Search

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) affect more than 320 million people worldwide, which is more than HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria combined. Elimination of HBV and HCV will, therefore, produce substantial public health and economic benefits and, most importantly, the prevention of 1.2 million deaths per year. In 2016, member states of the World Health Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution declaring that viral hepatitis should be eliminated by 2030. Currently, few countries have elimination programmes in place and even though the tools to achieve elimination are available, the right resources, commitments and allocations are lacking. During the fifth International Viral Hepatitis Elimination Meeting (IVHEM), 7–8 December 2018, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, an expert panel of clinicians, virologists and public health specialists discussed the current status of viral hepatitis elimination programmes across multiple countries, challenges in achieving elimination and the core indicators for monitoring progress, approaches that have failed and successful elimination plans.

Mobile dating applications play a prominent role in Chinese gay men’s social lives. Based on in-depth interviews with 21 participants, this study explores how urban gay singles in China develop social relationships on dating apps. It reveals that relationship development is often driven by casual conversations, which are not motivated by clear pragmatic purposes. Casual conversations tend to unfold around common hobbies or experiences, serving as a source of sociability, or satisfaction in socializing itself. In contrast to casual conversations, two forms of conversations are deemed highly instrumental and undesirable: one is the sex-oriented conversation aimed at immediate sexual encounters; the other is the interrogative conversation in which people ask private questions in a nonreciprocal and rigid way. Besides craving sociability, users “relationalize” casual sex by perceiving it as a form of social connection and endowing it with the potential to foster a relationship. This is also reflected in users’ preference for sexual partners with whom they can hold a conversation. Users also exploit the affordances of different media platforms and capture the relationship potential by platform switching. They switch to the mainstream media platform WeChat for more

A growing body of literature focuses on gay men's use of mobile dating applications or “dating apps.” Running on smartphones and working with GPS, dating apps connect users to others in close geographic proximity and often in real time. These apps allow users to create profiles to present themselves and interact with each other to reach multiple goals, such as casual sex, dating, or networking. Attending to the dynamics between communication technologies and society, this article reviews gay dating app studies that highlight the communicative practices and social relations mediated by dating apps. Using the mediation framework as a starting point, we examine major themes in these studies, including gay men's online self-presentation and interactions, gay community in the digital era, and gay men's interpersonal relationships. We suggest that future research should pay more attention to the technical development of dating devices and the transformation of gay men's social relations.

I'm going to teach the same class and write the same paper for the rest of my career. I realized this about six years ago, as a tenure-track assistant professor. It was a morbid insight, considering I was just getting into the grove of the academic lifestyle, defined by a 60 percent teaching, 40 percent research contract. The thought first came to me in a moment of teaching burnout. As lecturers, we know that the prep involved with teaching a class for the first time means exponentially more work. But if we continue to teach that class and claim it as “ours,” we can ease up. We can cover the same material and grade the same papers year after year. I’d already reached the fifth repetition of a course that I’d developed during my Ph.D. days. I was bored but didn’t feel the incentive to shake things up. I was overworked -- why add to my labor?

People have long used rituals of self-presentation and self-disclosure when looking for a romantic connection, whether they seek a passionate love affair, a spouse or a casual encounter. Mobile dating applications like Tinder have exploded in popularity in recent years. On Tinder, impression management begins with choosing one's

Authenticity is a popular buzzword in electoral politics: Electoral candidates and politicians are expected to be authentic in their public interactions. Since 2008, campaigning via social media has become an integral part of elections in the United States, and continues to gain importance. In such an environment, this paper presents research into the role of authenticity in electoral social media campaigns. Using Gilpin, et al.'s (2010) definition of authenticity as the theoretical basis, interviews were conducted with U.S. Democrats to query their perceptions of candidates' Facebook pages, and particularly in relation to authenticity. This study refines existing definitions of authenticity and offers insights into how electoral candidates can demonstrate authenticity in electoral social media campaigns. © First Monday.2013, Gabrielle Grow and Janelle Ward.