Intimacy and Sexuality: Toward a Lifespan Perspective

While the marketplace for sex-related goods and services, including drugs to remedy sexual dysfunction or enhance sexual experience, appears to be expanding exponentially, sexuality and intimacy are poorly understood aspects of human life and health. At some point, most adults experience sexual problems, concerns, or dysfunction, but physicians and other health care providers are poorly equipped to elicit discussion of or to treat these problems. Furthermore, social, cultural, and religious traditions largely exert negative influence on an individual's capacity for sexual self-knowledge and communication about sexual concerns. Ageist attitudes and overlapping health concerns further divert awareness and attention from sexual issues and exacerbate the problem for older adults. Physicians, the public, and policymakers alike assume that sexual expression and function inevitably wane and deteriorate with age. Even when sexual problems are anticipated or correctly diagnosed, a paucity of effective therapies prohibits treatment. To address these problems, a small consensus workshop of leading researchers on sexuality, intimacy, and aging was convened to review and evaluate current data on:sexuality and intimacy as part of a healthy lifestyle throughout lifecauses and impact of problems relating to sexuality and intimacypharmaceutical and other therapeutic interventions The workshop aimed to identify research gaps and disagreement about current data, to construct a research agenda for future work, and to make recommendations in order to assist individuals in maintaining a healthy sexual and intimate life into their later years

Privacy, Restriction, and Access: Legal and Ethical Dilemmas

This paper examines the intersection of privacy and access in archival repositories. Archival repositories are well known for containing restricted material, and for protecting the privacy of the donors. This literature review examines the need for restricted material from both legal and ethical standpoints, as well as discussing culturally sensitive materials while determining what archives and libraries can do to protect both themselves and their donors while enhancing accessibility and freedom of information

Generalized Einstein relation for disordered semiconductors - implications for device performance

The ratio between mobility and diffusion parameters is derived for a Gaussian-like density of states. This steady-state analysis is expected to be applicable to a wide range of organic materials (polymers or small molecules) as it relies on the existence of quasi-equilibrium only. Our analysis shows that there is an inherent dependence of the transport in trap-free disordered organic-materials on the charge density. The implications for the contact phenomena and exciton generation rate in light emitting diodes as well as channel-width in field-effect transistors is discussed

C0 beam elements based on the Refined Zigzag Theory for multilayered composite and sandwich laminates

The paper deals with the development and computational assessment of three- and two-node beam finite elements based on the Refined Zigzag Theory (RZT) for the analysis of multilayered composite and sandwich beams. RZT is a recently proposed structural theory that accounts for the stretching, bending, and transverse shear deformations, and which provides substantial improvements over previously developed zigzag and higher-order theories. This new theory is analytically rigorous, variationally consistent, and computationally attractive. The theory is not affected by anomalies of most previous zigzag and higher-order theories, such as the vanishing of transverse shear stress and force at clamped boundaries. In contrast to Timoshenko theory, RZT does not employ shear correction factors to yield accurate results. From the computational mechanics perspective RZT requires C°-continuous shape functions and thus enables the development of efficient displacement-type finite elements. The focus of this paper is to explore several low-order beam finite elements that offer the best compromise between computational efficiency and accuracy. The initial attention is on the choice of shape functions that do not admit shear locking effects in slender beams. For this purpose, anisoparametric (aka interdependent) interpolations are adapted to approximate the four independent kinematic variables that are necessary to model the planar beam deformations. To achieve simple two-node elements, several types of constraint conditions are examined and corresponding deflection shape-functions are derived. It is recognized that the constraint condition requiring a constant variation of the transverse shear force gives rise to a remarkably accurate two-node beam element. The proposed elements and their predictive capabilities are assessed using several elastostatic example problems, where simply supported and cantilevered beams are analyzed over a range of lamination sequences, heterogeneous material properties, and slenderness ratios

From Getting By to Getting Ahead: Navigating Career Advancement for Low-Wage Workers

From just getting by at the end of each month to getting ahead is a hard climb for many low-wage workers. This report, from MDRC's Work Advancement and Support Center (WASC) demonstration, explores how WASC career coaches help low-wage workers understand the complex interactions between earnings and eligibility for work support programs and guide them to make the best advancement decisions possible