Pourquoi pas la prévention du crime ? Une perspective canadienne

Cet article offre un aperçu des travaux scientifiques portant sur les programmes efficaces de prévention du crime et sur leur mise en oeuvre. Les évaluations scientifiques de projets de prévention du crime qui abordent des facteurs de risque montrent fréquemment qu’ils peuvent réduire la criminalité et que, souvent, ils sont plus efficaces à le faire que les réponses habituelles de la justice pénale. Les organisations intergouvernementales s’entendent sur les étapes-clés qui sont nécessaires pour en arriver à mobiliser les organismes concernés dans la lutte contre ces facteurs de risque. Malgré les recommandations de comités parlementaires et d’un nombre croissant d’experts, la prévention du crime n’est pas encore arrivée à jouer le rôle prépondérant qui pourrait être le sien afin de réduire plus efficacement les taux de criminalité au Canada. Toutefois, la politique récente annoncée par la province de l’Alberta suggère quelques avenues par lesquelles cette résistance pourrait éventuellement être surmontée.This paper gives an overview of the literature on effective crime prevention and its implementation. Scientific evaluations of crime prevention projects that tackle risk factors often reveal that they reduce crime and are often more efficient at doing so than standard criminal justice responses. Inter-governmental organizations agree on the critical steps necessary to mobilise relevant agencies to tackle such risk factors. Despite recommendations by parliamentary committees and a growing number of experts, effective crime prevention has not achieved the prominent role that it could occupy in order to more effectively reduce rates of crime in Canada. However, the recent policy announcement by the province of Alberta may offer some ways in which this resistance might eventually be overcome.Este artículo ofrece un panorama de textos científicos relativos a programas de prevención del crimen eficaces y a su puesta en práctica. Las evaluaciones científicas de proyectos de prevención del crimen que abordan los factores de riesgo muestran con frecuencia que pueden reducir la criminalidad y que a menudo son más eficaces que las respuestas del sistema penal. Las organizaciones intergubernamentales coinciden sobre las etapas clave que son necesarias para movilizar a los organismos pertinentes en la lucha contra dichos factores de riesgo. Pese a las recomendaciones de comités parlamentarios y de un número creciente de expertos, la prevención del crimen no desempeña aún el papel preponderante que podría tener a fin de reducir de manera más eficaz la tasa de criminalidad en Canadá. Sin embargo, la reciente política anunciada por la provincia de Alberta sugiere algunas vías a través de las cuales dicha resistencia podría ser superada eventualmente

Motivations of professional strippers

This research studied 470 different strippers across the globe through a content analysis of messages exchanged in a stripper-oriented discussion group. Stripping literature has primarily focused on the external rewards of stripping and has found that the primary motivation for engaging in stripping is the economic gain. This research revealed that there are other motivations to stripping beside just economic. Nonmonetary motivations were significantly important to the strippers; and were discussed more than monetary motivations. Significant unexpected findings included the fact that strippers feel that their job is similar to service type jobs. Multivariate analyses revealed that strippers who discuss non-economic motivations also tended to express economic motivations. Strippers who did hold monetary motivations were very unlikely to participate in any extra sexual favors or go to any illegal extent to make money. This is also contrary to the commonly reported interpretation that strippers are motivated only by economic rewards

Closing the health service gap: Métis women and solutions for culturally-safe health services

Métis peoples, while comprising over a third of the total Indigenous population in Canada, experience major gaps in health services that are culturally-safe. This is problematic given Métis peoples experience severe disparities in health determinants and outcomes compared to the non-Indigenous Canadian population. At the same time, Métis are unlikely to engage in health services that do not value their cultural identities, often utilising mainstream options.Traditionally, Métis women were central to the health and well-being of their communities. However, due to decades of colonial legislation and land displacement, female narratives have been silenced, and Métis identities have been fractured. This has resulted in having direct implications on Métis peoples current health and access to health services. Solutions to filling the Métis health service gap may lie in the all too often unacknowledged or missing voices of Métis women.  Given these contexts, this commentary aims to generate critical discussion on the culturally-safe health care gap for Métis peoples in Canada. It does this by calling on policymakers, health care workers, and researchers alike to engage with Métis women regarding the health of Métis communities, and finding solutions towards identifying and implementing pathways to culturally-safe healthcare

Non-contact photoacoustic tomography and ultrasonography for tissue imaging

The detection of ultrasound in photoacoustic tomography (PAT) and ultrasonography (US) usually relies on ultrasonic transducers in contact with the biological tissue. This is a major drawback for important potential applications such as surgery and small animal imaging. Here we report the use of remote optical detection, as used in industrial laser-ultrasonics, to detect ultrasound in biological tissues. This strategy enables non-contact implementation of PAT and US without exceeding laser exposure safety limits. The method uses suitably shaped laser pulses and a confocal Fabry-Perot interferometer in differential configuration to reach quantum-limited sensitivity. Endogenous and exogenous inclusions exhibiting optical and acoustic contrasts were detected ex vivo in chicken breast and calf brain specimens. Inclusions down to 0.5 mm in size were detected at depths well exceeding 1 cm. The method could significantly expand the scope of applications of PAT and US in biomedical imaging

Noncontacting laser Ultrasonic Generation and Detection at the Surface of Molten Metal

The use of pulsed lasers for noncontacting generation of ultrasound in solid materials is expanding rapidly [1], as is optical detection of ultrasound [2]. The noncontacting nature of laser ultrasonics is opening new areas of research where physical contact of transducers to the material under study is impossible or inadvisable. One example is in the titanium melting industry. Currently, vacuum arc remelting (VAR) is used to produce much of the nation’s titanium from Kroll process sponge. However, the process provides only limited means of removing oxynitride and carbide inclusions from the melt, which can become stress intensifiers in the ingot. VAR of titanium can be replaced with plasma or electron beam hearth melting, both of which have the potential to eliminate these stress-intensifying inclusions by increasing the residence time of the molten titanium in the hearth so that the oxynitrides dissolve and the carbides settle out of the melt. This process is so important that industry is starting to replace VAR with hearth melting for titanium to be used in critical applications such as rotating turbine parts. The new process has other advantages as well. Processing steps will be eliminated because sponge will no longer need to be consolidated into electrodes and fewer melting steps will be required. The improved quality of the melted product will result in less scrap, and the ability to recycle scrap into high value products will also be a major improvement. The most important aspect, though, is the capability to produce superior ingots with the potential of allowing turbine engines to be lighter and more efficient. However, industry has identified a critical requirement for these hearth melting processes: measurement of the volume of molten metal to ensure sufficient residence time in the melt. Ultrasonic sensing is one possible way for locating the interface between molten and solid metal so that the depth of the molten metal, the volume, and thus the residence time may be determined. Because the titanium hearth operates at high temperatures (1650°C), contacting transducers with buffer rods are not practical; it is also a potential source of melt contamination. Therefore, a totally noncontacting sensor system is needed. This sensing technology would also be widely applicable to other metals, including other reactive and refractory metals, superalloys, and steel.</p

Laser-Ultrasonics for Industrial Applications

Increased use of advanced materials and more stringent requirements for process and quality control are creating new needs for nondestructive inspection techniques. Ultrasonics is a widely used technique for defect detection in various materials and is being developed, and even in some cases actually applied for microstructural characterization. However, ultrasonics in its present state of implementation in industry suffers several limitations. Probing materials at elevated temperature is made difficult by fluid coupling problems. Inspecting specimens of complex shapes requires sophisticated robotic manipulators to properly orient the transducer. Furthermore, since the technique relies on a piezoelectric resonator to generate and receive ultrasound, it does not have the adequate bandwidth or sensitivity for some applications

Adaptive Heterodyne Interferometer for Ultrasonic NDE

For NDE applications, the remote generation and detection of ultrasound by laser present many advantages over traditional piezo-electric based methods. They provide nonintrusive, point generation and detection with a large frequency bandwidth. For example, it can be used on surfaces of complex geometry and elevated temperature on a production line. Ultrasound generation using absorption of pulse laser energy is well known. Various interferometers for optical detection of ultrasound have been described in the literature [1]. In order for the interferometer to be attractive for NDE applications, the interferometer must also be able to operate, without loss of sensitivity, in an environment where large amplitude low frequency vibrations are generally present. Furthermore, the interferometer must be able to achieve a good sensitivity on rough surfaces. The laser light reflected on a rough surface is characterized by speckles. The random intensity and phase distributions of these speckles require the use of interferometer with large étendue. In addition, the possibility of using an optical fiber in the path of the probe beam without loss in the interferometer sensitivity is highly desirable for applications where access to the specimen is limited. The confocal Fabry-Pérot interferometer [1] has been shown to be well adapted for NDE applications. Unfortunately, since the elimination of the optical side-bands is based on the optical filtering action of the confocal cavity, it is sensitive mostly to high frequencies for a reasonable cavity size, typically above 1MHz for a 1 meter cavity length

Improved resolution and signal-to-noise ratio in laser-ultrasonics by SAFT processing.

Laser-ultrasonics is an emerging nondestructive technique using lasers for the generation and detection of ultrasound which presents numerous advantages for industrial inspection. In this paper, the problem of detection by laser-ultrasonics of small defects within a material is addressed. Experimental results obtained with laser-ultrasonics are processed using the Synthetic Aperture Focusing Technique (SAFT), yielding improved flaw detectability and spatial resolution. Experiments have been performed on an aluminum sample with a contoured back surface and two flat-bottom holes. Practical interest of coupling SAFT to laser-ultrasonics is also discussed

Laser Ultrasonic Thermoelastic/Ablation Generation with Laser Interferometric Detection in Graphite/Polymer Composites

Ultrasonic signals have been generated and detected in graphite/polymer composites by optical methods. A Doppler interferometric technique was used for detection. The output voltage of this type of interferometer is proportional to the surface velocity of a sample area which is illuminated by cw laser light. Ultrasonic signals were generated by thermoelastic and ablation processes which occur as a consequence of laser pulses incident on the opposite surface of the sample. The evolution of the magnitude and shape of the detected signals was measured as a function of the pulse energy of the generating laser. Low-energy laser pulses generated ultrasound without causing obvious surface damage. At higher energies surface damage was observable in post inspection but could also be detected by observing (through protective goggles) bright flashes near the illuminated area. The energy at which these processes first occur is qualitatively referred to as the ablation threshold. Changes in the observed waveform were evident at energies above the ablation threshold. The higher-energy waveforms were found to consist of a superposition of a thermoelastic component and an ablatic component, whose relative magnitudes changed with laser power. A delay in the initiation of the ablatic wave relative to the thermoelastic wave was observed to be of the order of 0.3 μs, consistent with observations in pure polymer. [1] Photoelectric detection measurements of the ablation plume also showed a clear threshold and a time scale for growth of the ablation products with a characteristic time scale on the order of 0.3 μs