The concept of sexual exploitation in legislation relating to persons with intellectual disability

The focus of this paper is on the use of the concept of sexual exploitation in legislation concerning sexual expression by persons with mental impairment, with particular emphasis on persons with intellectual disability. Two main statutory approaches have been adopted in Australian jurisdictions. The first is prohibition of sexual acts between a person with intellectual disability and others who, by virtue of their employment, are in a position of ascendancy over that person. The second is the prohibition of sexually exploitative acts by any person towards a person with an intellectual disability. The major aim in this article is to critically examine these approaches and evaluate them according to the standards of being non-discriminatory, minimally restrictive of rights, and enforceable. It is argued that comprehensively cataloguing sexually exploitative acts is untenable, with the result that prohibition of all sexual exploitation is unenforceable. The alternative, namely legislation that prohibits sexual relations with any person employed to render any kind of service to the intellectually disabled person, would further restrict an already limited number of potential sexual partners. We suggest that a more useful approach would be to prohibit sexual activity in one-on-one relationships whose scope is commonly understood to exclude such acts, while allowing relations between workers or caregivers and the persons to whom they do not directly render services. This mechanism would have to be narrowly defined to have the desired effect of affording protection to vulnerable persons while preserving their right to sexual expression

20th century operation of the Tromsø Ionosonde

A history of ionospheric soundings from Tromsø and its vicinity in northern Norway (69°N , 19°E ) between 1932 and present is given

The radiologic diagnosis of skeletal dysplasias : past, present and future

Skeletal dysplasias have been recognised since recorded history began. The advent of radiography at the beginning of the 20th century and the subsequent introduction of departments of radiology have had tremendous impact and allowed conditions to be identified by their specific radiographic phenotypes. This has been enhanced by the addition of cross-sectional modalities (ultrasound, computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging), which have allowed for prenatal recognition and diagnosis of skeletal dysplasias, and by the recent explosion in identified genes. There are more than 400 recognised skeletal dysplasias, many of which (due to their rarity) the practising clinician (radiologist, paediatrician, geneticist) may never come across. This article provides a historical overview of aids to the radiologic diagnosis of skeletal dysplasias

Designing a Solid Waste Infrastructure Management Model for Integration into a National Infrastructure System-of Systems

Solid waste management is arguably one of the most important municipal services provided by government1. Given the rapid socio-economic changes that are projected to take place in the UK2 it is important that we plan our future waste management capacity to ensure the continuance of this valuable service. The Solid Waste Infrastructure Management System (SWIMS) model was designed to model the current solid waste infrastructure requirements (from collection through treatment and disposal) for an area based on its solid waste arisings. SWIMS allows an area’s waste treatment capacity requirements to be forecast against future socio-economic change to help decision-makers choose the right solid waste infrastructure given their goals, constraints and ideas about future conditions. The modelling of solid waste management systems has been carried out since the 1970s3 and such modelling exercises have been undertaken for numerous different geographical areas around the world4. However, the SWIMS model is unique in that it was designed to also operate within a larger national infrastructure system-of-systems model, including interdependencies with other infrastructure sectors including energy, water and waste water. To achieve such flexibility the SWIMS model was carefully designed using object-oriented programming (OOP) principles. In documenting this model’s design methodology we hope to demonstrate how applying OOP principles enables such models to not only be more flexible and more easily integrated with other modelling efforts, but also more easily understood by system experts and end-users

40Ar/39Ar ages from blueschists of the Jambaló region, Central Cordillera of Colombia : implications on the styles of accretion in the Northern Andes

This paper presents the first argon dating of blueschists from the Jambaló area (Cauca Department) in the Central Cordillera of the Colombian Andes. Step-heating 40Ar/39Ar spectra were obtained for mica from several lenses of blueschists including greenschist facies rocks. The blueschists are mainly constituted of preserved lenticular cores in strongly mylonitic rocks, which resulted from retrometamorphic processes that affected the high pressure rocks during their exhumation. The majority of 40Ar/39Ar data points to metamorphic ages close to 63±3Ma, but some ages are older than 71Ma. These Maastritchtian-Danian ages correspond to the timing of exhumation of the blueschists near metamorphic peak conditions, because the dated paragonite and phengite crystallized during development of the mylonitic foliation. The continuous exhumation of this blueschist belt between 71-63Ma reflects the flow on an accretionary system/subduction channel environment that was interrupted by the collision of an intra-oceanic arc with the continental margin. Regional geological correlations suggest that this arc-continent collision also took place in Ecuador. This collisional event, although synchronous with other arc-continent collisions in the Northern Andes, was apparently not related to the formation of the great Caribbean arc, but to an arc built in the southeastern margin of the Caribbean plate

Evaluation of efficacy of school-based anthelmintic treatments against anaemia in children in the United Republic of Tanzania

Objective: To determine the impact of deworming on anaemia as part of a large-scale school-based anthelmintic treatment programme in the Tanga Region of the United Republic of Tanzania. Methods: Both the reduction in the prevalence of anaemia and the cost per case prevented were taken into consideration. Cross-sectional studies involved parasitological examination and anaemia evaluation before and at 10 months and 15 months after schoolchildren were dewormed. Findings: Baseline studies indicated that the prevalence of anaemia (haemoglobin < 110 g/l) was high (54%) among schoolchildren, particularly those with high intensities of hookworm and schistosomiasis. Attributable fraction analysis suggested that hookworm and schistosomiasis were responsible for 6% and 15% of anaemia cases, respectively. Fifteen months after deworming with albendazole and praziquantel the prevalence of anaemia was reduced by a quarter and that of moderate-to-severe anaemia (haemoglobin <90 g/l) was reduced by nearly a half. The delivery of these anthelmintics through the school system was achieved at the relatively low cost of US$1 per treated child. The cost per anaemia case prevented by deworming schoolchildren was in the range US$ 6 - 8, depending on the haemoglobin threshold used. Conclusions: The results suggested that deworming programmes should be included in public health strategies for the control of anaemia in schoolchildren where there are high prevalences of hookworm and schistosomiasis

Improving Detectors Using Entangling Quantum Copiers

We present a detection scheme which using imperfect detectors, and imperfect quantum copying machines (which entangle the copies), allows one to extract more information from an incoming signal, than with the imperfect detectors alone.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, REVTeX, to be published in Phys. Rev.

Factors determining the home ranges of pet cats: A meta-analysis

Roaming pet cats Felis catus are a significant conservation issue because they may hunt, harass and compete with wildlife; spread disease, interbreed with cats in feral populations, and hybridise with wild native felids. Studies of the roaming behaviour of pet cats are often hampered by modest sample sizes and variability between cats, limiting statistical significance of the findings and their usefulness in recommending measures to discourage roaming. We resolved these difficulties through meta-analyses of 25 studies from 10 countries involving 469 pet cats to assess the influence of sex, whether a cat was desexed and housing density on roaming. A complementary linear mixed models approach used data on 311 individual animals from 22 studies and was also able to assess the influence of age and husbandry practices on roaming. This restricted sample gave greater statistical power than the meta-analyses. Meta-analyses found that: male pet cats had larger home ranges than females, desexing did not influence home range, and cats had larger home ranges when housing densities were low. The linear mixed models supported those results. They also indicated that animals ≥ 8 years old had smaller home ranges than younger cats. Cats fed regularly, provided with veterinary care and socialised with humans had similar home ranges to cats living in association with households but not provided for in some of these ways. Short of confinement, there is no simple measure owners can adopt to reduce roaming by their cats and prevent the associated environmental problems

Universal geometric approach to uncertainty, entropy and information

It is shown that for any ensemble, whether classical or quantum, continuous or discrete, there is only one measure of the "volume" of the ensemble that is compatible with several basic geometric postulates. This volume measure is thus a preferred and universal choice for characterising the inherent spread, dispersion, localisation, etc, of the ensemble. Remarkably, this unique "ensemble volume" is a simple function of the ensemble entropy, and hence provides a new geometric characterisation of the latter quantity. Applications include unified, volume-based derivations of the Holevo and Shannon bounds in quantum and classical information theory; a precise geometric interpretation of thermodynamic entropy for equilibrium ensembles; a geometric derivation of semi-classical uncertainty relations; a new means for defining classical and quantum localization for arbitrary evolution processes; a geometric interpretation of relative entropy; and a new proposed definition for the spot-size of an optical beam. Advantages of the ensemble volume over other measures of localization (root-mean-square deviation, Renyi entropies, and inverse participation ratio) are discussed.Comment: Latex, 38 pages + 2 figures; p(\alpha)->1/|T| in Eq. (72) [Eq. (A10) of published version