Building Authentic Partnerships to Reduce Sex Trafficking and Heal and Rebuild Lives, Families, and Communities

  Sex trafficking and sexual exploitation are tragedies affecting people across the United States and throughout our world. Over 34,700 sex trafficking cases in the US were reported to the National Sex Trafficking Hotline between 2007-2017, while globally, the International Labor Organization estimates 4.8 million people are being sexually exploited. In order to try to reduce and eventually eliminate the demand for sex trafficking and exploitation, Breaking Free, a survivor-led agency in Saint Paul, Minnesota began a partnership with Building Peaceful Community, a Minnesota-based violence prevention organization, to transform its former "John School" into "Men Breaking Free." This new approach, started in June 2018, is showing promising, transformative, healing results both with men referred to the program for having been arrested for trying to purchase sex from another human being, as well as with Breaking Free staff, survivors, and community partners. This paper describes the change from John School to Men Breaking Free, results from the first 14 months of this new approach, and potential implications for more effectively reducing demand and reducing sex trafficking, locally, nationally and world-wide.     &nbsp

Oblique impact: Projectile richochet, concomitant ejecta and momentum transfer

Experimental studies of oblique impact indicate that projectile richochet occurs for trajectory angles less than 30 deg and that the richocheted projectile, accompanied by some target material, are ejected at velocities that are a large fraction of the impact velocity. Because the probability of occurrence of oblique impact less than 30 deg on a planetary body is about one out of every four impact events, oblique impacts would seem to be a potential mechanism to provide a source of meteorites from even the largest atmosphere-free planetary bodies. Because the amount of richocheted target material cannot be determined from previous results, additional experiments in the Ames Vertical Gun laboratory were undertaken toward that purpose using pendulums; one to measure momentum of the richocheted projectile and concomitant target ejecta, and a second to measure the momentum transferred from projectile to target. These experiments are briefly discussed

Experimental evidence for non-proportional growth of large craters

Evidence from laboratory impact experiments is indicating that increasing crater aspect ratios (diameter:depth) can result from increasing both velocity and projectile size without invoking unusual impactor conditions. An extensive data base of experimental impact cratering was analyzed for a variety of impactors and impact velocities for low strength targets. These data indicate a change in cratering efficiency that appears to be related to the onset of projectile deformation or rupture. When all projectile types and sizes are considered, one finds two contrasting relationships between crater aspect ratio and impactor parameter. These relationships are briefly considered

Momentum transfer from oblique impacts

A completely satisfactory experiment would be in a low gravity environment where the effect of momentum imparted by ejecta impacting the surface can be removed or controlled from momentum transfer during impact. Preliminary estimates can be made using a ballistic pendulum. Such experiments were initiated at the NASA-Ames Vertical Gun Range in order to examine momentum transfer due to impact vaporization for oblique impacts. The preliminary results indicate that momentum from oblique impacts is very inefficient: decreasing with increasing impact velocity and perhaps size; increasing with decreasing density; and increasing with increasing impact angle. At face value, such results minimize the effect of momentum transfer by grazing impact; the more probable impact angles of 30 deg would have a greater effect, contrary to the commonly held impression

Mexico’s Professional Career Service Law: Governance, Political Culture and Public Administrative Reform

Less than three years after the historic election of President Vicente Fox in July 2000, Mexico passed a professional career service reform law (Ley de Servicio Profesional de Carrera, 2003) for national government ministries. This law, and the linked transformations in governance and political and administrative culture that underlie it, have stimulated public administrative reform at all levels of Mexican government – national, state and local. This paper: (1) presents a conceptual frame for the evolution of public personnel systems in developing countries, (2) describes Mexico’s professional career service law (LSPC) and the historical conditions that led up to it, (3) places the LSPC in the context of underlying changes in Mexican governance, political culture and institutions, and (4) uses selected economic, social, political and administrative indicators to benchmark the impact of the LSPC and these related changes on public administrative reform in Mexico today