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The purpose of this study was to examine the perceived role of African-American fathers in educating their sons about sex and HIV prevention. Given that some studies have shown a relationship between parent-adolescent sexual communication and adolescent sexual behavior, and the disproportionately high rates of teen pregnancy and HIV (and other STIs) among African-American youth, it is noteworthy that no previous study of parent-adolescent sexual communication has focused on African-American fathers. This study involved the qualitative analysis of focus group data obtained from 14 African-American fathers of adolescent boys between the ages of 11 and 14 years. The results of this analysis revealed three general themes, which were entitled: (1) 'Fathers Want to be Response-Able,' (2) 'What Would Michael Jordan Do?' and (3) 'Having Sex Could Mean Kissing Your Future Goodbye.' The findings show that African-American fathers place a high value on fatherhood and accept their roles as sex educators of their male children. Overall, the study's results have important implications for the design and implementation of effective HIV prevention programs for African-American adolescent boys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic stencil deposition (DSD) techniques offer a variety of fabrication advantages not possible with traditional lithographic processing, such as the ability to directly deposit nanostructures with programmable-height profiles. However, DSD systems have not enjoyed widespread usage due to their complexity. We demonstrate a simple, low-profile, portable, one-dimensional nanotranslation system that facilitates access to nanoscale DSD abilities. Furthermore we show a variety of fabricated programmable-height nanostructures, including parallel arrays of such structures, and suggest other applications that exploit the unique capabilities of DSD fabrication methods.

The phase-noise characteristics of a harmonically mode-locked fiber laser are investigated with a new measurement technique called phase-encoded optical sampling. A polarization-maintaining ring laser is mode locked by use of the short-pulse electrical output of a resonant-tunneling diode oscillator, enabling it to produce 30-ps pulses at a 208-MHz repetition rate. The interferometric phase-encoded sampling technique provides 60-dB suppression of amplitude-jitter noise and allows supermode phase noise to be observed and quantified. The white-noise pulse-to-pulse timing jitter and the rms supermode timing jitter of the laser are measured to be less than 50 and 70 fs, respectively.