Age at the Start of Birth Control Use and How it Affects Safe Sex Decision Making

In this research, I wanted to explore age at the start of birth control use and whether that has an effect on safe sex decision making in a sexual situation. To gather findings, a survey was administered to UNH students. There was a total of 393 respondents. 322 people answered the independent variable question and 321 people answered the dependent variable question. The independent variable question in the survey asked; “Before entering college, did you ever use birth control (such as condom, pill, IUD, etc.)” and the dependent variable question asked; ‘‘Have you ever had sex without birth control because your partner persuaded you not to?’’ Of the 97 people who responded “no” to the independent variable question, 13 answered “yes” to the dependent variable question (13.4%). Of the 224 that responded “yes” to the independent variable question, 53 responded “yes” to the dependent variable question (23.66%). From this research, we found that beginning birth control use before college does not relate to letting a partner sway your decision to use birth control in a sexual situation

Extra-virgin olive oil ameliorates cognition and neuropathology of the 3xTg mice. Role of autophagy

OBJECTIVE: Consumption of extra virgin olive oil (EVOO), a major component of the Mediterranean diet, has been associated with reduced incidence of Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, the mechanisms involved in this protective action remain to be fully elucidated. METHODS: Herein, we investigated the effect of daily consumption of EVOO on the AD-like phenotype of a mouse mode of the disease with plaques and tangles. RESULTS: Triple transgenic mice (3xTg) received either regular chow or a chow diet supplemented with EVOO starting at 6 months of age for 6 months, then assessed for the effect of the diet on the AD-like neuropathology and behavioral changes. Compared with controls, mice receiving the EVOO-rich diet had an amelioration of their behavioral deficits, and a significant increase in the steady state levels of synaptophysin, a protein marker of synaptic integrity. In addition, they had a significant reduction in insoluble Aβ peptide levels and deposition, lower amount of phosphorylated tau protein at specific epitopes, which were secondary to an activation of cell autophagy. INTERPRETATION: Taken together, our findings support a beneficial effect of EVOO consumption on all major features of the AD phenotype (behavioral deficits, synaptic pathology, Aβ and tau neuropathology), and demonstrate that autophagy activation is the mechanism underlying these biological actions

On a bilateral birth-death process with alternating rates

We consider a bilateral birth-death process characterized by a constant transition rate $\lambda$ from even states and a possibly different transition rate $\mu$ from odd states. We determine the probability generating functions of the even and odd states, the transition probabilities, mean and variance of the process for arbitrary initial state. Some features of the birth-death process confined to the non-negative integers by a reflecting boundary in the zero-state are also analyzed. In particular, making use of a Laplace transform approach we obtain a series form of the transition probability from state 1 to the zero-state.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

The concentration of homocysteine-derived disulfides in human coronary artery

*Background* 
Based on previous findings, we have estimated that, in injured coronary artery tissue, the low molecular weight disulfides homocystine and cysteine-homocysteine, otherwise identified as oxidized homocysteine equivalents (OHcyE), may achieve a total concentration that is higher than the aqueous solubility of homocystine at room temperature. In order to verify whether or not OHcyE could reach their saturation limit in the vascular tissue, we have measured the solubility of homocystine in physiological-like condition.

*Materials and methods* 
The solubility of homocystine has been measured in aqueous sodium chloride solutions at 37 °C by differential pulse polarography based on the reduction of homocystine to homocysteine.

*Results* 
We have estimated that the concentration achieved by OHcyE in injured coronary artery tissue is at least near-saturating, because the solubility of homocystine in physiological-like condition, above which deposition of homocystine and/or cysteine-homocysteine as solid phase occurs, almost exactly matches its value. Near-saturation levels of OHcyE within the vascular tissue means that significant leakage of intracellular fluid can promote OHcyE crystallization in tissue fluids, which may serve to initiate inflammation. 

*Conclusions* 
We speculate that deposition of OHcyE crystals could damage blood vessels and act as a primer of homocysteine-triggered inflammation, thus being along the causal pathway that leads to vascular dysfunction

Lucien Hervé and Le Corbusier: pair or peers?

The lasting iconicity surrounding the seminal accomplishments in modern architecture has its roots in long-term alliances between architects and photographers. The Masters of the Modern Movement carefully managed their public ‘image’ largely by establishing a distinct relationship with specific photographers, whose visual sensibility appeared to amplify the underlying design intent for maximum impact on the collective unconscious. Le Corbusier experienced particularly effective affinities with Lucien Hervé (1910–2007), whose photographic signature memorialised the last fifteen years of the Swiss/French architect's output. By choosing one photographer and remaining loyal to him for a significant amount of time, Le Corbusier ensured that his architecture took on a consistency that is partially the by-product of a photographic mind close to his architectural sensitivity. After the Second World War, there are numerous examples of such an interrelationship, among the most notable being Neutra/Shulman, Bunshaft/Stoller and Ellwood/Rand, with varying degrees of intensity, yet all revealing similar patterns of co-construction. Such a dynamic touched every corner of the globe where modern architecture was built and published, but was particularly visible in Europe and North America. Drawing on published and unpublished materials this paper focusses closely on the ramifications of the working couple Hervé/Le Corbusier so as to highlight the formation and consolidation of the partnership. This collaboration would elucidate the mutual influences between disciplines when a new, more humane idea of Modernity was formed and broadcast around the world

Un’endiadi impossibile. Parlare di città degli Stati Uniti oggi

This article analyzes several texts, published over the last two decades, which focus on postmodern space and the city in the United States. In particular, it tries to deconstruct the very phrase “American city”, which has been addressed by postmodern theorists as a cultural construct and, consequently, as a primarily theoretical notion. Reading works written by Rem Koolhaas, Michel de Certeau, Marc Augé and Jean Baudrillard vis-à-vis the works of sociologists and urban scientists, like Marshall Berman and Sharon Zukin, the article tries to figure out a new perspective to describe and narrate American cities today, halfway between the abstract postmodern theoretical speculations and the strictly materialist and sociological approach

Staging the Stigma: Syphilis and Its Metaphors in Claude McKay’s The Clinic

The paper proposes a reading of Claude McKay’s The Clinic (circa 1923) as a text addressing the male diseased body and the clinic as symbolic sites of stigma. More specifically, the male (homo)sexualized body at the center of McKay’s poetic investigation is scrutinized according to two crucial axes of dis-identification: sexuality and ethnicity. Drawing on the Foucauldian genesis of the clinic as a space of signification of illness and of the body, I contend that McKay stages the shift from medical to poetic gaze and scrutinizes the diseased body as a site of stigma and shame to disavow, in order to advocate a new, idealized model of black subjectivity