Worth their while?: Pursuing a rape complaint through the criminal justice system

If the criminal justice system were to advertise itself to victims of sexual violence, would its tag line be L'Oreal's 'Because you're worth it'? Or would the Foundry Premium Cider comment on the building of a pyramid: 'Twelve years in the making and it still doesn't taste very good' be more apposite? Certainly, a lack of faith in, or fear of, legal processes, is one of the reasons why eight out of nine women who are raped do not report the matter to the police.1 This article explores the extent to which victims' lack of faith in legal processes is warranted and asks if laying a complaint is worth the effort

Disrupted Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem with Order Release Delay

With the popularity of the just-in-time system, more and more companies are operating with little or no inventories, which make them highly vulnerable to delays on supply. This paper discusses a situation when the supply of the commodity does not arrive at the depot on time, so that not enough of the commodity is available to be loaded on all vehicles at the start of the delivery period. New routing plans need to be developed in such a case to reduce the impact the delay of supply may have on the distribution company. The resulting vehicle routing problem is different from other types of vehicle routing problems as it involves waiting and multiple trips. Two approaches have been developed to solve the order release delay problem, both of which involve a Tabu Search algorithm. Computational results show the proposed approaches can largely reduce the disruption costs that are caused by the delayed supply and they are especially effective when the length of delay is long

Bun splitting: a practical cutting stock problem

We describe a new hierarchical 2D-guillotine Cutting Stock Problem. In contrast to the classic cutting stock problem, waste is not an issue. The problem relates to the removal of a defective part and assembly of the remaining parts into homogeneous size blocks. The context is the packing stages of cake manufacturing. The company's primary objective is to minimise total processing time at the subsequent, packing stage. This objective reduces to one of minimising the number of parts produced when cutting the tray load of buns. We offer a closed form optimization approach to this class of problems for certain cases, without recourse to mathematical programming or heuristics. The methodology is demonstrated through a case study in which the number of parts is reduced by almost a fifth, and the manufacturer's subsidiary requirement to reduce isolated single bun parts and hence customer complaints is also satisfied

Singularly Perturbed Monotone Systems and an Application to Double Phosphorylation Cycles

The theory of monotone dynamical systems has been found very useful in the modeling of some gene, protein, and signaling networks. In monotone systems, every net feedback loop is positive. On the other hand, negative feedback loops are important features of many systems, since they are required for adaptation and precision. This paper shows that, provided that these negative loops act at a comparatively fast time scale, the main dynamical property of (strongly) monotone systems, convergence to steady states, is still valid. An application is worked out to a double-phosphorylation ``futile cycle'' motif which plays a central role in eukaryotic cell signaling.Comment: 21 pages, 3 figures, corrected typos, references remove

Intimate partner violence among women with HIV infection in rural Uganda: critical implications for policy and practice

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a major public health problem in Africa and worldwide. HIV infected women face increased IPV risk. We assessed the prevalence and factors associated with IPV among HIV infected women attending HIV care in Kabale hospital, Uganda.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This cross-sectional study was conducted among 317 HIV infected women attending Kabale regional hospital HIV treatment centre, from March to December 2010. Participants were interviewed using an interviewer-administered questionnaire. Data was collected on socio-demographic variables, social habits, and IPV (using the abuse assessment screen and the Severity of Violence against Women Scale to identify physical, sexual and psychological violence). Characteristics of the participants who reported IPV were compared with those who did not. Multivariate logistic-regression analysis was conducted to analyze factors that were independently associated with IPV.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The mean age of 317 respondents was 29.7 years. Twenty two (6.9%) were adolescents and 233 (73.5%) were married or cohabiting. The mean age of the spouse was 33.0 years.</p> <p>One hundred and eleven (35.0%) were currently on antiretroviral therapy. Lifetime prevalence of IPV (physical or sexual) was 36.6%. In the preceding 12 months, IPV (any type) was reported by 93 respondents (29.3%). This was physical for 55 (17.6%), and sexual /psychological for 38 (12.1%). On multivariate multinomial logistic regression analysis, there was a significant but inverse association between education level and physical partner violence (adjusted relative risk (ARR) 0.50, confidence limits (95% CI) 0.31-0.82, p-value = 0.007). There was a significant but inverse association between education level of respondent and sexual/psychological violence (ARR 0.47 95%CI (0.25-0.87), p-value = 0.017) Likewise, there was a significant inverse association between the education level of the spouse and psychological/sexual violence (ARR 0.57, 95% CI 0.25-0.90, p-value = 0.018). Use of antiretroviral therapy was associated with increased prevalence of any type of violence (physical, sexual or psychological) with ARR 3.04 (95%CI 1.15-8.45, p-value = 0.032).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Almost one in three women living with HIV had suffered intimate partner violence in the preceding 12 months. Nearly one in five HIV patients reported physical violence, and about one in every seven HIV patients reported sexual/psychological violence. Likewise, women who were taking antiretroviral drugs for HIV treatment were more likely to report any type of intimate partner violence (physical, sexual or psychological). The implication of these findings is that women living with HIV especially those on antiretroviral drugs should be routinely screened for intimate partner violence.</p

Choice-Disability and HIV Infection: A Cross Sectional Study of HIV Status in Botswana, Namibia and Swaziland

Interpersonal power gradients may prevent people implementing HIV prevention decisions. Among 7,464 youth aged 15–29 years in Botswana, Namibia and Swaziland we documented indicators of choice-disability (low education, educational disparity with partner, experience of sexual violence, experience of intimate partner violence (IPV), poverty, partner income disparity, willingness to have sex without a condom despite believing partner at risk of HIV), and risk behaviours like inconsistent use of condoms and multiple partners. In Botswana, Namibia and Swaziland, 22.9, 9.1, and 26.1% women, and 8.3, 2.8, and 9.3% men, were HIV positive. Among both women and men, experience of IPV, IPV interacted with age, and partner income disparity interacted with age were associated with HIV positivity in multivariate analysis. Additional factors were low education (for women) and poverty (for men). Choice disability may be an important driver of the AIDS epidemic. New strategies are needed that favour the choice-disabled

Why media representations of corporations matter for public health policy : a scoping review

BACKGROUND: Media representations play a crucial role in informing public and policy opinions about the causes of, and solutions to, ill-health. This paper reviews studies analysing media coverage of non-communicable disease (NCD) debates, focusing on how the industries marketing commodities that increase NCD risk are represented. METHODS: A scoping review identified 61 studies providing information on media representations of NCD risks, NCD policies and tobacco, alcohol, processed food and soft drinks industries. The data were narratively synthesized to describe the sample, media depictions of industries, and corporate and public health attempts to frame the media debates. RESULTS: The findings indicate that: (i) the limited research that has been undertaken is dominated by a focus on tobacco; (ii) comparative research across industries/risk-factors is particularly lacking; and (iii) coverage tends to be dominated by two contrasting frames and focuses either on individual responsibilities ('market justice' frames, often promoted by commercial stakeholders) or on the need for population-level interventions ('social justice' frames, frequently advanced by public health advocates). CONCLUSIONS: Establishing the underlying frameworks is crucial for the analysis of media representation of corporations, as they reflect the strategies that respective actors use to influence public health debates and decision making. The potential utility of media research lies in the insights that it can provide for public health policy advocates about successful framing of public health messages and strategies to counter frames that undermine public health goals. A better understanding of current media debates is of paramount importance to improving global health