The prevalence of, and factors associated with, paying for sex among men resident in Britain: findings from the third national survey of sexual attitudes and lifestyles (Natsal-3)

Objectives Men who pay for sex (MPS) are considered a bridging population for sexually transmitted infections (STI). However, the extent, characteristics and role of MPS in transmission is poorly understood. We investigate these questions using data from Britain's third National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal-3). Methods We performed complex survey analyses of data from 6293 men aged 16–74 years resident in Britain who completed Natsal-3, a probability sample survey undertaken during 2010–2012, using computer-assisted personal interviewing and computer-assisted self-interview. Results 11.0% (95% CI10.1% to 11.9%) of all men reported ever paying for sex. Among MPS, 18.4% (95% CI 18.2% to 18.7%) of their lifetime sexual partners were paid. 3.6% (95% CI 3.1% to 4.2%) of men had paid for sex in the past 5 years. Partners of MPS constitute 14.7% of all reported partners and MPS report 15.6% of all reported STI diagnoses in the past 5 years. Paying for sex in the past 5 years was strongly associated with reporting larger numbers of sexual partners (adjusted OR, AOR for 5+ partners, past 5 years, 31.50, 95% CI 18.69 to 53.09). After adjusting for partner numbers, paying for sex remained strongly associated with reporting new foreign partners outside the UK (AOR 7.96; 95% CI 4.97 to 12.73) and STI diagnosis/es (AOR 2.34; 95% CI 1.44 to 3.81), all in the past 5 years. Among men ever paying for sex, 62.6% (95% CI 58.3% to 66.8%) reported paying for sex outside the UK, most often in Europe and Asia. Conclusions MPS in Britain remain at greater risk of STI acquisition and onward transmission than men who do not. They report high numbers of partners, but the minority are paid partners. They are an important core group in STI transmission

Layered soils in the shallow subsurface (<6.0 m), North Sea; a data report

The Carbon Trust (2015) “Cable Burial Risk Assessment (CBRA) Methodology” document is widely used in the offshore subsea cable industry to define the cable burial Depth of Lowering (DoL). To-date, published work on anchor penetration depths has focused on single homogeneous soil units, offering limited information on the response of different soil layering combinations, and associated contrasting geotechnical properties between soil units. By interrogating >11,000 shallow cores from the entire UK North Sea area, we demonstrate that “layered” soil combinations (e.g., “sand over clay”) are statistically common across the North Sea study area. The results also highlight the importance of updating current CBRA approaches to include “layered” soils, and associated changes in geotechnical properties (e.g., strength and density) between single and layered soil units. In addition, we collated geotechnical data for input into physical and numerical modelling under-taken by the University of Dundee and Durham University respectively (see Sharif et al., 2023; Bird et al., 2023 a, b), to assess the implications for the current CBRA Methodology. Ultimately the goal is to create a new CPT-based tool for better constraining the DoL, as part of the EPSRC research grant “Offshore Cable Burial: How deep is deep enough?”

Experimental and theoretical studies of spectral alteration in ultrasonic waves resulting from nonlinear elastic response in rock

Experiments in rock show a large nonlinear elastic wave response, far greater than that of gases, liquids and most other solids. The large response is attributed to structural defects in rock including microcracks and grain boundaries. In the earth, a large nonlinear response may be responsible for significant spectral alteration at amplitudes and distances currently considered to be well within the linear elastic regime

Geo-challenges for ground model development in previously glaciated and periglaciated terrains

To achieve a net-zero clean energy future, developing offshore windfarm sites is fundamental to the UK’s success in the renewable forms of energy. Integral to this is understanding the shallow subsurface geology which forms the foundation zone to these windfarm developments; particularly the impacts of past glaciations on the sedimentary and structural architecture of the deposits left behind following deglaciation. The range of depositional environments and distribution of deposits including diamictons, organic soils, rhyth-mically laminated soils, sands and gravels, result in extreme lateral and vertical heterogeneity. This variability, coupled with glaciotectonism, can make wind-turbine installation, kilometres apart, extremely challenging. Therefore, a multidisciplinary approach integrating geotechnical, geological, and geophysical data has enabled geological models to reimagine these ancient landscapes, identifying how they changed spatially and tempo-rally, predict soil-type and behaviour, and furthers the understanding of implications for the foundation design of offshore infrastructure. Here we use knowledge of past glaciations to highlight several instances of extreme vertical and/or horizontal anisotropy, using onshore sites as analogues for observations from the North Sea, illustrating the necessity of fully characterising ancient landscapes to enable the development of ground models which overcome geo-challenges faced by offshore developments

Influence of L-carnitine on litter characteristics from gilts harvested at day 40, 55, and 70 of gestation

Swine research, 2005 is known as Swine day, 2005A total of 59 gilts were used to determine the effects of supplemental L-carnitine on reproductive performance. Experimental treatments were arranged in a 2 × 3 factorial with main effects of L-carnitine (0 or 50 ppm) and day of gestation (40, 55, or 70). All gilts received a constant feed allowance of 3.86 lb/day and a top-dress containing either 0 or 88 mg of L-carnitine, starting on the first day of breeding and continuing until the day of harvest. Total litter size, total litter weight, and crown-to-rump length of fetuses were not different (P>0.10) between treatments at any gestation length. By d 70 of gestation, average fetus weight was heavier (P = 0.06) for fetuses from gilts fed L-carnitine, compared with fetuses from gilts fed the control diet. In addition, at d 70, fetal insulin-like growth factor- II (IGF-II) concentrations were lower (P = 0.09) for fetuses from gilts fed L-carnitine than for fetuses from gilts fed the control diet. Feeding L-carnitine may have decreased fetal IGF-II, therefore increasing cell proliferation and delaying cell differentiation. These results show that providing supplemental Lcarnitine to gestating gilts has beneficial effects on average fetal weight, possibly observed because of its ability to reduce fetal IGF-II concentrations

The Other Side of Through: Young Breast Cancer Survivors’ Spectrum of Sexual and Reproductive Health Needs

The long-term reproductive health impact of cancer treatments is a concern for premenopausal women with a history of breast cancer. This study examined the unmet sexual and reproductive health needs of breast cancer survivors, as well as concordances and discordances in needs by childbearing status and race. We interviewed 17 women diagnosed with breast cancer between the ages of 18 and 45 years and living in North Carolina. To analyze these data, we used the Sort and Sift, Think and Shift© method, a multidimensional qualitative analysis approach. We learned that breast cancer survivors (a) received limited reproductive health information, (b) desired realistic expectations of conceiving postcancer, (c) struggled with adjusting to their altered physical appearance, and (d) had menopause symptoms that led to sexual health and quality of life issues. Breast cancer survivors are in need of and desire more education and resources to address their sexual and reproductive health concerns

Evaluating situational judgment test use and diversity in admissions at a southern US medical school

Introduction Situational judgment tests have been adopted by medical schools to assess decision-making and ethical characteristics of applicants. These tests are hypothesized to positively affect diversity in admissions by serving as a noncognitive metric of evaluation. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of the Computer-based Assessment for Sampling Personal Characteristics (CASPer) scores in relation to admissions interview evaluations. Methods This was a cohort study of applicants interviewing at a public school of medicine in the southeastern United States in 2018 and 2019. Applicants took the CASPer test prior to their interview day. In-person interviews consisted of a traditional interview and multiple-mini-interview (MMI) stations. Between subjects, analyses were used to compare scores from traditional interviews, MMIs, and CASPer across race, ethnicity, and gender. Results 1,237 applicants were interviewed (2018: n = 608; 2019: n = 629). Fifty-seven percent identified as female. Self-identified race/ethnicity included 758 White, 118 Black or African-American, 296 Asian, 20 Native American or Alaskan Native, 1 Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and 44 No response; 87 applicants identified as Hispanic. Black or African-American, Native American or Alaskan Native, and Hispanic applicants had significantly lower CASPer scores than other applicants. Statistically significant differences in CASPer percentiles were identified for gender and race; however, between subjects, comparisons were not significant. Conclusions The CASPer test showed disparate scores across racial and ethnic groups in this cohort study and may not contribute to minimizing bias in medical school admissions

Motivational Social Visualizations for Personalized E-Learning

A large number of educational resources is now available on the Web to support both regular classroom learning and online learning. However, the abundance of available content produces at least two problems: how to help students find the most appropriate resources, and how to engage them into using these resources and benefiting from them. Personalized and social learning have been suggested as potential methods for addressing these problems. Our work presented in this paper attempts to combine the ideas of personalized and social learning. We introduce Progressor + , an innovative Web-based interface that helps students find the most relevant resources in a large collection of self-assessment questions and programming examples. We also present the results of a classroom study of the Progressor +  in an undergraduate class. The data revealed the motivational impact of the personalized social guidance provided by the system in the target context. The interface encouraged students to explore more educational resources and motivated them to do some work ahead of the course schedule. The increase in diversity of explored content resulted in improving students’ problem solving success. A deeper analysis of the social guidance mechanism revealed that it is based on the leading behavior of the strong students, who discovered the most relevant resources and created trails for weaker students to follow. The study results also demonstrate that students were more engaged with the system: they spent more time in working with self-assessment questions and annotated examples, attempted more questions, and achieved higher success rates in answering them

The detection of Gravitational Waves

This chapter is concerned with the question: how do gravitational waves (GWs) interact with their detectors? It is intended to be a theory review of the fundamental concepts involved in interferometric and acoustic (Weber bar) GW antennas. In particular, the type of signal the GW deposits in the detector in each case will be assessed, as well as its intensity and deconvolution. Brief reference will also be made to detector sensitivity characterisation, including very summary data on current state of the art GW detectors.Comment: 33 pages, 12 figures, LaTeX2e, Springer style files --included. For Proceedings of the ERE-2001 Conference (Madrid, September 2001

Cold Nuclear Matter Effects on Dijet Productions in Relativistic Heavy-ion Reactions at LHC

We investigate the cold nuclear matter(CNM) effects on dijet productions in high-energy nuclear collisions at LHC with the next-to-leading order perturbative QCD. The nuclear modifications for dijet angular distributions, dijet invariant mass spectra, dijet transverse momentum spectra and dijet momentum imbalance due to CNM effects are calculated by incorporating EPS, EKS, HKN and DS param-etrization sets of parton distributions in nucleus . It is found that dijet angular distributions and dijet momentum imbalance are insensitive to the initial-state CNM effects and thus provide optimal tools to study the final-state hot QGP effects such as jet quenching. On the other hand, the invariant mass spectra and the transverse momentum spectra of dijet are generally enhanced in a wide region of the invariant mass or transverse momentum due to CNM effects with a feature opposite to the expected suppression because of the final-state parton energy loss effect in the QGP. The difference of EPS, EKS, HKN and DS parametrization sets of nuclear parton distribution functions is appreciable for dijet invariant mass spectra and transverse momentum spectra at p+Pb collisions, and becomes more pronounced for those at Pb+Pb reactions.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figure