Ever return from a meeting feeling elated by all those exciting talks, yet unsure how all those presented glamorous and/or exciting tools can be useful in your research?  Or do you have a great piece of software you want to share, yet only a handful of people visited your poster? We have all been there, and that is why we organized the Matchmaking for Computational and Experimental Biologists Session at the latest ISCB/GLBIO’2017 meeting in Chicago . The session exemplifies a novel approach, mimicking “matchmaking”, to encouraging communication, making connections and fostering collaborations between computational and non-computational biologists. More specifically, the session facilitates face-to-face communication between researchers with similar or differing research interests, which we feel are critical for promoting productive discussions and collaborations.  To accomplish this, three short scheduled talks were delivered, focusing on RNA-seq, integration of clinical and genomic data, and chromatin accessibility analyses.  Next, small-table developer-led discussions, modeled after speed-dating, enabled each developer (including the speakers) to introduce a specific tool and to engage potential users or other developers around the table.  Notably, we asked the audience whether any other tool developers would want to showcase their tool and we thus added four developers as moderators of these small-table discussions.  Given the positive feedback from the tool developers, we feel that this type of session is an effective approach for promoting valuable scientific discussion, and is particularly helpful in the context of conferences where the number of participants and activities could hamper such interactions. Informal, face-to-face communication between participants is a vital piece of a scientific conference, just as important, if not more important, as formal activities such as keynote addresses and formal talk sessions , or dediEven for those of us who conduct most of our interactions online, face-to-face interactions can solidify relationships, spur novel ideas and research directions, further promote collaborations, and speed up project implementations. Moreover, it is critical for tool developers to carefully assess the utility  and usability  of their software. In the open source community especially, these aspects often tend to be overlooked or there are not enough resources to implement them . These iFor users, another source for finding tools of interest is via formal publication (peer-reviewed). However, this avenue is relatively slow, and is occasionally inefficient and/or insufficient in reaching a broader audience. Pre-peer-reviewed venues, e.g. bioRxiv, Figshare , Zenodo,While many tools are being developed, a relatively fewer number are routinely used by the larger biological and medical community. In fact, the average lifespan of an open-source Bioinformatics software is often relatively short, frequently limited by the transient nature of work contracts of developers, many of whom are post-docs or graduate students , and then can seek users and data to test their approach and software. With this approach, it may be difficult for their tool to have visibility outside the Bioinformatics community, since 1) it is less likely that non-computational users are aware of your tool, and/or 2) your tool may not be user-friendly to non-computational users, and/or 3) your tool may not be readily adaptable to answer specific biological questions, or to accommodate a specific dataset format. With the surge in volume and variety of data types in high-dimensional biological data, adaptability is becoming more and more of a challenge. For example, a novel tool that integrates high-throughput omics data that is collected in the same samples may not be readily adaptable to data that is collected in different samples. Second, developers can develop Bioinformatics solutions that try to answer a specific biological or biomedical question, and can then broaden the utility of the tool by developing an associated software. Because the emphasis is on the biology, the resources and time available to generalize the software to other datasets are oftentimes lacking. This often results in a gap between a goal of developing a user-friendly software and ‘on the ground’ availability of low-level computational infrastructure (which is frequently scripting based) . We beliImportantly, it is worth noting that developers of widely adopted tools have often formally assessed utility and usability, enabling them to broadly disseminate their software. Guidelines for adopting a user-centered design when developing software have been formally assessed , has attracted a record 347 registered participants, including ~60% graduate students and post-docs with a broad range of computational and experimental expertise. First convened in 2006 as the Ohio Collaborative Conferences on Bioinformatics (OCCBIO), since 2010 joining forces with ISCB, over the years GLBIO has established itself as an ideal conference for showcasing the latest developments in analysis approaches and tools that span many different fields, and is a venue that attracts both computational and bench scientists. As we are all aware though, communication between computational and bench scientists can be challenging, particularly during the initial introduction stages when the overlap in mutual interests is not clear, and the matchmaking session that we ran is a first attempt at promoting such communication. As Dr. Funmi Olopade (University of Chicago) mentioned in her keynote speech, clinicians, basic researchers, and computational biologists must better communicate to advance research. This sentiment is generally shared in the biological sciences, yet each field has its own language and culture. Encouraging communication across different fields via a common theme  is precisely what our matchmaking session aimed to accomplish. The Matchmaking Session  attracted over 40 participants, including 9 tool developers. The session, held at 8 am on the first day of the conference, kicked off with three short introductory talks, followed by multiple rounds of 4–5 minutes long small-table discussions led by individual tool developers, and then open discussion. Short (10 minutes each) introductory talks by Drs. Ben Busby (NCBI), James Chen (OSU) and Ewy Mathé (OSU) covered available NCBI tools for RNA-seq analyses, approaches in integration of clinical and genomic data, and chromatin accessibility analyses, respectively. The purpose of these talks was to introduce broad topics that pose current, relevant topics and challenges in computational biology, and to present developers that are working on tools to address these challenges.Next, small-table developer-led discussions were modeled after speed-dating. In each round, participants joined a table, listened to the developer’s pitch, asked questions, discovered common interests, exchanged contact information, and then moved on to the next table. Because these small-table discussions were timed (4–5 minutes each), each participant had an opportunity to visit all the tables. At the end of “speed-dating” small-table discussions, participants still had 30–45 minutes available for further discussion. At this point, most users had identified developers that were presenting tools useful to them, and thus had the opportunity to discuss their own data needs in more detail. When planning the session, three main themes for tools were considered: analysis of RNA-seq, chromatin accessibility, and omics/multi-dimensional integration. A total 5 representatives of tool developer teams  were pre-registered for the session. However, at the start of the session, we asked whether other developers were interested in sharing their tool and, thus, were able to include 4 more developers. This near doubling of presenter-participants with a last minute change shows the level of interest that already exists in the community for sharing their tools.As a follow-up to the session, developers were asked about their experiences afterwards, whether they had the sufficient opportunity to discuss their tools with potential users, and whether the subsequent interactions have occurred during the remainder of the conference. The majority of developers have found the session to be quite useful, in part due to the opportunity to network with many potential users, during the session or afterwards. Having time constraints for the matchmaking rounds have also allowed the session participants to quickly determine whether or not they were interested in learning about a specific tool in depth, and if the latter, move on to another tool.Of note, the 5-minutes rounds were sufficiently long to accommodate exchange of contact information for subsequent follow-up, which occurred later during the conference functions and/or after the conference was over. The primary aim of the session was to provide face-to-face interactions between users and developers, and to provide ample opportunities for contact information exchange. Per feedback we received afterwards, this aim appeared to be successfully accomplished. We plan to build up and expand on our successful experiment during GLBIO’2017, to offer similar matchmaking sessions at other ISCB venues, such as ISMB in Chicago in 2018, and GLBIO in 2019 Madison, WI. We have already run an informal session at the ISCB DC-RSG summer workshop in College Park, Maryland  with lightweight planning, enormous popularity, and a very positive response.In the future, to broaden participation and improve participants’ experience, presenters/developers will be given the opportunity to prepare and present 1-2 slides about their tools at the beginning, similar to ‘flash talks’. This format will help developers to find other developers interested in solving similar problems. In our first matchmaking session, developers had little time to interact with each other during the session. In the future this flash talks-format could replace the broad, introductory topic-focused talks given at the beginning of the matchmaking session. Notably, though, these flash talks will not replace the small-table matchmaking portion of the session, which we believe is critical to foster communication between users and developers.Lastly, it is important to note that this session was scheduled at 8 am at the start of the conference. While we had anticipated lower participation due to this scheduling (assuming that a number of participants would chose to come in later on the first day to avoid traveling the Sunday prior to the start of the conference), the timing of the session turned out to be advantageous. Indeed, having a discussion-promoting, interactive session as a start of the conference is a great way to engage participants and “break the ice” for subsequent interactions during the conference. Further, it provides ample time for attendees to find each other later during the conference and formalize potential collaborations.The short-talk/“speed-dating” format provided a platform in which participants could learn about as many tools as possible in a short period of time, while making valuable connections across fields. Given the fast moving pace of Bioinformatics and the rapid advances across clinical/experimental biology fields, it is critical to keep the communication lines open between the communities. Our matchmaking session opened these communication lines by facilitating informal face-to-face interactions.All data underlying the results are available as part of the article and no additional source data are required. The authors discuss a unique experimental session that they initiated at the ISCB/GLBIO’2017 meeting in Chicago  in form of an opinion article. Based on the model of speed dating they teamed up interested parties with developers of bioinformatics software in order to connect those developers with potential users. The paper consists of roughly four parts. It starts with a brief introduction including a plea for the importance of face-to-face interactions at conferences and a description of options researchers have today to find the appropriate computer software to support their research projects. The next part describes the software development process for bioinformatics software as seen by the authors. They claim that there are basically two approaches that I would call developer-centric and research-centric. The first one seems to assume that developers develop a more general tool, but have difficulties to connect to potential users, while the other one apparently results in a program that suffers from a lack of general usability due to a too narrow focus on a specific biological problem. I’m not quite sure if this a based on the NCBI experience of one of the co-authors and how tools like Bioconductor would fit in here. There is certainly a problem for small scale software projects like those developed for one particular research project. That could be clarified with specific examples possibly from participants in the matchmaking session. The next part of the paper describes and discusses the session at the conference, emphasizing the focus on face-to-face communication, setup, implementation, feedback of presenters, and future plans. I thought of this as the essential part of the paper. Finally, as a third part the authors included a table with the description of the presented software and contact information. I believe that this experimental session is a very interesting and important approach, and the authors make very valuable points about the setup and implementation of the session and the outcomes especially for younger researcher. From the success the authors had I hope there will be more sessions like that at future conferences. Of course, the conclusions need to be preliminary based on only one session, however the authors make strong points that many results can be generalized. While the introductory and the second part feel like a unit and are the only ones referred to in the conclusion, I feel like the second part and the table are not really integrated enough. They deal with important aspects of the topic, if the topic is not a mere description of the whereabouts of the session and the conclusions drawn by the authors. If the purpose is purely informative, it could be largely reduced, but if it is part of the argument – as I assume, see also my comments above -, it should be included in the discussion and conclusion, and that would strengthen the message. I also agree with the comments of the other reviewer. In conclusion, the authors discuss a very interesting and promising approach to improve communication and personal connections especially for younger researcher in the bioinformatics community.I have read this submission. I believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard. P3 Para2: The heavy use of “e.g.” is distracting and unnecessary – suggest just leaving it out.rd line delete “an”; 4th line delete “often” (since you use the word “average”). Next column (same para), add a comma after “total usage”; near bottom of para replace “are” with “is” before “intuitive”.P3 Para4: Top line, “fewer” should be “smaller”; 3rd line delete “e.g.”; 7th line, replace “since” with “for one or more of the following reasons:” and delete both occurrences of “and/or”; 12 lines from bottom replace “Second” with “In the second broad approach”; and 3 lines below that remove “an”.P3 Para5: 3P3 Para7: replace “analysis” with “analytic”.P3 and throughout: Is it F1000Research style to capitalize “Bioinformatics” with every use?rd line remove “has”; 7th line add “and” before “since”.P4 Para2: top line add “the” before “International”; 3P4 Para3: remove “e.g.”P4 Para7: remove “have” before “also allowed the session”.P5 Para2: unclear what is meant by “lightweight” – please clarify.This manuscript summarizes experience and justification for a rapid developer-user meeting format, which was first implemented at the 2017 GLBIO-ISCB meeting. It is a useful summary and may stimulate others to try similar approaches. My comments are entirely on ways to clarify the writing, because the content is fine as is. I have read this submission. I believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.


Elderly adults have comprised the fastest growing population adopting the Internet and computer technology over the past decade. However, how their experiences can shed light on elderly learning theory has not been examined much in the literature.This study investigated the factors and reasons associated with Internet adoption and withdrawal among older adults in Taiwan, and if any gender differences exist in this context.Data on participants aged 50 years and older from the nationally representative “Digital Opportunity Survey on Individuals and Households in Taiwan,” who did not use the Internet in 2005 but adopted it in 2007 (n=1548), and those who reported using Internet in 2011 but then withdrew (n=1575), were analyzed. Factors and reasons associated with Internet adoption and withdrawal were examined using both quantitative and qualitative data.P=.04) and the amount of information obtained , as well as enriching recreation and entertainment , were less likely to withdraw from the Internet. The most common reason for Internet withdrawal was “psychological barriers” , followed by “health barriers” . Although psychological barriers were the most important factor for Internet withdrawal for both men  and women , women were more likely than men to be affected by health barriers  and anthropic factors or accidental barriers .Education level independently predicted Internet adoption behavior. With regard to the reasons for adoption, 66% (62/94) of participants indicated they started using the Internet to meet certain “needs”; for example, “keeping up with the world”  was listed as the most critical reason, followed by “job needs” . Older adults with a positive attitude toward the Internet with regard to increasing employment opportunities (OR 2.0, 95% CI 1.0-3.9, Our findings that the need to keep up with the world associated with Internet adoption, and gender differences in reasons behind Internet withdrawal, such that women reported more health and anthropic factors or accidental barriers than man, may provide a new perspective that help health educators understand strategies that encourage older adults to keep learning, an important component of active aging. Demographic statistics indicate that 8.1% of the global population were older adults in 1960, and this number grew to 10% in 2000, with estimates suggesting that 21.4% of the population will be senior citizens in 2050 . DespiteInternet use can bring many benefits, such as increasing the happiness and decreasing the loneliness of older adults in a retirement community , encouraMany studies have been conducted on why older people may choose to avoid the Internet, such as the webpage design not being suitable for older people and the perception of not being able to learn new things because of insufficient cognitive capability, vision, or motor function -27. The Gender differences may also exist in Internet adoption and withdrawal among middle-aged and older adults. Previous studies indicated that website attributes , InterneIn Taiwan, there is little data on older adults’ Internet use, with no nationwide surveys. As a result, there is no solid reference material for Internet adoption and withdrawal among middle-aged and older adults in Taiwan. In addition, because older adults are the fastest growing population in adopting the Internet and computer technology during the past decade , depictiData were derived from an on-going survey, the Individual & Household Digital Opportunity Survey, approved by the National Development Council in its Research on Constructing the Index System of Digital Opportunity Development in Taiwan. It covers home phone users and interviews native Taiwan citizens aged 12 years or older residing in ordinary households, and it has been carried out every year since 2002. Computer-assisted telephone interviews were adopted in this survey using a random stratified sampling procedure.Each year’s survey mainly covers information on Internet access, information literacy, information application, digital opportunity, and digital exclusion. Each year’s survey is designed as a cross-sectional study of that year. However, only one follow-up survey was conducted, with the first and second surveys taking place in 2005 and 2007. Those participants who did not use the Internet in 2005 were asked again in 2007 whether they had done so. As a result, we used the data in 2007 for the issue of Internet adoption. In addition, only the 2011 survey asked a question about Internet withdrawal; therefore, the 2011 survey was selected to examine the issue of Internet withdrawal. A total of 1548 valid participants aged 50 years and older in 2007 (success rate: 72.4%) and 1575 adults in 2011 (success rate: 69.4%) were analyzed in this study.Age (range 51-94 years), gender, living area , economic status , and educational background  were recorded.In this study, those who did not use the Internet in 2005 were asked in 2007 whether they now did. Those who answered “yes” were defined as Internet adopters, whereas those who answered “no” were defined as Internet nonadopters. For Internet withdrawal, the definition was based on the Internet use experience in 2011 and whether the person had used the Internet in the last month. Those who had previous experience of Internet use and had used it in the last month were defined as Internet nonwithdrawers, whereas those who had previous experience of Internet use but had not used it for a month were defined as Internet withdrawers. The reasons for Internet adoption and withdrawal were obtained from an open-ended question. Participants were asked: “Why did you start to use the Internet?” in 2007 and “Why don’t you use the Internet anymore?” in 2011.Opinions on Internet use were divided into three dimensions of “perceived helpfulness,” “perceived fun,” and “perceived interpersonal interaction.” The question for perceived helpfulness was “Is Internet use in your opinion helpful to your life?” and the choices were 1=very helpful, 2=somewhat helpful, and 3=not helpful. The question for perceived fun was “Do you feel that Internet use gives you more fun, less fun, or no effect at all?” and the choices were 1=less fun, 2=no effect, and 3=more fun. The question for perceived interpersonal interaction was “Does the Internet allow you to interact with your friends and relatives more frequently, less frequently, or have no effect at all?” and the choices were 1=more frequently, 2=less frequently, and 3=no effect.“Digital opportunity” referred to whether the respondents felt any change or opportunities created from starting to use the Internet in their daily lives . The study participants were asked if they had noticed any of the following changes: “Has your circle of friends / employment opportunity / learning opportunity / income / access to useful information / recreation and entertainment / government information increased because of your Internet use?” and “Is it possible for you to connect with others who share the same views in politics or policies?” . The choices were 1=yes and 2=no.“Information literacy” referred to the basic capabilities that are required for Internet use . The study participants were asked, “Have you applied for user accounts and passwords and become a member of specific website?” and “Do you know how to download and upload files, video clips, or photos?” The choices were 1=yes and 2=no. They were also asked, “Are you familiar with any kind of word processing program  for document editing?” and the choices were 1=very familiar, 2=somewhat familiar, 3=not very familiar, and 4=no idea whatsoever. The distribution of information literacy was determined based on these categories.t tests and chi-square tests were used for the ordinal and nominal variables, respectively. Second, logistic regression analysis was employed to examine independent factors predicting Internet adoption and withdrawal with comparison to those individuals without adoption or withdrawal. Third, open data coding was carried out for the reasons for Internet adoption and withdrawal, with the results described using the frequency and percentage. We finally examined gender differences with regard to the aforementioned patterns, stratifying the analysis by gender.To examine the sociodemographic characteristics, opinions for Internet use, digital opportunity, and information literacy between participants with and without Internet adoption or withdrawal, The distribution of demographic characteristics and opinions about Internet use, digital opportunity, and information literacy of the participants with and without Internet adoption or withdrawal is presented in The analysis of Internet withdrawal shows that the factors of age, gender, educational background, family income per month, digital opportunity, and information literacy were significantly different between those who withdrew or did not, whereas where they lived did not. For the withdrawers, most were female  and 72.6% of them (213/293) had a high school or lower diploma. Approximately 80% of the withdrawers (234/293) had a family income per month of NT$ 90,000 or less. The top three digital opportunities that the nonwithdrawers had were Internet use helps with the “improved learning opportunity” , followed by “more access to useful information” , then “enriched recreation and entertainment” . In addition, less than 50% of the withdrawers  selected “know how to use a word processing program  for document editing” for their information literacy, whereas the percentage was greater than 50% for nonwithdrawers in all three categories of information literacy.The results of the logistic regression analysis evaluating the independent effects of the demographic characteristics, opinions on Internet use, digital opportunity, and information literacy of the study participants on Internet adoption and withdrawal are presented in P=.02) or health barriers  for women than for men. Moreover, despite the failure to reach statistical significance, men had more psychological and equipment-related barriers than women. Nevertheless, it was found that the psychological barriers were the most important factor influencing Internet withdrawal for both males and females. A total of 72.5% (100/138) males and 62.0% (93/150) females believed that their Internet withdrawal behaviors were associated with psychological factors such as having no time available, no meaningful use, or nothing worth watching/reading.The results of the analysis for the reasons for Internet withdrawal among the middle-aged and older adults by gender are shown in This study is the first to use nationally representative data for older adults in Taiwan to examine the issues of Internet adoption and withdrawal. The results showed that both the respondents who adopted the Internet and with greater probability of continued use had the characteristics of higher proportion in men, younger and with higher education. In addition, the most important reasons for Internet adoption were associated with “needs,” especially keeping up with the world and job needs. Furthermore, although psychological barriers were the most important factor of Internet withdrawal for both men and women, women were more likely to be affected by health and anthropic factors or accidental barriers in this regard.P=.04), access to useful information , and recreation and entertainment, then they are less likely to withdraw from using it. These findings echo previous research indicating that older adults who do not use new technology or learn new things may simply not see the need for much of what is being offered [A number of factors associated with older adults’ technology adoption have been documented in the literature ,42, alth offered . EducatiMany of the existing studies focused on how deteriorating health conditions can hinder older adults’ use of technology or learning efforts. Recent international studies also indicated that people tend to withdraw from the Internet due to health-related factors  and some psychological barriers  ,16,44-46Gender differences in Internet use have been documented in a number of studies, although in this study using Taiwanese data, men and women were not different in Internet adoption. However, they were different in Internet withdrawal, with men less likely to withdraw from Internet use than women were. In addition, for both men and women, the most common response for the reason for Internet withdrawal was for “psychological barriers”  followed by “health barriers” . Although “psychological barriers” were the most important factor for Internet withdrawal among both men and women, women were more likely than men were to be affected by health and anthropic factors or accidental barriers. We suggest that in addition to focusing on health barriers, such as relearning to overcome cognitive declines, it is also important to work to reduce anthropic factors or accidental barriers, possibly by providing more resources, to encourage women to use new technology or take more learning opportunities.This study has some limitations. First, this work was based on a cross-sectional survey and it may not be possible to draw any conclusions on the causal relationship between Internet user types and social engagement. Second, due to our data structure we only investigated Internet adoption and withdrawal behavior during 2007 and 2011. Given the rapidly changing nature of the Internet and technology adoption by older adults, we acknowledge that the dynamics of adoption and withdrawal may change over time. However, although the next generation of older adults will have extensive Internet experience, different problems and solutions may arise with regard to adoption and withdrawal behaviors due to the nature of the human learning process. Moreover, the rapid pace of technological change means that “future older generations” are likely to confront an array of technologies they little understand and generally find inaccessible. According to Hanson , understA critical role of technology as an important health promotion strategy for older adults in low- and middle-income countries has been proposed . Our stu


San Dominick, its detection by a Massachusetts-born captain and its consequences, has been discussed in the context of Paul Gilroy’s black Atlantic paradigm. Few readings of the tale consider the significance of the Pacific setting of a story grounded in the transatlantic slave trade but happening far away from the center of American slavery. Taking a fresh look at Melville’s tale, this essay focuses on its translation of (black) Atlantic subject matters and epistemologies onto the Pacific. Not only do I read the tale as both an Atlantic and a Pacific text, demonstrating that the institution of slavery and its specters know no geographical borders in Melville’s imagination; I also argue that piracy is an important trope in this context. Anticipating the shift of piracy cases and slavery to the Pacific towards the end of the nineteenth century, it both recalls a black Atlantic and predicts a bleak Pacific of violent imperial scenarios that would come to characterize US–Pacific relations.Herman Melville’s novella “Benito Cereno” (1855/56) is one of the best-studied texts both within Melville’s oeuvre and nineteenth-century American literature in general. In recent decades, its puzzling structure and fragmented narrative perspective as well as its symbolism and themes have been subject to critical scrutiny mostly in the context of inquiries into the text’s racial politics regarding the institution of slavery. More specifically, the canonical tale about a slave uprising on the ship  San Dominick, and its detection and suppression by an American captain has been insightfully discussed in the context of Paul Gilroy’s black Atlantic paradigm and New World slavery,Critical readings of Herman Melville’s novella “Benito Cereno” (1855/56) rarely consider the significance of the Pacific island and coastal settings of a story grounded in the transatlantic slave trade. While Melville’s canonical tale about a slave uprising on the ship I read the tale as a transoceanic text, arguing that piracy is an important trope in the tale in that it recalls seventeenth-century piracy between the Caribbean and the Pacific, on the one hand, and anticipates the shift of actual piracy and slavery to the Pacific realm toward the end of the century, on the other. In what follows, I highlight points of connection and translation between Melville’s Atlantic and Pacific imagination rather than presenting a purely (trans)Pacific reading of “Benito Cereno,” which would have to situate itself more precisely within the fledgling field of (trans)Pacific studies.American expressing the “will to mastery and control that has led to the Americanization of the Pacific,”“Benito Cereno” is prophetic regarding the violent imperial scenarios that would come to characterize US–Pacific relations in this period, with America “Pushing Out Pacific Frontiers”In “Benito Cereno,” the colonial Atlantic becomes metaphorical to the degree that conflictuous power relations among Old and New World agents as well as their (enslaved) Others are carried from one ocean to another. At the same time, the novella remains historically grounded as it re-constructs these Atlantic relations in the Pacific in a historically specific hemispheric continuum, a “transoceanic imaginary” of slavery and piracy.The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993), Gilroy reads the sea in a double-edged manner as a fluid space of both exploitation and resistance. “[T]he image of ships in motion across the spaces between Europe, America, Africa, and the Caribbean”Propelling a turn to oceans Though Gilroy’s concept has been highly criticized, it has also been a productive framework for Atlantic/American studies.International Journal of Francophone Studies from which this quote is taken),With regard to its usefulness as a concept for this article, the black Atlantic has recently been adapted for (trans)Pacific American studies. Laudably, these adaptations constitute a branching-out of the concept in many ways rather than a uniform translation of Gilroy’s idea onto another ocean. The term “black Pacific” was first used by Eric Gardner in a study of the black (US-)American West to describe a migratory pattern of African Americans moving to California, either by ship around Cape Horn or by land across the Isthmus of Panama. Gardner relates the term to the black Atlantic, viewing Gilroy’s concept positively as highlighting a “set of power relations between a collection of regions in dialogue.”Unlike the black Atlantic, the black Pacific model has not (yet) made it into Melville studies. Following Heidi Feldman, my analysis of “Benito Cereno” uses the term as referring to “a newly imagined diasporic community on the periphery of the black Atlantic” that, in this case, harks back to Atlantic-Pacific genealogies of piracy and slavery.Nevertheless, using the term “black Pacific” also means to acknowledge a continuum with the black Atlantic paradigm with regard to the countercultural, diasporic effects of the Middle Passage that “Benito Cereno” stages in the form of a slave revolt and mutiny, on the one hand; on the other, the black Pacific model, while far from thoroughly theorized, serves as a heuristic tool in order to tease out the interrelations between the Atlantic and Pacific that the novella establishes. In the following, I offer a reading of the tale with a focus on the two main literary strategies through which the Atlantic slave trade correlates with a fledgling US imperialism in the Pacific: its spatiality and geographic imagination and its building on historical references to exploration, mutiny, and piracy.Narrative of Voyages and Travels in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres: Comprising Three Voyages round the World; Together with a Voyage of Survey and Discovery, in the Pacific Ocean and Oriental Islands  formed the basis for Melville’s tale. In chapter 18, Delano recounts how his ship Perseverance encountered the Spanish Tryal near the small, uninhabited desert island of Santa María off the coast of Chile in 1805. Its slaves had been transported from Senegambia to Buenos Aires, marched across the pampa to Lima, “the radiating heart of the black Pacific,” where they embarked on the Tryal and subsequently overthrew the Spanish crew.In 1928, Harold Scudder discovered that Amasa Delano, a distant ancestor of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and historical captain and explorer, and his Rather than losing or misplacing the island, the politics of Spanish-governed Chile becomes Melville’s catalyst for a transposition of the race debate, elided in Delano’s original Voyages into American consciousness.Melville changes the year of the revolt from 1805, the heyday of slavery in Uruguay, Argentina, and other South American countries,Putnam’s Monthly is equally significant, coinciding with the Fugitive Slave Act (1850) and its silencing effects on sympathizers of abolition, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) that opened the west of the United States for the expansion of slavery toward the Pacific.Amistad case of 1839 in the Caribbean Sea, in the context of which defense lawyer John Quincy Adams justified slave revolt at sea in terms of the natural right to liberty and revolution, explicitly dissociating the mutineers from accusations of piracy.Amistad, Justice Joseph Story eventually asserted that as much as the slaves might have committed dreadful acts, “they cannot be deemed pirates and robbers in the sense of the law of nations.”Amistad case strengthened and inspired discourses that saw the topics of piracy and slavery in need of disentanglement or reversal – the slavers rather than mutinous slaves needed to be unmasked, from the abolitionist perspective, as the “real” pirates. These widely reported legal arguments are subtly negotiated through literature in “Benito Cereno.”The opening description of the setting is highly significant: Melville displaces the island of Santa María, moving it from off the coast of central Chile “toward the southern extremity of the long coast of Chili.”San Dominick and its crew confront three historical positions, associated with three continents:San Dominick displaces this national(ist) allegory with a black Atlantic counterculture that, paradoxically, is formed in the Pacific.The Moby-Dick), has Dons from Lima ask about Lake Erie. When they are presented with the image of a waterway of global significance, they exclaim: “No need to travel! The world’s one Lima.”[…] the evil of colonial power, of court-sanctioned slavery, of mutilating violence against the oppressed […]. In the plaza, one sees them only too clearly [as] the stage from which Babo can make them visible.Oddly, the tale thus both highlights Peru as a crucial Pacific agent in the context of the South American trade to Manila during the formation of the early modern Pacific,Narrative in an episode on New Guinea, whose inhabitants he describes as “Negroes” that are[…] well known to hate white people so much as to reward an individual, by making him a chief when he will bring them a white man’s head [because] Europeans seized and carried them away as slaves, in a most treacherous manner.Lima, the closing geographical setting of the novella, is a “standard trope for  corruption” in Melville’s work, as Amy Kaplan remarks.gray Pacific, in which perception is always already tainted, blurred by Delano’s underlying racist and exceptionalist cultural framework. Accordingly, the color imagery centers on the color gray, mentioned four times in the description of the atmosphere in the opening paragraph:Everything was mute and calm; everything gray […]. The sky seemed a gray surtout. Flights of troubled gray fowl, kith and kin with flights of troubled gray vapors among which they were mixed, skimmed low and fitfully over the waters […]. Shadows present, foreshadowing deeper shadows to come. (35)The events aboard the Tryal are rendered in terms of ambivalence as grayness “envelops the appearance of the mysterious San Dominick.”Initially, the imagery in “Benito Cereno” transforms the black Atlantic into a [b]asing the theme of piracy in the novella on the Peter Samson charge to which Delano refers but does not include […], Melville extends the conflict between the historical Delano and Benito Cereno into the very heart of the novella.Sterling Stuckey and Joshua Leslie were perhaps the first to focus on Melville’s highly significant forms of evoking piracy in “Benito Cereno,” complementing the novella and its historical source with archival documents from the Archivo Nacional of Santiago de Chile.The more to encourage the sailors, they were told that the Spanish captain considered his ship good as lost; that she and her cargo, including some gold and silver, were worth more than a thousand doubloons. Take her, and no small part should be theirs. (87)As Gesa Mackenthun states, Delano’s attack on the San Dominick “reveals him as a figure that spans the period from the history of seventeenth-century buccaneers to the more subtle piracies of the 1850s,”Narrative).Delano himself suppressed some of the documents available in the Archivo in his record of the revolt and its aftermath; at first sight, “Benito Cereno” certainly concurs with that suppression, omitting accusations of piracy against Delano. Yet it is important here to distinguish between Delano’s and the auctorial narrative perspective: in the parts that are told from Delano’s unreliable and limited point of view, it is no surprise that he is disassociated from any such suspicion. But even in these parts a shadow of piracy is subtly cast on Delano. For one, he uses the same motivational rhetoric as the buccaneers and Caribbean pirates of the seventeenth century, a rhetoric of plunder that does not distinguish between gold, silver, and human “cargo”:Perseverance the Bachelor’s Delight,Pequod in chapter 115 of Moby-Dick). Notably, Dampier, along with Lionel Wafer, Basil Ringrose, James Kelley (a later associate of Captain William Kidd), and dozens of others, opened up the Pacific via the coast of Panama in the late seventeenth century for exploration, piracy, and Anglo trade. In 1683, Dampier and his crew had gone to Guinea, became involved in the slave trade, and took a number of enslaved African women whom they abused in every possible way on the ship.A New Voyage Round the World (1697) also presents an account of the first contact with coastal and island indigenous populations of the Pacific, hence constituting an early moment of inscribing the region in terms of the European-Atlantic “incursion upon indigenous culture” on the other side of the continent.Piazza Tales, first published two years earlier in Putnam’s, Melville discusses Dampier on the Galápagos as an exemplary pirate between utopian and dystopian representation in “Sketch Sixth: Barrington Isle and the Buccaneers”:That the buccaneers perpetrated the greatest outrages is very true; that some of them were mere cut-throats is not to be denied: but we know that here and there among their host was a Dampier, a Wafer, and a Cowley, and likewise other men, whose worst reproach was their desperate fortunes – whom persecution, or adversity, or secret and unavengeable wrongs, had driven from Christian society to seek the melancholy solitude or the guilty adventures of the sea […]. [A]ll of the buccaneers were not unmitigated monsters. […] Could it be possible, that they robbed and murdered one day, reveled the next, and rested themselves by turning meditative philosophers, rural poets and seat builders the third? […] Still, strange as it may seem, I must also abide by the more charitable thought, namely, that among these adventurers were some gentlemanly, companionable souls, capable of genuine tranquility and virtue.Again, Melville refuses “a unified political or ideological position” here, as marauders are transformed into pastoral poets in a Deleuzian “archipelago-perspectivism,”Riotocracy, which gloried in having no law but lawlessness”Melville’s tale further associates Delano with piracy by renaming the historical Amasa Delano’s ship The Rover, and though he references the vessel frequently when he seeks out a stable sign, reassured by its familiarity – he metaphorically compares her, like “the Negro” a little later, to a Newfoundland dog (64) – its linguistic signification carries instability and fluidity. Besides referencing a loyal pet, the dog metaphor at the same time evokes the piratical English “sea-dogs” of the sixteenth century (most notably Francis Drake), and a rover demarcates mobility and inconstancy, the shiftiness of the sea and of ships themselves roving between various owners – slave traders, merchantmen, pirates.In addition, Delano’s boat is called Just as Delano projects onto Cereno piratical schemes that he himself will blithely – and with the best intentions – actually perpetrate, so the United States in the mid-nineteenth century was projecting onto the decaying Spanish empire images that would legitimize its own piratical – but of course well-intentioned – expansionism.By associating the enterprising US-American captain with piracy, then, “Benito Cereno” also implies that Manifest Destiny, epitomized on America’s maritime frontiers by the historical Delano and his filibustering peers , is merely “the rhetorical camouflage for a largely ‘piratical’ enterprise,”In sum, Melville does not obliterate piracy as a potential status of the American captain but rather recasts it as a “kaleidoscopic question about who was the real pirate.”San Dominick “be of a piratical character” (56) displays the way his perception is shaped by a benevolent racism, as he sees Spaniards as shady characters but Africans as “too stupid” (63) to be the masterminds of a piratical scheme, taking to them “not philanthropically, but genially, just as other men to Newfoundland dogs” (63) and thereby creating a “fiction of fidelity.”Delano’s earlier suspicion that the it was no unusual thing to lure ships after them into their treacherous harbors, or entice boarders from a declared enemy at sea, by the spectacle of thinly manned or vacant decks, beneath which prowled a hundred spears with yellow arms ready to upthrust them through the mats. (56)That the comparison relates to Pacific rather than Atlantic piracy, Malay rather than Caribbean pirates, references the historical Delano’s New Guinea chapter, in which he recounts an attempt to enter an area of New Guinea occupied by Malays, whose past experiences with white men , has made them hostile.Moby-Dick), Melville already portrayed “the piratical proas [canoe-like boats] of the Malays” as possessing political agency and a sense of geo-strategic power, also with regard to indigenous people resorting to piracy in order to defend themselves from colonizing agents.In one of a number of suspicious moments, the narrator, through the eyes of Delano, compares the black mutineers specifically to “Malay pirates” for whomSan Dominick, Delano “unfailingly asserts a cultural and racial hegemony which masks itself as a kind of natural law” as he time and again reverts to a blind belief in “the ever-watchful Providence” (83),Haegert notes that in the process of repeatedly suppressing suspicion about the power relations aboard the Highlighting its Pacific dimension is not to imply that Melville’s narrative is not still, thematically, Atlantic, with the transatlantic slave trade “quietly govern[ing] the story.”not saved, we remain in the shadow”convulsive history of the entire region and epoch – from the Columbian discoveries of the Americas, through the democratic revolutions in the United States, Haiti, and Latin America, to the contemporary crisis over the expansion of the “Slave Power” in the United States.The tale yokes together Europe, Africa, the Atlantic, the Americas, and the Pacific as tainted by the institution of slavery and by piracy.after the storm.”Melville’s novella, a Gothic tale of haunting and enchantment pervaded by the imagery of death, ghosts, and a deep sense of gloom , creates a bleak rather than black Atlantic/Pacific continuum.Typee and Omoo) and his later, stylistically and philosophically more elaborate works. In my view, “Benito Cereno” does that work of conjunction. It revises Melville’s earlier Pacific descriptions of racial difference,deadly inadequacy of human language to measure the gap; […] his resort to metaphors exemplifies not only the deadliness of the geopolitical reality that constantly escapes the grasp of language, but also the slipperiness and ambiguity of the space between […] history and literature.Like Moby-Dick, “Benito Cereno” “links and crosses the Pacific as an oceanic American plantation,” enacting a “troubled crossing of the Atlantic into New World real estate.”Charles Olson famously called Herman Melville a “Pacific Man,”


Although sex and relationship education (SRE) represents a key strand in policies to safeguard young people and improve their sexual health, it currently lacks statutory status, government guidance is outdated and a third of UK schools has poor-quality SRE. We aimed to investigate whether current provision meets young people's needs.Synthesis of qualitative studies of young people's views of their school-based SRE.Eligible studies originated from the UK, Ireland, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Iran, Brazil and Sweden.Studies of students aged 4–19 in full-time education, young adults ≤19 (not necessarily in full-time education) or adults ≤25 if recalling their experiences of school-based SRE.–69 publications were identified, with 55 remaining after quality appraisal (representing 48 studies). The synthesis found that although sex is a potent and potentially embarrassing topic, schools appear reluctant to acknowledge this and attempt to teach SRE in the same way as other subjects. Young people report feeling vulnerable in SRE, with young men anxious to conceal sexual ignorance and young women risking sexual harassment if they participate. Schools appear to have difficulty accepting that some young people are sexually active, leading to SRE that is out of touch with many young people's lives. Young people report that SRE can be negative, gendered and heterosexist. They expressed dislike of their own teachers delivering SRE due to blurred boundaries, lack of anonymity, embarrassment and poor training.SRE should be ‘sex-positive’ and delivered by experts who maintain clear boundaries with students. Schools should acknowledge that sex is a special subject with unique challenges, as well as the fact and range of young people's sexual activity, otherwise young people will continue to disengage from SRE and opportunities for safeguarding and improving their sexual health will be reduced. The search strategy was comprehensive, using a wide range of manual searches in addition to electronic databases.The study includes all eligible qualitative studies of young people's views of their school-based sex and relationship education from around the world for the period 1990–2015.The methodology includes measures to ensure robustness and reliability, including double data extraction and the independent screening of publications and quality appraisal by two different researchers.The meta-ethnographic method allowed us to provide a fresh interpretation of the evidence, enabling the field to progress and pinpointing areas for policy change. Topics such as sexting and online safety are now discussed within some SRE programmes, but research into young people's views of such programmes had not been published at the time of our synthesis, creating a gap in the evidence.Sex and relationship education (SRE) in schools remains a fiercely debated topic.online material, young people want SRE to be taught in schools22The existing government UK guidance on SRE dates from 2000,An understanding of young people's views is essential if high-quality SRE programmes are to be developed.We have adhered to guidelines for enhancing transparency in reporting qualitative syntheses10.1136/bmjopen-2016-011329.supp1supplementary appendicesAs the wider collaboration was concerned with developing a sexual health and alcohol intervention, we originally aimed to identify studies of programmes that combined SRE with alcohol education, but excluded those that focused solely on alcohol education. Studies that focused solely on HIV/AIDS prevention were also excluded, as were those involving special schools or students with special needs. Programmes had to be either school based or linked to schools. Studies were included if samples were of students aged 4–19 in full-time education, young adults (not necessarily in full-time education) if most were under 19 or adults no older than 25 if recalling their education. Studies had to involve qualitative methods of data collection and analysis. If studies using mixed methods included a qualitative element that met our criteria, this element was included. Since attitudes towards sexual health have changed considerably over the past few decades, we limited our search to studies conducted in or after 1990, envisaging that those conducted before 1990 would be of little relevance today. Within the context of the databases searched, eligibility was not restricted by language or country.We searched MEDLINE, Embase, PsychInfo, Sociological Abstracts, IBSS, ERIC, Web of Science and Cinahl using simple searches , having We reviewed 10 checklists for appraising qualitative research to derive our quality criteria (see online Text was extracted from the results and discussion sections of publications and stored on Excel. The first author extracted young people's views and experiences (first-order constructs)The first author analysed the data using a combination of meta-ethnography and thematic synthesis.Twenty-eight publications were identified electronically, 3 by contacting authors of abstracts identified electronically, 37 by hand-searching and 1 serendipitously, producing 69 publications in total .The quality of publications was generally good except in relation to reporting methods . Most deThe remaining 55 publications  Like the sperm goes up the fallopian tube, hits the egg…we don't care about that’. ref. , p. 250‘Everything we got in our class had a really clinical feel, it's just like information but it's not related to yourself’. ref. , p. 103Since sex is such a powerful subject SRE contains it within a moral framework‘All they ever do is talk about the dangers of sex and that, and nothing about the pleasure’. ref. , p. 126‘They don't mention anything about same-sex relationships or homophobia, I think they should so more people are aware’. ref. , p. 258‘I think that their main focus in on, you don't feel pressured to have sex and things like that. I think that they depict it was the guy wants to have sex and the girl doesn't. And the guy is like, ‘Oh it will feel good’. They don't realise that a lot of girls want to have sex, too. And so I don't think that they focus on that enough at all’. ref. , p. 465Because of the difficulty of accepting young people's sexual activity SRE is out of touch with young people's lives‘We discuss contraception and sex but not what to do when having sex. We don't know’. ref. , p. 100‘So you just were taught about sexual intercourse causing pregnancy, but you were never taught about masturbation; you were never taught about oral sex all the different, other types of sexual practices…’. ref. , p. 224.‘As I started experimenting and everything I was like, I can't believe we were taught that this is not okay’. ref. , p. 103‘Didn't really say anything about oral sex, and maybe people want to have oral sex with their partners but are not ready to have sex’. ref. , p. 128Because of the difficulty of accepting young people's sexual activity SRE fails to discuss issues relevant to sexually active young people‘They don't really go into the whole relationships thing partly because I don't think—they don't want us to have relationships’. ref. , p. 657‘They didn't talk about the emotional part of having sex. They didn't really talk about how sex will affect you as a person and how it affects your emotions’. ref. , p. 103‘They didn't really help you with your sexual feelings, they made you kind of feel bad about having them’. ref. , p. 103‘It's not just about what happens when the sperm meets the egg, or putting a video on, I had that at school. They have to talk to young people about all the pressures out there, from the media, from family, friends, all that's important’. ref. , p. 354SRE is valued by young people from ethnic minorities and much younger children‘You get some good information in these classes. All my mother would tell me, she would tell me like myths, hypothetical things, things that old ladies from generation to generation will tell her. Like ′Mom, that's not even true!’’. ref. , p. 263Improving SRETeachers: ‘If your teacher who's a grown up can't talk about it, how are you (supposed to)? That gives you the impression that, oh I'm not really supposed to talk about it’.  from?’ Girls (chorus): ‘Somebody we don't know’. Girl: ‘The school nurse or somebody that comes in’. PA: ‘So you all agree? What are the reasons for having somebody you don't know?’ Girl: ‘So when you tell them something they don't know you’. Girl: ‘You don't get embarrassed like in front of teachers’. Girl: ‘Well, you'd be embarrassed the next day with a teacher’. Girl: ‘We don't want them to know all about us’. PA: ‘Is it about privacy?’ Girl: ‘Yeah. It's like your own feelings…it was our form tutor!’. ref. , p. 88Peer educators: ‘They treated us with respect, they treated us like fellow students instead of … pupils’.  that we felt explained most of the data. First, schools have taken insufficient account of the ‘specialness',Discussing sex within school renders students (and teachers) vulnerable.Students reported embarrassment and discomfort, particularly in mixed-sex SRE,50–56Young people wanted to receive SRE in a safe and confidential environment47Sex is a potent subject, so SRE defuses it by presenting it as a scientific topic.Young people criticised SRE for being overly biological67Sex is a potent subject, so SRE contains it within an implicit moral framework.SRE was described as prescribing appropriate behaviour,61Since schools have difficulty accepting young people's sexuality SRE is out of touch with many young people's lives.It was observed that young people disengage from sources of information that do not match their own experiences71Young people reported that SRE was delivered too late73Since schools have difficulty accepting young people's sexuality, SRE fails to discuss issues relevant to sexually active young people.SRE failed to provide information that sexually active young people wanted, including on community health services,74Nevertheless, SRE was valued by two distinct groups of students. Although it was reported to be occasionally culturally insensitive,While schoolteachers were occasionally praised,76Furthermore, while most believe that ideally teachers should deliver SRE because they know their students, it was this very familiarity that many students found inappropriate, provoking suggestion that delivery of SRE by a familiar teacher has potential to disrupt existing relationships and breach boundaries.41Students reported good, mutually respectful relationships with peer educators,40Many young people liked the idea of sexual health professionals delivering SRE.The synthesis indicates that schools take insufficient account of the ‘specialness' of sex as a topic, negatively affecting the way SRE is delivered and rendering many young people vulnerable and reluctant to engage. The synthesis also suggests that schools struggle to accept that some young people are sexually active, leading to SRE content that is out of touch with many young people's lives. Finally, the evidence indicates that young people dislike having their own teachers deliver SRE.Despite the wide geographical reach of the studies, young people's views are strikingly consistent. It might be imagined that some studies would produce highly contrasting data, such as the studies from JapanWe found no studies of young people's views of SRE that covered issues such as sexting or online safety. While these topics are clearly being discussed within schools,Owing to the ‘specialness' of sex as a topic,We suggest that unless schools accept the fact and range of many young people's sexual activity, students will continue to report that SRE content is out of touch and irrelevant and will be less likely to engage in—and so benefit from—their SRE. Schools' reluctance to acknowledge young people's sexual activity may be influenced by the anticipated reactions of parents or the media, or by lack of confidence about what can be taught in SRE. However, our society is anxious about young people's sexualityYoung people's discomfort with the current practice of having SRE delivered by their own teachers appears to represent, among other things, a plea for clear roles and boundaries. This emerging evidence finds support in a recent survey that reveals that only 19% of 18-year olds feel SRE should be taught by a teacher from their school,99Nevertheless there is likely to be considerable resistance to any suggestion that teachers should not deliver SRE. Teachers are regarded as the most sustainable option since they are already embedded in schools and constitute an ongoing resource; outside experts, it is argued, are expensive, while peer educators have to be regularly trained up as existing cohorts age. Perhaps a compromise would be the provision of specialist SRE teachers who only teach SRE and whom students would not encounter except in the context of SRE. This might deal with young people's need for clear boundaries, while also encouraging expertise and professionalism in SRE. The role of specialist SRE teachers could be developed so that it is clearly distinct from that of other teachers, with a view to lessening the traditional teacher–student power imbalance in that context.There is a need to further explore young people's views about who should deliver SRE—specifically examining issues relating to boundaries, anonymity and power—and whether these views vary with age. Younger children did seem more positive about SRE than older children, but since our synthesis only included one study of primary school children, this evidence is only suggestive, making it difficult to draw any solid conclusions about the significance of age. Research should investigate the acceptability to young people of SRE being delivered by highly trained, specialist teachers who only teach SRE. Unless we get the delivery, right young people will continue to disengage from SRE and opportunities for safeguarding young people and improving their sexual health will be reduced.


We discuss the depths of the challenge in transforming masculinities in relation to sexual health and wellbeing in such communities.Within and across areas of high deprivation, we explored constructions of masculinity in relation to sexual health and wellbeing, in what we believe to be the first UK study to take this approach. Our sample of 116 heterosexual men and women age 18–40 years took part in individual semi-structured interviews (n = 35) and focus group discussions (n = 18), across areas in Scotland. Drawing on a socio-ecological framework, findings revealed experience  •Gender practices were commonly rooted in a domestically violent milieu.•Localised, socio-cultural influences offered limited opportunities for an egalitarian masculinity.•Interventions need to operate across multiple levels and engage with multiple agencies. Sexual health requires a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relationships, as well as the possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination and violence. For sexual health to be attained and maintained, the sexual rights of all persons must be respected, protected and fulfilled.” Sexual Health and Blood Borne Virus Framework 2015–2020, developed to promote key outcomes including in relation to STIs and unintended pregnancies, inequalities, and sexual violence , blood borne viruses and unplanned pregnancies. The most recent National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles  survey, conducted across Britain with 15,162 people age 16–74 years found 1 in 10 women and 1 in 71 men reported an experience of ‘non-volitional’ sex  . Physicaviolence .In this article, one of a series of articles from our ‘DeMaSH’ study , we first draw upon a social determinants of health framework as it intersects with our analysis of how masculinities in places influence sexual health and wellbeing. Here we draw out the importance of neighbourhood and community level factors, citing examples of how we might engage in interruptions in ecological systems ; elsewhe1.1Immediate determinants of sexual health and wellbeing include, for example, individuals’ knowledge of sexual risks; however, although knowledge improvement is important for behaviour change, it is insufficient on its own to effect significant change as influences upon sexual health stem from factors beyond individual knowledge. At the more distal level, poverty is a significant contributor to various forms of gender-based violence . Epidemiin places  the dominant position of men and the subordination of women’ , p. 77. rformed’ ; secondlrformed’ , and thirformed’ . As Courrformed’ . Thus, erformed’ , p. 75.Berg and Longhurst's review, ‘Placing Masculinities and Geography’, provides an excellent overview of the masculinities and geography research from its beginnings, so we opt not to rehash that here . We do dCausal pathways link structural factors and sexual health and wellbeing outcomes; hence, for example, tackling gender inequalities can improve equitable interpersonal relationships  or reduc2masculinities and sexual health, attitudes and behaviours, we first conducted focus groups with groups of men who were friends or who knew each other, so that we could capture men's ‘performances’ of masculinities in the presence of other men , in individual interviews rather than in a group context. By contrast, as we anticipated that the ways in which understandings of both sexual health and socially appropriate performances of masculinity and femininity are co-created in interaction with others, we considered focus group discussions to be more appropriate to explore negotiations of such meanings between participants. We chose to conduct the focus groups as single sex discussions. Since our primary interest was in the interrelationships between constructions of ther men . As sexuther men . The all2.1We recruited men and women, aged 18–40 years, who resided in areas classified as the most deprived. Participants lived in major cities within Scotland  or rural/semi-rural settings in the Highlands. We selected these locations based on a combination of sexual health outcomes  and the degree of urbanicity/rurality, as assessed by the Scottish Government's 6-fold Urban/Rural Classification, 2011–2012 ; and, more proactive approaches, such as talks in community settings, approaching potential participants directly in pubs and community settings, and engaging gatekeepers within community organisations. The proactive approaches required time to build trust and rapport, but proved the most effective means of recruitment. These early interactions also provided valuable insights into the areas and communities in which participants lived. Recruitment occurred between February 2014 and April 2015. Interviews lasted between 45 min and 2 h (1 h on average) and focus groups between 1 and 2 h (1.5 h on average). Each participant received a £20 gift voucher as a gesture of thanks for their time.2.3In this study we embraced a holistic definition of sexual health, which encompasses disease prevention but also positive relationships free of coercion and violence . Our pil2.4what was it like growing up in [area]?’), guiding respondents towards discussions that enabled us to explore the ways in which ontological identity (sense of self) and biographies are bound up with the places in which people live , probing for similarities and differences to people in their own area when growing up and also at present. The five images depicting gender-based violence were then used to prompt discussions on their understandings of sexual consent as well as views towards, and experiences of, physical, sexual and verbal abuse. Participants were then asked about their sexual health understandings, knowledge and behaviours .We began by asking participants about their experiences of living/growing up in the area .3We recruited 116 people aged 18–40 years to the study: 68 men (mean age 30) and 48 women (mean age 29) see . We cond3.1…probably the biggest thing is the look of people. Kinda people in [area] kinda look pretty grey, pretty thin, pretty miserable looking to be honest. .As per our inclusion criteria, all participants were resident in an area of high deprivation, but most also grew-up in the same or a similar area. Childhood experiences, and many of the accounts of contemporary life, were thick descriptions of poverty, material deprivation and hostile environments. In addition to examples of experiencing a lack of basic nourishment and money, many also described how manifestations of poverty affected the way people looked. For example, Angela saidYeah there was a lot o’ gang fights back then, yeah. There was a lot o’ like from scheme [housing estate] to scheme. It's not like that anymore but yeah, each scheme used to fight, have a day that they went up and fought each other, sort of thing. There was a lot o’ gang violence back then. The language many men and women used to describe their areas was, at times, stark , mirroring findings from other work, and sometimes even the exact same terms . People,Overall, what emerged strongly in relation to accounts of manifestations of poverty within places was people's habituation to them, often expressed through shrugs of shoulders and a neutral tone of voice. Angela  talked of growing up with poverty but “you just kinda deal with it”. Across the many descriptions of drug misuse, violence and criminality they experienced or were aware of in their locality, we failed to read such habituation as dispassion. Of course, not all participants who resided in these areas of high deprivation necessarily lived in poverty themselves. Nevertheless, we were struck by the shadow cast by poverty, drugs and violence, which appeared never to be far from the doorsteps of almost all participants, and for many it was an intrinsic part of negotiating everyday life. Hence, the stresses and strain of residing in some challenging environments varied across accounts but appeared present in some form.L: Well, I think… in most non-affluent areas it's like that. It's just people get desperate, don't they? And then they get drunk tae try an' hide their desperations and their reality sort of.Participants’ accounts often noted the influence of wider structural level influences bearing down on them. Luke, for example, pointed out that individuals’ alcohol consumption should not be detached from the influence of povertyL: Well, you see… now you see all these people going tae food banks an' stuff like that 'cause they cannae feed their kids or they've no' got a job so they sit aboot the hoose all day bored so they just go 'Ah, fuck it, I'll get drunk' Int: So when you say they get desperate, how do you mean?building a’ that [new cultural facilities] on the waterfront [in Dundee]. What's that for? It's no’ for us. That's no’ for us. It might benefit the city in general wi’ tourists and things, but when you come out o’ Dundee you’ll see it, it's a nice place, but behind that it's still Dundee. It's still the shithole that's here. Daniel spoke with passionate concern about Dundee's level of mortality related to drug misuse but addedpeople just don't realise what it's like tae live and kind o' grow up in some o' these places and I think that they're kind o' ignorant when they think that they can just change a couple o' things and it'll make everything awright Thomas challenged the notion that individuals can easily change their behaviour:I feel like a lot o' this immigration is a way tae drive doon wage costs, you know what I mean? Rather than any great plan tae, you know, multiculturalise Britain, … No negative effect on doctors or middle class people, you know, getting their cheap coffee or, you know, their nanny or whatever it is….The breeding of alienation was evident in the class injury experienced by many respondents: the way in which class narratives were woven through narratives of structural disadvantage highlights the way in which masculinities were, for some, constructed in relation to class identity. Ally, for example, interwove his politics throughout his interview, from challenging housing regeneration to immigration:There was a tendency for men's recalled practices and beliefs to point towards a traditional hegemonic masculinity structuring their gender relations. However, at the intersection of gender, poverty and class , we read corporeal performances – sexual behaviours and violence – as reflecting responses to impoverished situations by both adhering to and contesting this traditional hegemonic masculinity. Connell has described a ‘Protest masculinity [which] is a marginalised masculinity, which picks up themes of hegemonic masculinity in the society at large but reworks them in a context of poverty' , p. 114.3.2A particularly prominent account of ‘place’ – commonly associated with growing up, but also peppering accounts of contemporary life – emphasised the violent milieus, in which a narrow range of performances of masculinity felt possible. Two particular types of violence narratives emerged across our data: youth violence and domestic abuse. The former was not a specific question in our topic guide whereas the latter was, via the images we used see .3.2.1gang fights, just fae [from] where you’re fae – different side o’ the street… everybody else was daen [doing] it, but it was the only thing there was to dae at the time Men who discussed their experiences of engaging in youth violence –commonly, but not exclusively, our Glasgow participants – gave a variety of reasons for this, from boredom to the acquisition of status, mirroring others’ findings . In thesit would be forty, fifty o' us boys hanging aboot a street at night so there'd maybe be four or five girls hanging aboot with us. But if anybody had came doon and tried tae fight with any o' the girls and they had a whole big, massive squad o' us tae fight Peer group networks are a key site for the construction and (re)production of masculinity: young men engage in specific types of (hetero) sexual practice in order to gain social approval from peers . For manSuch performances of violence, as a response to their environment, can be ways to gain power, and so demonstrate gains from adherence to hegemonic masculinity. However, such behaviours are more commonly deemed a ‘protest’ masculinity whereby displays of hyper-masculine behaviours draw upon the hegemonic ideal but fail to reap the full rewards of it and certainly it is not a contestation of hegemony . That saWomen's accounts also conveyed the negotiation of such violent milieus, sometimes evoking strong emotional responses (feeling ‘petrified’), and likened gang violence to a ‘war zone’. However, what stood out across the women's data was their perceptions of high social cohesion in their very localised community, although this tended to be in sororities, with female neighbours and other women to whom they were not related . In such relational accounts, we discerned the living of almost separate lives by women and men across these communities, impacting on how the sexes understood, and communicated with, each other.3.2.2It's just something that I've seen for years, aye [yes]. It's a common thing, aye. You know? You might no' see the physical acts o' violence. You dae [do] sometimes. But you see the way women are. Those who spoke of more personal experiences, including witnessing domestic abuse as a child, mostly described certain incidents.I grew up wae [with] my mum, domestic violence, seen it when I was a child and I don’t like it. I remember being stuck in a room, my bedroom, and I could hear my mum getting battered off all the walls Another man recalled an extreme episode of violence perpetrated on a woman he had been in a relationship with by her ex-partner, which resulted in him later being diagnosed with PTSD [we provide no further details here to preclude deductive disclosure of either party's identity]. One man spoke of an aunt being subject to what has been referred to as ‘intimate terrorism’ – the sustained use of physical and other tactics to exert control  commonly resulted in men expressing wholehearted agreement that women had a right to be treated equally, without the spectre of violence:P2: You can see the pain in her face, you know what I mean?P1: Or it could be that, eh? But then I think she’ll end up selling the book later on, sorta thing, like, telling her story.(Laughing)P1: No, honestly. I’m no’ being funny about it, I’m no’, honestly. It just seems like that kinda thing. However, at times, humour was wielded, in ways that minimized the seriousness of the issue, particularly during focus group discussions, as in this discussion of image 4 (domestic abuse), in which the image of a bruised and cowering woman led to claims of her being a ‘golddigger’:Well, you don’t want tae wake up the next day and then the lassie's like that, ‘What happened last night? Did we have sex? Blah, blah, blah.’ And then she goes away and says ‘I got raped last night.’ Know what I mean? ‘Cause she's too drunk to remember. The group context could have increased embarrassment such that humour may have been used as a way to cover discomfort. However, these were not one-off jokes, smirks, sniggers or laughs. When challenged to explain their laughter, smiles or smirks, a level of back-tracking took place and discussions often, but not always, moved towards a more condoning tone. Men may have been performing in front of each other, or occasionally felt awkward in front of a female researcher, but they were not awkward when stating with certainty that many women ‘cry rape’.Some women also offered similar views, such as Denise : “if she's too drunk she doesnae know what she's doing and in the morning she could forget and obviously wake up next tae him, cry rape”.I was in a relationship where I suffered domestic violence, I put up with it for 4 years and I was ashamed. I felt so ashamed, I couldn’t tell anybody. So I’d need to stay in and I’d need to put foundation over my bruises. And it wasn’t just physical abuse, it was a mental abuse. He made me feel like I was worth, worth nothing. Sometimes I wanted to kill myself it was that bad. The blaming of women for incidents of sexual violence was salient in the data. Irrespective of whether the assignment of blame was nuanced with some ambiguity, or categorically stated from the outset, the caveats and considerations that followed almost always led back to attribution of blame to women. This was particularly marked in men's discussion, while women were more likely to attribute some blame to men. It may be that the women's greater levels of personal experience of gender-based violence affected responses. Indeed, we heard horrific stories of abuse involving stabbings, brutal beatings and sustained coercive control.If I had a’ known, years ago, that you can actually get a boyfriend done with rape, then I would have done it – it's as simple as that. But obviously, it's hard to establish. You’re in a relationship; you’ve got a child to the person.Jade , viewed image 3 and saidI would actually say that if the girl doesnae fit the bill, men, boys, are, they are cruel. They are. I mean, you'll get… they'll call them names or they'll be nasty tae them. Yeah, I think that. It's just the way the world is in society. .Even when presented with some of the more positive views expressed by the men, many women expressed doubts about their veracity, sincerity and honesty, and denied that they were reflective of their own experiences of men in their areas.Of the sixteen women we interviewed, thirteen revealed that they had witnessed and/or been subject to personal experiences of domestic abuse. It is perhaps not unsurprising given such biographies of violence, and negotiating their femininity in relation to such violence, that women held such views towards men. Almost all of these comments were made with a serious tone of voice, with the exception of one focus group in which the women collectively laughed at a man's positive statement read to them. Nevertheless, many wanted such sentiments from men to be true. However, it is also important to note that we also heard women refer to other women as whores, tarts and bitches, and some also blamed victims of sexual violence, thus using language that supports inequalities and the gender order.3.3Creighton and Oliffe recognise the importance of men's peer, partner and parental relationships . Most ofConnor: ‘You don’t want somebody that's gonnae be cleaning hooses and that, no, you want somebody that's independent as well…You don’t want them tae just come hame, cook, clean, and give the bairn [child] their dinners…’Interviewer: So why not?Connor: ‘Cause it's maybe a family if people dae things together.However, we discerned no clear line between family structures and egalitarian/non-egalitarian views. Similarly, a weak association has been found between ‘father absence’ and physical and verbal aggression . Five ma4in places. Masculinities originating from strain and adversity have been explored both theoretically and empirically  to allow us to probe participants’ understandings more fully. Whether men expressed more egalitarian views and rejected all violence towards women, for example, in order to present a socially acceptable masculinity to a female researcher is questionable given only one man of 68 in the study offered consistently egalitarian views. The ways in which women expressed their scepticism about the veracity or sincerity of men's more positive comments seems wholly consistent with the accounts of sometimes sustained and horrific abuse that peppered life stories. In this sense, it is not surprising that many women responded with a smirk or a disbelieving ‘aye, right’. Indeed, our own experience of conducting the fieldwork included interactions that indicated an acceptance and normalisation of problematic attitudes and behaviours.5in places needs to be better understood if sexual health and wellbeing interventions are to achieve more than incremental gains.Drawing upon a social determinants of health framework, we found a complex picture of multi-level influences upon masculinity construction across the life course: gender norms within contexts of poverty are reinforced at a local level to create a gendered environment, which is then taken on in individual behaviours and attitudes. The accounts revealed through this research highlight the depth of the challenge in improving understandings and practices of sexual health, tackling gender norms and helping foster more positive and equal relationships in these contexts. Localised, socio-cultural influences did not appear to enable more egalitarian expressions of masculinity, and were setting out boundaries of acceptable social roles within romantic relationships. For men to attain the positive, intimate relationships that some said they desire, the masculinity norms they embrace need to shift towards respect for gender equality. We strongly recommend interventions occur across all levels of influence, drawing upon evidence from multi-disciplinary and multi-agency approaches, due to the limits of what individual-level interventions can achieve. However, the contexts our participants recalled and described are the real-world ones that policies need to work within; therefore, the importance of experiences


The use of small Unmanned Aircraft Systems  for professional and personal-leisure use is increasing enormously. UAS operate at low altitudes (<500 m) and in any terrain, thus they are susceptible to interact with local fauna, generating a new type of anthropogenic disturbance that has not been systematically evaluated. To address this gap, we performed a review of the existent literature about animals’ responses to UAS flights and conducted a pooled analysis of the data to determine the probability and intensity of the disturbance, and to identify the factors influencing animals’ reactions towards the small aircraft. We found that wildlife reactions depended on both the UAS attributes  and the characteristics of animals themselves . Target-oriented flight patterns, larger UAS sizes, and fuel-powered (noisier) engines evoked the strongest reactions in wildlife. Animals during the non-breeding period and in large groups were more likely to show behavioral reactions to UAS, and birds are more prone to react than other taxa. We discuss the implications of these results in the context of wildlife disturbance and suggest guidelines for conservationists, users and manufacturers to minimize the impact of UAS. In addition, we propose that the legal framework needs to be adapted so that appropriate actions can be undertaken when wildlife is negatively affected by these emergent practices. Recently, Unmanned Aircraft Systems  have experienced a remarkable development. Although originally UAS were mainly used for military purposes, the technological advances and the miniaturization of components have facilitated the emergence of a mass production industry, which has led to decreasing prices and consequently to a proliferation of the use of UAS in civilian applications. Small UAS (Maximum Take-Off Weight [MTOW] of 250 g—25 kg) are nowadays used for a variety of professional tasks, such as remote sensing, photography, precision agriculture, infrastructures inspection, mining, forestry management, and surveillance, among others ,2.Small UAS can provide high spatial and temporal resolution data, which has favored their incorporation to environmental biology in different research and management topics, such as plant and animal ecology –6, wildlThere is abundant literature about the effects of disturbance on wildlife. Animal responses to on-foot human presence , terrestDue to the recent expansion of UAS use, assessment of their impact is currently restricted to isolated ,42 or dest, 2015. One person performed the searches in English and Spanish and another person did the search in German with the same criteria. On a consensual way, we gathered information from scientific articles, dissertations, and reports mentioning the use of small UAS in animal monitoring and ecology related topics. In the search we applied the keywords: ‘unmanned aircraft/aerial system’; ‘remote piloted aircraft system’; ‘UAS’; ‘UAV’; ‘drone’; ‘RPAS’; ‘radio control aircraft’; ‘model aircraft’ and variations of these terms, combined with: ‘wildlife’; ‘survey’; ‘inventory’; ‘impact’; ‘monitoring’ and similar ones. Searches were made mainly using databases  but also complemented through reference harvesting, citation tracking, abstracts in conference programs, and author search . StuFrom retained studies we collected all available information on animals' reaction to UAS. To investigate the determinants of these reactions, we also recorded any characteristics of the flight, aircraft, or the animals concerned, which could be influencing animal responses according to previous literature . Unfreaction caused by the UAS into the following categories: “none” , “alert reaction” , or “active reaction” .In order to standarize the animal behaviors described in the different studies, we classified the size of the aircraft (i.e. largest measure of the vehicle in any dimension), and the engine type as a proxy of noise (i.e. “fuel” being noisier than “electric”). The flight was characterized by the flight pattern followed in the study and by the spatial relation of the aircraft to the animals when the reaction, or lack of it, was observed.UAS-dependent parameters that we were able to record from the publications  were the characteristics of the flight, the flight pattern was summarized in three categories: “target-oriented”, for those that approached the animal either directly or in consecutive vertical-horizontal approaching steps, “lawn-mower”, entailing a flight with systematic turns back and forth at a constant AGL to scan an area, and “hobby”, which included the acrobatic or irregular flight patterns (e.g. leisure flights) typically performed by RC planes. The spatial relation of the aircraft to the animals was measured either by the UAS altitude above ground level AGL (in meters) or by the distance (in meters) to the UAS/RC, depending on what was provided on each study. When a given reaction was mentioned in a study , we recorded the maximum AGL or distance, depending on availability, at which the reaction was observed as the threshold at which the effect started. When the AGL or distance at which the reactions occurred was not given, but they only provided the range of values at which the UAS was flown, we retained consistently the lowest/shortest value to avoid overestimation of the impact. When no reaction (“none”) was observed, we took the lowest/shortest value provided in order to represent how close fauna was approached without causing any disturbance.The species (i.e. lowest taxonomic level available), which was later classified in five animal types according to the expected differences in response to UAS: “flightless birds” (i.e. penguins), “large birds” (flying birds with average body size longer than 70 cm and heavier than 1 kg), “small birds” , “terrestrial mammals” , and “underwater species”  , “medium group” , and “large group” . Animal characteristics not directly provided in the publication were approximated from specialized sources, such as handbooks or field guides .AGL and flight pattern).In order to determine which of the factors recorded are affecting animal responses to UAS, we selected a sequential analysis approach that allowed us to integrate information from all studies, which varied importantly in the type of information given, and to cope with correlated explanatory variables  and absence of reaction . In the second model we focused on the intensity of the reaction. For that, we only considered studies where a reaction was observed. The dependent variable was set to “0” when the response was weak  and “1” when the reaction was strong (“active” reaction including attack and fleeing). In both models, we tested for the effect of flight pattern, engine type, and animal type as explanatory variables. Further variables could not be included due to either correlation issues or missing values.In a first step we pooled all data to examine which factors determined the impact of UAS. For this, we fitted two different logistic mixed models with AGL or distance from the UAS these responses occurred. Note that the AGL and distances used here are conservative and represent the AGL or distances at which some animals start to actively react, but not necessarily the ones at which all observed animals react. We analyzed the data for each flight pattern separately and tested the effect of variables that we could not investigate in the first step. Note that most data in this second-step analyses are referred to birds, except for seven cases of terrestrial mammals for the “target-oriented” and one for the “lawn-mower” pattern. To analyze the data on “target-oriented” and “lawn-mower” patterns respectively, we used the log-transformed AGL as the response variable, which followed a normal distribution. As explanatory variables, we tested for the effect of life history stage and the size of the UAS. Given that sample size was larger for the “lawn-mower” case, we could also include the engine type. For the “hobby” pattern data, usually distance to animals was provided instead of AGL. Thus, we used the log-transformed distance as dependent variable, also following a normal distribution, and were able to test for the effect of life history stage and the level of aggregation as explanatory variables.In a second step we focused only on the cases showing active responses (mostly fleeing) and used mixed models to examine at which reference), same species (species), and same family (family). All models were performed with the software R version 2.15.1 [In all five mixed models we included three random factors to account for the autocorrelation among data within the same study . For all three types of flight patterns, individuals outside the gestation or parental-care periods responded at significant (or near-significant) larger AGL  or distances from the UAS than animals in those breeding stages , producWe detected that fuel engines (e.g. ), generaAs hypothesized, we found substantial differences in occurrence of response to UAS among different animal types. Birds are the most sensitive to UAS, with flightless birds and large birds being more likely to show reactions than smaller ones, probably due to a higher range of detection for larger size species . TerrestWe found that animal-specific characteristics, such as life-history stage and level of aggregation, have an influence on the animals’ response. We found that breeding animals  are on average less inclined to flee than non-breeders, probably due to a reluctance to abandon the progeny (i.e. nest) or to movement difficulties for gravid females ,31. In sWe acknowledge that there might be other important factors affecting animal responses to UAS that we could not explore quantitatively in this study due to incomplete information or correlation with other variables. For example, Vas et al.  and RümmCurrently we have insufficient information on the physiological and long-term consequences of UAS disturbances. However, there are some indications that UAS might cause non-visible effects. For example, Ditmer et al.  found inUAS constitute a potential new source of anthropogenic disturbance, and the extent to which they elicit wildlife reactions depends on UAS and animal related factors. Smaller UAS, electric engines, and lawn-mower flight patterns generally evoke no disturbance at all or only a short disturbance, the latter comparable to those induced by natural predators. More intense reactions are observed in bird species, larger group sizes, and animals in non-breeding stage. AGL or distances at which animals were observed to flee during UAS flights are smaller  than for manned aircraft  and We recommend using UAS only in projects where flights are justified and adopting the following guidelines Click here for additional data file.S2 Text(DOCX)Click here for additional data file.S3 Text(DOCX)Click here for additional data file.S4 Text(DOCX)Click here for additional data file.S5 Text(DOCX)Click here for additional data file.S1 Table(DOCX)Click here for additional data file.S2 Table(DOCX)Click here for additional data file.S1 Checklist(PDF)Click here for additional data file.