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__Background:__ Since 2003, a harm reduction program for injecting drug users has been rolled out countrywide in China. It entails services for condom promotion, a needle and syringe program (NSP), and methadone maintenance treatment (MMT). However, it remains unknown if and to what extent the coverage of these services at city level is related to a reduced risk of HIV infection among drug users. __Methods:__ We wished to quantify the extent to which city-level characteristics (such as NSP and MMT service coverage) and individual-level determinants (e.g., self-reported exposure to NSP and MMT services, knowledge, motivation, and skills) were associated with the risk of HIV infection among drug users. In 2006, we conducted an integrated serological and behavioral survey among drug users in five cities of Yunnan Province, China (N = 685), constructing a multilevel logistic regression model with drug users clustered within these cities. __Results:__ Drug users who reported having received NSP or MMT services were about 50% less likely to be infected with HIV than those who reported not having received them (OR 0.45, 95% CI, 0.26-0.83 for NSP and 0.48, 95% CI, 0.31-0.73 for MMT). Despite a between-city variation of HIV infection risk (ICC 0.24, 95% CI 0.08-0.54), none of the city-level factors could explain this difference. Individual-level determinants such as perceived risk of infection and use of condoms were not associated with HIV infection. __Conclusions:__ Although people who had used NSP or MMT services were less likely to be HIV infected, this study found no relationship between city-level coverage of HIV prevention programs and variations in HIV infection between cities. This may have been due to the low number of cities in the analysis. Future research should include the analysis of data from a larger number of cities, which are collected widely in China through integrated behavioral and serological surveys.

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Contains fulltext : 103418.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)

Two-photon photoluminescence (TPPL) from gold nanostructures is becoming one of the most relevant tools for plasmon-assisted biological imaging and photothermal therapy as well as for the investigation of plasmonic devices. Here we study the yield of TPPL as a function of the temporal width delta of the excitation laser pulses for a fixed average power. In the delta > 1 ps regime, the TPPL yield decreases as delta is increased, while for shorter pulse widths it becomes independent of delta and, consequently, of the laser-pulse peak power. This peculiar dynamics is understood and modeled by considering that two-photon absorption in Au is a two-step process governed by the lifetime of the metastable state populated by the first photon absorption.

The intensity of the O 1s core photoemission peak has been measured for CuO and NiO as the photon energy is scanned across the L-3 absorption edge of the metal ion. In CuO, the O 1s peak shows a typical antiresonant behavior, with a sizable decrease of its cross section at photon energies below the Cu L-3 threshold. No detectable effect is observed for NiO. The CuO data are well reproduced by a multiatom resonant photoemission model based on resonant light scattering., QC 20100525

Spin resolved resonant photoemission using circularly polarized light has been performed on thick gamma-Ce films and the measured photoelectrons show a high degree of polarization in agreement with a simple model calculation. The two near Fermi edge features are shown to influence the polarization spectrum in opposite directions, as intuitively expected for states with opposite spin-orbit alignment., QC 20100525