Systematic child abuse incidents in a children’s residential home in Hong Kong: regulatory and criminal law reform proposals

Purpose – The paper aims to recommend legal and regulatory reforms to better prevent child abuse in childcare institutions in Hong Kong. Design/methodology/approach – A summary of investigation report and news reports are referred to in describing the abuse incidents which occurred in a children’s residential home. Routine Activity Theory (RAT) is used as the framework for identifying the causes. Local and overseas legislation, regulations, case law, and policies are analysed to provide recommendations for reforms. Findings – There are systematic failures such as workload issues, inadequate supervision, and the absence of continuing professional development (CPD) that contributed to the incidents. The regulations governing the operation of childcare centres and criminal laws against child abuse are long overdue for an update in Hong Kong. On the institutional side, this paper recommends enacting regulations that mandate CPD, lower the staff-to-child ratio, and strengthen the Social Welfare Department’s (SWD) supervisory powers over childcare centres. From the criminal law perspective, it is recommended that “reasonable chastisement” be abolished as a defence of corporal punishment, and that there be new offences for failure to report suspected child abuse incidents and causing or allowing the death/serious harm of a child. Originality/value – The child abuse incidents, occurring in a childcare institution, have drawn wide public concern. Reform is required to protect vulnerable children and regain public confidence

Dependence of the emission from tris(8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminum based microcavity on device thickness and the emission layer position

In this work, we present a systematic study of the emission from bilayer organic microcavity light emitting diodes with two metal mirrors. The devices consisting of two organic layers, N,NV-di(naphthalene-1-yl)-N,NV-diphenylbenzidine as the hole transport layer and tris (8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminum as the emitting layer, and two metal mirrors were fabricated and characterized by transmittance, reflectance, photoluminescence, and electroluminescence measurements. The effects of layer thickness, interface position, and the choice of anode(bottom mirror) were investigated. The transmittance and reflectance spectra were modeled using a transfer matrix model, and the optical functions for all the materials used were determined by spectroscopic ellipsometry. The dependence of the photoluminescence and electroluminescence spectra on the device thickness and interface position is discussed

New insights into the genetic etiology of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias

Characterization of the genetic landscape of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related dementias (ADD) provides a unique opportunity for a better understanding of the associated pathophysiological processes. We performed a two-stage genome-wide association study totaling 111,326 clinically diagnosed/'proxy' AD cases and 677,663 controls. We found 75 risk loci, of which 42 were new at the time of analysis. Pathway enrichment analyses confirmed the involvement of amyloid/tau pathways and highlighted microglia implication. Gene prioritization in the new loci identified 31 genes that were suggestive of new genetically associated processes, including the tumor necrosis factor alpha pathway through the linear ubiquitin chain assembly complex. We also built a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future AD/dementia or progression from mild cognitive impairment to AD/dementia. The improvement in prediction led to a 1.6- to 1.9-fold increase in AD risk from the lowest to the highest decile, in addition to effects of age and the APOE ε4 allele

An Experimental comparison study between Single-Axis Tracking and Fixed Photovoltaic Solar Panel Efficiency and Power Output: Case Study in East Coast Malaysia

A sustainable energy supply is required in Malaysia to meet the increasing electricity demand with rapid growing in population and economy. Photovoltaic solar panel is most suitable alternative way to generate electricity in Malaysia where most of its location receives large number of solar radiation throughout the year. However, fixed solar panel is more preferred than tracking panel because it is cost effective. In present work, the power output and efficiency of single-axis tracking solar panel is compared with fixed solar panel by experimentally in East Coast Malaysia. A single-axis tracking panel produces higher power output than fixed panel up to 28W. During this time, the average efficiency of tracking panel was about 66.70% and fixed panel was 39.96%. Hence, the percentage increment on average power output using tracking panel reached up to 66.92% compare to fixed panel during this period. The tracking panel module efficiency was higher than fixed panel for the same period and can reach up to 28.9% at 6.00p.m. In conclusion, single-axis tracking panel is more efficient than fixed panel in premeridian and postmeridian. Thus, it produces higher power output than fixed panel which means it utilize the most of available solar radiation effectively and this will reduce payback period of the initial investment cost

The quality control and pharmaceutical analysis of nonvolatile and volatile bioactive compounds in Chinese herbal medicine by HPLC and GC

Current Pharmaceutical Analysis72133-14

A real-time interactive surgical simulator for catheter navigation

10.1117/12.309454Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering32624-14PSIS

Retinal stretching limits peripheral visual acuity in myopia

AbstractAxial elongation of the myopic eye has the potential to stretch the retina, thereby reducing the sampling density of retinal neurons. Resolution acuity in the peripheral field of normal eyes is known to be sampling-limited, which suggests that retinal stretching in the myopic eye should have a direct effect on resolution acuity everywhere in the visual field except perhaps the fovea, which is usually optically limited. We tested this prediction that neural sampling density is reduced in myopic eyes by measuring resolution acuity for sinusoidal gratings in the fovea plus five peripheral locations in 60 myopic subjects exhibiting a wide range of refractive errors. Control experiments using a detection paradigm to provoke spatial aliasing verified that peripheral resolution was sampling limited. Retinal spatial frequencies of the grating stimulus were computed assuming Knapps’ Law of visual optics, which ensures that retinal image size (in mm) is independent of refractive error when axial myopia is corrected by a spectacle lens located in the anterior focal plane of the eye. Results obtained at every retinal locus showed that resolution acuity declined linearly with magnitude of refractive error. Regression of the population data indicated that approximately 15D of refractive error doubles the spacing between retinal neurons, thereby halving peripheral resolution acuity relative to the emmetropic eye. Several subjects also demonstrated sampling-limited performance in the fovea, which indicated that optical filtering by the eye’s optical system failed to protect the fovea from aliasing artifacts of neural undersampling in these eyes. We conclude that stretching of the retina is a primary cause of reduced spatial resolution of the peripheral field, and occasionally of the fovea, in myopic eyes. Stretching appears to be locally uniform over the central ±15° of visual field but is globally non-uniform since the foveal region appears to stretch more than the globe itself