Note: Design and implementation of a home-built imaging system with low jitter for cold atom experiments.

A novel home-built system for imaging cold atom samples is presented using a readily available astronomy camera which has the requisite sensitivity but no timing-control. We integrate the camera with LabVIEW achieving fast, low-jitter imaging with a convenient user-defined interface. We show that our system takes precisely timed millisecond exposures and offers significant improvements in terms of system jitter and readout time over previously reported home-built systems. Our system rivals current commercial "black box" systems in performance and user-friendliness.

Structural issues affecting creation of a community action and advocacy board.

The most effective woman-initiated method to prevent HIV/sexually transmitted infections is the female condom (FC). Yet, FCs are often difficult to find and denigrated or ignored by community health and service providers. Evidence increasingly supports the need to develop and test theoretically driven, multilevel interventions using a community-empowerment framework to promote FCs in a sustained way. We conducted a study in a midsized northeastern US city (2009-2013) designed to create, mobilize and build capacity of a community group to develop and implement multilevel interventions to increase availability, accessibility and support for FCs in their city. The Community Action and Advocacy Board (CAAB) designed and piloted interventions concurrently targeting community, organizational and individual levels. Ethnographic observation of the CAAB training and intervention planning and pilot implementation sessions documented the process, preliminary successes, challenges and limitations of this model. The CAAB demonstrated ability to conceptualize, plan and initiate multilevel community change. However, challenges in group decision-making and limitations in members' availability or personal capacity constrained CAAB processes and intervention implementation. Lessons from this experience could inform similar efforts to mobilize, engage and build capacity of community coalitions to increase access to and support for FCs and other novel effective prevention options for at-risk women.

Inclusion of the female condom in a male condom-only intervention in the sex industry in China: a cross-sectional analysis of pre- and post-intervention surveys in three study sites.

OBJECTIVES: To describe female condom (FC) use, male condom (MC) use and overall levels of protected sex before, during and after FC education and promotion (using the original prototype FC) combined with MC promotion among female sex workers in three rural or small urban settings in southern China. STUDY DESIGN: The 1-year FC intervention was conducted by local health workers through outreach to establishments where sex work is conducted. Three serial cross-sectional surveys were conducted in each study town before, during and after the intervention along with process documentation throughout the intervention period. METHODS: Cross-sectional data from pre-intervention (baseline) and 6-month and 12-month post-intervention surveys from three study sites are used in a descriptive comparison of the context of the sex industry, outreach in two phases of intervention, and FC adoption after the intensive intervention phase in each site. RESULTS: Approximately 75-80% of eligible women working in sex establishments, varying from 74 to 155 participants for each survey, were recruited from three study sites. After introduction and promotion of the FC along with the MC during the community public health intervention, between one-fifth and one-half of the study participants had tried the FC in the three study sites by the time of the 6-month and 12-month cross-sectional surveys. Among them, 10-30% had used the FC more than once. FC awareness increased following the intervention with much less variation across the three study sites. At baseline, 31-54% of participants across the three sites reported 100% protected sex in the last 30 days with all types of partners. At one of the sites with relatively low MC use before the intervention, the proportion of women reporting 100% protected sex in the last 30 days increased by 15%, and the proportion reporting nil protected sex in the last 30 days decreased by 13% between baseline and 12-month post-intervention surveys. More complex profiles of FC and MC use and protected sex were shown at the other two study sites, where a higher level of protection had been reached before the project started. CONCLUSIONS: Different levels of FC adoption were identified after the 1-year FC promotion intervention through outreach to sex establishments. The input, output and outcomes of the intervention may be associated with women's demographic and risk characteristics, the local capacities of intervention staff, and other contextual factors. Further analysis of these factors will help establish the role of the FC in increasing protected sex, and provide insight into how to achieve greater FC use.

Lowering HIV risk among ethnic minority drug users: comparing culturally targeted intervention to a standard intervention.

To test the efficacy of culturally targeted acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) prevention programs on ethnic minority street drug users, 669 African-American and Puerto Rican drug users were assigned to receive either the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) standard intervention or a culturally competent enhanced intervention in a quasi-experimental study. The standard intervention was a two-session educational program, while both the African-American and Puerto Rican enhanced interventions provided additional AIDS information in a culturally appropriate fashion. Although human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) risk behaviors, as measured by Bell's risk indices, decreased, there were no meaningful significant differences between interventions. However, participants who went into drug treatment programs showed greater reduction in HIV risk behavior. Cultural interventions may provide better outcome if they concentrate on getting participants into drug treatment.

AIDS risk perception among women drug users in Hartford, CT.

This paper reports the findings of a study of congruence between AIDS risk perception and risk behavior in a sample of outreach-recruited out-of-treatment injection and non-injection crack cocaine using women in Hartford, CT. While rates of drug- and sex-related AIDS risk were high in this sample, perception of risk was low among many of the respondents. Variation in risk perception reflects sociodemographic differences in the sample, with those women who were most socially isolated exhibiting the greatest incongruence between personal risk and risk perception. Women who have had contact with health or social service programs were the most likely to report reductions in risk behavior.

Streets, drugs, and the economy of sex in the age of AIDS.

Drug addicted women whose economic and social base is urban streets face limited options for income generation and multiple dangers of predation, assault, arrest, and illness. Exchanging sex for money or drugs offers one important source of income in this context. Yet the legal, social, and safety risks associated with these exchanges reduce the likelihood of regular safer sex practices during these encounters, thereby increasing the risk of HIV infection. Such conditions lead women engaged in sexual exchanges for money to varied and complex responses influenced by multiple and often contradictory pressures, both personal and contextual. Street-recruited women drug users in an AIDS prevention program in Hart-ford, Connecticut reported a range of condom use when engaging in sex for money exchanges. This paper explores their differences by ethnicity, economic resources, and drug use, and analyzes these and other factors that impact on street risks through sexual income generation. Surveys and in-depth interviews with drug-addicted women sex workers describe their various approaches to addressing multiple risks on the streets and suggest significant effort by women in these contexts to avoid the many risks, including HIV infection.

PIP: AIDS prevention programs directed toward women who exchange sex for money or drugs must address multiple issues, including drug addiction, lack of job opportunities for women, culturally constituted gender relationships, and the power of clients to force unprotected sexual activity. Project COPE II, a collaborative effort on the part of community-based service and research agencies in Hartford, Connecticut (US), conducted street outreach to recruit active heroin injectors and crack cocaine users for AIDS risk assessment and voluntary HIV testing. 46% of the 258 female drug users recruited had exchanged sex for money and 31% had exchanged sex for drugs, but only 21% reported consistent condom use. Of the 128 women who agreed to HIV testing, 19 (15%) were HIV-positive; another 37 women did not undergo testing because they already knew they were infected. There was a positive association between exchanging sex for money and both higher injection rates and crack use, suggesting the former may be a strategy for women to achieve a sufficient income to support an addiction at that level. Open-ended interviews with 22 women who reported engaging in sex for money in the preceding month indicated women's need to acquire drugs and avoid withdrawal symptoms overpowered their determination to insist on condom use. Women tried to reduce their HIV risk by promoting oral sex with clients and sticking with regular clients. Interventions aimed at street-based workers should build on women's existing methods of self-protection and empower them to take greater control over their sexual encounters. Also essential are increased drug treatment availability to reduce the effects of addiction, injection drug use harm reduction techniques for those unwilling to enter treatment, and improved training and employment opportunities for impoverished women.

Variation in drug injection frequency among out-of-treatment drug users in a national sample.

This article analyzes data on drug injection frequency in a sample of more than 13,000 out-of-treatment drug injectors interviewed across 21 U.S. cities and Puerto Rico through the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Cooperative Agreement for AIDS Community-Based Outreach/Intervention Research Program. The goals of the article are to present findings on injection frequency and to predict variation in terms of a set of variables suggested by previous research, including location, ethnicity, gender, age, educational attainment, years since first use of alcohol and marijuana, income, living arrangement, homelessness, drugs injected, and duration of injection across drugs. Three models were tested. Significant intersite differences were identified in injection frequency, although most of the other predictor variables we tested accounted for little of the variance. Ethnicity and drugs injected, however, were found to be significant. Taken together, location, ethnicity, and type of drug injected provide a configuration that differentiated and (for the variables available for the analysis) best predicted injection frequency. The public health implications of these findings are presented.

Changing the environment of AIDS risk: findings on syringe exchange and pharmacy sales of syringes in Hartford, CT.

This paper reports findings from a National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded study designed to test the hypothesis that environmental changes, such as the enactment of laws to increase the accessibility of sterile syringes, including syringe exchange and pharmacy sale of syringes without a prescription, will lower the frequency of HIV risk and the prevalence of HIV among street drug users. Project COPE, a study of AIDS risk and risk prevention, collected longitudinal data on drug use, HIV risk, serostatus, and source of syringes in a sample of 710 out-of-treatment injection drug users in Hartford, CT. Findings support the hypothesis and the growing research-based conclusion that syringe exchange is an effective AIDS risk reduction modality.

AIDS prevention for African-American and Latina women: building culturally and gender-appropriate intervention.

African-American and Latino women are at high risk of HIV infection through heterosexual transmission, reflected in the significant increases in reported AIDS cases of women thus infected. Few AIDS-prevention programs have addressed this risk for women by directly, separately and, in appropriate ways, focusing on specific women's issues of gender roles, sexuality, and differential power relationships with men, in the context of racial and class relations, as these affect HIV transmission. This article discusses the contributions of a community-based AIDS-prevention program to the development of culturally and gender-appropriate intervention for African-American and Latina women at high risk. Further such programs are needed which build on the use of ethnic cultural concepts, racial and other social relations, and acknowledge issues specific to minority women in order to prevent their infection with HIV.