The Perspectives of Gay, Bisexual, and Queer Adolescent Males with Parent-Child Sex Communication

Problem: Gay, bisexual, and queer (GBQ) adolescent males are disproportionately affected by negative sexual health outcomes compared to their heterosexual counterparts. Their sex education needs are not sufficiently addressed in the home and the larger ecological systems. The omission of their sex education needs at a time when they are forming a sexual identity during adolescence compels GBQ males to seek information in unsupervised settings. Evidence-based interventions aimed at ensuring positive sexual health outcomes through sex communication cannot be carried out with these youth as research on how parents and GBQ males discuss sex in the home has been largely uninvestigated.

Methods: This naturalistic qualitative study focused on the interpretive reports of 15- to 20-year-old GBQ males’ discussions about sex-related topics with their parents. From a purposive sample of 30 male adolescents who self-identified as GBQ, participants who could recall at least one conversation about sex with their parents were recruited for one-time interviews and card sorts. This strategy revealed, using Bronfenbrenners’ Bioecological Theory, their perceptions about sex communication in the context of their reciprocal relationship and the ecological systems that GBQ males and their parents navigate.

Results: Parents received poor ratings as sex educators, were generally viewed as not confident in their communication approach, and lacked knowledge about issues pertinent to GBQ sons. Nevertheless, participants viewed parents as their preferred source of sex information and recognized multiple functions of sex communication. The value placed by GBQ youth on sex communication underscores their desire to ensure an uninterrupted parent-child relationship in spite of their GBQ sexual orientation. For GBQ children, inclusive sex communication is a proxy for parental acceptance.

Results show that the timing, prompts, teaching aids, and setting of sex communication for this population are similar to what has been reported with heterosexual samples. However, most GBQ sons rarely had inclusive guidance about sex and sexuality that matched their attraction, behavior, and identities. Furthermore, the assumption of heterosexuality resulted in the early awareness of being different from their peers which led them to covertly search for sex information. The combination of assumed heterosexuality and their early reliance on themselves for applicable information is a missed parental opportunity to positively impact the health of GBQ sons. More importantly, due to the powerful reach of new media, there is a critical period of maximum receptiveness that has been identified which makes inclusive sex communication paramount in the pre-sexual stage for this population. Our findings also indicate that there are plenty of opportunities for systemic improvements to meet this population’s sexual education needs.

Risk communication in clinical trials: a cognitive experiment and a survey.

BACKGROUND: A Royal Statistical Society Working Party recently recommended that "Greater use should be made of numerical, as opposed to verbal, descriptions of risk" in first-in-man clinical trials. This echoed the view of many clinicians and psychologists about risk communication. As the clinical trial industry expands rapidly across the globe, it is important to understand risk communication in Asian countries. METHODS: We conducted a cognitive experiment about participation in a hypothetical clinical trial of a pain relief medication and a survey in cancer and arthritis patients in Singapore. In part 1 of the experiment, the patients received information about the risk of side effects in one of three formats (frequency, percentage and verbal descriptor) and in one of two sequences (from least to most severe and from most to least severe), and were asked about their willingness to participate. In part 2, the patients received information about the risk in all three formats, in the same sequence, and were again asked about their willingness to participate. A survey of preference for risk presentation methods and usage of verbal descriptors immediately followed. RESULTS: Willingness to participate and the likelihood of changing one's decision were not affected by the risk presentation methods. Most patients indicated a preference for the frequency format, but patients with primary school or no formal education were indifferent. While the patients used the verbal descriptors "very common", "common" and "very rare" in ways similar to the European Commission's Guidelines, their usage of the descriptors "uncommon" and "rare" was substantially different from the EU's. CONCLUSION: In this sample of Asian cancer and arthritis patients, risk presentation format had no impact on willingness to participate in a clinical trial. However, there is a clear preference for the frequency format. The lay use of verbal descriptors was substantially different from the EU's.

Imaging Learned Song Representations in Populations of Sensorimotor Neurons Essential to Vocal Communication

Perceiving or producing complex vocalizations such as speech and birdsongs require the coordinated activity of neuronal populations, and these activity patterns can vary over space and time. How learned communication signals are represented by populations of sensorimotor neurons essential to vocal perception and production remains poorly understood. Using a combination of two-photon calcium imaging, intracellular electrophysiological recording and retrograde tracing methods in anesthetized adult male zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata), I addressed how the bird's own song and its component syllables are represented by the spatiotemporal patterns of activity of two spatially intermingled populations of projection neurons (PNs) in HVC, a sensorimotor area required for song perception and production. These experiments revealed that neighboring PNs can respond at markedly different times to song playback and that different syllables activate spatially intermingled HVC PNs within a small region. Moreover, noise correlation analysis reveals enhanced functional connectivity between PNs that respond most strongly to the same syllable and also provides evidence of a spatial gradient of functional connectivity specific to PNs that project to song motor nucleus (i.e. HVC_RA cells). These findings support a model in which syllabic and temporal features of song are represented by spatially intermingled PNs functionally organized into cell- and syllable-type networks.

Patient-provider communication, self-reported medication adherence, and race in a postmyocardial infarction population.

OBJECTIVES: Our objectives were to: 1) describe patient-reported communication with their provider and explore differences in perceptions of racially diverse adherent versus nonadherent patients; and 2) examine whether the association between unanswered questions and patient-reported medication nonadherence varied as a function of patients' race. METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of baseline in-person survey data from a trial designed to improve postmyocardial infarction management of cardiovascular disease risk factors. RESULTS: Overall, 298 patients (74%) reported never leaving their doctor's office with unanswered questions. Among those who were adherent and nonadherent with their medications, 183 (79%) and 115 (67%) patients, respectively, never left their doctor's office with unanswered questions. In multivariable logistic regression, although the simple effects of the interaction term were different for patients of nonminority race (odds ratio [OR]: 2.16; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.19-3.92) and those of minority race (OR: 1.19; 95% CI: 0.54-2.66), the overall interaction effect was not statistically significant (P=0.24). CONCLUSION: The quality of patient-provider communication is critical for cardiovascular disease medication adherence. In this study, however, having unanswered questions did not impact medication adherence differently as a function of patients' race. Nevertheless, there were racial differences in medication adherence that may need to be addressed to ensure optimal adherence and health outcomes. Effort should be made to provide training opportunities for both patients and their providers to ensure strong communication skills and to address potential differences in medication adherence in patients of diverse backgrounds.

Do You Want to Hear the Bad News? The Value of Diagnostic Tests for Alzheimer's Disease.

OBJECTIVE: The diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) remains difficult. Lack of diagnostic certainty or possible distress related to a positive result from diagnostic testing could limit the application of new testing technologies. The objective of this paper is to quantify respondents' preferences for obtaining AD diagnostic tests and to estimate the perceived value of AD test information. METHODS: Discrete-choice experiment and contingent-valuation questions were administered to respondents in Germany and the United Kingdom. Choice data were analyzed by using random-parameters logit. A probit model characterized respondents who were not willing to take a test. RESULTS: Most respondents indicated a positive value for AD diagnostic test information. Respondents who indicated an interest in testing preferred brain imaging without the use of radioactive markers. German respondents had relatively lower money-equivalent values for test features compared with respondents in the United Kingdom. CONCLUSIONS: Respondents preferred less invasive diagnostic procedures and tests with higher accuracy and expressed a willingness to pay up to €700 to receive a less invasive test with the highest accuracy.

Global Mental Health: Five Areas for Value-Driven Training Innovation.

OBJECTIVE: In the field of global mental health, there is a need for identifying core values and competencies to guide training programs in professional practice as well as in academia. This paper presents the results of interdisciplinary discussions fostered during an annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Psychiatry and Culture to develop recommendations for value-driven innovation in global mental health training. METHODS: Participants (n = 48), who registered for a dedicated workshop on global mental health training advertised in conference proceedings, included both established faculty and current students engaged in learning, practice, and research. They proffered recommendations in five areas of training curriculum: values, competencies, training experiences, resources, and evaluation. RESULTS: Priority values included humility, ethical awareness of power differentials, collaborative action, and "deep accountability" when working in low-resource settings in low- and middle-income countries and high-income countries. Competencies included flexibility and tolerating ambiguity when working across diverse settings, the ability to systematically evaluate personal biases, historical and linguistic proficiency, and evaluation skills across a range of stakeholders. Training experiences included didactics, language training, self-awareness, and supervision in immersive activities related to professional or academic work. Resources included connections with diverse faculty such as social scientists and mentors in addition to medical practitioners, institutional commitment through protected time and funding, and sustainable collaborations with partners in low resource settings. Finally, evaluation skills built upon community-based participatory methods, 360-degree feedback from partners in low-resource settings, and observed structured clinical evaluations (OSCEs) with people of different cultural backgrounds. CONCLUSIONS: Global mental health training, as envisioned in this workshop, exemplifies an ethos of working through power differentials across clinical, professional, and social contexts in order to form longstanding collaborations. If incorporated into the ACGME/ABPN Psychiatry Milestone Project, such recommendations will improve training gained through international experiences as well as the everyday training of mental health professionals, global health practitioners, and social scientists.

Adaptive Brain-Computer Interface Systems For Communication in People with Severe Neuromuscular Disabilities

Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) have the potential to restore communication or control abilities in individuals with severe neuromuscular limitations, such as those with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The role of a BCI is to extract and decode relevant information that conveys a user's intent directly from brain electro-physiological signals and translate this information into executable commands to control external devices. However, the BCI decision-making process is error-prone due to noisy electro-physiological data, representing the classic problem of efficiently transmitting and receiving information via a noisy communication channel.

This research focuses on P300-based BCIs which rely predominantly on event-related potentials (ERP) that are elicited as a function of a user's uncertainty regarding stimulus events, in either an acoustic or a visual oddball recognition task. The P300-based BCI system enables users to communicate messages from a set of choices by selecting a target character or icon that conveys a desired intent or action. P300-based BCIs have been widely researched as a communication alternative, especially in individuals with ALS who represent a target BCI user population. For the P300-based BCI, repeated data measurements are required to enhance the low signal-to-noise ratio of the elicited ERPs embedded in electroencephalography (EEG) data, in order to improve the accuracy of the target character estimation process. As a result, BCIs have relatively slower speeds when compared to other commercial assistive communication devices, and this limits BCI adoption by their target user population. The goal of this research is to develop algorithms that take into account the physical limitations of the target BCI population to improve the efficiency of ERP-based spellers for real-world communication.

In this work, it is hypothesised that building adaptive capabilities into the BCI framework can potentially give the BCI system the flexibility to improve performance by adjusting system parameters in response to changing user inputs. The research in this work addresses three potential areas for improvement within the P300 speller framework: information optimisation, target character estimation and error correction. The visual interface and its operation control the method by which the ERPs are elicited through the presentation of stimulus events. The parameters of the stimulus presentation paradigm can be modified to modulate and enhance the elicited ERPs. A new stimulus presentation paradigm is developed in order to maximise the information content that is presented to the user by tuning stimulus paradigm parameters to positively affect performance. Internally, the BCI system determines the amount of data to collect and the method by which these data are processed to estimate the user's target character. Algorithms that exploit language information are developed to enhance the target character estimation process and to correct erroneous BCI selections. In addition, a new model-based method to predict BCI performance is developed, an approach which is independent of stimulus presentation paradigm and accounts for dynamic data collection. The studies presented in this work provide evidence that the proposed methods for incorporating adaptive strategies in the three areas have the potential to significantly improve BCI communication rates, and the proposed method for predicting BCI performance provides a reliable means to pre-assess BCI performance without extensive online testing.

Factors Impacting Grandparent and Grand Child Communication Across Sex- Related Topics in Kenya

Background: Although many studies have investigated sexual communication between parents and children in Kenya, none have focused singularly on grandparent and grandchild communication when grandparents are primary caregivers. Further, few studies have asked about specific topics related to sex, instead asking generally about “sex related topics” or focusing on HIV/AIDS. This research aims to investigate communication on ten specific sex- related topics between grandparents who are primary caregivers and their grandchildren. The primary research aim was to identify facilitators and barriers to grandparent-grandchild communication associated with frequency of communication. A secondary exploratory question was whether frequency of communication and youth satisfaction with communication were associated with youth’s desire for more communication in the future. Methods: The study was conducted in urban and peri-urban central Kenya. A convenience sample of 193 grandparents and 166 twelve to fifteen year old grandchildren were identified by community health workers. A cross sectional survey assessed nine potential barriers or facilitators to communication (e.g., frequency of communication, perceived grandparent knowledge, grandparent sense of responsibility to communication on a given topic) on ten specified sex- related topics (e.g., peer pressure on sex topics, romantic relationships, condoms). Bivariate and multivariable analyses identified significant associations between communication variables and the outcomes of interest. Results: Bivariate regression showed that higher grandchild age, grandchild gender, higher perceived grandparent knowledge, higher perceived grandparent comfort, higher grandparent-reported sense of responsibility, higher grandparent-reported belief that child should be aware of a given topic before initiating in sex, and higher youth’s own comfort during communication, were significantly associated with higher levels of communication frequency. In the multivariable model, higher grandchild age, gender, higher comfort during communication, and higher perceived grandparent knowledge remained significantly associated with higher levels communication frequency. For the secondary research question, higher communication frequency and higher levels of youth satisfaction were both significantly associated with higher levels of youth desire for more communication in bivariate regression, and higher levels of youth’s satisfaction with communication remained significantly associated with higher levels of youth’s desire for more in the adjusted analysis. Conclusions: This study found that several potential barriers and facilitators of communication are associated with both frequency of and youth’s desire for more communication. The association between grandchild age, gender and perceived grandparent knowledge and frequency of communication is similar to findings from other studies that have examined sex-related communication between parent primary caregivers and children. This finding has important implications for understanding grandparent and grandchild communication, and communication on specific topics in a population from Kenya. The positive association between youth satisfaction of and desire for more communication has important education policy and intervention implications, suggesting that if youth are satisfied with the communication with their caregivers, they may want to learn more.

Using Coding to Improve Localization and Backscatter Communication Performance in Low-Power Sensor Networks

Backscatter communication is an emerging wireless technology that recently has gained an increase in attention from both academic and industry circles. The key innovation of the technology is the ability of ultra-low power devices to utilize nearby existing radio signals to communicate. As there is no need to generate their own energetic radio signal, the devices can benefit from a simple design, are very inexpensive and are extremely energy efficient compared with traditional wireless communication. These benefits have made backscatter communication a desirable candidate for distributed wireless sensor network applications with energy constraints.

The backscatter channel presents a unique set of challenges. Unlike a conventional one-way communication (in which the information source is also the energy source), the backscatter channel experiences strong self-interference and spread Doppler clutter that mask the information-bearing (modulated) signal scattered from the device. Both of these sources of interference arise from the scattering of the transmitted signal off of objects, both stationary and moving, in the environment. Additionally, the measurement of the location of the backscatter device is negatively affected by both the clutter and the modulation of the signal return.

This work proposes a channel coding framework for the backscatter channel consisting of a bi-static transmitter/receiver pair and a quasi-cooperative transponder. It proposes to use run-length limited coding to mitigate the background self-interference and spread-Doppler clutter with only a small decrease in communication rate. The proposed method applies to both binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) and quadrature-amplitude modulation (QAM) scheme and provides an increase in rate by up to a factor of two compared with previous methods.

Additionally, this work analyzes the use of frequency modulation and bi-phase waveform coding for the transmitted (interrogating) waveform for high precision range estimation of the transponder location. Compared to previous methods, optimal lower range sidelobes are achieved. Moreover, since both the transmitted (interrogating) waveform coding and transponder communication coding result in instantaneous phase modulation of the signal, cross-interference between localization and communication tasks exists. Phase discriminating algorithm is proposed to make it possible to separate the waveform coding from the communication coding, upon reception, and achieve localization with increased signal energy by up to 3 dB compared with previous reported results.

The joint communication-localization framework also enables a low-complexity receiver design because the same radio is used both for localization and communication.

Simulations comparing the performance of different codes corroborate the theoretical results and offer possible trade-off between information rate and clutter mitigation as well as a trade-off between choice of waveform-channel coding pairs. Experimental results from a brass-board microwave system in an indoor environment are also presented and discussed.