Gay and bisexual men’s perceptions of the donation and use of human biological samples for research: a qualitative study

Human biological samples (biosamples) are increasingly important in diagnosing, treating and measuring the prevalence of illnesses. For the gay and bisexual population, biosample research is particularly important for measuring the prevalence of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). By determining people’s understandings of, and attitudes towards, the donation and use of biosamples, researchers can design studies to maximise acceptability and participation. In this study we examine gay and bisexual men’s attitudes towards donating biosamples for HIV research. Semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with 46 gay and bisexual men aged between 18 and 63 recruited in commercial gay scene venues in two Scottish cities. Interview transcripts were analysed thematically using the framework approach. Most men interviewed seemed to have given little prior consideration to the issues. Participants were largely supportive of donating tissue for medical research purposes, and often favourable towards samples being stored, reused and shared. Support was often conditional, with common concerns related to: informed consent; the protection of anonymity and confidentiality; the right to withdraw from research; and ownership of samples. Many participants were in favour of the storage and reuse of samples, but expressed concerns related to data security and potential misuse of samples, particularly by commercial organisations. The sensitivity of tissue collection varied between tissue types and collection contexts. Blood, urine, semen and bowel tissue were commonly identified as sensitive, and donating saliva and as unlikely to cause discomfort. To our knowledge, this is the first in-depth study of gay and bisexual men’s attitudes towards donating biosamples for HIV research. While most men in this study were supportive of donating tissue for research, some clear areas of concern were identified. We suggest that these minority concerns should be accounted for to develop inclusive, evidence-informed research protocols that balance collective benefits with individual concerns

A HISTORY-DEPENDENT NONWETTING PHASE TRAPPING MODEL FOR MULTIPHASE FLOW CHARACTERISTIC CURVES

Characteristic curves used in numerical multiphase flow simulators describe relative permeability-saturation and capillary pressure-saturation relationships for flow simulations. Characteristic curves are typically non-hysteretic; meaning they are monotonic functions of saturation and are limited to a single value for residual saturation. Implications of residual saturation are important for environmental, petroleum, and geologic carbon sequestration modeling. However, hysteretic characteristic curves predict that trapped residual saturation depends on the local saturation history. The use of hysteretic characteristic curves is critical to predicting the residual saturation and ultimately the mobility of a nonwetting phase such as supercritical CO2 or a nonaqueous phase liquid (NAPL). Previous hysteretic formulations often have discontinuous derivatives of relative permeability and capillary pressure at turning point saturations, which can cause numerical difficulties during Newton-Raphson iterations. A straight forward hysteretic model for nonwetting phase trapping is presented and assessed by comparison to both experimental and published simulation results. This constitutive model produces smooth, continuously differentiable relative permeability and capillary pressure curves at drainage-imbibition turning points, which eases numerical performance during the Newton-Raphson iteration technique used to solve the non-linear governing equations used to analyze multiphase flow. In addition, hysteresis is included in the characteristic functions without requiring any additional parameters. An assessment of the new model is made by simulating an experiment published by Johnston and Adamski (2005) that explored the relationship of residual- and maximum- non-wetting phase saturations using an undisturbed soil sample. Another assessment is made by comparing the results of the new model to an analysis by Doughty (2007) when simulating the injection and migration of a supercritical CO2 plume in a deep storage formation. The simulated results compare favorably and confirm that the new model can duplicate essential features of more complicated hysteretic models

Multi-Objective Optimization for Speed and Stability of a Sony Aibo Gait

Locomotion is a fundamental facet of mobile robotics that many higher level aspects rely on. However, this is not a simple problem for legged robots with many degrees of freedom. For this reason, machine learning techniques have been applied to the domain. Although impressive results have been achieved, there remains a fundamental problem with using most machine learning methods. The learning algorithms usually require a large dataset which is prohibitively hard to collect on an actual robot. Further, learning in simulation has had limited success transitioning to the real world. Also, many learning algorithms optimize for a single fitness function, neglecting many of the effects on other parts of the system. As part of the RoboCup 4-legged league, many researchers have worked on increasing the walking/gait speed of Sony AIBO robots. Recently, the effort shifted from developing a quick gait, to developing a gait that also provides a stable sensing platform. However, to date, optimization of both velocity and camera stability has only occurred using a single fitness function that incorporates the two objectives with a weighting that defines the desired tradeoff between them. However, the true nature of this tradeoff is not understood because the pareto front has never been charted, so this a priori decision is uninformed. This project applies the Nondominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm-II (NSGA-II) to find a pareto set of fast, stable gait parameters. This allows a user to select the best tradeoff between balance and speed for a given application. Three fitness functions are defined: one speed measure and two stability measures. A plot of evolved gaits shows a pareto front that indicates speed and stability are indeed conflicting goals. Interestingly, the results also show that tradeoffs also exist between different measures of stability

Falwell v. Flynt: Lampooning or Liability; The Realization of a Three-Pronged Tort Approach for Establishing Media Liability for Fictional Defamation

This article will discuss the appellate court\u27s interpretation and application of the three tort theories of liability. It will also analyze the potential floodgate effect this case may have on future defamation actions against the media for publishing fictional publications, including political cartoons

On the Fringes of Peripheries: A Comparison of the Working-Class Representations of Larry Brown and Irvine Welsh

In this thesis, I compare the fiction of Mississippi author Larry Brown and Scottish author Irvine Welsh, specifically in how they represent their respective regions’ working classes. The project concerns the genre of working-class fiction in both the American South and Scotland, as well as the general fields of Southern and Scottish contemporary fiction. The groundwork for this thesis began when I read Welsh’s Trainspotting while studying at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland during the spring of 2011.1 wanted to explore why Welsh’s working-class representations felt so similar to the Southern fiction I read at the University of Mississippi, and eventually decided his writing most directly resembled the fiction of Larry Brown, an author from Mississippi. I researched the literary histories of American and British working-class fiction to contextualize the authors’ place in these traditions at the end of the twentieth century. I searched for similarities and differences between the two histories in an effort to find out why Brown and Welsh eventually wrote comparable representations,especially given their different geographic settings and cultures. In studying the fiction, I decided to compare several works from Brown with Welsh’s Trainspotting, since the novel covered a variety of issues found across Brown’s body of work. I articulate three thematic comparisons between the two writers in the first chapter: their tendency to characterize their working-classes as “underclasses,” their emphasis on substance abuse, and their focus on non-traditional working families. In the following chapters, I argue that the two major differences between the wTiters - their separate geographic settings and their different uses of vernacular language - actually point to similar sensibilities at work in their fiction. In chapter two, I argue that their settings of Scotland and Mississippi are related because they are both geographic peripheries. In chapter three, I argue that Brown and Welsh’s “different” linguistic choices react to their literar}^ histories in the same manner and achieve a similar “empowering’\u27 effect. I ultimately found that it was entirely possible to find specific ways in which Brown and Welsh are connected, and that my initial whim to connect Welsh to Southern writing has an arguable basis

Automated Identification and Reconstruction of YouTube Video Access

YouTube is one of the most popular video-sharing websites on the Internet, allowing users to upload, view and share videos with other users all over the world. YouTube contains many different types of videos, from homemade sketches to instructional and educational tutorials, and therefore attracts a wide variety of users with different interests. The majority of YouTube visits are perfectly innocent, but there may be circumstances where YouTube video access is related to a digital investigation, e.g. viewing instructional videos on how to perform potentially unlawful actions or how to make unlawful articles. When a user accesses a YouTube video through their browser, certain digital artefacts relating to that video access may be left on their system in a number of different locations. However, there has been very little research published in the area of YouTube video artefacts. The paper discusses the identification of some of the artefacts that are left by the Internet Explorer web browser on a Windows system after accessing a YouTube video. The information that can be recovered from these artefacts can include the video ID, the video name and possibly a cached copy of the video itself. In addition to identifying the artefacts that are left, the paper also investigates how these artefacts can be brought together and analysed to infer specifics about the user’s interaction with the YouTube website, for example whether the video was searched for or visited as a result of a suggestion after viewing a previous video. The result of this research is a Python based prototype that will analyse a mounted disk image, automatically extract the artefacts related to YouTube visits and produce a report summarising the YouTube video accesses on a system