Women, Reproductive Rights, and HIV/AIDS: Issues on Which Research and Interventions are Still Needed

From 2002 to 2005, two literature reviews identified a number of reproductive-health issues that appeared to be relatively neglected in relation to HIV/AIDS: contraceptive information tailored to the needs of HIV-positive people; voluntary HIV counselling and testing during antenatal care, labour, and delivery; parenting options for HIV-positive people besides pregnancy through unprotected intercourse (i.e. assisted conception and legal adoption or foster care); unwanted pregnancy; and abortion-related care. An additional finding was that stigma and discrimination were frequently cited as barriers to enjoyment of reproductive rights by HIV-positive women. Subsequently, a pilot project was initiated in which non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in developing countries used benchmarks to ascertain whether these neglected issues were addressed in local programmes and interventions serving women affected by HIV and AIDS. The benchmarks also assessed whether policies and programmes paid attention to the human and reproductive rights of HIV-positive women. This paper describes the main findings from the two exercises in relation to contraception for women living with HIV or AIDS, abortion-related care, legal adoption by HIV-positive parents, and reproductive rights. It concludes with a number of recommendations on topics to be incorporated into the international research agenda, policies, and programmes in the field of HIV/AIDS

Healthy chickens, healthy children? Exploring contributions of village poultry-keeping to the diets and growth of young children in rural Tanzania

One in three Tanzanian children under five years of age is affected by stunting: an outcome of chronic undernutrition and an indication of impaired physical and cognitive development. The potential for livestock-keeping to contribute positively to children’s growth, including by providing nutrient-dense animal-source foods and household income to enable other nutritious food purchases, has been well-described but poorly demonstrated. Village chickens are an accessible and versatile form of livestock, kept in small free-ranging flocks by many households in resource-poor settings and often managed by women. This mixed methods research was undertaken in villages of Manyoni District in central Tanzania, alongside a project establishing a community-based vaccination service against Newcastle disease in village chickens. Significantly larger chicken flock sizes were identified as an outcome of vaccinating in a given campaign and of continuing to vaccinate at four-monthly intervals, compared to vaccinating less often or not at all. Chicken meat and eggs were infrequently eaten during the study period, with eggs more commonly hatched to increase chicken numbers and chickens retained for sale in times of need. Consumption of poultry products by mothers and their young children was closely linked and no gender-based differences in children’s consumption frequency were found. Analysis of national and regional food composition tables highlighted the need for recent and locally-derived data on the nutrient content of animal-source foods, to better reflect the products of indigenous livestock in low-input management systems. This thesis did not identify a significant impact of chicken-keeping on the height-for-age of children over a two-year period; however, importantly, it found no negative health or growth impacts which would undermine a continued focus on poultry interventions as a strategy to sustainably enhance nutrition at a household level

Women, Reproductive Rights, and HIV/AIDS: Issues on Which Research and Interventions are Still Needed

From 2002 to 2005, two literature reviews identified a number of reproductive health issues that appeared to be relatively neglected in relation to HIV/AIDS: contraceptive information tailored to the needs of HIV-positive people; voluntary HIV counselling and testing during antenatal care, labour, and delivery; parenting options for HIV-positive people besides pregnancy through unprotected intercourse (i.e. assisted conception and legal adoption or foster care); unwanted pregnancy; and abortion-related care. An additional finding was that stigma and discrimination were frequently cited as barriers to enjoyment of reproductive rights by HIV-positive women. Subsequently, a pilot project was initi\uadated in which non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in developing countries used benchmarks to ascertain whether these neglected issues were addressed in local programmes and interventions serving women affected by HIV and AIDS. The benchmarks also assessed whether policies and programmes paid attention to the human and reproductive rights of HIV-positive women. This paper describes the main findings from the two exercises in relation to contraception for women living with HIV or AIDS, abortion-related care, legal adoption by HIV-positive parents, and reproductive rights. It concludes with a number of recommendations on topics to be incorporated into the international research agenda, policies, and programmes in the field of HIV/AIDS

Perfect variations in Romance

The morpho-syntactic configuration auxiliary (have or be) + past participle known as the HAVE-PERFECT functions as a tense-aspect category in many Western European languages. Synchronic variation within Romance nicely illustrates the developmental pattern described as the aoristic drift, whereby the PERFECT develops over time into a PERFECTIVE PAST with full-fledged past meanings. A parallel corpus study of L’Étranger by Albert Camus (1942) and its translations using the Translation Mining methodology provides empirical data supporting the view that modern French, Romanian and Italian make a more liberal use of the PERFECT, whereas the PERFECT distribution in Spanish is closer to (but not identical to) English. Catalan occupies an intermediate position and Portuguese has the most restricted PERFECT among the Romance languages. We argue that this variation is best captured by a PERFECT scale, without a clear cut-off point between perfect and perfective past meaning. The meaning ingredients that govern the distribution of the HAVE-PERFECT across Romance languages emerge from the parallel corpus. They include lexical, compositional and discourse semantics, and range from sensitivity to aspectual class, pluractionality, hodiernal and pre-hodiernal past time reference to narration

Search for the baryon- and lepton-number violating decays B0 →pμ- and Bs0 →pμ

A search for the baryon- and lepton-number violating decays B0→pμ- and Bs0→pμ- is performed at the LHCb experiment using data collected in proton-proton collisions at s=7, 8 and 13 TeV, corresponding to integrated luminosities of 1, 2, and 6 fb-1, respectively. No significant signal for B0→pμ- and Bs0→pμ- decays is found and the upper limits on the branching fractions are determined to be B(B0→pμ-)<2.6(3.1)×10-9 and B(Bs0→pμ-)<12.1(14.0)×10-9, respectively, at 90% (95%) confidence level. These are the first limits on these decays to date

First observation of the B+ → Ds+ Ds- K+ decay

The B+→Ds+Ds-K+ decay is observed for the first time using proton-proton collision data collected by the LHCb detector at center-of-mass energies of 7, 8, and 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 9 fb-1. Its branching fraction relative to that of the B+→D+D-K+ decay is measured to be B(B+→Ds+Ds-K+)B(B+→D+D-K+)=0.525±0.033±0.027±0.034, where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second systematic, and the third is due to the uncertainties on the branching fractions of the Ds±→K∓K±π± and D±→K∓π±π± decays. This measurement fills an experimental gap in the knowledge of the family of Cabibbo-favored b¯→c¯cs¯ transitions and opens the path for unique studies of spectroscopy in future. © 2023 CERN.<br/

First observation of the B+ → Ds+ Ds- K+ decay

The B+→Ds+Ds-K+ decay is observed for the first time using proton-proton collision data collected by the LHCb detector at center-of-mass energies of 7, 8, and 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 9 fb-1. Its branching fraction relative to that of the B+→D+D-K+ decay is measured to be B(B+→Ds+Ds-K+)B(B+→D+D-K+)=0.525±0.033±0.027±0.034, where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second systematic, and the third is due to the uncertainties on the branching fractions of the Ds±→K∓K±π± and D±→K∓π±π± decays. This measurement fills an experimental gap in the knowledge of the family of Cabibbo-favored b¯→c¯cs¯ transitions and opens the path for unique studies of spectroscopy in future. © 2023 CERN.<br/

Search for the baryon- and lepton-number violating decays B0 →pμ- and Bs0 →pμ

A search for the baryon- and lepton-number violating decays B0→pμ- and Bs0→pμ- is performed at the LHCb experiment using data collected in proton-proton collisions at s=7, 8 and 13 TeV, corresponding to integrated luminosities of 1, 2, and 6 fb-1, respectively. No significant signal for B0→pμ- and Bs0→pμ- decays is found and the upper limits on the branching fractions are determined to be B(B0→pμ-)&lt;2.6(3.1)×10-9 and B(Bs0→pμ-)&lt;12.1(14.0)×10-9, respectively, at 90% (95%) confidence level. These are the first limits on these decays to date

Search for the baryon- and lepton-number violating decays B0 →pμ- and Bs0 →pμ

A search for the baryon- and lepton-number violating decays B0→pμ- and Bs0→pμ- is performed at the LHCb experiment using data collected in proton-proton collisions at s=7, 8 and 13 TeV, corresponding to integrated luminosities of 1, 2, and 6 fb-1, respectively. No significant signal for B0→pμ- and Bs0→pμ- decays is found and the upper limits on the branching fractions are determined to be B(B0→pμ-)&lt;2.6(3.1)×10-9 and B(Bs0→pμ-)&lt;12.1(14.0)×10-9, respectively, at 90% (95%) confidence level. These are the first limits on these decays to date

Search for the baryon- and lepton-number violating decays B0 →pμ- and Bs0 →pμ

A search for the baryon- and lepton-number violating decays B0→pμ- and Bs0→pμ- is performed at the LHCb experiment using data collected in proton-proton collisions at s=7, 8 and 13 TeV, corresponding to integrated luminosities of 1, 2, and 6 fb-1, respectively. No significant signal for B0→pμ- and Bs0→pμ- decays is found and the upper limits on the branching fractions are determined to be B(B0→pμ-)&lt;2.6(3.1)×10-9 and B(Bs0→pμ-)&lt;12.1(14.0)×10-9, respectively, at 90% (95%) confidence level. These are the first limits on these decays to date