Recognition that social, economic, political, and environmental factors directly aff ect HIV risk and vulnerability has stimulated interest in structural approaches to HIV prevention. Progress in the use of structural approaches has been limited for several reasons: absence of a clear defi nition; lack of operational guidance; and limited data on the eff ectiveness of structural approaches to t...

Understanding how intra-specific differences in plant traits mediate vulnerability to herbivores of relevant habitat-forming plants is vital to attain a better knowledge on the drivers of the structure and functioning of ecosystems. Such studies, however, are rare in seagrass-mesograzer systems despite the increasingly recognized relevance of mesograzers as seagrass consumers. We investigated t...

The present study examines how the use of social network sites (SNS) increases the potential of experiencing psychological, reputational and physical vulnerability online. From our theoretical perspective, concerns over the use of social network sites and online vulnerability stem from the ease with which users can amass large and diverse sets of online social connections and the associated mai...

OBJECTIVE To explain the association between children's self-perceived oral health status and dental anxiety, by considering their levels of cognitive vulnerability. METHODS Participants were 161 children (47.8% female; mean age = 11.93 years) who filled in a questionnaire comprising self-assessed oral health-related status, dental treatment-related cognitive vulnerability and dental anxiety ...

ABSTRACT: A methodology is presented for making property investment decisions using loss analysis and the principles of decision analysis. It proposes that the investor choose among competing investment alternatives on the basis of the certainty equivalent of their net asset value which depends on the uncertain discounted future net income, uncertain discounted future earthquake losses, initial...

Biological networks, such as cellular metabolic pathways or networks of corticocortical connections in the brain, are intricately organized, yet remarkably robust toward structural damage. Whereas many studies have investigated specific aspects of robustness, such as molecular mechanisms of repair, this article focuses more generally on how local structural features in networksmay give rise to ...

A conceptual area is divided into units or barangays, each was allowed to evolve under a physical constraint. A risk assessment method is then used to identify the flood risk in each community using the following risk factors: the area's urbanized area ratio, literacy rate, mortality rate, poverty incidence, radio/TV penetration, and state of structural and non-structural measures. Vulnerabilit...

This paper examines the possible causes of collapse of a primary school in San Giuliano, Italy, in the 2002 Molise earthquake, which killed 27 students and one teacher. It also considers the general sources of seismic vulnerability of school buildings in Italy prior to the introduction of new seismic zonation and new seismic codes in 2003. In addition to incomplete seismic zonation and inadequa...

This paper explores a variety of strategies for understanding the formation, structure, efficiency, and vulnerability of water distribution networks. Water supply systems are studied as spatially organized networks for which the practical applications of abstract evaluation methods are critically evaluated. Empirical data from benchmark networks are used to study the interplay between network s...

abstract   iran has many historic cities and villages with economic, historic and cultural values facing with many seismic faults. there have been no comprehensive studies about reducing the vulnerability of the historic villages, and the available documents describe the retrofitting experiments only about the single buildings.  lack of a comprehensive look at the subject leads to the loss of t...