Mandatory Reporting and the Difficulties Identifying and Responding to Risk of Severe Neglect: A Response Requiring a Rethink

Neglect of children is a significant social issue worldwide and is typically the most frequently reported form of maltreatment in Western nations, with its severe forms sometimes resulting in significant illness and disablement or death. Yet, paradoxically, it remains ‘neglected’ and largely in the shadow of physical and sexual abuse, often being viewed as less serious despite the real-life consequences of its insidious and compounding nature and the lasting damage it causes to intergenerational familial relationships and the life outcomes of those affected. This chapter explores the many complex forms of child neglect, its causes and impacts and the strategies to prevent it. In particular, a critical standpoint is taken in analysing the rationale and merits of mandatory reporting of neglect and their effects, systemically and for children.

Legislation Concerning Reporting of Child Sexual Abuse and Child Trafficking in India: A Closer Look

The increasing rate of child sexual abuse and child trafficking has become a serious concern for national and international policy makers. Because these acts are criminal, result in serious harms to the child, and occur in closed scenarios where the situation is concealed, it is very important for people who become aware of the acts to report the incidents to the appropriate authority. Reporting of incidents could help provide justice to the victim and penalize the perpetrators. In addition, it would help us to understand the nature and magnitude of the problem. The objective of this chapter is first to review the Indian legislation concerning mandatory reporting of child abuse and neglect, and second to consider the potential for mandatory reporting of two categories of child maltreatment in particular in the Indian context: sexual abuse and child trafficking.

Thinking critically about rural crime: The influence of William J. Chambliss

William J. Chambliss (Bill) is well-known for his path-breaking theories of lawmaking and for his innovative research on state-organized crime. However, rarely discussed is the fact that his study of the original vagrancy laws marked the birth of rural critical criminology. The main objective of this article is twofold: (1) to show how Bill helped shape contemporary rural critical criminology and (2) to provide suggestions for further critical theoretical and empirical work on rural crime and social control.

A reassessment of energy and GDP relationship: The case of Australia

This paper investigates the long- and short-run relationships between energy consumption and economic growth in Australia using the bound testing and the ARDL approach. The analytical framework utilized in this paper includes both production and demand side models and a unified model comprising both production and demand side variables. The energy-GDP relationships are investigated at aggregate as well as several disaggregated energy categories, such as coal, oil, gas and electricity. The possibilities of one or more structural break(s) in the data series are examined by applying the recent advances in techniques. We find that the results of the cointegration tests could be affected by the structural break(s) in the data. It is, therefore, crucial to incorporate the information on structural break(s) in the subsequent modelling and inferences. Moreover, neither the production side nor the demand side framework alone can provide sufficient information to draw an ultimate conclusion on the cointegration and causal direction between energy and output. When alternative frameworks and structural break(s) in time series are explored properly, strong evidence of a bidirectional relationship between energy and output can be observed. The finding is true at both the aggregate and the disaggregate levels of energy consumption.

Constructing the ideal victim in the United States of America's annual trafficking in persons reports

Human trafficking as a global phenomenon continues to elude accurate quantitative measure, and remains a controversial policy domain significantly influenced by anecdotal evidence. Drawing on the policy analysis framework of Bacchi (1999; 2007) the problem representation of trafficking through narratives can be considered a direct antecedent of contemporary anti-human trafficking policy. This article explores the construction of human trafficking within the Trafficking in Persons Reports, published annually by the United States of America’s Department of State. An examination of the victim and offender narratives contained within the reports published between 2001 and 2012 demonstrates that human trafficking is predominantly represented as a crime committed by ideal offenders against idealized victims, consistent with Christie’s (1986) landmark criteria of ideal victimization. This representation of an ideal prototype has the potential to inform policy that diverts focus from the causative role of global socioeconomic injustice towards criminal justice policies targeting individual offenders.

Dimethyl sulfide and other biogenic volatile organic compound emissions from branching coral and reef seawater: Potential sources of secondary aerosol over the Great Barrier Reef

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the headspace of bubble chambers containing branches of live coral in filtered reef seawater were analysed using gas chromatography with mass spectrometry (GC-MS). When the coral released mucus it was a source of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and isoprene; however, these VOCs were not emitted to the chamber headspace from mucus-free coral. This finding, which suggests that coral is an intermittent source of DMS and isoprene, was supported by the observation of occasional large pulses of atmospheric DMS (DMSa) over Heron Island reef on the southern Great Barrier Reef (GBR), Australia, in the austral winter. The highest DMSa pulse (320 ppt) was three orders of magnitude less than the DMS mixing ratio (460 ppb) measured in the headspace of a dynamically purged bubble chamber containing a mucus-coated branch of Acropora aspera indicating that coral reefs can be strong point sources of DMSa. Static headspace GC-MS analysis of coral fragments identified mainly DMS and seven other minor reduced sulfur compounds including dimethyl disulfide, methyl mercaptan, and carbon disulfide, while coral reef seawater was an indicated source of methylene chloride, acetone, and methyl ethyl ketone. The VOCs emitted by coral and reef seawater are capable of producing new atmospheric particles < 15 nm diameter as observed at Heron Island reef. DMS and isoprene are known to play a role in low-level cloud formation, so aerosol precursors such as these could influence regional climate through a sea surface temperature regulation mechanism hypothesized to operate over the GBR.

Corporate board and corporate social responsibility assurance: Evidence from China

This paper investigates the association between board characteristics and the company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) assurance decision in China. By examining 2054 firm-years of Chinese listed companies with CSR reports from 2008 to 2012, we find that firms with a large board size, more female directors, and separation of CEO and chairman positions are more likely to engage in CSR assurance. Gender diversity also influences the CSR assurance provider choice. However, board independence and overseas background of the CEO do not affect the CSR assurance decision. Inconsistent with our prediction, firms with foreign directors are less likely to engage in voluntary CSR assurance. In summary, this research provides in-depth insights into the determinants of Chinese firms’ voluntary CSR assurance.

Thymidine phosphorylase in cancer; Enemy or friend?

Thymidine phosphorylase (TP) is a nucleoside metabolism enzyme that plays an important role in the pyrimidine pathway.TP catalyzes the conversion of thymidine to thymine and 2-deoxy-α-D-ribose-1-phosphate (dRib-1-P). Although this reaction is reversible, the main metabolic function of TP is catabolic. TP is identical to the angiogenic factor platelet-derived endothelial-cell growth factor (PD-ECGF). TP is overexpressed in several human cancers in response to cellular stressful conditions like hypoxia, acidosis, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. TP has been shown to promote tumor angiogenesis, invasion, metastasis, evasion of the immune-response and resistance to apoptosis. Some of the biological effects of TP are dependent on its enzymatic activity, while others are mediated through cytokines like interleukin 10 (IL-10), basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) and tumour necrosis factor α (TNFα). Interestingly, TP also plays a role in cancer treatment through its role in the conversion of the oral fluoropyrimidine capecitabine into its active form 5-FU. TP is a predictive marker for fluoropyrimidine response. Given its various biological functions in cancer progression, TP is a promising target in cancer treatment. Further translational research is required in this area.

Busy auditors, ethical behavior, and discretionary accruals quality in Malaysia

The required professional and ethical pronouncements of accountants mean that auditors need to be competent and exercise due care and skill in the performance of their audits. In this study, we examine what happens when auditors take on more clients than they should, thus raising doubts about their ability to maintain competence and audit quality. Using 2803 observations of Malaysian companies from 2010 to 2013, we find that auditors with multiple clients are associated with lower earnings quality, proxied by total accruals and discretionary accruals. Our results demonstrate that associating client firms’ reported discretionary accruals with individual auditors, rather than their firms or offices, is important in determining audit quality. Moreover, we demonstrate that the disclosure of auditors’ signatures on their reports is useful for assessing auditor quality at the individual level, thus contributing to the debate on the usefulness of having auditor identities on reports.

Spectral unmixing with estimated adaptive endmember index using Extended Support Vector Machine

The most difficult operation in the flood inundation mapping using optical flood images is to separate fully inundated areas from the ‘wet’ areas where trees and houses are partly covered by water. This can be referred as a typical problem the presence of mixed pixels in the images. A number of automatic information extraction image classification algorithms have been developed over the years for flood mapping using optical remote sensing images. Most classification algorithms generally, help in selecting a pixel in a particular class label with the greatest likelihood. However, these hard classification methods often fail to generate a reliable flood inundation mapping because the presence of mixed pixels in the images. To solve the mixed pixel problem advanced image processing techniques are adopted and Linear Spectral unmixing method is one of the most popular soft classification technique used for mixed pixel analysis. The good performance of linear spectral unmixing depends on two important issues, those are, the method of selecting endmembers and the method to model the endmembers for unmixing. This paper presents an improvement in the adaptive selection of endmember subset for each pixel in spectral unmixing method for reliable flood mapping. Using a fixed set of endmembers for spectral unmixing all pixels in an entire image might cause over estimation of the endmember spectra residing in a mixed pixel and hence cause reducing the performance level of spectral unmixing. Compared to this, application of estimated adaptive subset of endmembers for each pixel can decrease the residual error in unmixing results and provide a reliable output. In this current paper, it has also been proved that this proposed method can improve the accuracy of conventional linear unmixing methods and also easy to apply. Three different linear spectral unmixing methods were applied to test the improvement in unmixing results. Experiments were conducted in three different sets of Landsat-5 TM images of three different flood events in Australia to examine the method on different flooding conditions and achieved satisfactory outcomes in flood mapping.