HIV positive status disclosure to sexual partner among women attending ART clinic at Hawassa University Referral Hospital, SNNPR, Ethiopia

Background: Disclosure of HIV positive status has key role in the prevention and control of HIV/AIDS. Reports of non-disclosure and negative outcome of disclosure are common. Thus, disclosure of HIV positive status is a theme that demands investigation.Objective: The objective of this study was to determine the magnitude and outcome of HIV positive status disclosure to sexual partner among women living with HIV/AIDS and attending Hawassa University Referral Hospital, South Nations and Nationalities Peoples Region (SNNPR) during a period of March to April 2008.Methods: A cross sectional survey was conducted at Hawassa University  Referral Hospital. Single population proportion formula was used to determine sample size. Using a structured and pre-tested questionnaire, data on disclosure were collected through interview. After explaining purpose of the survey, data collection was continued until the required sample was obtained. Then, data were entered using EPI info version 2002 statistical package and cross checked for reliability. Using SPSS 12.1 for windows statistical package, analysis was done. Results: Overall 85.7% of the women had disclosed their HIV positive status to sexual partner. Main barriers of disclosure reported by non-disclosed subjects were; fear of abandonment, fear of break-up in relationship and fear of stigma. More than 59% of the women with regular sexual partner faced negative partner reaction after disclosure. Compared with married women, those women who were in a cohabiting relationship were less likely to disclose their HIV status to sexual partners (AOR 0.16; 95% CI 0.04, 0.60); women who did not know HIV status of their sexualpartners were less likely to disclose their HIV positive status than their counter parts (AOR 0.02; 95% CI 0.00, 0.08) and women who had been on ART for more than one year were more likely to disclose their HIV positive status than the reference groups (AOR 8.62; 95% CI 1.35, 55.22).Conclusion: HIV positive status disclosure to sexual partner in this study was higher than what was reported in other studies in Ethiopia, for Mettu and Gore (69%) but slightly lower than the report from Jimma (94.5%) and Addis Ababa (92%). Negative partner reaction following disclosure was higher. Effectively addressing issues of disclosure was recommended to encourage disclosure and cope with negative reactions after disclosure in People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). Besides, currently existing Information Education Communication (IEC) interventions on HIV/AIDS should be strengthened, to reduce negative partner reaction following disclosure. [Ethiop. J. Health Dev. 2010;24(1):9-14

Relativistic and slowing down: the flow in the hotspots of powerful radio galaxies and quasars

Pairs of radio emitting jets with lengths up to several hundred kiloparsecs emanate from the central region (the `core') of radio loud active galaxies. In the most powerful of them, these jets terminate in the `hotspots', compact high brightness regions, where the jet flow collides with the intergalactic medium (IGM). Although it has long been established that in their inner ($\sim$parsec) regions these jet flows are relativistic, it is still not clear if they remain so at their largest (hundreds of kiloparsec) scales. We argue that the X-ray, optical and radio data of the hotspots, despite their at-first-sight disparate properties, can be unified in a scheme involving a relativistic flow upstream of the hotspot that decelerates to the sub-relativistic speed of its inferred advance through the IGM and viewed at different angles to its direction of motion. This scheme, besides providing an account of the hotspot spectral properties with jet orientation, it also suggests that the large-scale jets remain relativistic all the way to the hotspots.Comment: to appear in ApJ

Aging and aerobic fitness affect the contribution of noradrenergic sympathetic nerves to the rapid cutaneous vasodilator response to local heating

Sedentary aging results in a diminished rapid cutaneous vasodilator response to local heating. We investigated whether this diminished response was due to altered contributions of noradrenergic sympathetic nerves; assessing 1) the age-related decline and, 2) the effect of aerobic fitness. We measured skin blood flow (SkBF)(laser-Doppler flowmetry) in young (24±1 yr) and older (64±1 yr) endurance-trained and sedentary men (n=7 per group) at baseline and during 35 min of local skin heating to 42 °C at three forearm sites: 1) untreated; 2) bretylium tosylate (BT), preventing neurotransmitter release from noradrenergic sympathetic nerves; and 3) yohimbine and propranolol (YP), antagonising α- and β-adrenergic receptors. SkBF was converted to cutaneous vascular conductance (CVC) (SkBF/mean arterial pressure) and normalized to maximal CVC (%CVCmax) achieved by skin heating to 44 °C. Pharmacological agents were administered using microdialysis. In the young trained, the rapid vasodilator response was reduced at the BT and YP sites (P0.05) but treatment with BT did (P>0.05). Neither BT nor YP treatments affected the rapid vasodilator response in the older sedentary group (P>0.05). These data suggest that the age-related reduction in the rapid vasodilator response is due to an impairment of sympathetic-dependent mechanisms, which can be partly attenuated with habitual aerobic exercise. Rapid vasodilation involves noradrenergic neurotransmitters in young trained men, and non-adrenergic sympathetic cotransmitters (e.g., neuropeptide Y) in young sedentary and older trained men, possibly as a compensatory mechanism. Finally, in older sedentary men, the rapid vasodilation appears not to involve the sympathetic system

Anisotropy and oblique total transmission at a planar negative-index interface

We show that a class of negative index (n) materials has interesting anisotropic optical properties, manifest in the effective refraction index that can be positive, negative, or purely imaginary under different incidence conditions. With dispersion taken into account, reflection at a planar negative-index interface exhibits frequency selective total oblique transmission that is distinct from the Brewster effect. Finite-difference-time-domain simulation of realistic negative-n structures confirms the analytic results based on effective indices.Comment: to appear in Phys. Rev.

Determination of body composition of people living with HIV/AIDS: A comparison of air displacement plethysmography with Tanita segmental body composition analyzer

Background: Body composition (BC) assessment of patients living with HIV is frequently done by a variety of methods. During the past decades, several new technologic developments have introduced different methods of BC assessment. Yet, simple, accurate, and noninvasive methods for assessing BC are needed in clinical, community, and research settings. Objective: To compare BC assessed by air displacement plethysmography (ADP) with that assessed by Tanita segmental BC analyzer in patients with HIV/AIDS.Method: Eighty-eight adult (> 18 years) HIV/AIDS patients who were on follow up at anti-retroviral clinic in Jimma university medical centre were randomly selected. ADP and Tanita segmental BC analyzer were used to collect data. Agreement between the methods was tested using paired t-test, Pearson’s correlation, and linear regression. Result: Thirty-nine (57.4%) of the patients were female and 29 (42.6%) were male. About 41(60.3%) of them were malnourished. The patients who were in stage one of the disease accounted 83.8%. Mean value of %BF measured by Tanita segmental BC analyzer was significantly lower than %BF measured by the ADP (mean difference = 3.2, p < 0.001). Regardless of the difference in mean, %BF assessed by the two methods were strongly correlated (r = 0.98, p < 0.001). Conclusion: Estimates of %BF by Tanita segmental BC analyzer and ADP in people living with HIV/AIDS in Southwest Ethiopia showed significant difference. Tanita segmental BC analyzer significantly underestimated %BF in HIV/AIDS patients

Comparative Analysis of Requirements Change Prediction Models: Manual, Linguistic, and Neural Network

Requirement change propagation, if not managed, may lead to monetary losses or project failure. The a posteriori tracking of requirement dependencies is a well-established practice in project and change management. The identification of these dependencies often requires manual input by one or more individuals with intimate knowledge of the project. Moreover, the definition of these dependencies that help to predict requirement change is not currently found in the literature. This paper presents two industry case studies of predicting system requirement change propagation through three approaches: manually, linguistically, and bag-of-words. Dependencies are manually and automatically developed between requirements from textual data and computationally processed to develop surrogate models to predict change. Two types of relationship generation, manual keyword selection and part-of-speech tagging, are compared. Artificial neural networks are used to create surrogate models to predict change. These approaches are evaluated on three connectedness metrics: shortest path, path count, and maximum flow rate. The results are given in terms of search depth needed within a requirements document to identify the subsequent changes. The semi-automated approach yielded the most accurate results, requiring a search depth of 11 %, but sacrifices on automation. The fully automated approach is able to predict requirement change within a search depth of 15 % and offers the benefits of full minimal human input

Suppression of Anderson localization of light and Brewster anomalies in disordered superlattices containing a dispersive metamaterial

Light propagation through 1D disordered structures composed of alternating layers, with random thicknesses, of air and a dispersive metamaterial is theoretically investigated. Both normal and oblique incidences are considered. By means of numerical simulations and an analytical theory, we have established that Anderson localization of light may be suppressed: (i) in the long wavelength limit, for a finite angle of incidence which depends on the parameters of the dispersive metamaterial; (ii) for isolated frequencies and for specific angles of incidence, corresponding to Brewster anomalies in both positive- and negative-refraction regimes of the dispersive metamaterial. These results suggest that Anderson localization of light could be explored to control and tune light propagation in disordered metamaterials.Comment: 4 two-column pages, 3 figure