Fertility Desires among Men and Women Living with HIV/AIDS in Nairobi Slums: A Mixed Methods Study

Objectives

Fertility desires require new understanding in a context of expanding access to antiretroviral therapy for people living with HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper studies the fertility desires and their rationales, of slum-dwelling Kenyan men and women living with HIV/AIDS who know their serostatus, but have different antiretroviral therapy treatment statuses. It addresses two research questions: How do people living with HIV/AIDS consider their future fertility? What factors contribute to an explanation of fertility desires among people living with HIV/AIDS.

Methods

A mixed methods study (survey [n = 513] and in-depth interviews [n = 41]) with adults living with HIV/AIDS living in Nairobi slums was conducted in 2010. Regression analyses assess independent relationships between fertility desires and socio-demographic factors. Analyses of in-depth interviews are used to interpret the statistical analyses of fertility desires.

Results

Our analyses show that fertility desires are complex and ambivalent, reflecting tensions between familial and societal pressures to have children versus pressures for HIV (re-)infection prevention. More than a third (34%) of men and women living with HIV expressed future fertility desires; however, this is significantly lower than in the general population. Factors independently associated with desiring a child among people living with HIV/AIDS were age, sex, number of surviving children, social support and household wealth of the respondent.

Discussion

Increasing access to ART is changing the context of future childbearing for people living with HIV/AIDS. Prevailing values mean that, for many people living with HIV/AIDS, having children is seen as necessary for a “normal” and healthy adult life. However, the social rewards of childbearing conflict with moral imperatives of HIV prevention, presenting dilemmas about the “proper” reproductive behaviour of people living with HIV/AIDS. The health policy and service delivery implications of these findings are explored.     

红火蚁工蚁体积、重量与数量之间关系研究

红火蚁Solenopsis invicta Buren是国际上一种重要危险性入侵害虫,已经入侵我国多年,并对我国社会多个方面造成危害和威胁。调查和明确红火蚁的分布、发生和危害是做好科学防控的基础和前提。本研究明确了大（体长：5~6 mm）、中（3~4 mm）、小（2~2.5 mm）3类不同体型工蚁在死亡和活体状态下同一体积时的重量和数量差异性及相关性。在此基础上建立了拟合2种状态下3类体型工蚁的体积、重量和数量间关系的系列幂模型,其中大、中、小体型活工蚁的体积与重量之间关系模型分别为Y=0.2066X^1.09265、Y=0.2179X^1.2362、Y=0.1725X^1.0897,死亡工蚁的体积与重量之间关系模型分别为Y=0.2003X^1.2226、Y=0.0876X^1.3038、Y=0.1491X^1.2041;大、中、小体型活工蚁的体积与数量之间关系模型分别为Y=41.7252X^1.5681、Y=27.9203X^1.7075、Y=181.7866X^1.0187,死亡工蚁的体积与数量之间关系模型分别为Y=115.8781X^1.1245、Y=460.1223X^1.0039、Y=433.0574X^0.9595;大、中、小体型活工蚁和死亡工蚁的重量与数量之间关系模型分别为Y=390.6213X1.4699、Y=219.6564X^1.4133、Y=942.2587X^0.9267、Y=524.3954X^0.8803、Y=3005.7651X^0.7571、Y=1984.2138X^0.7818;并依据以上各个模型,计算、制作了2种状态3类体型时依据体积估测重量和数量,依据重量估测数量的分级表。     

Mortality,fertility, and the OY ratio in a model hunter–gatherer system

An agent‐based model (ABM) is used to explore how the ratio of old to young adults (the OY ratio) in a sample of dead individuals is related to aspects of mortality, fertility, and longevity experienced by the living population from which the sample was drawn. The ABM features representations of rules, behaviors, and constraints that affect person‐ and household‐level decisions about marriage, reproduction, and infant mortality in hunter–gatherer systems. The demographic characteristics of the larger model system emerge through human‐level interactions playing out in the context of “global” parameters that can be adjusted to produce a range of mortality and fertility conditions. Model data show a relationship between the OY ratios of living populations (the living OY ratio) and assemblages of dead individuals drawn from those populations (the dead OY ratio) that is consistent with that from empirically known ethnographic hunter–gatherer cases. The dead OY ratio is clearly related to the mean ages, mean adult mortality rates, and mean total fertility rates experienced by living populations in the model. Sample size exerts a strong effect on the accuracy with which the calculated dead OY ratio reflects the actual dead OY ratio of the complete assemblage. These results demonstrate that the dead OY ratio is a potentially useful metric for paleodemographic analysis of changes in mortality and mean age, and suggest that, in general, hunter–gatherer populations with higher mortality, higher fertility, and lower mean ages are characterized by lower dead OY ratios. Am J Phys Anthropol 154:222–231, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Relative abundances of living and dead molluscs in two Californian lagoons

Assemblages of living benthic invertebrates (predominantly bivalve molluscs) from the sand-channel habitat of two Southern California (U.S.A.) lagoons were sampled on ten occasions over a 37-month period. A one-time sampling of the corresponding assemblages of accumulating dead remains made possible a contrast of living and dead assemblages designed to assess the biasing effects of post-mortem transportation, shell dissolution, and time-averaging. Species-by-species comparisons of the living and dead molluscs found together in the same samples strongly suggested that post-mortem transportation is insignificant within this high-energy habitat. A similar conclusion arose from contrasting the pattern of spatial heterogeneity of the living community with that of the dead assemblage. Species presence-and-absence comparisons were generally more reliable than comparisons of relative abundances. Adjustments for experimentally determined rates of post-mortem shell dissolution proved significant and further decreased the correspondence in relative abundances between living and dead assemblages. Greater temporal variability of living populations at Mugu Lagoon, probably caused by a more harsh physical environment, increased the differences in composition between living and dead assemblages, which suggests that correspondence in relative abundances between living and dead assemblages generally should be expected to decrease as the life environment becomes more harsh.     

Adolescent Movements: Dating,Elopements, and Youth Policing in Ladakh,India

ABSTRACT

In India's northwest border region of Ladakh, norms of sexuality are changing, which is resulting in the emergence of new sexual practices, such as dating, ‘roaming’, and the dramatic elopements of Buddhist and Muslim youth. This has caused the emergence of youth policing the perceived sexual infractions of others, through targeting particular zones of intimacy – marriage, religious identity, and mobility. Yet, youth policing is uneven, targeting those considered to be the most ‘at risk’ for moral transgressions, including Buddhists, the elite, and those pursuing education. Ladakhi youth are in a tenuous position, where they negotiate their desires to be ‘modern’ with the community pressure to maintain a strong sense of cultural identity. This paper examines how youth navigate between tensions of modernity and culture, showing that they employ a range of strategic practices and tactics that provide space for expressing desires for modernity, while simultaneously securing cultural loyalty.     

Dendrochronological assessment of the time since death of dead wood in an old growth Magellan's beech forest,Navarino Island (Chile)

The present study investigated the relationship between time since death and the morphological characteristics of fallen dead trees in a Nothofagus betuloides forest stand located on the island of Navarino (Chile). In this unmanaged forest, there were 399 m³ ha^?1 of dead wood, which represented about half of the living tree volume. At the investigation site, 18 living trees were selected and increment cores were collected from them to build master ring‐width chronologies. Cross sections were also collected from 48 fallen dead trees. The samples collected were then assigned to observable decay classes and their death date was determined dendrochronologically. Cross‐dating techniques were used and it was found that the fallen dead trees cross‐dated significantly with standard chronologies. A year of death was successfully determined for 75% of the sampled fallen dead trees. However, this study demonstrated that, in the standard classification, the transition rate from one class of decay to another was highly variable. Furthermore, the inconsistencies found in the decay rates of the fallen dead trees demonstrated that the existing decay classification schemes were unsuitable for this type of forest stand and that the relationship between qualitatively assessed decay classes and the time since death of trees in this extreme environment was rather weak. In addition, the analysis of the time since death, in this old growth forest, was indicative of the persistence of dead wood on the forest floor in austral cold ecosystems and of its contribution to long‐term carbon storage.     

Death,Funerals and Emotion in an Australian Aboriginal Community

This paper discusses emotions as intersubjective states that develop in the interactions between individuals. Central to the discussion is the funeral of an Aboriginal elder in Cape York Peninsula, Australia. The actions of certain of her kin are described, and demonstrate their concern to bridge the gap between the loss of such elders and the uncertainties of a future without their guidance. Funerals are clearly events marking the social change associated with death and allow for intense expressions of grief, but they are also part of the trajectory of everyday life. In the social context discussed, beliefs about intersubjectivity between the spirits of the dead and their living kin inform all spheres of action, including the economic, and require observance of the cultural value of ‘respect’. Understanding emotions as interactive states engaged in such locally significant events sheds light on the relationship between them and collective political aspirations.     

The utilization of dead wood resources by woodpeckers in Britain

Dead wood is important for woodpeckers, providing foraging, roost and nest-sites. In this paper, data from long-term studies of woodpeckers and dead wood in oakwoods in southern England are used to examine the dead wood requirements of the three British resident woodpecker species. Both Great Dendrocopos major and Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers Dendrocopos minor select dead trees for nest-sites although the former is able to nest in living trees too. On the other hand a smaller fraction of Lesser Spotted Woodpecker nests are in living trees. Green Woodpecker Picus viridis shows no selection for dead nesting trees. Hence the smallest woodpecker species appears to be most dependent on dead and decaying trees for nest-sites. Great and Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers show no preference for foraging on dead trees although they both make use of dead branches on living trees. Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers forage on smaller branches higher in the tree than Great Spotted Woodpeckers. There has been a trend for increasing dead wood resources in the study woods with both dead wood on the ground and standing dead trees (snags) increasing in the last 20 years. The levels of dead wood are shown to be the result of continual processes of creation and decay. Around 0.5% of oak Quercus spp., Ash Fraxinus excelsior and Hornbeam Carpinus betulus and 3.4% of the birch Betula spp. trees die each year in the woods resulting in a continuity of new dead snags and fallen trees. There is a high turnover of standing dead snags of oak and birch with 95% and 80% annual survival, respectively. Snags are only suitable for nesting Great Spotted Woodpeckers for a few years after their creation. It is suggested that these stand and dead wood dynamics are likely to provide habitats more favourable for the Great Spotted than the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker.     

Synoptic determination of living/dead and active/dormant bacterial fractions in marine sediments

The most widely used methods for the estimation of the living/dead fractions of bacterial cells involve specific stains that are able to reveal membrane integrity. Here, we have compared two different probes (propidium iodide and ethidium homodimer-2) that have different molecular weights and steric hindrance effects. We have also combined this method with the staining/destaining procedure that is currently used in the identification of potentially active cells. The procedure for marine sediments described here allows the synoptic (i.e. from the same filter) identification of: (i) the number of living bacteria; (ii) the number of active vs. dormant cells within this living fraction; (iii) the bacterial fraction with an intact nucleoid region without membrane integrity; and (iv) dead cells (devoid of the nucleoid region and without membrane integrity). Our results demonstrate that the concentration of propidium is crucial for the correct estimation of the dead bacterial fraction, ethidium homodimer-2 allows efficient and accurate estimates that are independent of the concentrations used and the sample storage. The active bacterial fraction represented c. 40% of the total bacterial abundance, the inactive/dormant fraction c. 30%, and the dead fraction was, on average, c. 30%. This method allows the processing of a large number of samples with high precision and at relatively low cost, and thus it provides additional synoptic insights into the metabolic state of bacteria in marine sediments.     

‘Cats give funerals to rats’: making the dead modern with lament

This article compares funeral laments in a Tibeto‐Burman‐speaking community in Yunnan, China, from two periods: the early 1990s, after ritual revitalization was thoroughly underway, and 2011, after this community had come into more intimate contact with the modernity‐obsessed cultures of urban and semi‐urban China. Laments fashion grief in a public setting by conceptualizing the dead and their relations with the living in vivid poetic language. Laments from the early 1990s described these relations as a circuit of suffering, in which children returned a debt of suffering they owed their parents after the latter's deaths. By 2011, innovative lamenters had reorientated their understanding of suffering to be personal, internal, and intimate. The dead became more ‘modern’, allowing the living, defined largely by their relations with the dead, to participate in ‘modernized’ forms of authentic, sincere emotional expression.     

Structures determining bryophyte species richness in a managed forest landscape in boreo-nemoral Europe

Forest patches with high biological value are protected as woodland key habitats (WKH), which are identified by the presence of forest structures and indicator species. However, management for conservation needs to consider also managed forests as habitats for species. In this respect, there is a need to set quantitative targets for species and structures at different landscape scales. Due to non-intensive methods of forest management used prior to 1940 in Latvia, it might be expected that large areas of forest have developed structures that can support many species characteristic of natural forests. The aim of the study was to create a model that best described the richness of bryophyte species that are characteristic of natural forests, using forest structures as explanatory factors. The structures and bryophyte communities on living trees and coarse woody debris (CWD) were described in plots along transects blindly placed in areas dominated by State forests under commercial management. Explanatory variables related to tree species composition and tree size explained 54% of the variation in WKH indicator species richness on living trees. The best explanatory factors were maximum diameter of deciduous tree species and CWD. Low richness of total bryophyte and indicator species was found on dead wood, and the amount of variation in bryophyte species richness on CWD explained by explanatory variables was low. The study indicates the importance of deciduous tree substrate in managed forests in maintaining the spatial continuity of epiphytic species diversity. However, the forests in the managed forest landscape did not support high diversity of epixylic species, even in the WKHs, due to low diversity of suitable dead wood substrate.     

Relations between Funerary Cannibalism and Warfare Cannibalism: The Question of Predation

The Wari’, a southern Amazonian group of the Txapakura linguistic family, ate their dead and their enemies until at least the beginning of the 1960s. This article argues the continuity between these two forms of cannibalism by demonstrating that the Wari’ conceive the ingestion of the dead as a means of transforming them into prey. Predation – a defining characteristic of Amerindian warfare cannibalism – comprises a crucial means of differentiating two terms set in relationship, whether these terms be allies and enemies, the Wari’ and animals, or the living and the dead. In a world peopled by actual or potential human subjects, to transform the other into prey is to guarantee oneself the exclusive position of human, despite this being an essentially temporary position.     

Importance of habitat patch size for occupancy and density of aspen-associated saproxylic beetles

In Fennoscandian boreal forests, aspen (Populus tremula) is one of the most important tree species for biodiversity. In this study we explore how occupancy and density of beetles associated with dead aspen are related to habitat patch size and connectedness in a 45,000 ha boreal managed forest landscape in central Sweden. Patch size was estimated as amount of breeding substrate and connectedness as crown cover of living aspen in the surrounding landscape. The beetles were sampled by sieving of bark or by inspection of species-characteristic galleries in 56 patches with dead aspen. Six of nine aspen-associated species (Xylotrechus rusticus, Ptilinus fuscus, Mycetophagus fulvicollis, Cyphaea curtula, Homalota plana and Endomychus coccineus) showed a positive significant relationship between habitat patch size and occupancy. For all these species, except C. curtula, there was also a significant positive relationship between patch size and density. Connectedness was not retained as a significant variable in the analyses. Species not defined as aspen-associated constituted a significantly larger proportion of the total density of individuals of saproxylic beetles in smaller habitat patches than in larger patches. Richness of aspen-associated species was positively related to habitat patch size. Efforts in the managed forest should be directed towards preserving and creating larger patches of living and dead aspen trees and increasing the amount of aspen at the landscape level.     

Disabling violence: intellectual disability and the limits of ethical engagement

Those giving care to people with intellectual disabilities in the United Kingdom are obliged to drive bad forms of intimacy, such as abuse, out of the caring relationship. They must also enable these individuals to find positive forms of intimacy through reciprocal relationships such as friendships. These two aims are normally separated, but in an organization called L'Arche UK, they are combined in the same relationship when caregivers pursue reciprocal friendships with those they support. What happens to this ethical project when those with intellectual disabilities are violent to their caregivers? Trying to pursue intimate engagement in this context has the unexpected result of creating distrustful and tense relationships, which raises questions not only about why this ethical project goes so wrong, but also about what it would mean for it to go right: that is, what a richer and fully positive reciprocity between limited and complex human beings would actually look like in practice.     

Assessment of mite numbers: New methods and results

The determination of mite numbers in dust samples depends on the effectiveness of the sampling procedure. We report on mite isolation from dust samples by flotation distinguishing between living and dead mites. The results are varied and unreproducible; ageing processes are of relevance in the case of dead mites. Living mites can be determined more reliably when using mite mobility. Two methods based on this principle, the mobility test and the heat escape method, are described and discussed. In the case of a natural analogous mite development on carpets, mite numbers ranging from 80 000 to 200 000 mites per m² are found after approx. 3 months. It is shown that the mobility of different mite species varies. The mobility test allows the detection of mites in textile objects, and shows how mites are distributed over these objects. It is demonstrated how the infestation of clothes by mites can be determined.     

Ratio between living and dead cells and the size structure of the Yenisei River phytoplankton downstream of the Krasnoyarsk Hydroelectric Power Station

Based on a daily examination of phytoplankton in the Yenisei River downstream of the Krasnoyarsk Hydroelectric Power Station (HPS) within a 4-year period, the ratio between living and dead cells is estimated and the size fractions of phytoplankton are described. It is found that, despite the certain negative effects of passing through the turbine blades of the high-head dam, high current speed, and influence of water discharges from the HPS, living algae cells dominate over dead ones in the water column of the studied reach of the Yenisei River during almost the entire year, except for several dates in late autumn and winter. It is shown that microphytoplankton (20–64 μm in size) and nanophytoplankton (2–20 μm), which make up 83% of the total algae count, pass through the turbine blades of the HPS and mostly remain undamaged, with the fraction of living cells varying from 21% in the winter period to 96% in the spring–summer period.     

Compliance and obedience in an Alabama prison faith dorm

This article considers how the Christian obedience of male prisoners inside the ‘faith dorm’ of a maximum-security prison in the US state of Alabama overlaps with penal compliance. I argue that prisoners’ devotion to faith-dorm strictures is not straightforward rule-following but forges social and Christly intimacy. Faith-dorm obedience foregrounds the theological, and it reveals non-church institutional domains as theologically dynamic and capable of spiritually infused material work. To explore this, I describe how spiritual governance became a technique of Alabama's prison population management. Then I show how the resulting compliance is transfigured into critical notions of obedience that elicit practices of care and mutual support among prisoners through theological imaginaries of grace and Jesus’ crucifixion. Ultimately, I advance prisoners’ obedience as ‘dark wisdom’, which draws on the paradox of a crucified messiah to derive justice and intimacy from the prison's coerced living conditions.     

Can dead bacterial cells be defined and are genes expressed after cell death?

There is a paucity of knowledge on gene expression in dead bacterial cells. Why would this knowledge be useful? The cells are dead. However, the time duration of gene expression following cell death is often unknown, and possibly in the order of minutes. In addition, it is a challenge to determine if bacterial cells are dead, or viable but non-culturable (VBNC), and what is an agreed upon correct definition of dead bacteria. Cells in the bacterial population or community may die at different rates or times and this complicates both the viability and gene expression analysis. In this article, the definition of dead bacterial cells is discussed and its significance in continued gene expression in cells following death. The definition of living and dead has implications for possible, completely, synthetic bacterial cells that may be capable of growth and division.