My partner wants a child: A cross-sectional study of the determinants of the desire for children among mutually disclosed sero-discordant couples receiving care in Uganda

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The percentages of couples in HIV sero-discordant relationships range from 5 to 31% in the various countries of Africa. Given the importance of procreation and the lack of assisted reproduction to avoid partner transmission, members of these couples are faced with a serious dilemma even after the challenge of disclosing their HIV status to their spouses. Identifying the determinants of the decision to have children among sero-discordant couples will help in setting reproductive intervention priorities in resource-poor countries.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We conducted a survey among 114 mutually disclosed sero-discordant couples (228 individuals) receiving HIV care at four centres in Greater Kampala, between June and December 2007. The data we collected was classified according to whether the man or the woman was HIV-positive. We carried out multivariate logistic regression modelling to determine factors (age, gender, and the influences of relatives and of health workers, ART knowledge, and disclosure) that are independently associated with a desire for children.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The majority, 59%, of the participants, desired to have children. The belief that their partner wanted children was a major determinant of the desire to have children, irrespective of the HIV sero-status (adjusted odds ratio 24.0 (95% CI 9.15, 105.4)). Among couples in which the woman was HIV-positive, young age and relatives' expectations for children were significantly associated with increased fertility desire, while among couples in which the man was positive; knowledge of ART effectiveness was associated with increased fertility desire. Availability of information on contraception was associated with decreased fertility desire.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The gender of the positive partner affects the factors associated with a desire for children. Interventions targeting sero-discordant couples should explore contraceptive choices, the cultural importance of children, and partner communication.</p

Association of the OPRM1 Variant rs1799971 (A118G) with Non-Specific Liability to Substance Dependence in a Collaborative de novo Meta-Analysis of European-Ancestry Cohorts

Peer reviewe

Search for heavy resonances decaying to two Higgs bosons in final states containing four b quarks

A search is presented for narrow heavy resonances X decaying into pairs of Higgs bosons (H) in proton-proton collisions collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC at root s = 8 TeV. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb(-1). The search considers HH resonances with masses between 1 and 3 TeV, having final states of two b quark pairs. Each Higgs boson is produced with large momentum, and the hadronization products of the pair of b quarks can usually be reconstructed as single large jets. The background from multijet and t (t) over bar events is significantly reduced by applying requirements related to the flavor of the jet, its mass, and its substructure. The signal would be identified as a peak on top of the dijet invariant mass spectrum of the remaining background events. No evidence is observed for such a signal. Upper limits obtained at 95 confidence level for the product of the production cross section and branching fraction sigma(gg -> X) B(X -> HH -> b (b) over barb (b) over bar) range from 10 to 1.5 fb for the mass of X from 1.15 to 2.0 TeV, significantly extending previous searches. For a warped extra dimension theory with amass scale Lambda(R) = 1 TeV, the data exclude radion scalar masses between 1.15 and 1.55 TeV

Measurement of the top quark mass using charged particles in pp collisions at root s=8 TeV

Peer reviewe

Application of an ensemble-trained source apportionment method to speciated pm2.5 data at the st. louis midwest supersite

Four receptor models and a chemical transport model were used to quantify the sources of PM2.5 impacting the St. Louis Supersite (STL-SS) between June 2001 and May 2003. The receptor models utilized two independent datasets, one that included ions and trace elements and a second that incorporated 1-in-6 day organic molecular marker data. Since each source apportionment (SA) technique has its own limitations, this work compared the results of five different SA approaches to better understand the biases and limitations of each. The source impacts predicted by these five models were then integrated into an ensemble-trained SA methodology. The ensemble method offered several improvements over the five individual SA techniques. Primarily, the ensemble method calculated source impacts on days when individual models either did not converge to a solution or did not have adequate input data to develop source impact estimates. Additionally, the ensemble method resulted in fewer days on which major emissions sources (e.g., secondary organic carbon and diesel vehicles) were estimated to have either a zero or negative impact on PM2.5 concentrations at the STL-SS. When compared with a traditional chemical mass balance (CMB) approach using measurement-based source profiles (MBSPs), the ensemble method was associated with better fit statistics, including reduced chi-squared values and improved PM2.5 mass reconstruction. A comparison of the different modeling techniques also revealed some of the subjectivities associated with applying specific SA models to the STL-SS dataset. For instance, positive matrix factorization (PMF) results were very sensitive to both the fitting species and number of factors selected for the analysis, whereas source impacts predicted in CMB were sensitive to the selection of source profiles to represent local metals processing emissions. Additionally, the different SA approaches predicted different impacts for the same source on a given day, with correlation coefficients ranging from 0.03 to 0.66 for gasoline vehicle, -0.51 to 0.85 for diesel vehicles, -0.29 to 0.86 for dust, -0.34 to 0.76 for biomass burning, 0.22 to 0.72 for metals processing, and -0.70 to 0.68 for secondary organic carbon. These issues emphasized the value of using several different SA techniques at a given receptor site, either by comparing source impacts predicted by different models or by utilizing an ensemble-trained SA technique.MSCommittee Chair: Russell, Armistead G.; Committee Member: Bergin, Michael; Committee Member: Mulholland, James A.; Committee Member: Weber, Rodney J

Spooky actions cannot be tricked: Exploring the Nature of Micro-Psychokinesis with Higher-Level Analytical Strategies

Objective. Testing specific mind-related effects on reality formation by investigating deviations from quantum randomness during the process of intentional observation, also known as micro-psychokinesis (micro-PK), is one empirical approach to address the mind-matter problem. While meta-analytical evidence over decades of research suggests that observers’ conscious or unconscious motivational states could produce significant micro-PK effects on quantum number generator (QRNG) outcomes, direct replication attempts often failed or the initially strong and apparently stable effects declined over time. Therefore, in addition to a direct replication strategy, alternative confirmatory approaches have been proposed that apply Higher-Level Analytical Strategies (HLASs) to test these effects existence. The present study reports a preregistered replication attempt of a micro-PK effect on QRNG outcomes documented by a specific HLAS variant, the Change of Evidence (CoE) measures, which were performed on a post-hoc basis in an original study. Method. To assess the observers’ unconscious intentional states, in a re-analysis of an existing data set we determined participants’ personality traits (PTs) on Cluster C and analyzed the relation between Cluster C outcome and trait-related sentences selected via QRNG outputs mirroring the respective typical concerns associated with the PTs vs. neutral stimuli. We predicted the presentation of more PT-related stimuli than chance expectation among participants exhibiting high PT assessment scores (PT-high) but not among individuals who exhibited low levels of these characteristics (PT-low). Although in line with this prediction initially strong Bayesian evidence for H1 was found within the PT-high group, this effect unexpectedly declined upon further data collection to indecisive evidence. Three post-hoc CoE tests were then performed comparing the empirical data to a randomly generated set of 10,000 simulations to distinguish a false positive finding i.e., an unsystematic, random Bayesian evidence variation, from a true positive effect that later declined i.e., from a systematic one. These exploratory post-hoc re-analyses of an existing data set rejected the null hypotheses in all CoE tests performed. These findings were then tested for replicability in a preregistered replication study which will be reported here. Results. The replication attempt failed. No Bayesian evidence for micro-PK was found and none of the CoE analyses could reject the null hypothesis in the PT-high group. As expected, no effects were found in the PT-low group either. Conclusion. The findings of the herein presented analyses go along with the results of earlier studies reporting similar experimental approaches which initially revealed strong and supposedly robust evidence for the postulated effects in non-preregistered original experiments but failed in a direct replication. Most central, the present findings indicate, that even CoE measures following the idea of HLASs to circumvent the non-replicability problem cannot provide replicable higher order micro-PK effects. The results obtained are discussed with regard to the Model of Pragmatic Information (MPI)