"A man without a job is a dead man": The meaning of work and welfare in the lives of young men

Little is known about the use of welfare by young men; most research and debate have concentrated on the use of welfare by families headed by single women. The present research includes young men in the debate by examining the personal characteristics, backgrounds, and reasons for use of young men who participated in a General Assistance (GA) program. It explores the events that precipated their use, why they exited, and the barriers they faced in obtaining employment. Data are from qualitative interviews of 20 young men who resided in Madison, Wisconsin. A majority of respondents came from disadvantaged backgrounds, and more than half had been raised in a single-parent family. Fourteen of the 20 respondents had some involvement in the criminal justice system while they were adolescents; thirteen were fathers, only one of whom was married to the mother; eleven had been homeless, nine had a parent who had received AFDC; and six had neither a high school diploma nor a GED. Findings suggest that these young men use GA as a type of unemployment insurance between jobs. The average length of use for men in this sample was 7.5 months, and about half the men used GA more than once. This research makes clear the importance of assistance in improving the level of human capital and locating and retaining employment for poor men and suggests areas for future research.

Point-of-care testing for disasters: needs assessment, strategic planning, and future design.

Objective evidence-based national surveys serve as a first step in identifying suitable point-of-care device designs, effective test clusters, and environmental operating conditions. Preliminary survey results show the need for point-of-care testing (POCT) devices using test clusters that specifically detect pathogens found in disaster scenarios. Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami in southeast Asia, and the current influenza pandemic (H1N1, "swine flu") vividly illustrate lack of national and global preparedness. Gap analysis of current POCT devices versus survey results reveals how POCT needs can be fulfilled. Future thinking will help avoid the worst consequences of disasters on the horizon, such as extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis and pandemic influenzas. A global effort must be made to improve POC technologies to rapidly diagnose and treat patients to improve triaging, on-site decision making, and, ultimately, economic and medical outcomes

Revising old child support orders: The Wisconsin experience

In an effort to make Wisconsin's child support cases more equitable and up-to-date, child support staff reviewed "old" child support orders in thirteen of the state's seventy-two counties. (Reviewing old child support orders is now mandatory under the provisions of the Family Support Act of 1988.) Of the reviewed cases, only 21 percent were revised. Primary reasons for non-revision were the economic circumstances of the noncustodial parent (among welfare cases) and a lack of permission by the custodial parent to proceed (among non-welfare cases). Revised orders increased substantially, an average of $116/month (77 percent). An alternative method of keeping orders current is to express them as a percentage of the noncustodial parent's income; these orders are kept up-to-date automatically and are associated with large increases in collections.

"It has literally been a lifesaver": The role of 'knowing kinship' in supporting fat women to navigate medical fatphobia

This article focuses on the development of online fat kinship in the Health at Every Size (HAES) movement. We draw upon 15 fat women’s experiences of their HAES community membership to explore the ways that fat kinship develops around fatphobic experiences, and how such kinship can facilitate the mitigation of the oppression faced by fat individuals. Building upon Davenport et al.’s (2018) notion of the “knowing community,” we suggest that sharing common experiences of medical fatphobia and developing tactics of resistance against it transforms “knowing communities” into what we call “knowing kinships.” These “knowing kinships” are characterised by mutual support and affective relationships. We stress the importance of sharing experiences on egalitarian social media platforms and argue that such sharing builds towards a supportive, safe, and affective kinship network of “knowing” members. We show that through this online-based kinship network, fat women not only share stories of medical fatphobia but also collaboratively develop tactics of “everyday resistance” against it. More specifically, this includes the identification of fat positive healthcare practitioners and the honing of verbal and non-verbal communication strategies to optimise healthcare interactions and outcomes. These tactics, we suggest, are developed to convey a high degree of “cultural health capital” (Shim, 2010) which undermines assumptions of fat patients as apathetic and leaves less space for fatphobic treatment. Although we are focusing on kinship development in the HAES landscape, we conclude with some reflections on the application of our “knowing kinship” framework to other fat populations

Long-term caffeine consumption exacerbates renal failure in obese, diabetic, ZSF1 (fa-facp) rats

Long-term caffeine consumption exacerbates renal failure in obese, diabetic, ZSF1 (fa-facp) rats.BackgroundOur preliminary studies indicate that chronic caffeine consumption has adverse renal effects in nephropathy associated with high blood pressure and insulin resistance. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of early (beginning at 8 weeks of age) and long-term (30 weeks) caffeine treatment (0.1% solution) on renal function and structure in obese, diabetic ZSF1 rats.MethodsMetabolic and renal function measurements were performed at six-week intervals and in a subset of animals (N = 6 per group) heart rate (HR) and mean arterial blood pressure (MABP) were monitored by a radiotelemetric technique. At the end of the study acute, measurements of renal hemodynamics and excretory function were conducted in anesthetized animals.ResultsCaffeine produced a very mild increase (4 to 5%) of MABP and HR, but greatly augmented proteinuria (P < 0.001), reduced creatinine clearance (P < 0.05) and had a mixed effect on metabolic status in obese ZSF1 rats. Caffeine significantly reduced body weight, glycosuria, fasting glucose and insulin levels and improved glucose tolerance, had no effect on elevated plasma triglycerides levels and significantly increased plasma cholesterol level (P < 0.001). Acute measurements of renal function revealed increased renal vascular resistance (95.1 ± 11 vs. 50.7 ± 2.4 mm Hg/mL/min/g kidney, P < 0.01) and decreased inulin clearance (0.37 ± 0.11 vs. 0.97 ± 0.13 mL/min/g kidney, P < 0.002) in caffeine-treated versus control animals, respectively. Caffeine potentiated the development of more severe tubulointerstitial changes (P < 0.05) and increased focal glomerulosclerosis (14.7 ± 1.7 vs. 6.5 ± 0.9%, caffeine vs. control, P < 0.002).ConclusionThe present study provides the first evidence that caffeine (despite improving insulin sensitivity) exacerbates renal failure in obese, diabetic ZSF1 rats. Further mechanistic studies of adverse renal effects of caffeine in chronic renal failure associated with metabolic syndrome are warranted

VIDA: A Voxel-Based Dosimetry Method for Targeted Radionuclide Therapy Using Geant4

We have developed the Voxel-Based Internal Dosimetry Application (VIDA) to provide patient-specific dosimetry in targeted radionuclide therapy performing Monte Carlo simulations of radiation transport with the Geant4 toolkit. The code generates voxel-level dose rate maps using anatomical and physiological data taken from individual patients. Voxel level dose rate curves are then fit and integrated to yield a spatial map of radiation absorbed dose. In this article, we present validation studies using established dosimetry results, including self-dose factors (DFs) from the OLINDA/EXM program for uniform activity in unit density spheres and organ self- and cross-organ DFs in the Radiation Dose Assessment Resource (RADAR) reference adult phantom. The comparison with reference data demonstrated agreement within 5% for self-DFs to spheres and reference phantom source organs for four common radionuclides used in targeted therapy (131I, 90Y, 111In, 177Lu). Agreement within 9% was achieved for cross-organ DFs. We also present dose estimates to normal tissues and tumors from studies of two non-Hodgkin Lymphoma patients treated by 131I radioimmunotherapy, with comparison to results generated independently with another dosimetry code. A relative difference of 12% or less was found between methods for mean absorbed tumor doses accounting for tumor regression.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/140327/1/cbr.2014.1713.pd

The polaroid image as photo-object

This article is part of a larger project on the cultural history of Polaroid photography and draws on research done at the Polaroid Corporate archive at Harvard and at the Polaroid company itself. It identifies two cultural practices engendered by Polaroid photography, which, at the point of its extinction, has briefly flared into visibility again. It argues that these practices are mistaken as novel but are in fact rediscoveries of practices that stretch back as many as five decades. The first section identifies Polaroid image-making as a photographic equivalent of what Tom Gunning calls the ‘cinema of attractions’. That is, the emphasis in its use is on the display of photographic technologies rather than the resultant image. Equally, the common practice, in both fine art and vernacular circles, of making composite pictures with Polaroid prints, draws attention from image content and redirects it to the photo as object

Evaluation of the London Measure of Unplanned Pregnancy in a United States population of women

Copyright @ 2012 Morof et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Objective: To evaluate the reliability and validity of the London Measure of Unplanned Pregnancy (a U.K.-developed measure of pregnancy intention), in English and Spanish translation, in a U.S. population of women. Methods: A psychometric evaluation study of the London Measure of Unplanned Pregnancy (LMUP), a six-item, self-completion paper measure was conducted with 346 women aged 15–45 who presented to San Francisco General Hospital for termination of pregnancy or antenatal care. Analyses of the two language versions were carried out separately. Reliability (internal consistency) was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha and item-total correlations. Test-retest reliability (stability) was assessed using weighted Kappa. Construct validity was assessed using principal components analysis and hypothesis testing. Results: Psychometric testing demonstrated that the LMUP was reliable and valid in both U.S. English (alpha = 0.78, all item-total correlations .0.20, weighted Kappa = 0.72, unidimensionality confirmed, hypotheses met) and Spanish translation (alpha = 0.84, all item-total correlations .0.20, weighted Kappa = 0.77, unidimensionality confirmed, hypotheses met). Conclusion: The LMUP was reliable and valid in U.S. English and Spanish translation and therefore may now be used with U.S. women.The study was funded by an anonymous donation

Increased Turnover of T Lymphocytes in HIV-1 Infection and Its Reduction by Antiretroviral Therapy

The mechanism of CD4+ T cell depletion in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-1 infection remains controversial. Using deuterated glucose to label the DNA of proliferating cells in vivo, we studied T cell dynamics in four normal subjects and seven HIV-1–infected patients naive to antiretroviral drugs. The results were analyzed using a newly developed mathematical model to determine fractional rates of lymphocyte proliferation and death. In CD4+ T cells, mean proliferation and death rates were elevated by 6.3- and 2.9-fold, respectively, in infected patients compared with normal controls. In CD8+ T cells, the mean proliferation rate was 7.7-fold higher in HIV-1 infection, but the mean death rate was not significantly increased. Five of the infected patients underwent subsequent deuterated glucose labeling studies after initiating antiretroviral therapy. The lymphocyte proliferation and death rates in both CD4+ and CD8+ cell populations were substantially reduced by 5–11 weeks and nearly normal by one year. Taken together, these new findings strongly indicate that CD4+ lymphocyte depletion seen in AIDS is primarily a consequence of increased cellular destruction, not decreased cellular production