Sex Industry and Sex Workers in Nevada

Las Vegas has long been known as the symbolic center of the commercial sex industry. Nevada is host to the only legal system of prostitution in the United States. From the early legalization of quickie divorce and marriage to the marketing of its large resorts, sexuality has been a key component of Nevada’s tourist economy. If trends continue, for good or for ill, the sex industry will be an even larger part of the economy in the future. The sex industry refers to all legal and illegal adult businesses that sell sexual products, sexual services, sexual fantasies, and actual sexual contact for profit in the commercial marketplace. The sex industry encompasses an exceedingly wide range of formal and informal, legal and illegal businesses, as well as a wide range of individuals who work in and around the industry. This report will review the context in which sexually oriented commercial enterprises have flourished, discuss general trends in the Nevada sex industry, and make policy recommendations

Introduction to the design and analysis of complex survey data

We give a brief overview of common sampling designs used in a survey setting, and introduce the principal inferential paradigms under which data from complex surveys may be analyzed. In particular, we distinguish between design-based, model-based and model-assisted approaches. Simple examples highlight the key differences between the approaches. We discuss the interplay between inferential approaches and targets of inference and the important issue of variance estimation

Confronting the “fraud bottleneck”: private sanctions for fraud and their implications for justice

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the ways in which contemporary organisations are imposing their own private sanctions on fraudsters. Design/methodology/approach – The research draws on primary data from interviews with counter fraud practitioners in the UK, secondary sources and case examples. Findings – Such developments have been stimulated, at least in part, by the broader limitations of the criminal justice system and in particular a “fraud bottleneck”. Alongside criminal sanctions, many examples are provided of organisations employing private prosecutions innovative forms of civil sanction and “pseudo state” sanctions, most commonly civil penalties comparable to fines. Research limitations/implications – Such changes could mark the beginning of the “rebirth of private prosecution” and the further expansion of private punishment. Growing private involvement in state sanctions and the development of private sanctions represents a risk to traditional guarantees of justice. There are differences in which comparable frauds are dealt with by corporate bodies and thus considerable inconsistency in sanctions imposed. In contrast with criminal justice measures, there is no rehabilitative element to private sanctions. More research is needed to assess the extent of such measures, and establish what is happening, the wider social implications, and whether greater state regulation is needed. Practical implications – Private sanctions for fraud are likely to continue to grow, as organisations pursue their own measures rather than relying on increasingly over-stretched criminal justice systems. Their emergence, extent and implications are not fully understood by researchers and therefore need much more research, consideration and debate. These private measures need to be more actively recognised by criminal justice policy-makers and analysts alongside the already substantial formal involvement of the private sector in punishment through prisons, electronic tagging and probation, for example. Such measures lack the checks and balances, and greater degree of consistency as laid out in sentencing guidelines, of the criminal justice system. In light of this, consideration needs to be given to greater state regulation of private sanctions for fraud. More also needs to be done to help fraudsters suffering problems such as debt or addiction to rebuild their lives. There is a strong case for measures beyond the criminal justice system to support such fraudsters to be created and publicly promoted. Originality/value – The findings are of relevance to criminal justice policy-makers, academics and counter fraud practitioners in the public and private sectors

BREAST MOVEMENT ASYMMETRY DURING RUNNING: IMPLICATIONS ON BREAST SUPPORT

This study aimed to investigate 1) the prevalence and magnitude of breast movement asymmetry, 2) the interaction between static and dynamic breast asymmetry during running and 3) the influence of sports bras on breast asymmetry. Nipple position data were collected from 167 female participants whilst treadmill running and then from a sub-group of twelve participants running in different bra conditions. Breast movement asymmetry was present in 74% of participant during running, with greater resultant static breast position asymmetry for participants that displayed asymmetry whilst running. Asymmetry was most commonly caused (65 - 80%) by greater movement of the left than right breast. Sports bras reduced asymmetry prevalence to as few as 17% of participants in the antero-posterior direction but only 58% in the infero-superior direction

RPPA Space: An R Package for Normalization and Quantitation of Reverse-Phase Protein Array Data

SUMMARY: Reverse-Phase Protein Array (RPPA) is a robust high-throughput, cost-effective platform for quantitatively measuring proteins in biological specimens. However, converting raw RPPA data into normalized, analysis-ready data remains a challenging task. Here, we present the RPPA SPACE (RPPA Superposition Analysis and Concentration Evaluation) R package, a substantially improved successor to SuperCurve, to meet that challenge. SuperCurve has been used to normalize over 170 000 samples to date. RPPA SPACE allows exclusion of poor-quality samples from the normalization process to improve the quality of the remaining samples. It also features a novel quality-control metric, \u27noise\u27, that estimates the level of random errors present in each RPPA slide. The noise metric can help to determine the quality and reliability of the data. In addition, RPPA SPACE has simpler input requirements and is more flexible than SuperCurve, it is much faster with greatly improved error reporting. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: The standalone RPPA SPACE R package, tutorials and sample data are available via https://rppa.space/, CRAN (https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/RPPASPACE/index.html) and GitHub (https://github.com/MD-Anderson-Bioinformatics/RPPASPACE). SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online

General practitioners’ perspectives on campaigns to promote rapid help-seeking behaviour at the onset of rheumatoid arthritis

Objective. To explore general practitioners’ (GPs’ ) perspectives on public health campaigns to encourage people with the early symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) to seek medical help rapidly. Design. Nineteen GPs participated in four semistructured focus groups. Focus groups were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analysed using thematic analysis. Results. GPs recognised the need for the early treatment of RA and identified that facilitating appropriate access to care was important. However, not all held the view that a delay in help seeking was a clinically significant issue. Furthermore, many were concerned that the early symptoms of RA were often non-specific, and that current knowledge about the nature of symptoms at disease onset was inadequate to inform the content of a help-seeking campaign. They argued that a campaign might not be able to specifically target those who need to present urgently. Poorly designed campaigns were suggested to have a negative impact on GPs’ workloads, and would “clog up” the referral pathway for genuine cases of RA. Conclusions. GPs were supportive of strategies to improve access to Rheumatological care and increase public awareness of RA symptoms. However, they have identified important issues that need to be considered in developing a public health campaign that forms part of an overall strategy to reduce time to treatment for patients with new onset RA. This study highlights the value of gaining GPs’ perspectives before launching health promotion campaigns