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

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

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

Soil health, crop productivity, microbial transport, and mine spoil response to biochars

Biochar is being evaluated by scientists from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) for its potential to sequester soil C, to improve soil health, and to increase crop yields. ARS scientists from multiple locations such as Florence, SC, Kimberly, ID, Bowling Green, KY, Corvallis, OR, and St. Paul, MN, are conducting investigations with agronomic experiments at the laboratory, greenhouse, and field plot scales. To further expand biochars utility, ARS scientists have collaborated with United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) investigators to reclaim mine-impacted soils. In the agronomic investigations, both positive and negative aspects of biochar application were revealed. In some experiments, biochars were reported to have no effect on crop yields, and minimal impact on movement of microbial pathogens through soil. In other experiments, biochars were reported to improve soil fertility, increase water retention, and bind with heavy metals in solutions and in mine spoil soils. This variation in biochars influence, substantiates and encourages further work on the designer biochar concept, which states that the biochars can be crafted for targeted agronomic and environmental purposes. There is a need to broadcast the successes and failures of biochar research reported by scientists from both agencies. Consequently, the objectives of this review are: to report on biochar effectiveness as a soil amendment; to ascertain its ability to modify soil properties, to evaluate its impact on soil leaching of microbes; and its potential capacity to help reclaim mine spoil sites

The 'dirty dozen' of freshwater science: detecting then reconciling hydrological data biases and errors

Sound water policy and management rests on sound hydrometeorological and ecological data. Conversely, unrepresentative, poorly collected, or erroneously archived data introduce uncertainty regarding the magnitude, rate, and direction of environmental change, in addition to undermining confidence in decision-making processes. Unfortunately, data biases and errors can enter the information flow at various stages, starting with site selection, instrumentation, sampling/measurement procedures, postprocessing and ending with archiving systems. Techniques such as visual inspection of raw data, graphical representation, and comparison between sites, outlier, and trend detection, and referral to metadata can all help uncover spurious data. Tell-tale signs of ambiguous and/or anomalous data are highlighted using 12 carefully chosen cases drawn mainly from hydrology (‘the dirty dozen’). These include evidence of changes in site or local conditions (due to land management, river regulation, or urbanization); modifications to instrumentation or inconsistent observer behavior; mismatched or misrepresentative sampling in space and time; treatment of missing values, postprocessing and data storage errors. Also for raising awareness of pitfalls, recommendations are provided for uncovering lapses in data quality after the information has been gathered. It is noted that error detection and attribution are more problematic for very large data sets, where observation networks are automated, or when various information sources have been combined. In these cases, more holistic indicators of data integrity are needed that reflect the overall information life-cycle and application(s) of the hydrological data