Fathers’ subjective lived experiences of their partner’s medically high-risk pregnancy in the Western Cape, South Africa

Magister Artium (Psychology) - MA(Psych)The presence of a supportive and attentive father has been shown to hold a myriad of positive health outcomes for a pregnancy, and benefits the wellbeing of the mother, child, and the father himself. Pregnancy is a key period for fathers to become invested in their children’s lives. However, obstetric research continues to be largely feminised, therefore neglects the experiences of men. Considering that existing research shows that the antenatal period is a turbulent time for men, the aim of this research was to explore fathers’ subjective lived experiences of their partner’s medically high-risk pregnancy

Protest injuries : A situational analysis of injurious protests in Gauteng

In this article, we investigate contextual and situational circumstances of protest events that record injurious outcomes for civilians and examine how these differ from protests which do not record such outcomes. Using the IRIS database, we examine how contextual factors, including protest period, protest location, reason for protest, and situational factors, such as type of protest, damage to property, arrests and police response contribute to civilian injury. Using logistic regression analysis, it was found that: 1) protest-related injuries were more frequent during the late-2000s than the 2010–15 period; 2) protest location was not a significant predictor of protest injury; 3) protests which recorded arrests and damage to property were more likely to report injurious outcomes; and 4) the addition of an aggressive police response was significant in determining protestor injury outcomes. Our findings have implications for public policing strategies, highlighting the role of different modalities of police response in the mitigation or escalation of injuries at protest events

Protest injuries: A situational analysis of injurious protests in Gauteng

In this article, we investigate contextual and situational circumstances of protest events that record injurious outcomes for civilians and examine how these differ from protests which do not record such outcomes. Using the IRIS database, we examine how contextual factors, including protest period, protest location, type of protest, reason for protest, and situational factors, such as damage to property, arrests and police response contribute to civilian injury. Using multiple logistic regression analysis, it was found that: 1) protest-related injuries were more frequent during the late-2000s than the 2010-15 period; 2) protest location was not a significant predictor of protest injury; 3) protests which recorded arrests and damage to property were more likely to report injurious outcomes; and 4) the addition of an aggressive police response was significant in determining protestor injury outcomes. Our findings have implications for public policing strategies, highlighting the role of different modalities of police response in the mitigation or escalation of violence at protest events

Risk of cancer in the vicinity of municipal solid waste incinerators: importance of using a flexible modelling strategy

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>We conducted an ecological study in four French administrative departments and highlighted an excess risk in cancer morbidity for residents around municipal solid waste incinerators. The aim of this paper is to show how important are advanced tools and statistical techniques to better assess weak associations between the risk of cancer and past environmental exposures.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The steps to evaluate the association between the risk of cancer and the exposure to incinerators, from the assessment of exposure to the definition of the confounding variables and the statistical analysis carried out are detailed and discussed. Dispersion modelling was used to assess exposure to sixteen incinerators. A geographical information system was developed to define an index of exposure at the IRIS level that is the geographical unit we considered.</p> <p>Population density, rural/urban status, socio-economic deprivation, exposure to air pollution from traffic and from other industries were considered as potential confounding factors and defined at the IRIS level. Generalized additive models and Bayesian hierarchical models were used to estimate the association between the risk of cancer and the index of exposure to incinerators accounting for the confounding factors.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Modelling to assess the exposure to municipal solid waste incinerators allowed accounting for factors known to influence the exposure (meteorological data, point source characteristics, topography). The statistical models defined allowed modelling extra-Poisson variability and also non-linear relationships between the risk of cancer and the exposure to incinerators and the confounders.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In most epidemiological studies distance is still used as a proxy for exposure. This can lead to significant exposure misclassification. Additionally, in geographical correlation studies the non-linear relationships are usually not accounted for in the statistical analysis. In studies of weak associations it is important to use advanced methods to better assess dose-response relationships with disease risk.</p

Génération d'impulsions ultrabrèves de haute puissance et a haut taux de répétition par amplification fibrée en régime auto-similaire ou d'auto-modulation de phase

Nous démontrons l’amplification d’impulsions pico- et femto-secondes par un dispositif fibré à un taux de répétition de 1 GHz obtenu par utilisation d’un VECSEL passivement mode-locké. Deux régimes non-linéaires d’amplification sont alors clairement mis en évidence, l’un dominé par l’auto-modulation de phase et l’autre par une évolution autosimilaire. Ce dernier régime conduit après recompression temporelle à des impulsions en limite de Fourier avec une durée temporelle inférieure à 150 fs

Power spectrum for the small-scale Universe

The first objects to arise in a cold dark matter universe present a daunting challenge for models of structure formation. In the ultra small-scale limit, CDM structures form nearly simultaneously across a wide range of scales. Hierarchical clustering no longer provides a guiding principle for theoretical analyses and the computation time required to carry out credible simulations becomes prohibitively high. To gain insight into this problem, we perform high-resolution (N=720^3 - 1584^3) simulations of an Einstein-de Sitter cosmology where the initial power spectrum is P(k) propto k^n, with -2.5 < n < -1. Self-similar scaling is established for n=-1 and n=-2 more convincingly than in previous, lower-resolution simulations and for the first time, self-similar scaling is established for an n=-2.25 simulation. However, finite box-size effects induce departures from self-similar scaling in our n=-2.5 simulation. We compare our results with the predictions for the power spectrum from (one-loop) perturbation theory and demonstrate that the renormalization group approach suggested by McDonald improves perturbation theory's ability to predict the power spectrum in the quasilinear regime. In the nonlinear regime, our power spectra differ significantly from the widely used fitting formulae of Peacock & Dodds and Smith et al. and a new fitting formula is presented. Implications of our results for the stable clustering hypothesis vs. halo model debate are discussed. Our power spectra are inconsistent with predictions of the stable clustering hypothesis in the high-k limit and lend credence to the halo model. Nevertheless, the fitting formula advocated in this paper is purely empirical and not derived from a specific formulation of the halo model.Comment: 30 pages including 10 figures; accepted for publication in MNRA

A summary of the 2012 JHU CLSP Workshop on Zero Resource Speech Technologies and Models of Early Language Acquisition

We summarize the accomplishments of a multi-disciplinary workshop exploring the computational and scientific issues surrounding zero resource (unsupervised) speech technologies and related models of early language acquisition. Centered around the tasks of phonetic and lexical discovery, we consider unified evaluation metrics, present two new approaches for improving speaker independence in the absence of supervision, and evaluate the application of Bayesian word segmentation algorithms to automatic subword unit tokenizations. Finally, we present two strategies for integrating zero resource techniques into supervised settings, demonstrating the potential of unsupervised methods to improve mainstream technologies.5 page(s

Nanomechanical Detection of Itinerant Electron Spin Flip

Spin is an intrinsically quantum property, characterized by angular momentum. A change in the spin state is equivalent to a change in the angular momentum or mechanical torque. This spin-induced torque has been invoked as the intrinsic mechanism in experiments ranging from the measurements of angular momentum of photons g-factor of metals and magnetic resonance to the magnetization reversal in magnetic multi-layers A spin-polarized current introduced into a nonmagnetic nanowire produces a torque associated with the itinerant electron spin flip. Here, we report direct measurement of this mechanical torque and itinerant electron spin polarization in an integrated nanoscale torsion oscillator, which could yield new information on the itinerancy of the d-band electrons. The unprecedented torque sensitivity of 10^{-22} N m/ \sqrt{Hz} may enable applications for spintronics, precision measurements of CP-violating forces, untwisting of DNA and torque generating molecules.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures. visit http://nano.bu.edu/ for related paper

Differential Inductive Signaling of CD90+ Prostate Cancer-Associated Fibroblasts Compared to Normal Tissue Stromal Mesenchyme Cells

Prostate carcinomas are surrounded by a layer of stromal fibroblastic cells that are characterized by increased expression of CD90. These CD90+ cancer-associated stromal fibroblastic cells differ in gene expression from their normal counterpart, CD49a+CD90lo stromal smooth muscle cells; and were postulated to represent a less differentiated cell type with altered inductive properties. CD90+ stromal cells were isolated from tumor tissue specimens and co-cultured with the pluripotent embryonal carcinoma cell line NCCIT in order to elucidate the impact of tumor-associated stroma on stem cells, and the ‘cancer stem cell.’ Transcriptome analysis identified a notable decreased induction of smooth muscle and prostate stromal genes such as PENK, BMP2 and ChGn compared to previously determined NCCIT response to normal prostate stromal cell induction. CD90+ stromal cell secreted factors induced an increased expression of CD90 and differential induction of genes involved in extracellular matrix remodeling and the RECK pathway in NCCIT. These results suggest that, compared to normal tissue stromal cells, signaling from cancer-associated stromal cells has a markedly different effect on stem cells as represented by NCCIT. Given that stromal cells are important in directing organ-specific differentiation, stromal cells in tumors appear to be defective in this function, which may contribute to abnormal differentiation found in diseases such as cancer

Are Amphipod invaders a threat to the regional biodiversity? Conservation prospects for the Loire River

The impact of invasions on local biodiversity is well established, but their impact on regional biodiversity has so far been only sketchily documented. To address this question, we studied the impact at various observation scales (ranging from the microhabitat to the whole catchment) of successive arrivals of non-native amphipods on the amphipod assemblage of the Loire River basin in France. Amphipod assemblages were studied at 225 sites covering the whole Loire catchment. Non-native species were dominant at all sites in the main channel of the Loire River, but native species were still present at most of the sites. We found that the invaders have failed to colonize most of tributaries of the Loire River. At the regional scale, we found that since the invaders first arrived 25 years ago, the global amphipod diversity has increased by 33% (from 8 to 12 species) due to the arrival of non-native species. We discuss the possibility that the lack of any loss of biodiversity may be directly linked to the presence of refuges at the microhabitat scale in the Loire channel and in the tributaries, which invasive species have been unable to colonize. The restoration of river quality could increase the number of refuges for native species, thus reducing the impact of invader