'Mum never loved me.' How structural factors influence adolescent sexual and reproductive health through parent–child connectedness: a qualitative study in rural Tanzania

Research in high income countries shows parent–child connectedness to be protective against undesirable sexual and reproductive health (SRH) outcomes among young people. Little has been done to understand the nature of parent–child connectedness, the structural factors that impact on connectedness and parents’ understanding of how connectedness affects their children's sexual behaviour in sub-Saharan Africa and Tanzania in particular. Ethnographic research involved 30 days of observation in 10 households, 9 focus group discussions and 60 in-depth interviews. Thematic analysis was conducted using NVIVO qualitative data analysis software.<p></p> The structural factors with greatest influence on connectedness were economic circumstances, gender, social status, state education, and globalisation. Economic circumstances impacted on parent–child connectedness through parents’ ability to provide for their children's material needs, and the time their occupation allowed for them to spend with their children and monitor their activities. Appropriate parent–child interactions were shaped by gender norms and by social status in the form of respectability, adolescents’ adherence to norms of respect/ obedience shaping their parents’ affection. State education affected parents’ preferences between children but also undermined parental authority, as did broader globalisation. Connectedness was related to SRH in a bi-directional way: lack of connectedness was linked to young people's low self-esteem and risky sexual behaviour while unplanned pregnancies seriously undermined young women's connectedness with their parents. Since material provision was perceived to be a central element of parent–child connectedness, structural factors limiting provision made transactional sex more likely both through direct material pathways and emotional ones. Motives for transactional sex were said to be material needs and to feel loved and cared for.<p></p> An important pathway by which structural factors shape adolescent SRH outcomes is through parent–child connectedness, especially parents’ ability to spend time with their children and provide for their economic needs. Modifying these structural factors should facilitate parent–child connectedness, which may help delay early sexual intercourse, protect young people against unplanned pregnancy through encouraging communication on contraception use and, overall, promote healthy adolescent development

The structural influence of family and parenting on young people's sexual and reproductive health in rural northern Tanzania

This paper explores the structural role of the family and parenting in young people's sexual and reproductive health. The study involved eight weeks of participant observation, 26 in-depth interviews, and 11 group discussions with young people aged 14–24 years, and 20 in-depth interviews and 6 group discussions with parents/carers of children in this age group. At an individual level, parenting and family structure were found to affect young people's sexual behaviour by influencing children's self-confidence and interactional competence, limiting discussion of sexual health and shaping economic provision for children, which in turn affected parental authority and daughters' engagement in risky sexual behaviour. Sexual norms are reproduced both through parents' explicit prohibitions and their own behaviours. Girls are socialised to accept men's superiority, which shapes their negotiation of sexual relationships. Interventions to improve young people's sexual and reproductive health should recognise the structural effects of parenting, both in terms of direct influences on children and the dynamics by which structural barriers such as gendered power relations and cultural norms around sexuality are transmitted across generations

Data associations and the protection of reputation online in Australia

This article focuses upon defamation law in Australia and its struggles to adjust to the digital landscape, to illustrate the broader challenges involved in the governance and regulation of data associations. In many instances, online publication will be treated by the courts in a similar fashion to traditional forms of publication. What is more contentious is the question of who, if anyone, should bear the responsibility for digital forms of defamatory publication which result not from an individual author?s activity online but rather from algorithmic associations. This article seeks, in part, to analyse this question, by reference to the Australian case law and associated scholarship regarding search engine liability. Reflecting on the tensions involved here offers us a fresh perspective on defamation law through the conceptual lens of data associations. Here the focus of the article shifts to explore some wider questions posed for defamation law by big data. Defamation law may come to play a significant role in emerging frameworks for algorithmic accountability, but these developments also call into question many of its traditional concepts and assumptions. It may be time to think differently about defamation and to consider its interrelationship with privacy, speech and data protection more fully. As a result, I conclude that the courts and policymakers need to engage more deeply and explicitly with the rationale(s) for the protection of reputation and that more thought needs to be given to changing conceptions of reputation in the context of data associations.Peer reviewe

The Cosmological Bootstrap: Spinning Correlators from Symmetries and Factorization

We extend the cosmological bootstrap to correlators involving massless particles with spin. In de Sitter space, these correlators are constrained both by symmetries and by locality. In particular, the de Sitter isometries become conformal symmetries on the future boundary of the spacetime, which are reflected in a set of Ward identities that the boundary correlators must satisfy. We solve these Ward identities by acting with weight-shifting operators on scalar seed solutions. Using this weight-shifting approach, we derive three- and four-point correlators of massless spin-1 and spin-2 fields with conformally coupled scalars. Four-point functions arising from tree-level exchange are singular in particular kinematic configurations, and the coefficients of these singularities satisfy certain factorization properties. We show that in many cases these factorization limits fix the structure of the correlators uniquely, without having to solve the conformal Ward identities. The additional constraint of locality for massless spinning particles manifests itself as current conservation on the boundary. We find that the four-point functions only satisfy current conservation if the s, t, and u-channels are related to each other, leading to nontrivial constraints on the couplings between the conserved currents and other operators in the theory. For spin-1 currents this implies charge conservation, while for spin-2 currents we recover the equivalence principle from a purely boundary perspective. For multiple spin-1 fields, we recover the structure of Yang-Mills theory. Finally, we apply our methods to slow-roll inflation and derive a few phenomenologically relevant scalar-tensor three-point functions.Comment: 128 pages, 15 figures; V3: minor corrections and references adde

Upfront: Economic news across the region

Articles: "Danville works: new IKEA factory hums;" "Troubled asset relief: Bank of America repays government loans;" "Apples, soybeans, poultry: Virginia's exports to Cuba grow;" "Cash economy: underground commerce grows in recession"Economic conditions ; Federal Reserve District, 5th

Effectiveness of Schools in Combating Bullying Behaviors among Public Secondary Schools in Hai District, Tanzania

The study investigated on the management of bullying behavior in public secondary schools in Hai District. The study employed the mixed research approach to organize the qualitative and quantitative data so as to deal with the research problem. Convergent parallel research design was employed to enable the researchers to collect data concurrently. While the targeted schools were 45 in the district, 5 schools were purposively selected with the sample of 171 respondents. The study found that majority of teachers  were not effective in managing bullying behavior in schools though they are obligated with the task of managing students’ behaviors in through identifying, directing, controlling, monitoring the behavior and providing guidance and counseling to students. The study recommends that schools should come up with strategies to control bullying by offering short courses, seminars and workshops to teachers so as to equip them with skills on how to control bullying. Clubs and societies should be established in schools so as to involve learners in management of bullying. Schools should put in place a schedule where talks on various aspects of bullying can be presented to students. Speakers from outside the school can be invited to make presentations

Silk-fibronectin protein alloy fibres support cell adhesion and viability as a high strength, matrix fibre analogue

Silk is a natural polymer with broad utility in biomedical applications because it exhibits general biocompatibility and high tensile material properties. While mechanical integrity is important for most biomaterial applications, proper function and integration also requires biomaterial incorporation into complex surrounding tissues for many physiologically relevant processes such as wound healing. In this study, we spin silk fibroin into a protein alloy fibre with whole fibronectin using wet spinning approaches in order to synergize their respective strength and cell interaction capabilities. Results demonstrate that silk fibroin alone is a poor adhesive surface for fibroblasts, endothelial cells, and vascular smooth muscle cells in the absence of serum. However, significantly improved cell attachment is observed to silk-fibronectin alloy fibres without serum present while not compromising the fibres' mechanical integrity. Additionally, cell viability is improved up to six fold on alloy fibres when serum is present while migration and spreading generally increase as well. These findings demonstrate the utility of composite protein alloys as inexpensive and effective means to create durable, biologically active biomaterials.T32 EB006359 - NIBIB NIH HH

Towards energy-autonomous wake-up receiver using visible light communication

The use of Visible Light Communication (VLC) in wake-up communication systems is a potential energy-efficient and low-cost solution for wireless communication of consumer electronics. In this paper, we go one step further and propose the use of visible light both for wake-up communication and energy harvesting purposes, with the final objective of an energy-autonomous wake-up receiver module. We first present the details and the design criteria of this novel system. We then present the results of evaluation of design criteria such as solar panel and capacitor type choices. To evaluate the performance of the developed wake-up system with energy-autonomous receiver system, we perform realistic indoor scenario tests, analyzing the effect of varying distances, angles, and light intensities as well as the effect of presence of interfering lights.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

The Mistaken Identity: Debt Versus Equity: The Kenyan Perspective

Debt has always been perceived as expensive compared to equity, many people, especially businessmen havealways assumed that debt is more expensive to equity, however going through literature and theories it is clearthat this has been the most mistaken identity, according to pecking order theory, firms would first of all preferinternals funds, followed by debt and lastly followed by equity, thus according to the Myer’s Pecking ordertheory, equity is less preferred than debt and internal funds are preferred more to debt. Thus as per the order ofpriority, Debt is preferred to equity, and equity according to the theory is more expensive in the long run to debt,the reasons being the tax advantage given to debt holders among others .Keywords: Pecking order theory, debt, equit