Dealing with a problem that doesn't exist?:Professional responses to female perpetrated child sexual abuse

Female involvement in sexual offences against children is more common than is generally thought and has serious implications for the long-term emotional and psychological well-being of victims. Drawing on findings from: a comprehensive review of the literature; an overview of relevant literature and legislation; and an electronic survey of Multi-Agency Public Protection Panels; this paper explores the criminal justice response to female sex offending in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The literature highlights that the way in which professionals identify and respond to child sexual abuse has been shown to be influenced by the gender of the perpetrator. Equally, whilst similar to male sex offending in terms of the intrusiveness and seriousness of the abuse, some aspects of female sex offending can cause particular problems for professionals. The fact that some sexual abuse can be disguised as childcare can make it difficult for professionals to identify this type of abuse whilst high rates of co-offending bring additional difficulties in determining the degree of female involvement and assigning responsibility. The survey findings indicate that risk assessment tools for female sex offenders is a key area requiring development and point towards small inconsistencies in the current practice of risk assessing females in the community. The survey also identifies the lack of treatment programmes for this group of offenders as well as drawing attention to the need for national policies and procedures, staff training and the identification of areas of good practice. Increased discussion and debate about how best to work with this group of sex offenders is also required. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Spin-wave modes in Ni nanorod arrays studied by Brillouin light scattering

Dynamic magnetic properties of arrays of Ni nanorods with a low aspect ratio have been investigated. It has been shown that the spectra of spin-wave resonances localized on nanorods with a low aspect ratio typically feature the presence of zones with high density of states resulting in a characteristic two-peak pattern of Stokes and anti-Stokes lines of magneto-optical (MO) Brillouin light scattering with pronounced Stokes–anti-Stokes (S-AS) asymmetry. A simple theoretical model based on the analysis of the elliptic character of the polarization of the optical wave interacting with a dipole magnetostatic wave has been proposed. It has been shown that the S-AS asymmetry is due entirely to the asymmetry of the MO interaction efficiency with respect to time reversal of the magnetic precession in a magnon.

Exporting Poor Health: The Irish in England

In the twentieth century, the Irish-born population in England has typically been in worse health than both the native population and the Irish population in Ireland, a reversal of the commonly observed healthy migrant effect. Recent birth cohorts living in England and born in Ireland, however, are healthier than the English population. The substantial Irish migrant health penalty arises principally for cohorts born between 1920 and 1960. In this article, we attempt to understand the processes that generated these changing migrant health patterns for Irish migrants to England. Our results suggest a strong role for economic selection in driving the dynamics of health differences between Irish-born migrants and white English populations.

Was Personalverantwortliche über das Verbot der mittelbaren Geschlechtsdiskriminierung wissen sollten

This chapter introduces the uses of indirect discrimination on grounds of sex for human resources management.

Inbreeding uncovers fundamental differences in the genetic load affecting male and female fertility in a butterfly

Inbreeding depression is most pronounced for traits closely associated with fitness. The traditional explanation is that natural selection eliminates deleterious mutations with additive or dominant effects more effectively than recessive mutations, leading to directional dominance for traits subject to strong directional selection. Here we report the unexpected finding that, in the butterfly Bicyclus anynana, male sterility contributes disproportionately to inbreeding depression for fitness (complete sterility in about half the sons from brother-sister matings), while female fertility is insensitive to inbreeding. The contrast between the sexes for functionally equivalent traits is inconsistent with standard selection arguments, and suggests that trait-specific developmental properties and cryptic selection play crucial roles in shaping genetic architecture. There is evidence that spermatogenesis is less developmentally stable than oogenesis, though the unusually high male fertility load in B. anynana additionally suggests the operation of complex selection maintaining male sterility recessives. Analysis of the precise causes of inbreeding depression will be needed to generate a model that reliably explains variation in directional dominance and reconciles the gap between observed and expected genetic loads carried by populations. This challenging evolutionary puzzle should stimulate work on the occurrence and causes of sex differences in fertility load.