Contraceptive confidence and timing of first birth in Moldova: an event history analysis of retrospective data

Objectives: To test the contraceptive confidence hypothesis in a modern context. The hypothesis is that women using effective or modern contraceptive methods have increased contraceptive confidence and hence a shorter interval between marriage and first birth than users of ineffective or traditional methods. We extend the hypothesis to incorporate the role of abortion, arguing that it acts as a substitute for contraception in the study context.Setting: Moldova, a country in South-East Europe. Moldova exhibits high use of traditional contraceptive methods and abortion compared with other European countries.Participants: Data are from a secondary analysis of the 2005 Moldovan Demographic and Health Survey, a nationally representative sample survey. 5377 unmarried women were selected.Primary and secondary outcome measures: The outcome measure was the interval between marriage and first birth. This was modelled using a piecewise-constant hazard regression, with abortion and contraceptive method types as primary variables along with relevant sociodemographic controls.Results: Women with high contraceptive confidence (modern method users) have a higher cumulative hazard of first birth 36?months following marriage (0.88 (0.87 to 0.89)) compared with women with low contraceptive confidence (traditional method users, cumulative hazard: 0.85 (0.84 to 0.85)). This is consistent with the contraceptive confidence hypothesis. There is a higher cumulative hazard of first birth among women with low (0.80 (0.79 to 0.80)) and moderate abortion propensities (0.76 (0.75 to 0.77)) than women with no abortion propensity (0.73 (0.72 to 0.74)) 24?months after marriage.Conclusions: Effective contraceptive use tends to increase contraceptive confidence and is associated with a shorter interval between marriage and first birth. Increased use of abortion also tends to increase contraceptive confidence and shorten birth duration, although this effect is non-linear—women with a very high use of abortion tend to have lengthy intervals between marriage and first birth

Dimension-adaptive bounds on compressive FLD Classification

Efficient dimensionality reduction by random projections (RP) gains popularity, hence the learning guarantees achievable in RP spaces are of great interest. In finite dimensional setting, it has been shown for the compressive Fisher Linear Discriminant (FLD) classifier that forgood generalisation the required target dimension grows only as the log of the number of classes and is not adversely affected by the number of projected data points. However these bounds depend on the dimensionality d of the original data space. In this paper we give further guarantees that remove d from the bounds under certain conditions of regularity on the data density structure. In particular, if the data density does not fill the ambient space then the error of compressive FLD is independent of the ambient dimension and depends only on a notion of ‘intrinsic dimension'

Exciton Dynamics in the J-Aggregates of a Carbocyanine Dye

We report on the exciton dynamics in the J-aggregating dye 5,5',6,6'-tetrachloro-1,1'-diethyl-3,3'-di(4-sulfobutyl)-benzimidazolocarbocyanine, which is known readily to form J-aggregates, even at room temperature and at a low concentration. We performed a series of time-correlated single-photon-counting experiments at different emission wavelengths and at different temperatures in the range between 1.5 and 125 K. Additionally, the temperature dependence of the relative fluorescence quantum yield was determined

Activation of phonological and semantic codes in toddlers

What are the processes underlying word recognition in the toddler lexicon? Work with adults suggests that, by 5-years of age, hearing a word leads to cascaded activation of other phonologically, semantically and phono-semantically related words (Huang & Snedeker, 2010; Marslen-Wilson & Zwitserlood, 1989). Given substantial differences in children’s sensitivity to phonological and semantic relationships between words in the first few years of life (Arias-Trejo & Plunkett, 2010; Newman, Samuelson, & Gupta, 2009; Storkel & Hoover, 2012), the current set of experiments investigated whether children younger than five also show such phono-semantic priming. Using a picture-priming task, Experiments 1 and 2 presented 2-year-olds with phono-semantically related prime-target pairs, where the label for the prime image is phonologically related (Experiment 1 – onset CV overlap, Experiment 2 – rhyme VC overlap) to a semantic associate of the target label. Across both experiments, toddlers recognised a word faster when this was preceded by a phono-semantically related prime relative to an unrelated prime. Overall, the results provide strong evidence that word recognition involves cascaded processing of phono-semantically related words by 2-years of age

The correlates of natural method use in Moldova: is natural method use associated with poverty and isolation?

Natural method use is often associated with high levels of unwanted births and induced abortions. This study investigates the correlates of natural method use in Moldova, a country with one of the highest proportions of natural contraceptive users in Europe. We hypothesize that economic and spatial disadvantage increase the reliance on natural methods whereas exposure to FP programs decreases the probability of natural method use. The analysis considers a sub-sample of 5860 sexually-active women from the 2005 Demographic and Health Survey. Results from multilevel multinomial models, controlling for relevant characteristics and data structure, show that economic disadvantage increases the probability of natural method use; but the overall effect is small. Higher FP media exposure reduces natural method use; however this effect attenuates with age. We conclude that FP efforts directed towards the poorest may have limited impact, but interventions targeted at older women could reduce the burden of unwanted pregnancies

Acoustic Enhancement of Polymer/ZnO Nanorod Photovoltaic Device Performance

Leverhulme Trust and EPSRC. Grant Numbers: EP/J500021/1, EP/G037515/1

Prospects for photon blockade in four level systems in the N configuration with more than one atom

We show that for appropriate choices of parameters it is possible to achieve photon blockade in idealised one, two and three atom systems. We also include realistic parameter ranges for rubidium as the atomic species. Our results circumvent the doubts cast by recent discussion in the literature (Grangier et al Phys. Rev Lett. 81, 2833 (1998), Imamoglu et al Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 2836 (1998)) on the possibility of photon blockade in multi-atom systems.Comment: 8 page, revtex, 7 figures, gif. Submitted to Journal of Optics B: Quantum and Semiclassical Optic

CCR5 limits cortical viral loads during West Nile virus infection of the central nervous system

BACKGROUND: Cell-mediated immunity is critical for clearance of central nervous system (CNS) infection with the encephalitic flavivirus, West Nile virus (WNV). Prior studies from our laboratory have shown that WNV-infected neurons express chemoattractants that mediate recruitment of antiviral leukocytes into the CNS. Although the chemokine receptor, CCR5, has been shown to play an important role in CNS host defense during WNV infection, regional effects of its activity within the infected brain have not been defined. METHODS: We used CCR5-deficient mice and an established murine model of WNV encephalitis to determine whether CCR5 activity impacts on WNV levels within the CNS in a region-specific fashion. Statistical comparisons between groups were made with one- or two-way analysis of variance; Bonferroni’s post hoc test was subsequently used to compare individual means. Survival was analyzed by the log-rank test. Analyses were conducted using Prism software (GraphPad Prism). All data were expressed as means ± SEM. Differences were considered significant if P ≤ 0.05. RESULTS: As previously shown, lack of CCR5 activity led to increased symptomatic disease and mortality in mice after subcutaneous infection with WNV. Evaluation of viral burden in the footpad, draining lymph nodes, spleen, olfactory bulb, and cerebellum derived from WNV-infected wild-type, and CCR5(−/−) mice showed no differences between the genotypes. In contrast, WNV-infected, CCR5(−/−) mice exhibited significantly increased viral burden in cortical tissues, including the hippocampus, at day 8 post-infection. CNS regional studies of chemokine expression via luminex analysis revealed significantly increased expression of CCR5 ligands, CCL4 and CCL5, within the cortices of WNV-infected, CCR5(−/−) mice compared with those of similarly infected WT animals. Cortical elevations in viral loads and CCR5 ligands in WNV-infected, CCR5(−/−) mice, however, were associated with decreased numbers of infiltrating mononuclear cells and increased permeability of the blood-brain barrier. CONCLUSIONS: These data indicate that regional differences in chemokine expression occur in response to WNV infection of the CNS, and that cortical neurons require CCR5 activity to limit viral burden in this brain region

Rich pictures for stakeholder dialogue:A polyphonic picture book

We describe the design and use of a ‘polyphonic picture book’ for engaging stakeholders and research participants with findings from an interdisciplinary project investigating how UK citizens create and manage online identities at three significant life transitions. The project delivered socio-cultural and technical findings to inform policy-making and service innovation for enhancing digital literacy in online self-representation. The picture book presented findings through multi-perspectival, fictional scenarios about experiences of life transition. We describe our use of the book with our stakeholders in five workshop settings and our evaluation of the visual format for fostering stakeholder dialogue around the findings and their transferability. This paper contributes methodological insights about using visual storytelling to scaffold interpretative, dialogical contexts of research engagement