The sustainable delivery of sexual violence prevention education in schools

Sexual violence is a crime that cannot be ignored: it causes our communities significant consequences including heavy economic costs, and evidence of its effects can be seen in our criminal justice system, public health system, Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC), and education system, particularly in our schools. Many agencies throughout New Zealand work to end sexual violence. Auckland-based Rape Prevention Education: Whakatu Mauri (RPE) is one such agency, and is committed to preventing sexual violence by providing a range of programmes and initiatives, information, education, and advocacy to a broad range of audiences. Up until early 2014 RPE employed one or two full-time positions dedicated to co-ordinating and training a large pool (up to 15) of educators on casual contracts to deliver their main school-based programmes, BodySafe – approximately 450 modules per year, delivered to some 20 high schools. Each year several of the contract educators, many of whom were tertiary students, found secure full time employment elsewhere. To retain sufficient contract educators to deliver its BodySafe contract meant that RPE had to recruit, induct and train new educators two to three times every year. This model was expensive, resource intense, and ultimately untenable. The Executive Director and core staff at RPE wanted to develop a more efficient and stable model of delivery that fitted its scarce resources. To enable RPE to know what the most efficient model was nationally and internationally, with Ministry of Justice funding, RPE commissioned Massey University to undertake this report reviewing national and international research on sexual violence prevention education (SVPE). [Background from Executive Summary.]Rape Prevention Education: Whakatu Maur

Interleukin-33 contributes to both M1 and M2 chemokine marker expression in human macrophages

Abstract Background Interleukin-33 is a member of the IL-1 cytokine family whose functions are mediated and modulated by the ST2 receptor. IL-33-ST2 expression and interactions have been explored in mouse macrophages but little is known about the effect of IL-33 on human macrophages. The expression of ST2 transcript and protein levels, and IL-33-mediated effects on M1 (i.e. classical activation) and M2 (i.e. alternative activation) chemokine marker expression in human bone marrow-derived macrophages were examined. Results Human macrophages constitutively expressed the membrane-associated (i.e. ST2L) and the soluble (i.e. sST2) ST2 receptors. M2 (IL-4 + IL-13) skewing stimuli markedly increased the expression of ST2L, but neither polarizing cytokine treatment promoted the release of sST2 from these cells. When added to naïve macrophages alone, IL-33 directly enhanced the expression of CCL3. In combination with LPS, IL-33 blocked the expression of the M2 chemokine marker CCL18, but did not alter CCL3 expression in these naive cells. The addition of IL-33 to M1 macrophages markedly increased the expression of CCL18 above that detected in untreated M1 macrophages. Similarly, alternatively activated human macrophages treated with IL-33 exhibited enhanced expression of CCL18 and the M2 marker mannose receptor above that detected in M2 macrophages alone. Conclusions Together, these data suggest that primary responses to IL-33 in bone marrow derived human macrophages favors M1 chemokine generation while its addition to polarized human macrophages promotes or amplifies M2 chemokine expression.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78250/1/1471-2172-11-52.xmlhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78250/2/1471-2172-11-52.pdfPeer Reviewe

The Crucible, v. 1, no. 1

A scan of the first edition of a college paper known as The Crucible published by the students of the Maine State College. Student editors included J. M. Oak, G. H. Hamlin and C. E. Reed. A second edition of this newspaper, published in August, 1874, is also available in this collection in Digital Commons

Preliminary assessment of the irradiation behaviour of the FeCrMnNi High-Entropy Alloy for nuclear applications

In the search for new nuclear materials with improved radiation tolerance and behavior, the high-entropy alloys (HEAs) have arisen as new candidates for structural components in nuclear reactors due to their suspected superior stability under irradiation. The metallurgical definition of HEAs is any alloy with multiple elements, five or more all in equiatomic compositions. The basic principle is the high mixing entropy of its solid solution lowers the Gibbs free energy giving a strong enhancement of the microstructural stability at low and high temperatures. The objective of this project is to assess the irradiation behaviour of the FeCrMnNi HEA system in order to investigate whether the high entropy effect is responsible for a microstructure with better radiation resistance compared to conventional alloys. In this work transmission electron microscopy (TEM) with in-situ ion irradiation has been used at the MIAMI-1 facility at the University of Huddersfield, UK: a 100 kV ion accelerator coupled with a JEOL JEM-2000FX TEM. This methodology allows the evolution of the HEA microstructure to be studied on the nanoscale during the ion irradiation

Preliminary assessment of the irradiation behaviour of the FeCrMnNi High-Entropy Alloy for nuclear applications

In the search for new nuclear materials with improved radiation tolerance and behavior, the high-entropy alloys (HEAs) have arisen as new candidates for structural components in nuclear reactors due to their suspected superior stability under irradiation. The metallurgical definition of HEAs is any alloy with multiple elements, five or more all in equiatomic compositions. The basic principle is the high mixing entropy of its solid solution lowers the Gibbs free energy giving a strong enhancement of the microstructural stability at low and high temperatures. The objective of this project is to assess the irradiation behaviour of the FeCrMnNi HEA system in order to investigate whether the high entropy effect is responsible for a microstructure with better radiation resistance compared to conventional alloys. In this work transmission electron microscopy (TEM) with in-situ ion irradiation has been used at the MIAMI-1 facility at the University of Huddersfield, UK: a 100 kV ion accelerator coupled with a JEOL JEM-2000FX TEM. This methodology allows the evolution of the HEA microstructure to be studied on the nanoscale during the ion irradiation

Calculation of a self-consistent, low frequency electrostatic field in the drift-kinetic approximation

July 1977Includes bibliographical references (pages 22-23)We derive an asymptotic series in [omega]p -2 , the inverse-square plasma frequency, for the self-consistent, low frequency electrostatic field in tori. The derivation is consistent with the drift-kinetic ordering and may be used in either instability or equilibrium calculations. We find that in a time-dependent formalism, the electric field is completely determined to first order in a drift-kinetic expansion.Research supported by the Energy Research and Development Administration under contract with Union Carbide Corporation and under contract at M.I.T EX-76-A-01-229

Cloud adjustments from large-scale smoke-circulation interactions strongly modulate the southeast Atlantic stratocumulus-to-cumulus transition

Smoke from southern Africa blankets the southeast Atlantic Ocean from June&ndash;October, producing strong and competing aerosol radiative effects. Smoke effects on the transition between overcast stratocumulus and scattered cumulus clouds are investigated along a Lagrangian (air-mass-following) trajectory in regional climate and large eddy simulation models. Results are compared with observations from three recent field campaigns that took place in August 2017: ORACLES, CLARIFY, and LASIC. The case study is set up around the joint ORACLES-CLARIFY flight that took place near Ascension Island on 18 August 2017. Smoke sampled upstream on an ORACLES flight on 15 August 2017 likely entrained into the marine boundary layer later sampled during the joint flight. The case is first simulated with the WRF-CAM5 regional climate model in three distinct setups: 1) FireOn, in which smoke emissions and any resulting smoke-cloud-radiation interactions are included; 2) FireOff, in which no smoke emissions are included; and 3) RadOff, in which smoke emissions and their microphysical effects are included but aerosol does not interact directly with radiation. Over the course of the Lagrangian trajectory, differences in free tropospheric thermodynamic properties between FireOn and FireOff are nearly identical to those between FireOn and RadOff, showing that aerosol-radiation interactions are primarily responsible for the free tropospheric effects. These effects are non-intuitive: in addition to the expected heating within the core of the smoke plume, there is also a "banding" effect of cooler temperature (~1&ndash;2 K) and greatly enhanced moisture (&gt;2 g/kg) at plume top. This banding effect is caused by a vertical displacement of the former continental boundary layer in the free troposphere in the FireOn simulation resulting from anomalous diabatic heating due to smoke absorption of sunlight that manifests primarily as a few hundred m per day reduction in large-scale subsidence over the ocean. A large eddy simulation (LES) is then forced with free tropospheric fields taken from the outputs for the WRF-CAM5 FireOn and FireOff runs. Cases are run by selectively perturbing one variable (e.g., aerosol number concentration, temperature, moisture, vertical velocity) at a time to better understand the contributions from different indirect (microphysical), "large-scale" semi-direct (above-cloud thermodynamic and subsidence changes), and "local" semi-direct (below-cloud smoke absorption) effects. Despite a more than five-fold increase in cloud droplet number concentration when including smoke aerosol concentrations, minimal differences in cloud fraction evolution are simulated by the LES when comparing the base case to a perturbed aerosol case with identical thermodynamic and dynamic forcings. A factor-of-two decrease in background free tropospheric aerosol concentrations from the FireOff simulation shifts the cloud evolution from a classical entrainment-driven "deepening-warming" transition to trade cumulus to a precipitation-driven "drizzle-depletion" transition to open cells, however. The thermodynamic and dynamic changes caused by the WRF-simulated large-scale adjustments to smoke diabatic heating strongly influence cloud evolution in terms of both the rate of deepening (especially for changes in the inversion temperature jump and in subsidence) and in cloud fraction on the final day of the simulation (especially for the moisture "banding" effect). Such large-scale semi-direct effects would not have been possible to simulate using a small domain LES model alone.</p

Cellular and transcriptional impacts of Janus kinase and/or IFN-gamma inhibition in a mouse model of primary hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis

BackgroundPrimary hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (pHLH) is an inherited inflammatory syndrome driven by the exuberant activation of interferon-gamma (IFNg)-producing CD8 T cells. Towards this end, ruxolitinib treatment or IFNg neutralization (aIFNg) lessens immunopathology in a model of pHLH in which perforin-deficient mice (Prf1–/–) are infected with Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis virus (LCMV). However, neither agent completely eradicates inflammation. Two studies combining ruxolitinib with aIFNg report conflicting results with one demonstrating improvement and the other worsening of disease manifestations. As these studies used differing doses of drugs and varying LCMV strains, it remained unclear whether combination therapy is safe and effective.MethodsWe previously showed that a ruxolitinib dose of 90 mg/kg lessens inflammation in Prf1–/– mice infected with LCMV-Armstrong. To determine whether this dose controls inflammation induced by a different LCMV strain, we administered ruxolitinib at 90mg/kg to Prf1–/– mice infected with LCMV-WE. To elucidate the impacts of single agent versus combination therapy, Prf1–/– animals were infected with LCMV, treated or not with ruxolitinib, aIFNg or both agents, and analyzed for disease features and the transcriptional impacts of therapy within purified CD8 T cells.ResultsRuxolitinib is well-tolerated and controls disease regardless of the viral strain used. aIFNg, administered alone or with ruxolitinib, is most effective at reversing anemia and reducing serum IFNg levels. In contrast, ruxolitinib appears better than aIFNg, and equally or more effective than combination therapy, at lessening immune cell expansion and cytokine production. Each treatment targets distinct gene expression pathways with aIFNg downregulating IFNg, IFNa, and IL-6-STAT3 pathways, and ruxolitinib downregulating IL-6-STAT3, glycolysis, and reactive oxygen species pathways. Unexpectedly, combination therapy is associated with upregulation of genes driving cell survival and proliferation.ConclusionsRuxolitinib is tolerated and curtails inflammation regardless of the inciting viral strain and whether it is given alone or in combination with aIFNg. When administered at the doses used in this study, the combination of ruxolitinb and aIFNg appears no better than treatment with either drug alone in lessening inflammation. Further studies are warranted to elucidate the optimal doses, schedules, and combinations of these agents for the treatment of patients with pHLH