Substance Use Among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Clients Entering Substance Abuse Treatment: Comparisons to Heterosexual Clients

Objective: This study evaluated whether sexual orientation-specific differences in substance use behaviors exist among adults entering substance abuse treatment. Method: Admissions records (July 2007–December 2009) were examined for treatment programs in San Francisco, California receiving government funding. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) persons (n = 1,441) were compared to heterosexual persons (n = 11,770) separately by sex, examining primary problem substance of abuse, route of administration, age of first use, and frequency of use prior to treatment. Results: Regarding bisexual males, the only significant finding of note was greater prevalence of methamphetamine as the primary substance of abuse. When compared to heterosexual men, gay and bisexual men evidenced greater rates of primary problem methamphetamine use (44.5% and 21.8%, respectively, vs. 7.7%, adjusted odds ratios [ORs] 6.43 and 2.94), and there was lower primary heroin use among gay men (9.3% vs. 25.8%, OR 0.35). Among LGB individuals, race and ethnicity did not predict primary problem substance, except that among LGB men and women, a non-White race predicted cocaine use (OR 4.83 and 6.40, respectively), and among lesbian and bisexual women, Hispanic ethnicity predicted lower odds of primary cocaine use (OR 0.24). When compared to heterosexual men, gay men were more likely to smoke their primary problem substance (OR 1.61), first used this substance at an older age (M = 23.16 vs. M = 18.55, p \u3c .001), and used this substance fewer days prior to treatment (M = 8.75 vs. M = 11.41, p \u3c .001). There were no differences between heterosexual and lesbian or bisexual women. Conclusions: There were unique patterns of substance use for gay and bisexual men entering substance abuse treatment, but women did not evidence differences. Gay men evidenced unique factors that may reflect less severity of use when entering treatment including fewer days of use and a later age of initiation of their primary problem substances. The results underscore the importance of being sensitive to differences between gay, bisexual, and heterosexual males when considering substance use disorders

Germination and Vegetative Propagation of Native Prairie Forbs

In the late 1960\u27s and early 1970\u27s there arose an increased awareness of the ecological relationships of nature to man. Although this relationship has been known for some time and numerous books have been written on the subject, public awareness has been slow in coming. But for some unknown reason man has taken a turn to nature. He is becoming more involved with conservation of nature and appreciative of its aesthetic beauty. With this new awareness there has come a new era of camping, hiking, and riding, to mention only a few activities which man needs or wants to enable him to enjoy his new relationship with nature. As strange as it may seem, one of these new interests is the prairie. In his awareness, man now has become concerned over his management of the prairie and now is looking at its aesthetic beauty, historical dialog, and restoration. If the prairies are to be restored or prairie plants used for landscaping and other commercial uses, there will be a large demand for· seed from forbs which does not exist in sufficient quantity at the present time. This seed source must come from the small relict areas which still possess a gene pool representative of the native prairie. Jenkins points out that in any natural community there are a few dominant species which are very abundant and a large number of species which are more or less rare. In a prairie in Wisconsin, with 240 species present, 12 species were represented by as many individual plants as all the other 228 species combined. It is these 228 species, the majority of which are forbs, that this thesis is concerned about. Extensive research has been done on the grasses of the prairie, and these grasses can be established with relative ease compared to the forbs. Essentially no research has been done with forbs in· comparison to prairie grasses. The objectives of this thesis are twofold: (1) to determine the germination potential of several native prairie forbs, and (2) to determine the vegetative propagation potential of several native prairie forbs

Venezuelan higher education and national development

The author spent four years in Latin America--almost three of those years in Maracaibo, Venezuela (1962-1965). As a Student Affairs Grantee with the United States Information Agency and working out of the cultural America House, it was his duty to know the university scene, and especially its student leaders. Among other duties were the teaching and organizing of English classes within the university and assisting the American Embassy by providing student leaders to conference where prominent North American and Venezuelan educators would speak and offer an exchange of ideas regarding the contemporary university scene. During that time it was his pleasure to become acquainted with the Director of the Planning Commission and Dean of the School of Architecture, Dr. Miguel Casas Armengol, and his assistant, Dr. Alberto Mendoza, whose unyielding efforts served as an inspiration and impetus for this thesis

Rapid detection of faecally contaminated drinking water with in-situ fluorescence spectroscopy

Two billion people consume drinking water contaminated with human and animal faeces. The resulting infections are a major source of disease globally, with an estimated 500,000 deaths per year from diarrhoea alone. This thesis explores the viability of in-situ fluorescence spectroscopy as a simpler, instantaneous, more temporally resilient alternative to faecal indicator organisms (FIOs) to indicate faecal contamination risk in drinking water sources across a range of hydrological and climatological settings. TLF was a significant predictor in logistic regression models of the presence-absence of FIOs and moderately to very strongly correlated with FIO enumeration, including in real-time data. HLF was also shown to be a similarly effective indicator to TLF of FIO presence-absence and enumeration. TLF/HLF were superior to other rapid approaches, such as turbidity, sanitary risk scores or total bacterial cell counts, to indicate FIOs. Seasonal sampling demonstrated TLF/HLF were more associated with FIOs during the wet season than dry season. The ranking of sources using TLF/HLF was more resilient with time than that using FIOs, with dry season TLF/HLF more related to wet season FIOs, when FIOs are elevated, then dry season FIOs. In groundwater, tryptophan-like and humic-like fluorophores were shown to be predominantly extracellular and hence will have different transport properties in comparison to FIOs and larger pathogens. Fluorophores were also demonstrated to accumulate in highly contaminated intergranular aquifers where TLF/HLF intensity related to other indicators of faecal contamination, such as on-site sanitation density, but not to FIO enumeration. In-situ fluorescence spectroscopy is a simple, instantaneous approach to screen water sources for faecal contamination risk. The technique offers global scope to reduce population exposure to enteric pathogens in drinking water: from providing real-time data across municipal supply infrastructure to assessing the relative risks between drinking water sources in low-income settings

Just luck: an experimental study of risk taking and fairness

Choices involving risk significantly affect the distribution of income and wealth in society. This paper reports the results of the first experiment, to our knowledge, to study fairness views about risk-taking, specifically whether such views are based chiefly on ex ante opportunities or on ex post outcomes. We find that, even though many participants focus exclusively on ex ante opportunities, most favor some redistribution ex post. Many participants also make a distinction between ex post inequalities that reflect differences in luck and ex post inequalities that reflect differences in choices. These findings apply to both stakeholders and impartial spectators.fairness; justice; risk

Hydroecological impacts of climate change modelled for a lowland UK wetland

Conservation management of wetlands often rests on modifying hydrological functions to establish or maintain desired flora and fauna. Hence the ability to predict the impacts of climate change is highly beneficial. Here, the physically based, distributed model MIKE SHE was used to simulate hydrology for the Lambourn Observatory at Boxford, UK. This comprises a 10 ha lowland riparian wetland protected for conservation, where the degree of variability in the peat, gravel and chalk geology has clouded hydrological understanding. Notably, a weathered layer on the chalk aquifer surface seals it from overlying deposits, yet is highly spatially heterogeneous. Long-term monitoring yielded observations of groundwater and surface water levels for model calibration and validation. Simulated results were consistent with observed data and reproduced the effects of seasonal fluctuations and in-channel macrophyte growth. The adjacent river and subsidiary channel were found to act as head boundaries, exerting a general control on water levels across the site. Discrete areas of groundwater upwellings caused raised water levels at distinct locations within the wetland. These were concurrent to regions where the weathered chalk layer is absent. To assess impacts of climate change, outputs from the UK Climate Projections 2009 ensemble of global climate models for the 2080s are used to obtain monthly percentage changes in climate variables. Changes in groundwater levels were taken from a regional model of the Chalk aquifer. Values of precipitation and evapotranspiration were seen to increase, whilst groundwater levels decreased, resulting in the greater dominance of precipitation. The discrete areas of groundwater upwelling were seen to diminish or disappear. Simulated water levels were linked to specific requirements of wetland plants using water table depth zone diagrams. Increasing depth of winter and summer groundwater levels leads to a loss of Glyceria maxima and Phragmites australis, principal habitat for the endangered Vertigo moulinsiana. Further, the reduced influx of base-rich groundwater and increased dominance of high pH rain-fed waters alters the acidity of the soil. This leads to changes in species composition, with potential reductions in Carex paniculata, Caltha palustris and Typha latifolia

Skewness and kurtosis properties of income distribution models

This paper explores the ability of some popular income distributions to model observed skewness and kurtosis. We present the generalized beta type 1 (GB1) and type 2 (GB2) distributions' skewness-kurtosis spaces and clarify and expand on previously known results on other distributions' skewness-kurtosis spaces. Data from the Luxembourg Income Study are used to estimate sample moments and explore the ability of the generalized gamma, Dagum, Singh-Maddala, beta of the first kind, beta of the second kind, GB1, and GB2 distributions to accommodate the skewness and kurtosis values. The GB2 has the flexibility to accurately describe the observed skewness and kurtosis