Final report to the Anchorage Police Department

This brief report updates the previous report Descriptive Analysis of Sexual Assaults in Anchorage to document some of the changes in the nature of sexual assault in Anchorage, Alaska from 2000 to 2003. From 2000 to 2003, the rates of reported sexual assaults in Anchorage continue to be significantly higher than national rates; most victims continued to be female, and almost all suspects male; over half of sexual assaults continued to occur in private residences; and the Spenard and Fairview community council areas continued to experience the highest numbers of sexual assaults in the municipality. However, from 2000 to 2003, some key changes in the nature of sexual assaults were observed. The number of forcible rapes and sexual assaults reported showed a steady increase; sexual assault victimizations increased particularly among Natives and Blacks, among persons younger than 15 years old and those aged 45 to 54 years of age; stranger assaults declined while non-stranger assaults increased; and sexual assaults occurring in the Downtown community council area increased by 144 percent. While this update provides a brief overview of some key changes in the nature of sexual assaults in Anchorage, it does provide enough information to assist in changing policy, and the information presented is now two years old. Ideally, a monitoring program would be developed in Anchorage to provide real-time empirical information about sexual assault and forcible rape to assist in efforts to fight these crimes.Acknowledgments / Executive Summary / I. Gravity Of The Problem: How Does Anchorage Compare Now? / II. The Current Study / III. Victim Information / IV. Suspect Information / V. Assault Information / Conclusion / Appendix A: Data Collection Instrument for 2002/2003 Updat

HIV-1 pol Diversity among Female Bar and Hotel Workers in Northern Tanzania

A national ART program was launched in Tanzania in October 2004. Due to the existence of multiple HIV-1 subtypes and recombinant viruses co-circulating in Tanzania, it is important to monitor rates of drug resistance. The present study determined the prevalence of HIV-1 drug resistance mutations among ART-naive female bar and hotel workers, a high-risk population for HIV-1 infection in Moshi, Tanzania. A partial HIV-1 pol gene was analyzed by single-genome amplification and sequencing in 45 subjects (622 pol sequences total; median number of sequences per subject, 13; IQR 5–20) in samples collected in 2005. The prevalence of HIV-1 subtypes A1, C, and D, and inter-subtype recombinant viruses, was 36%, 29%, 9% and 27%, respectively. Thirteen different recombination patterns included D/A1/D, C/A1, A1/C/A1, A1/U/A1, C/U/A1, C/A1, U/D/U, D/A1/D, A1/C, A1/C, A2/C/A2, CRF10_CD/C/CRF10_CD and CRF35_AD/A1/CRF35_AD. CRF35_AD was identified in Tanzania for the first time. All recombinant viruses in this study were unique, suggesting ongoing recombination processes among circulating HIV-1 variants. The prevalence of multiple infections in this population was 16% (n = 7). Primary HIV-1 drug resistance mutations to RT inhibitors were identified in three (7%) subjects (K65R plus Y181C; N60D; and V106M). In some subjects, polymorphisms were observed at the RT positions 41, 69, 75, 98, 101, 179, 190, and 215. Secondary mutations associated with NNRTIs were observed at the RT positions 90 (7%) and 138 (6%). In the protease gene, three subjects (7%) had M46I/L mutations. All subjects in this study had HIV-1 subtype-specific natural polymorphisms at positions 36, 69, 89 and 93 that are associated with drug resistance in HIV-1 subtype B. These results suggested that HIV-1 drug resistance mutations and natural polymorphisms existed in this population before the initiation of the national ART program. With increasing use of ARV, these results highlight the importance of drug resistance monitoring in Tanzania

Stability of histone post-translational modifications in samples derived from liver tissue and primary hepatic cells.

Chromatin structure, a key contributor to the regulation of gene expression, is modulated by a broad array of histone post-translational modifications (PTMs). Taken together, these "histone marks" comprise what is often referred to as the "histone code". The quantitative analysis of histone PTMs by mass spectrometry (MS) offers the ability to examine the response of the histone code to physiological signals. However, few studies have examined the stability of histone PTMs through the process of isolating and culturing primary cells. To address this, we used bottom-up, MS-based analysis of histone PTMs in liver, freshly isolated hepatocytes, and cultured hepatocytes from adult male Fisher F344 rats. Correlations between liver, freshly isolated cells, and primary cultures were generally high, with R2 values exceeding 0.9. However, a number of acetylation marks, including those on H2A K9, H2A1 K13, H3 K4, H3 K14, H4 K8, H4 K12 and H4 K16 differed significantly among the three sources. Inducing proliferation of primary adult hepatocytes in culture affected several marks on histones H3.1/3.2 and H4. We conclude that hepatocyte isolation, culturing and cell cycle status all contribute to steady-state changes in the levels of a number of histone PTMs, indicating changes in histone marks that are rapidly induced in response to alterations in the cellular milieu. This has implications for studies aimed at assigning biological significance to histone modifications in tumors versus cancer cells, the developmental behavior of stem cells, and the attribution of changes in histone PTMs to altered cell metabolism