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Sport, children's rights and violence prevention: A source book on global issues and local programmes
Copyright @ Brunel University, 2012In line with the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), UNICEF has been a strong advocate of children’s right to leisure and play. It recognizes the intrinsic value sports have in promoting the child’s health and well-being, education and development, and social inclusion, including by fostering the culture of tolerance and peace. Every child has the right to play safely, in an enabling and protective environment. However, although under-researched, evidence shows that children have been subjected to various forms of violence, abuse and exploitation ranging from undue pressure to achieve high performance, beatings and physical punishment, sexual harassment and assaults, to child labour and trafficking. The violence that children experience can lead to lifelong consequences for their health and development. It can also have devastating consequences.
Article 19 of the CRC asserts that all children have the right to be protected from violence, calling on State Parties to take all appropriate measures for the protection of children, including while in the care others. Measures include strengthening child protection systems; increasing awareness and strengthening the protective role of parents, teachers, coaches and others caregivers as well as the media; developing and implementing standards for the protection and well-being of children in sports; implementing sport for development and other international programmes and initiatives; and improving data collection and research to develop an evidence-base of “what works”. Above all, the protection of young athletes starts by ensuring that those around children regard them in a way that is appropriate to their needs and that is respectful of their rights - as children first and athletes second.
This book provides an expanded set of evidence and resources to back up the 2010 report from the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre in Florence, Italy - Protecting Children from Violence in Sport: A review with a focus on industrialized countries. I am delighted to provide a Foreword as it complements the ongoing work being done by UNICEF in development and humanitarian environments to make sport a safer place for children
The Diurnal Variation of the Wimp Detection Event Rates in Directional Experiments
The recent WMAP data have confirmed that exotic dark matter together with the
vacuum energy (cosmological constant) dominate in the flat Universe. Modern
particle theories naturally provide viable cold dark matter candidates with
masses in the GeV-TeV region. Supersymmetry provides the lightest
supersymmetric particle (LSP), theories in extra dimensions supply the lightest
Kaluza-Klein particle (LKP) etc. The nature of dark matter can only be
unraveled only by its direct detection in the laboratory. All such candidates
will be called WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles). In any case the
direct dark matter search, which amounts to detecting the recoiling nucleus,
following its collision with WIMP, is central to particle physics and
cosmology. In this work we briefly review the theoretical elements relevant to
the direct dark matter detection experiments, paying particular attention to
directional experiments. i.e experiments in which, not only the energy but the
direction of the recoiling nucleus is observed. Since the direction of
observation is fixed with respect the the earth, while the Earth is rotating
around its axes, the directional experiment will sample different parts of the
sky at different times during the day. So, since the event rates are different
when looking at different parts of the sky, the observed signal in such
experiments will exhibit very interesting and characteristic periodic diurnal
variation.Comment: 21 pages, 20 figure
Species-specific differences in follicular antral sizes result from diffusion-based limitations on the thickness of the granulosa cell layer
The size of mature oocytes is similar across mammalian species, yet the size
of ovarian follicles increases with species size, with some ovarian follicles
reaching diameters more than 1000-fold the size of the enclosed oocyte. Here we
show that the different follicular sizes can be explained with diffusion-based
limitations on the thickness of the hormone-secreting granulosa layer. By
analysing published data on human follicular growth and granulosa cell
expansion during follicular maturation we find that the 4-fold increase of the
antral follicle diameter is entirely driven by an increase in the follicular
fluid volume, while the thickness of the surrounding granulosa layer remains
constant at about 45+/-10 mkm. Based on the measured kinetic constants, the
model reveals that the observed fall in the gonadotropin concentration from
peripheral blood circulation to the follicular antrum is a result of
sequestration in the granulosa. The model further shows that as a result of
sequestration, an increased granulosa thickness cannot substantially increase
estradiol production but rather deprives the oocyte from gonadotropins. Larger
animals (with a larger blood volume) require more estradiol as produced by the
ovaries to downregulate FSH-secretion in the pituitary. Larger follicle
diameters result in larger follicle surface areas for constant granulosa layer
thickness. The reported increase in follicular surface area in larger species
indeed correlates linearly both with species mass and with the predicted
increase in estradiol output. In summary, we propose a structural role for the
antrum in that it determines the volume of the granulosa layer and thus the
level of estrogen production.Comment: Mol Hum Repr 201
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