Identity and the Availability of Emergency Contraception from Pharmacies in Istanbul

Emergency contraception (EC) has been and remains available in Turkey without prescription since 2002. This study attempted to determine the availability of emergency contraception from pharmacies in Istanbul, Turkey and whether the identity of the purchaser had any impact on availability. More specifically, we sought to understand if young women feel shamed or denied access to EC. This study employed a mystery patient/shopper approach where mystery patients attempted to purchase emergency contraception from a random sample of 352 pharmacies in Istanbul. Mystery shoppers, ages 18-22, were trained and provided a standard scenario and identity. The identities included: conservative/ religious female; secular/modern female; and male. After each pharmacy visit, the mystery patients recorded the details of their attempts to purchase EC. In 95.4% of visits mystery shoppers were able to purchase EC. Despite the availability of several types of EC, little choice was given to shoppers. Male mystery shoppers were given more choice of EC than their female counterparts and were more often able to purchase the less expensive form of EC. In the majority of transactions, pharmacists offered no medical instructions or recommendations. EC is widely available from pharmacies in Istanbul but lack of choice and information from pharmacists result in a less than ideal health care experience.

Maximum Coverage Location Model for Fire Stations with Top Corporate Risk Locations

The fire station location is a critical decision to optimize the coverage level as measured in terms of the response time. This paper focuses on optimizing the coverage problem, especially in the fire protection field, with new model features to incorporate realistic business challenges such as location criticality and secondary coverage. We extend the deterministic Maximum Coverage Location Problem to account for Top Corporate Risk locations being covered by different fire stations as primary and secondary coverage. To deal with the response time uncertainty arising in practice, we propose a new binary linear problem based on the Maximum Expected Covering Location Problem. By exploiting the model structural characteristics, we prove that the model complexity can be substantially reduced to yield an efficient solution. In the numerical experiments, we use a real case study with five years of historical data. The optimization results of the models yield a priority ranking of the fire stations to open and show the value of incorporating the coverage uncertainty. Finally, we also compare our model with uncertainty with the standard scenario-based optimization to extend the numerical results.

Presentational Markup: What's going on?

In the markup community, the role of presentational markup in facilitating the recognition of a document’s content objects has been part of the standard scenario of textual communication since the concept was introduced in 1987. Yet exactly how presentational markup makes the recognition of content objects more efficient and reliable has received little attention. We explore some possible accounts of what presentational markup does and how it does what it does. To this end, we prepare for comparisons with other non-linguistic contributions to textual communication, ranging from rhetorical style to punctuation. These are early, preliminary, and informal ruminations — a Balisage “Late Breaking” conversation. We are asking questions and inviting answers.

A two-index generalization of conformable operators with potential applications in engineering and physics

We developed a somewhat novel fractional-order calculus workbench as a certain generalization of the Khalil’s conformable derivative. Although every integer-order derivate can naturally be consistent with fully physical-sense problem’s quotation, this is not the standard scenario of the non-integer-order derivatives, even aiming physics systems’s modelling, solely.We revisited a particular case of the generalized conformable fractional derivative and derived a differential operator, whose properties overcome those of the integer-order derivatives, though preserving its clue advantages.Worthwhile noting, that two-fractional indexes differential operator we are dealing, departs from the single-fractional index framework, which typifies the generalized conformable fractional derivative. This distinction leads to proper mathematical tools, useful in generalizing widely accepted results, with potential applications to fundamental Physics within fractional order calculus. The later seems to be especially appropriate for exercising the Sturm-Liouville eigenvalue problem, as well as the Euler-Lagrange equation and to clarify several operator algebra matters.

Secure quantum key distribution with a subset of malicious devices

The malicious manipulation of quantum key distribution (QKD) hardware is a serious threat to its security, as, typically, neither end users nor QKD manufacturers can validate the integrity of every component of their QKD system in practice. One possible approach to re-establish the security of QKD is to use a redundant number of devices. Following this idea, we address various corruption models of the possibly malicious devices and show that, compared to the most conservative model of active and collaborative corrupted devices, natural assumptions allow to significantly enhance the secret key rate or considerably reduce the necessary resources. Furthermore, we show that, for most practical situations, the resulting finite-size secret key rate is similar to that of the standard scenario assuming trusted devices.

Choosing inequality: how economic security fosters competitive regimes

In a novel experimental design, we study how social immobility affects the choice among distributional schemes in an experimental democracy. We design a two-period experiment in which subjects first choose a distributional scheme by majority voting (“social contract”). Then subjects engage in a competitive real-effort task to earn points. Based on production success, participants are ranked from best to worst. In combination with the initially chosen scheme, these ranks determine the final payout of the first round, leading to a pattern of societal stratification. Participants are informed individually about points and rank, before the same sequence of voting, production and payoff determination is repeated in a second round. To test the effect of social immobility on choosing distributional regimes the experiment is conducted with and without a social immobility factor, i.e. a different weighting of the two rounds. In our standard scenario, payoffs are simply added. In our “social immobility setting”, we alter the game as follows: the actual income in round 2 is calculated by adding 0.2 times the raw payoff from the second production game and 0.8 times the income from round 1. With the higher importance of round 1 success, we simulate the fact that economic movement upwards and downwards in societies (“social mobility”) is a de facto rigid constraint: high and low incomes tend to reproduce themselves. Our main findings are that in the Equal Weight Treatment, most groups opt for complete equality in both rounds, while in the unequal weight setting the initial choice of equality is followed by a shift to the most competitive regime. In both treatments, we observe that those performing well in round 1 tend to vote for unequal schemes in round 2, while low-performers develop an even stronger “taste for equality”. This supports a central Rawlsian idea: behind an (experimental) “veil of uncertainty”, the lack of idiosyncratic information is strong enough to let people decide as if driven by social preferences. The different group decisions in round 2 suggest that for this to happen, stakes need to be sufficiently high. To our surprise, other factors like gender, social background or real-life income have hardly any impact on unveiled decision making. We conclude that in our experimental democracy, competition based income allocation (a “market economy”) finds support only if people are sufficiently well off. Hence, increasing inequality perpetuated by social immobility is likely to undermine the general support for market-based systems.

A perfect power-law spectrum even at the highest frequencies: The Toothbrush relic

Radio relics trace shock fronts generated in the intracluster medium (ICM) during cluster mergers. The particle acceleration mechanism at the shock fronts is not yet completely understood. We observed the Toothbrush relic with the Effelsberg and Sardinia Radio Telescope at 14.25 GHz and 18.6 GHz, respectively. Unlike previously claimed, the integrated spectrum of the relic closely follows a power law over almost three orders of magnitude in frequency, with a spectral index of α58 MHz18.6 GHz = −1.16 ± 0.03. Our finding is consistent with a power-law injection spectrum, as predicted by diffusive shock acceleration theory. The result suggests that there is only little magnetic field strength evolution downstream of the shock. From the lack of spectral steepening, we find that either the Sunyaev–Zeldovich decrement produced by the pressure jump is less extended than ∼600 kpc along the line of sight or, conversely, that the relic is located far behind in the cluster. For the first time, we detect linearly polarized emission from the “brush” at 18.6 GHz. Compared to 8.3 GHz, the degree of polarization across the brush increases at 18.6 GHz, suggesting a strong Faraday depolarization toward lower frequencies. The observed depolarization is consistent with an intervening magnetized screen that arises from the dense ICM containing turbulent magnetic fields. The depolarization, corresponding to a standard deviation of the rotation measures as high as σRM = 212 ± 23 rad m−2, suggests that the brush is located in or behind the ICM. Our findings indicate that the Toothbrush relic can be consistently explained by the standard scenario for relic formation.

A new insight into isotopic fractionation associated with decarboxylation in organisms: implications for amino acid isotope approaches in biogeoscience

Stable nitrogen (15N/14N) and carbon (13C/12C) isotopic compositions of amino acids in organisms have widely been employed as a powerful tool to evaluate resource utilization and trophic connection among organisms in diverse ecosystems. However, little is known about the physiological factors or mechanisms responsible for determining the isotopic discrimination (particularly for carbon) within amino acids of organisms. In the present study, we investigated the inter-trophic discrimination of nitrogen and carbon isotopes within amino acids (Δδ15NAA and Δδ13CAA, respectively) using four consumer–diet pairs. Each pairing illustrates a metabolic perspective of isotopic fractionation of amino acids. The Δδ15NAA values in these combinations reveal a trend consistent with those observed in many other combinations in previous studies. This further validates a standard scenario: the deamination preferentially removes 14N amino group from diet-derived amino acids, leaving behind the 15N-enriched amino acids in consumer biomass. The Δδ15NAA values thus mirror the activity of amino acid deamination in consumers. In contrast, the trends in the Δδ13CAA value suggest a different metabolic fate for the amino acid carbon isotope. Based on our results, we predict the following scenario: decarboxylation preferentially removes 12C α-carbon (i.e., carbonyl-carbon) from pyruvic acid in glycolysis, and from α-ketoglutaric acid in the tricarboxylic acid cycle, leaving behind the 13C-enriched both pyruvic and α-ketoglutaric acids. The 13C is then transferred to amino acids that are synthesized from the 13C-enriched precursor molecules within consumers. The Δδ13CAA values therefore mirror the pathways of de novo amino acid synthesis in consumers. The proposed link between nitrogen and carbon isotopes can refine our knowledge of the potential processes affecting the isotopic fractionation within diet and consumer compartments, as well as environmental samples. Graphical abstract

Power law plateau inflation potential in the RS II braneworld evading swampland conjecture

In the recent time, inflationary cosmology is facing an existential crisis due to the proposed Swampland criterion which aims to evade any (meta-)stable de Sitter construction within the String landscape. It is been realised that a single field slow roll inflation is inconsistent with the Swampland criterion unless the inflationary model is realised in some non-standard scenario such as Warm inflation or the Braneworld scenario. Dimopoulos and Owen (Phys Rev D 94(6): 063518, 2016) introduced a new class of model of inflation dubbed as the power law plateau inflation in the standard cold inflationary scenario. But to realise this model in the standard scenario consistent with observation, they had to introduce a phase of thermal inflation. In this paper we have analysed this model in the braneworld scenario to show that for some choice of the parameters defining the model class, one can have an observationally consistent power law plateau without any phase of thermal inflation. We have also shown that, for the correct choice of model parameters, one can easily satisfy the Swampland criterion. Besides, for correct choice of equation of states ($$w_{re}$$ w re ), one can also satisfy the recently proposed Trans–Planckian Censorship Conjecture (TCC).

The solar abundance problem and eMSTOs in clusters

In this study, we focus on the impact of accretion from protoplanetary discs on the stellar evolution of AFG-type stars. We used a simplified disc model that was computed using the Two-Pop-Py code, which contains the growth and drift of dust particles in the protoplanetary disc, to model the accretion scenarios for a range of physical conditions for protoplanetary discs. Two limiting cases were combined with the evolution of stellar convective envelopes that were computed using the Garstec stellar evolution code. We find that the accretion of metal-poor (gas) or metal-rich (dust) material has a significant impact on the chemical composition of the stellar convective envelope. As a consequence, the evolutionary track of the star diverts from the standard scenario predicted by canonical stellar evolution models, which assume a constant and homogeneous chemical composition after the assembly of the star is complete. In the case of the Sun, we find a modest impact on the solar chemical composition. Indeed, the accretion of metal-poor material reduces the overall metallicity of the solar atmosphere and it is consistent, within the uncertainty, with the solar Z reported by Caffau et al. (2011, Sol. Phys., 268, 255), but our model is not consistent with the measurement by Asplund et al. (2009, ARA&A, 47, 481). Another relevant effect is the change of the position of the star in the colour-magnitude diagram. By comparing our predictions with a set of open clusters from the Gaia DR2, we show that it is possible to produce a scatter close to the TO of young clusters that could contribute to explaining the observed scatter in CMDs. Detailed measurements of metallicities and abundances in the nearby open clusters will additionally provide a stringent observational test for our proposed scenario.