhanced basal melting

Taking tissue seriously means taking communities seriously

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Health research is increasingly being conducted on a global scale, particularly in the developing world to address leading causes of morbidity and mortality. While research interest has increased, building scientific capacity in the developing world has not kept pace. This often leads to the export of human tissue (defined broadly) from the developing to the developed world for analysis. These practices raise a number of important ethical issues that require attention.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>In the developed world, there is great heterogeneity of regulatory practices regarding human tissues. In this paper, we outline the salient ethical issues raised by tissue exportation, review the current ethical guidelines and norms, review the literature on what is known empirically about perceptions and practices with respect to tissue exportation from the developing to the developed world, set out what needs to be known in terms of a research agenda, and outline what needs to be done immediately in terms of setting best practices. We argue that the current status of tissue exportation is ambiguous and requires clarification lest problems that have plagued the developed world occur in the context of global heath research with attendant worsening of inequities. Central to solutions to current ethical concerns entail moving beyond concern with individual level consent and embracing a robust interaction with communities engaged in research.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Greater attention to community engagement is required to understand the diverse issues associated with tissue exportation.</p

Supersymmetric AdS_5 solutions of M-theory

We analyse the most general supersymmetric solutions of D=11 supergravity consisting of a warped product of five-dimensional anti-de-Sitter space with a six-dimensional Riemannian space M_6, with four-form flux on M_6. We show that M_6 is partly specified by a one-parameter family of four-dimensional Kahler metrics. We find a large family of new explicit regular solutions where M_6 is a compact, complex manifold which is topologically a two-sphere bundle over a four-dimensional base, where the latter is either (i) Kahler-Einstein with positive curvature, or (ii) a product of two constant-curvature Riemann surfaces. After dimensional reduction and T-duality, some solutions in the second class are related to a new family of Sasaki-Einstein spaces which includes T^{1,1}/Z_2. Our general analysis also covers warped products of five-dimensional Minkowski space with a six-dimensional Riemannian space.Comment: 40 pages. v2: minor changes, eqs. (2.22) and (D.12) correcte

Unprecedented springtime retreat of Antarctic sea ice in 2016

During austral spring 2016 Antarctic sea ice extent (SIE) decreased at a record rate of 75 x 10(3) km(2) d(-1), which was 46% faster than the mean rate and 18% faster than in any previous spring season during the satellite era. The decrease of sea ice area was also exceptional and 28% greater than the mean. Anomalous negative retreat occurred in all sectors of the Antarctic but was greatest in the Weddell and Ross Seas. Record negative SIE anomalies for the day of year were recorded from 3 November 2016 to 9 April 2017. Rapid ice retreat in the Weddell Sea took place in strong northerly flow after an early maximum ice extent in late August. Rapid ice retreat occurred in November in the Ross Sea when surface pressure was at a record high level, with the Southern Annular Mode at its most negative for that month since 1968

Supersymmetric AdS_5 Solutions of Type IIB Supergravity

We analyse the most general bosonic supersymmetric solutions of type IIB supergravity whose metrics are warped products of five-dimensional anti-de Sitter space AdS_5 with a five-dimensional Riemannian manifold M_5. All fluxes are allowed to be non-vanishing consistent with SO(4,2) symmetry. We show that the necessary and sufficient conditions can be phrased in terms of a local identity structure on M_5. For a special class, with constant dilaton and vanishing axion, we reduce the problem to solving a second order non-linear ODE. We find an exact solution of the ODE which reproduces a solution first found by Pilch and Warner. A numerical analysis of the ODE reveals an additional class of local solutions.Comment: 33 page

The future for sheep

In the 1960\u27s the sheep industry has been described as being at a crossroads. Serious concern has been expressed over the future of the entire industry. Declining numbers, competition from other meats and fabrics and low returns have all been cited as reasons for pessimism. But recent developments in product improvement and industrywide efforts to a~tack problems have given rise to a degree of cautious optimism about the future.https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/card_reports/1022/thumbnail.jp

Cosmological parameters from SDSS and WMAP

We measure cosmological parameters using the three-dimensional power spectrum P(k) from over 200,000 galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) in combination with WMAP and other data. Our results are consistent with a ``vanilla'' flat adiabatic Lambda-CDM model without tilt (n=1), running tilt, tensor modes or massive neutrinos. Adding SDSS information more than halves the WMAP-only error bars on some parameters, tightening 1 sigma constraints on the Hubble parameter from h~0.74+0.18-0.07 to h~0.70+0.04-0.03, on the matter density from Omega_m~0.25+/-0.10 to Omega_m~0.30+/-0.04 (1 sigma) and on neutrino masses from <11 eV to <0.6 eV (95%). SDSS helps even more when dropping prior assumptions about curvature, neutrinos, tensor modes and the equation of state. Our results are in substantial agreement with the joint analysis of WMAP and the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey, which is an impressive consistency check with independent redshift survey data and analysis techniques. In this paper, we place particular emphasis on clarifying the physical origin of the constraints, i.e., what we do and do not know when using different data sets and prior assumptions. For instance, dropping the assumption that space is perfectly flat, the WMAP-only constraint on the measured age of the Universe tightens from t0~16.3+2.3-1.8 Gyr to t0~14.1+1.0-0.9 Gyr by adding SDSS and SN Ia data. Including tensors, running tilt, neutrino mass and equation of state in the list of free parameters, many constraints are still quite weak, but future cosmological measurements from SDSS and other sources should allow these to be substantially tightened.Comment: Minor revisions to match accepted PRD version. SDSS data and ppt figures available at http://www.hep.upenn.edu/~max/sdsspars.htm