Legal Backlash: the Expanding Liabilty of Women Who Fail to Protect Their Childrem from Their Male Counter Parts Abuse

Although child abuse has existed for centuries in the United States, an increase in the number of reported incidents in recent years has spurred legislative and judicial response, primarily in the form of failure-to protect laws.2 Failure-to-protect laws impose liability upon parents, who have a duty to protect their child, when they fail to prevent abuse of the child at the hands of a known offender.3 Child abuse statutes generally appear in two forms: commission statutes,4 which are used to convict those who actually inflict abuse (active abusers), and omission statutes,S which criminalize the passive conduct of those who expose a child to a risk of maltreatment or fail to protect or care for a child when they have an affirmative duty to do so (passive perpetrators).6 A court\u27s inquiry when applying an omission statute focuses on whether the passive perpetrator had notice of ongoing abuse and allowed the abuse to continue. A passive perpetrator\u27s liability for child abuse or homicide, if the abuse is the direct cause of the child\u27s death, is predicated upon a finding of several factors: (1) a legal duty to protect the child; 7 (2) actual or constructive notice of the foreseeability of abuse; (3) the child\u27s exposure to abuse; and (4) failure to prevent such abuse. Parents can fulfill their legal duty to protect their children in the face of abuse by reporting the abuse to authorities, removing the child from the abusive situation, or ejecting the abuser from the child\u27s home. Statutes which criminalize passive conduct aim to protect children\u27s best interests by compelling parents to remove their children from abusive environments

A climate-based approach to the restoration of fire-dependent ecosystems

Recurrent fires are integral to the function of many ecosystems worldwide. The management of fire-frequented ecosystems requires the application of fire at the appropriate frequency and seasonally, but establishing the natural fire regime for an ecosystem can be problematic. Historical records of fires are often not available, and surrogates for past fires may not exist. We suggest that the relationship between climate and fire can provide an alternative means for inferring past fire regimes in some ecosystems. © 2005 Society for Ecological Restoration International

Decoupling natural and anthropogenic fire regimes: A case study in Everglades National Park, Florida

Anthropogenic fire regimes obscure natural fire regimes, reducing the ability to manage fire-frequented habitats ecologically. To address this problem, we attempted to decouple natural and anthropogenic fire regimes by comparing them to seasonal climatic patterns and landscape characteristics in Everglades National Park (1948-1999). Of the total area burned by lightning fires, 57% resulted from ignitions seven days within onset of the wet season, 11% from ignitions starting 7-21 days before onset, and 36% from ignitions \u3e 7 days after onset. In contrast, of the total area burned by incendiary fires, 89% resulted from ignitions \u3e 7 days before onset, and 40% resulted from ignitions \u3e 35 days before onset. Moreover, ∼100% of the total area burned by prescribed fires resulted from ignitions \u3e 7 days after onset. Lightning fires occurred most frequently in wet seasonal savanna that had limited accessibility to humans; incendiary fires were most frequent in wet seasonal savanna that had ready accessibility to humans. In addition, 35% of the total area burned by incendiary fires in areas of limited accessibility occurred when incendiary fires spread from readily accessible areas. We propose that, because incendiary fires occurred at the end of the dry season, they burned drier fuels and burned more intensely than lightning fires, which generally occurred following the first rains of the wet season. Incendiary fires thus should be more likely to burn lower elevation areas that normally hinder fire spread. Finally, by occurring later in the wet season, prescribed fires may have burned patchily and insufficiently intensely to achieve restoration goals. Decoupling anthropogenic and natural fire regimes using seasonal climate patterns and landscape characteristics leads us to propose strategies to guide fire management in the park

Towards a catalog of spreadsheet smells

Spreadsheets are considered to be the most widely used programming language in the world, and reports have shown that 90% of real-world spreadsheets contain errors. In this work, we try to identify spreadsheet smells, a concept adapted from software, which consists of a surface indication that usually corresponds to a deeper problem. Our smells have been integrated in a tool, and were computed for a large spreadsheet repository. Finally, the analysis of the results we obtained led to the refinement of our initial catalog

Locomotor kinematics of the manus and pes in dinocephalian therapsids reconstructed from three-dimensional morphology of footprints from Gansfontein, South Africa

The Gansfontein paleosurface from the Late PermianAbrahamskraal Formation (Beaufort Group, TapinocephalusAssemblage Zone) near Fraserburg, South Africa, preserves several vertebratetrackways. Among the best-preserved trackways is a series of several footprintsthat have been attributed to a single dinocephalian therapsid walking acrossthe surface. This attribution is based on both the large size of the footprints(25 cm in breadth), and the reduction of digit I in the manus and pes. However,a curious feature of this trackway is that, in contrast to the straight digitsindicated by skeletal specimens of dinocephalians, the digit impressions from theprints are curved so that their tips point medially. To test hypotheses aboutthe locomotor kinematics of the dinocephalian manus and pes that produced thesecurved-digit prints, we constructed contour maps that depicted how the depth ofan impression varied within individual prints. In our initial analysis, we constructedthe maps by pouring milk into the prints in successive increments of 2 mm inheight, and tracing the perimeters of filled areas on translucent paper fixedto the paleosurface by tape. We have also used surface scanners to generatedepth profiles with finer scale resolution. These analyses indicated that thedistal tips of digit impressions are among the shallowest portions of theprints, a pattern consistent with outward rotation of the hand and foot duringstance. In addition, heel impressions are lacking in the prints, indicatingthat the animal that made them may have used digitigrade foot posture. Spacing betweenleft and right prints is small, less than the breadth of individual prints.However, the presence of foot rotation during stance suggests thatdinocephalians used sprawling, rather than parasagittal limb posture. Closespacing of footprints likely resulted from a combination of lateral bending ofthe body and significant cranio-caudal limb excursion, rather than increasedadduction of the limbs under the body.Fil: Blob, Richard W.. Clemson University; Estados UnidosFil: Wilson, Jeffrey A.. University of Michigan; Estados UnidosFil: Marsicano, Claudia Alicia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Estudios Andinos "Don Pablo Groeber". Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Estudios Andinos "Don Pablo Groeber"; ArgentinaFil: Panko, Laura J.. Northwestern University; Estados UnidosFil: Smith, Roger M.. Iziko South African Museum Cape Town; Sudáfrica77th Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate PaleontologyCanadáSociety of Vertebrate Paleontolog

The Effect of Simulated Lunar Dust on the Absorptivity, Emissivity, and Operating Temperature on AZ-93 and Ag/FEP Thermal Control Surfaces

JSC-1AF lunar simulant has been applied to AZ-93 and AgFEP thermal control surfaces on aluminum or composite substrates in a simulated lunar environment. The temperature of these surfaces was monitored as they were heated with a solar simulator and cooled in a 30 K coldbox. Thermal modeling was used to determine the absorptivity ( ) and emissivity ( ) of the thermal control surfaces in both their clean and dusted states. Then, a known amount of power was applied to the samples while in the coldbox and the steady state temperatures measured. It was found that even a submonolayer of simulated lunar dust can significantly degrade the performance of both white paint and second-surface mirror type thermal control surfaces under these conditions. Contrary to earlier studies, dust was found to affect as well as . Dust lowered the emissivity by as much as 16 percent in the case of AZ-93, and raised it by as much as 11 percent in the case of AgFEP. The degradation of thermal control surface by dust as measured by / rose linearly regardless of the thermal control coating or substrate, and extrapolated to degradation by a factor 3 at full coverage by dust. Submonolayer coatings of dust were found to not significantly change the steady state temperature at which a shadowed thermal control surface will radiate

Optical absorption edge and luminescence in phosphorous-implanted Cu₆PS₅X (X = I, Br) single crystals

Implantation of Cu6PS5X (X = I, Br) single crystals was carried out for different values of fluence with using P⁺ ions; the energy of ions was 150 keV. For the implanted Cu₆PS₅X crystals, the structural studies were performed using the scanning electron microscopy technique and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. Spectrometric studies of optical absorption edge and luminescence were carried out within the temperature range 77…320 K. The influence of ionic implantation on luminescence spectra, parameters of Urbach absorption edge, parameters of exciton-phonon interaction as well as ordering-disordering processes in Cu₆PS₅X (X = I, Br) superionic conductors have been studied