Effect of cigarette smoking on sexual functions,psychological factors,and disease activity in male patients with ankylosing spondylitis

Objective: This study aims to investigate the effect of smoking on sexual functions in AS patients.

Patients and methods: A total of 67 male AS patients with a median age of 34 years (range: 18–57) reporting sexual activity at least for the past 4 weeks period were included. Patients were divided into smokers (Group 1, n?=?47) and non-smokers (Group 2, n?=?20). Fagerström test for nicotine dependence, smoking history, exhaled carbon monoxide test were recorded for smoking AS patients. Visual analogue scale (VAS), Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Index (BASDAI), Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Metrology Index (BASMI), Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Functional Index (BASFI), Ankylosing Spondylitis Quality of Life (ASQoL), International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) were filled for both groups.

Results: There was no significant difference between smokers and non-smokers in all evaluation parameters. BASMI scores were significantly lower in the mild dependency subgroup as compared to those with moderate or severe dependency (p?=?.005 and p?=?.007, respectively). Total IIEF score and IIEF categories correlated significantly with BASDAI, BASFI, BASMI, ASQoL, pain, fatigue, and cumulative smoking. BDI showed an inverse correlation with the IIEF score and IIEF category (p?r?=?–0.520, p?r?=?–0.508, respectively).

Conclusions: Sexual function in AS patients is associated with the pain, fatigue, disease activity, functional status, quality of life, depression as well as the cumulative exposure to smoking, and that sexual functions tend to decline with increasing degree of cigarette dependency.     

The Aversion to Tampering with Nature (ATN) Scale: Individual Differences in (Dis)comfort with Altering the Natural World

People differ in their comfort with tampering with the natural world. Although some see altering nature as a sign of human progress, others see it as dangerous or hubristic. Across four studies, we investigate discomfort with tampering with the natural world. To do so, we develop the Aversion to Tampering with Nature (ATN) Scale, a short scale that is the first to directly measure this discomfort. We identify six activities that people believe tamper with nature (geoengineering, genetically modified organisms, pesticides, cloning, gene therapy, and nanoparticles) and show that ATN scores are associated with opposition to these activities. Furthermore, the ATN Scale predicts actual behavior: donations to an anti-tampering cause. We demonstrate that ATN is related to previously identified constructs including trust in technology, naturalness bias, purity values, disgust sensitivity, aversion to playing God, and environmental beliefs and values. By illuminating who is concerned about tampering with nature and what predicts these beliefs, the ATN Scale provides opportunities to better understand public opposition to technological innovations, consumer preferences for “natural” products, and strategies for science communication.     

The Effect of Evaluator Masculinity on Dyadic Hiring Decisions

Gender Issues - Research examining gender disparities in the workplace tends to focus on individual behavior rather than the behavior of teams or dyads, yet important workplace decisions such as...     

Strong convergence rates of probabilistic integrators for ordinary differential equations

Probabilistic integration of a continuous dynamical system is a way of systematically introducing discretisation error, at scales no larger than errors introduced by standard numerical discretisation, in order to enable thorough exploration of possible responses of the system to inputs. It is thus a potentially useful approach in a number of applications such as forward uncertainty quantification, inverse problems, and data assimilation. We extend the convergence analysis of probabilistic integrators for deterministic ordinary differential equations, as proposed by Conrad et al. (Stat Comput 27(4):1065–1082, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11222-016-9671-0), to establish mean-square convergence in the uniform norm on discrete- or continuous-time solutions under relaxed regularity assumptions on the driving vector fields and their induced flows. Specifically, we show that randomised high-order integrators for globally Lipschitz flows and randomised Euler integrators for dissipative vector fields with polynomially bounded local Lipschitz constants all have the same mean-square convergence rate as their deterministic counterparts, provided that the variance of the integration noise is not of higher order than the corresponding deterministic integrator. These and similar results are proven for probabilistic integrators where the random perturbations may be state-dependent, non-Gaussian, or non-centred random variables.

     

Serious case reviews: The lived experience of Black children

Despite the many high‐profile Black child deaths in England, race as a factor remains a largely underexplored factor of serious case reviews (SCRs). Evidence from analysis of SCRs indicates that race receives limited attention, or is virtually absent. Given that the main function of SCRs is to provide opportunities for learning lessons to improve practice, the way in which issues of race and culture may influence child protection processes for Black children is therefore of critical importance. In this article, we employ content analysis to examine the extent that race and cultural factors are considered in SCRs involving Black children. It is argued that race is often an important factor influencing Black children's experiences of abuse and neglect, as well as their encounters in the child protection system. This article therefore poses two key questions: (a) What questions are asked about race, ethnicity, and culture in SCRs concerning Black children? (b) How did the SCRs extract lessons to be learnt for improving practice to safeguard Black children? By extending the analysis of race and ethnicity in SCRs, this article furthers our understandings of the needs of Black children in the child protection system.     

When the Norwegian child-welfare services get involved: parents making sense of referrals

There is limited research exploring parents' views and understanding of referrals to the child-welfare services (CWS). This study explores parents' understanding of the circumstances leading to a child-welfare referral, and their understanding of the reporter's objectives in making the referral. Qualitative content analysis and frequency analysis was performed on open-ended survey responses from a sample of 683 Norwegian parents in contact with the CWS. The results showed that the majority (60.2%) of the parents perceived the referral to be initiated solely because of parental difficulties and multiple family life stressors. Some of the parents (22.8%) believed the referrals were initiated exclusively because of their children's problems, whereas a few (13.3%) perceived it to be a combination of parental/familial difficulties and children's problems. The findings reveal that close to half of the parents (46.4%) felt the objective of the person making the referral was to help the child, their parents and the family. Some (36.5%) saw it as a routine or mandated action by public or official services, while others (18.7%) reported that they did not know why referrals had been made, or gave no answer to the question. A small group of parents (6%) viewed the referral as an act of harassment. The main implications of these findings are discussed.     

Sequential Monte Carlo for rare event estimation

This paper discusses a novel strategy for simulating rare events and an associated Monte Carlo estimation of tail probabilities. Our method uses a system of interacting particles and exploits a Feynman-Kac representation of that system to analyze their fluctuations. Our precise analysis of the variance of a standard multilevel splitting algorithm reveals an opportunity for improvement. This leads to a novel method that relies on adaptive levels and produces, in the limit of an idealized version of the algorithm, estimates with optimal variance. The motivation for this theoretical work comes from problems occurring in watermarking and fingerprinting of digital contents, which represents a new field of applications of rare event simulation techniques. Some numerical results show performance close to the idealized version of our technique for these practical applications.     

Cohort Measures of Internal Migration: Understanding Long-Term Trends

Internal migration intensities fluctuate over time, but both migration levels and trends show great diversity. The dynamics underpinning these trends remain poorly understood because they are analyzed almost exclusively by applying period measures to cross-sectional data. This article proposes 10 cohort measures that can be applied to both prospective and retrospective data to systematically examine long-term trends. To demonstrate their benefits, the proposed measures are applied to retrospective survey data for England that provide residential histories from birth to age 50 for cohorts born between 1918 and 1957. The analysis reveals stable lifetime migration for men but increased lifetime migration for women associated with earlier ages at moving in adulthood and a compression of intervals between consecutive moves. The proposed cohort measures provide a more comprehensive picture of migration behavior and should be used to complement period measures in exploring long-term trends. Increasing availability of retrospective and longitudinal survey data means that researchers can now apply the proposed measures to a wide range of countries.     

Mobility and Professional Networks in Academia: An Exploration of the Obligations of Presence

This article explores the obligations of presence behind work-related mobility for academics in internationalizing higher education systems. By further developing John Urry’s concept of ‘meetingness’, the article reveals how academics depend on corporeal and virtual mobility to create and maintain a networked professional life outside their own institution, which is crucial in the context of changing work conditions. Our insights are drawn from original qualitative research (42 interviews) in a Flemish and Danish context. The data reveal obligations of presence associated with an interrelated mix of functionality, and the construction of dense and sparse social networks that together support career success and work at the frontiers of academic knowledge. Despite the now well-recognized costs of corporeal mobility, obligations of presence result in virtual and corporeal mobility coexisting, rather than the former substituting for the latter. Virtual mobility is mainly used when conflicting obligations of presence exist, and as a means of sustaining networks over time given the processual nature of meetingness, rather than as a means to reduce levels of corporeal mobility.