Māori women and intimate partner violence: Some sociocultural influences

Intimate partner violence (IPV) has recently been acknowledged as a worldwide phenomenon, with approximately one in four intimate relationships containing some form of violence. This study explores the interaction between relationship dynamics, IPV and whānau and community influences. We completed narrative interviews with two Māori women in December 2010. Our findings confirm the results of earlier studies which have found that childhood experiences of violence, actual or witnessed, have a powerful effect that reverberate within adult lives and into the formation of intimate relationships. Our interviews show that Māori whānau and women are textured by the same patriarchal expectations that privilege men in the Pākehā world. We also found that seeking help from whānau to escape a violent relationship may not be the most welcomed course of action. We conclude with a discussion of future research directions

Lagunitas Brewing Company

The story of Lagunitas Beer is presented, from its start as a hobby for the founder Tony Magee to its current production of over 600,000 barrels per year, making it the 5th largest craft brewer in the US in 2013. To add perspective, a brief history of beer and the emergence of craft beer is included

The Language of Dialogue Is Complex

Integrative Complexity (IC) is a psychometric that measures the ability of a person to recognize multiple perspectives and connect them, thus identifying paths for conflict resolution. IC has been linked to a wide variety of political, social and personal outcomes but evaluating it is a time-consuming process requiring skilled professionals to manually score texts, a fact which accounts for the limited exploration of IC at scale on social media.We combine natural language processing and machine learning to train an IC classification model that achieves state-of-the-art performance on unseen data and more closely adheres to the established structure of the IC coding process than previous automated approaches. When applied to the content of 400k+ comments from online fora about depression and knowledge exchange, our model was capable of replicating key findings of prior work, thus providing the first example of using IC tools for large-scale social media analytics.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, 10 table

VPH-2 Risk Factor Analysis for the Transmission of Classical Swine Fever in West Timor, Indonesia

Classical Swine Fever (CSF) is a serious and highly infectious viral disease of domestic pigs and wild boar (Paton and Greiser-Wilke 2003). The causative agent, Classical Swine Fever Virus (CSFV) is a small (40±60 nm) enveloped ribonucleic acid (RNA) virus with a single stranded genome with positive polarity (Horzinek et al. 1971; Moennig and Greiser-Wilke 2008). The virus is one of three pestiviruses that forms a group of economically important pathogens (Moennig et al. 1990) belonging to the Flaviviridae family. It has a close antigenic relationship with the other pestiviruses - bovine viral diarrhoea virus (BVDV) and border disease virus (BDV), as demonstrated by immunodiffusion and immunofluorescence tests, and their similar morphology and nucleic acid homology (Wengler 1991; Wengler et al. 1995). Indonesia was free from CSF until 1993. Between 1994 and 1996 thousands of pigs were reported to have died from the disease in the Indonesian regions of North Sumatera, Jakarta, Bali, Central Java, and North Sulawesi (Satya and Santhia 2000). An outbreak of CSF was reported in Dili, East Timor in August 1997 and the disease then spread to the Kupang district of West Timor in March 1998 (Satya and Santhia 2009) and subsequently to all districts of Timor (Santhia et al. 1997; Santhia et al. 1998).              The existence of CSF in an area and the potential for introducing the disease into a new area can be associated with the presence of certain risk factors. Identification of these risk factors is important in understanding the transmission of disease and for developing effective prevention, control and eradication programs. Farmers are a valuable source of information about potential risk factors and associated management and husbandry practices linked with disease as they often have many years of experience in raising or trading livestock. This knowledge can be used to identify risk factors for disease.The objective of the study was to identify potential risk factors associated with CSF infection in West Timor. In particular factors involved in the management and husbandry of pigs were investigated

Stroke penumbra defined by an MRI-based oxygen challenge technique: 2. Validation based on the consequences of reperfusion

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with oxygen challenge (T2* OC) uses oxygen as a metabolic biotracer to define penumbral tissue based on CMRO2 and oxygen extraction fraction. Penumbra displays a greater T2* signal change during OC than surrounding tissue. Since timely restoration of cerebral blood flow (CBF) should salvage penumbra, T2* OC was tested by examining the consequences of reperfusion on T2* OC-defined penumbra. Transient ischemia (109±20 minutes) was induced in male Sprague-Dawley rats (n=8). Penumbra was identified on T2*-weighted MRI during OC. Ischemia and ischemic injury were identified on CBF and apparent diffusion coefficient maps, respectively. Reperfusion was induced and scans repeated. T2 for final infarct and T2* OC were run on day 7. T2* signal increase to OC was 3.4% in contralateral cortex and caudate nucleus and was unaffected by reperfusion. In OC-defined penumbra, T2* signal increased by 8.4%±4.1% during ischemia and returned to 3.25%±0.8% following reperfusion. Ischemic core T2* signal increase was 0.39%±0.47% during ischemia and 0.84%±1.8% on reperfusion. Penumbral CBF increased from 41.94±13 to 116.5±25 mL per 100 g per minute on reperfusion. On day 7, OC-defined penumbra gave a normal OC response and was located outside the infarct. T2* OC-defined penumbra recovered when CBF was restored, providing further validation of the utility of T2* OC for acute stroke management

Stroke penumbra defined by an MRI-based oxygen challenge technique: 1. validation using [14C]2-deoxyglucose autoradiography

Accurate identification of ischemic penumbra will improve stroke patient selection for reperfusion therapies and clinical trials. Current magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques have limitations and lack validation. Oxygen challenge T2* MRI (T2* OC) uses oxygen as a biotracer to detect tissue metabolism, with penumbra displaying the greatest T2* signal change during OC. [14C]2-deoxyglucose (2-DG) autoradiography was combined with T2* OC to determine metabolic status of T2*-defined penumbra. Permanent middle cerebral artery occlusion was induced in anesthetized male Sprague-Dawley rats (n=6). Ischemic injury and perfusion deficit were determined by diffusion- and perfusion-weighted imaging, respectively. At 147±32 minutes after stroke, T2* signal change was measured during a 5-minute 100% OC, immediately followed by 125 μCi/kg 2-DG, intravenously. Magnetic resonance images were coregistered with the corresponding autoradiograms. Regions of interest were located within ischemic core, T2*-defined penumbra, equivalent contralateral structures, and a region of hyperglycolysis. A T2* signal increase of 9.22%±3.9% (mean±s.d.) was recorded in presumed penumbra, which displayed local cerebral glucose utilization values equivalent to contralateral cortex. T2* signal change was negligible in ischemic core, 3.2%±0.78% in contralateral regions, and 1.41%±0.62% in hyperglycolytic tissue, located outside OC-defined penumbra and within the diffusion abnormality. The results support the utility of OC-MRI to detect viable penumbral tissue follow