How do the youth in two communities make decisions about using condoms?

From the behavioural perspective, there is a key problem that needs to be overcome to enable effective action against the HIV epidemic. Why do people who are aware of and understand the nature of the HIV epidemic and how to protect themselves, choose to behave in a manner that puts them at risk? Historically, the social sciences have proposed multiple theories that attempt to explain how people make decisions, about the nature and structure of conscious thought, and how information is processed. There are acknowledged gaps in these theories, but what will be argued here is that an improved application of this theory may give us better direction. This paper will examine how the youth in two communities near Cape Town make decisions about condom usage. Three theories will be employed to attempt to understand the data collected - namely Lay Theory, Theory of Reasoned Action and Theory of Planned Behaviour. During the research, information was obtained from 43 depth interviews, two focus groups and a survey of 406 respondents. The theories are able to examine, from different perspectives, problems behind the behaviour choice. Using the data from the depth interviews and the focus groups, Lay Theory offered the following explanations: culture was influential in supporting gender dominance and multi-partner sexuality; and in social situations, both men and women felt a pressure to conform to pre-set roles, to undermine condom usage and to emphasize sexual pleasure. The Theories of Reasoned Action and Planned Behaviour offer more insight into individual decision processes by examining the roles of attitudes, the influence of those close to the person, and perceived controls of behaviour. Factors that were important included sexual desire, love, fear of partner's anger and whether there was knowledge of where to get condoms and how to use them. The data generally showed a lack of belief on the part of the respondents that AIDS really would affect them. These theories do not provide all the answers, but taken together they could provide some useful insights into the contribution of psychology theory and on how to design and implement intervention campaigns

Vulnerability in children due to HIV/AIDS : Literature review and factor analysis

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-67).This study aims to use factor analysis to increase our understanding of how these threats covary and comibe to increase the vulnerability of groups of children. Data was drawn from a survey of children aged 6-14 in Kanana in the North West Province, which was part of a larger study to develop best practice interventions for working with orphaned and vulnerable children

Value-Directed Remembering: Evidence for Distinctive Processing of High Value Items

A large body of literature has found that when participants are instructed to maximize their score, they reliably demonstrate better memory for information assigned high relative to low-values. This value-directed remembering effect has been replicated numerous times throughout nearly three decades of research. The most current theoretical explanation posits that high-value items disproportionately benefit from semantic processing relative to low-value items; however, this does not explain how this additional processing supports better memory for high-value items. Prior research suggests that semantic processing may benefit memory through item-specific processing or the processing of unique aspects of meaning. To this extent, the current theory argues for the role of item-specific processing; however, this ignores other research which suggests a role of relational processing in supporting memory within value-directed remembering. The current study provided evidence for a new theoretical explanation of value-directed remembering in which high-value items are thought to benefit from distinctive processing to a greater extent than low-value items. Given that distinctive processing incorporates the joint action of item-specific and relational processing, this study builds upon the current literature and, in doing so, provides a mechanistic explanation for value-directed remembering

Factors caregivers believe helped their preschool children to cope with a parent's detention and subsequent events : a study from the Western Cape

Bibliography: leaves 43-46.An exploratory study of factors that caregivers felt helped their child, in preschool at the time of the detention, to cope with a parent's detention was conducted. It is part of a broader study looking at the consequences for these children of the parent's detention. Semi-structured, depth interviews were conducted with the prime caregivers of the child, in 1986 and then a follow-up study was done in 1988. The original sample contained 19 subjects between the ages of two and six years, from a range of contexts. In the follow-up study 13 caregivers were re-interviewed. The research was done in cooperation with community groups who provided the contacts and gave direction. Caregivers reported a wide range of factors which they felt assisted coping, with varying levels of success. Results are reported in brief before a more detailed discussion is entered into, including case reports. The most commonly cited factor was the availability and use of social support and support structures, which appeared to be extensive in most cases. Family centered coping strategies were reported to be important where they were applied, particularly if the family was able to sit down as a whole and address the problems it faced. Politically centered strategies were also used. The focus in these was on obtaining information on detention so as to make sense of the situation and the use of political structures to give vent to emotions. Other aspects of coping not covered by the above areas include strategies such as keeping a regular routine. As was found in the 1986 study (Skinner and Swartz,L., 1989), security of life following the detention was found to be important in assisting the child to come to terms with the previous stressor

The Effect of Staphylococcal Toxin on Renal Function in the Dog

In spite of the advances that have taken place in medical and bacteriological research since the turn of the century, surprisingly little is known regarding the actual mechanisms of action of bacterial toxins on systemic homeostasis. The investigations to be reported were made as an attempt to elicit information regarding the effect of staphylococcal toxin on the circulatory system with specific reference to renal function

Heating and cooling a tri-level house with a hydronic baseboard-valance system

Cover title.Prepared as part of an investigation conducted by the Engineering Experiment Station, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Exnovation of Low Value Care: A Decade of Prostate‐Specific Antigen Screening Practices

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146902/1/jgs15591-sup-0001-supinfo.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146902/2/jgs15591.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146902/3/jgs15591_am.pd

Heterologous prime-boost-boost immunisation of Chinese cynomolgus macaques using DNA and recombinant poxvirus vectors expressing HIV-1 virus-like particles

Background: There is renewed interest in the development of poxvirus vector-based HIV vaccines due to the protective effect observed with repeated recombinant canarypox priming with gp120 boosting in the recent Thai placebo-controlled trial. This study sought to investigate whether a heterologous prime-boost-boost vaccine regimen in Chinese cynomolgus macaques with a DNA vaccine and recombinant poxviral vectors expressing HIV virus-like particles bearing envelopes derived from the most prevalent clades circulating in sub-Saharan Africa, focused the antibody response to shared neutralising epitopes. Methods: Three Chinese cynomolgus macaques were immunised via intramuscular injections using a regimen composed of a prime with two DNA vaccines expressing clade A Env/clade B Gag followed by boosting with recombinant fowlpox virus expressing HIV-1 clade D Gag, Env and cholera toxin B subunit followed by the final boost with recombinant modified vaccinia virus Ankara expressing HIV-1 clade C Env, Gag and human complement protein C3d. We measured the macaque serum antibody responses by ELISA, enumerated T cell responses by IFN-gamma ELISpot and assessed seroneutralisation of HIV-1 using the TZM-bl beta-galactosidase assay with primary isolates of HIV-1. Results: This study shows that large and complex synthetic DNA sequences can be successfully cloned in a single step into two poxvirus vectors: MVA and FPV and the recombinant poxviruses could be grown to high titres. The vaccine candidates showed appropriate expression of recombinant proteins with the formation of authentic HIV virus-like particles seen on transmission electron microscopy. In addition the b12 epitope was shown to be held in common by the vaccine candidates using confocal immunofluorescent microscopy. The vaccine candidates were safely administered to Chinese cynomolgus macaques which elicited modest T cell responses at the end of the study but only one out of the three macaques elicited an HIV-specific antibody response. However, the antibodies did not neutralise primary isolates of HIV-1 or the V3-sensitive isolate SF162 using the TZM-bl b-galactosidase assay. Conclusions: MVA and FP9 are ideal replication-deficient viral vectors for HIV-1 vaccines due to their excellent safety profile for use in humans. This study shows this novel prime-boost-boost regimen was poorly immunogenic in Chinese cynomolgus macaques

In Vivo Testing of MicroRNA-Mediated Gene Knockdown in Zebrafish

The zebrafish (Danio rerio) has become an attractive model for human disease modeling as there are a large number of orthologous genes that encode similar proteins to those found in humans. The number of tools available to manipulate the zebrafish genome is limited and many currently used techniques are only effective during early development (such as morpholino-based antisense technology) or it is phenotypically driven and does not offer targeted gene knockdown (such as chemical mutagenesis). The use of RNA interference has been met with controversy as off-target effects can make interpreting phenotypic outcomes difficult; however, this has been resolved by creating zebrafish lines that contain stably integrated miRNA constructs that target the desired gene of interest. In this study, we show that a commercially available miRNA vector system with a mouse-derived miRNA backbone is functional in zebrafish and is effective in causing eGFP knockdown in a transient in vivo eGFP sensor assay system. We chose to apply this system to the knockdown of transcripts that are implicated in the human cardiac disorder, Long QT syndrome