A quasi-experimental evaluation of parents as sexual health educators resulting in delayed sexual initiation and increased access to condoms.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effectiveness of an educational intervention for parents of first year high school students in the State of Morelos, Mexico, whose aim was to impact adolescents' sexual behavior, knowledge and access to contraception. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Quasi-experimental prospective study with eleven control and eleven intervention schools using self-administered questionnaires for parents and adolescents pre- and post-intervention. Parent-child dyads in the control and intervention schools were matched according to parents' propensity score; the average treatment effect (ATE) was estimated for adolescent's outcome variables. RESULTS: At follow-up, we found significant differences for adolescents in the intervention schools: 6.8% delayed initiation of sexual intercourse, 14.4% had correct knowledge about emergency contraception (EC), and 164% reported having received condoms from their parents, when comparing with students in control schools. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that parent-focused interventions could be an innovative and effective strategy to promote adolescents sexual health

HIV prevention in Mexican schools: prospective randomised evaluation of intervention.

OBJECTIVE: To assess effects on condom use and other sexual behaviour of an HIV prevention programme at school that promotes the use of condoms with and without emergency contraception. DESIGN: Cluster randomised controlled trial. SETTING: 40 public high schools in the state of Morelos, Mexico. PARTICIPANTS: 10 954 first year high school students. INTERVENTION: Schools were randomised to one of three arms: an HIV prevention course that promoted condom use, the same course with emergency contraception as back-up, or the existing sex education course. Self administered anonymous questionnaires were completed at baseline, four months, and 16 months. Students at intervention schools received a 30 hour course (over 15 weeks) on HIV prevention and life skills, designed in accordance with guidelines of the joint United Nations programme on HIV/AIDS. Two extra hours of education on emergency contraception were given to students in the condom promotion with contraception arm. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Primary outcome measure was reported condom use. Other outcomes were reported sexual activity; knowledge and attitudes about HIV and emergency contraception; and attitudes and confidence about condom use. RESULTS: Intervention did not affect reported condom use. Knowledge of HIV improved in both intervention arms and knowledge of emergency contraception improved in the condom promotion with contraception arm. Reported sexual behaviour was similar in the intervention arms and the control group. CONCLUSION: A rigorously designed, implemented, and evaluated HIV education course based in public high schools did not reduce risk behaviour, so such courses need to be redesigned and evaluated. Addition of emergency contraception did not decrease reported condom use or increase risky sexual behaviour but did increase reported use of emergency contraception

Extended-Household as a Co-Residence Strategy: The Case Of Santiago De Chile

Extended- household, as a social phenomenon, depends on the value of relationships of support and dependence among the members of a community. When this collaborative relationship occurs between residents of the same dwelling, it is then understood as a situation of co-residence. In the case of Santiago de Chile, the Extended - household phenomenon has increased by 610%. Data shows that families prefer to sacrifice conditions of habitability, privacy and security to maintain networks of support, location and access to urban goods, rather than migrating to the periphery as homeowners. It is urgent to generate mechanisms that recognize the needs and preferences of those who make up this “chronic” housing deficit, which is shown today as a form of fragile resistance to socio-spatial segregation

A beginning sketch of the Huastec noun phrase

From the introduction: The present paper proposes a preliminary analysis of nominal phrases in Huastec, a Mayan language spoken in the states of Veracruz and San Luís Potosí, Mexico. This analysis is important in that it provides one of the first discussions of phrase structure in Huastec, a language regarded by some authorities as somewhat independent in its development in the Mayan family (for one classification of Huastec, cf. Voeglin and Voeglin (1977:224ff)). While earlier studies of Huastec (cf. Walker 1983)) have claimed the basic word order to be VSO, material found in texts has adduced little evidence for this. In fact, the most frequent orders encountered in our Huastec discourse data are SVO and VOS, respectively. Sentences given in isolation by our language consultant and co-author, Abdías Pablo, are exclusively SVO. In any case, it seems that Huastec can safely be considered VO (note that it also has both prepositions and genitive-head noun orders, two statistically common correlates of this basic word order type.) Nevertheless, we leave the question open since its resolution is tangential to the question of noun phrase structure. This study is organized as follows: First, a brief outline of the noun morphology is proposed, with indications as to the semantic range and co-occurrence restrictions among the positional classes listed. The second section addresses the facts of constituent order and configuration as well as some derived orders and relative clauses. The study concludes with an overview of pronouns

Hundreds of putatively functional small open reading frames in Drosophila

Background: The relationship between DNA sequence and encoded information is still an unsolved puzzle. The number of protein-coding genes in higher eukaryotes identified by genome projects is lower than was expected, while a considerable amount of putatively non-coding transcription has been detected. Functional small open reading frames (smORFs) are known to exist in several organisms. However, coding sequence detection methods are biased against detecting such very short open reading frames. Thus, a substantial number of non-canonical coding regions encoding short peptides might await characterization. Results: Using bio-informatics methods, we have searched for smORFs of less than 100 amino acids in the putatively non-coding euchromatic DNA of Drosophila melanogaster, and initially identified nearly 600,000 of them. We have studied the pattern of conservation of these smORFs as coding entities between D. melanogaster and Drosophila pseudoobscura, their presence in syntenic and in transcribed regions of the genome, and their ratio of conservative versus non-conservative nucleotide changes. For negative controls, we compared the results with those obtained using random short sequences, while a positive control was provided by smORFs validated by proteomics data. Conclusions: The combination of these analyses led us to postulate the existence of at least 401 functional smORFs in Drosophila, with the possibility that as many as 4,561 such functional smORFs may exist

Fatal Spotted Fever Rickettsiosis, Minas Gerais, Brazil

The emergence and reemergence of a serious infectious disease are often associated with a high case-fatality rate because of misdiagnosis and inappropriate or delayed treatment. The current reemergence of spotted fever rickettsiosis caused by Rickettsia rickettsii in Brazil has resulted in a high proportion of fatal cases. We describe two familial clusters of Brazilian spotted fever in the state of Minas Gerais, involving six children 9 months to 15 years of age; five died. Immunohistochemical investigation of tissues obtained at necropsy of a child in each location, Novo Cruzeiro and Coronel Fabriciano municipalities, established the diagnosis by demonstration of disseminated endothelial infection with spotted fever group rickettsiae. The diagnosis in the two fatal cases from Coronel Fabriciano and the surviving patient from Novo Cruzeiro was further supported by immunofluorescence serologic tests

The EphB4 receptor promotes the growth of melanoma cells expressing the ephrin-B2 ligand

Cutaneous melanoma is the most aggressive form of skin cancer and several families of receptor tyrosine kinases have been implicated in its development and progression, including the Eph receptor family (Hess et al., 2007; Smalley et al., 2009). Among Eph receptors, EphA2 has been most extensively studied in melanoma and linked to increased malignancy (Hess et al., 2007; Margaryan et al., 2009).Fil: Yang, Nai Ying . University of California; Estados UnidosFil: Lopez Bergami, Pablo Roberto. Sanford-burnham Medical Research Institute; Estados Unidos. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental (i); Argentina; ArgentinaFil: Goydos, James S.. Robert Wood Johnson Medical School; Estados UnidosFil: Yip, Dana . Robert Wood Johnson Medical School; Estados UnidosFil: Walker, Ameae . University of California; Estados UnidosFil: Pasquale, Elena B.. Sanford-burnham Medical Research Institute; Estados UnidosFil: Ethell, Iryna. University of California; Estados Unido