Long-acting reversible contraceptives for adolescent females: a review of current best practices.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: This review will address the need for adolescent contraception, compare the benefits of long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARC) with non-LARC methods, discuss unique barriers to LARC for adolescents, and provide physicians with latest recommendations for counseling adolescents on contraception. RECENT FINDINGS: The United States has the highest adolescent birth rate of any developed country at 18.8 births per 1000 females aged 15-19 years. This rate is more than double the rate in France (9/1000) and Spain (9/1000), and nearly 1.6× the rate in the United Kingdom (12/1000). As the most effective and user-independent methods of contraception, LARC have the potential to notably lower the adolescent birth rate. However, despite higher rates of patient satisfaction and continuation with LARC, adolescent LARC usage remains low. Just 4.3% of all American females aged 15-19 years who reported using some form of contraception between 2006 and 2010 used an intrauterine device (IUD) or subdermal implant, compared with 96% who used the male condom and 56% who used the oral contraceptive pill (OCP). Barriers to adolescent LARC usage include patient and provider misinformation, high upfront costs, and issues of confidentiality and consent. SUMMARY: LARC methods are recommended by most reproductive and adolescent healthcare organizations as the most effective contraceptive options for adolescent females. Pediatricians should provide their adolescent patients with up-to-date information on all options for contraception, including risks and benefits. It is important for them to remove their own personal biases when counseling patients and work to reduce barriers to LARC for adolescent females.

Flexibility and non-destructive conductivity measurements of Ag nanowire based transparent conductive films via terahertz time domain spectroscopy.

Highly stable and flexible transparent electrodes are fabricated based on silver nanowires (AgNWs) on both polyethylene-terephthalate (PET) and polyimide (PI) substrates. Terahertz time domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) was utilized to probe AgNW films while bended with a radius 5 mm to discover conductivity of bended films which was further analyzed through Drude-Smith model. AgNW films experience little degradation in conductivity (<3%) before, after, and during 1000 bending cycles. Highly stable AgNW flexible electrodes have broad applications in flexible optoelectronic and electronic devices. THz-TDS is an effective technique to investigate the electrical properties of the bended and flattened conducting films in a nondestructive manner.

A Facile Electrochemical Reduction Method for Improving Photocatalytic Performance of α-Fe2O3 Photoanode for Solar Water Splitting.

Electrochemical reduction method is used for the first time to significantly improve the photo-electrochemical performance of α-Fe2O3 photoanode prepared on fluorine-doped tin oxide substrates by spin-coating aqueous solution of Fe(NO3)3 followed by thermal annealing in air. Photocurrent density of α-Fe2O3 thin film photoanode can be enhanced 25 times by partially reducing the oxide film to form more conductive Fe3O4 (magnetite). Fe3O4 helps facilitate efficient charge transport and collection from the top α-Fe2O3 layer upon light absorption and charge separation to yield enhanced photocurrent density. The optimal enhancement can be obtained for <50 nm films because of the short charge transport distance for the α-Fe2O3 layer. Thick α-Fe2O3 films require more charge and overpotential than thinner films to achieve limited enhancement because of the sluggish charge transport over a longer distance to oxidize water. Electrochemical reduction of α-Fe2O3 in unbuffered pH-neutral solution yields much higher but unstable photocurrent enhancement because of the increase in local pH value accompanied by proton reduction at a hematite surface.