2018 Research & Innovation Day Program

A one day showcase of applied research, social innovation, scholarship projects and activities.https://first.fanshawec.ca/cri_cripublications/1005/thumbnail.jp

The context of child sexual abuse, and points of departure

This chapter sets out the context of child sexual abuse and marks out several points of departure from which the rest of the book proceeds. It first defines the concept of child sexual abuse. Then, it reviews the best literature on the prevalence of child sexual abuse both generally, and in specific contexts, around the world. It reviews other important epidemiological features, referring to evidence about gender, age of onset, the relationship between those who inflict abuse and the child, frequency of offending, factors influencing offending, and theories of offending. It notes the common health and behavioural consequences of child sexual abuse. Significantly, it then reviews literature on the common non-disclosure of child sexual abuse by both girls and boys: a critical feature of this context. The chapter than shows that the gravity of child sexual abuse should be and is recognised in international policy and in most social norms. An appropriately nuanced approach is then urged, in recognition of a spectrum of cases that demand appropriately differentiated responses. Finally, the chapter explains that the book also proceeds on the basis that in any civilised society, individuals, institutions and broader social systems and nation states have a deep ethically-based duty to prevent and identify child sexual abuse, and to respond appropriately to it after it occurs. These ethical duties are consistent with bodies of political and public health theory, the Capabilities Approach, and human dignity informing the book’s entire conceptual approach

Coronal Heating as Determined by the Solar Flare Frequency Distribution Obtained by Aggregating Case Studies

Flare frequency distributions represent a key approach to addressing one of the largest problems in solar and stellar physics: determining the mechanism that counter-intuitively heats coronae to temperatures that are orders of magnitude hotter than the corresponding photospheres. It is widely accepted that the magnetic field is responsible for the heating, but there are two competing mechanisms that could explain it: nanoflares or Alfv\'en waves. To date, neither can be directly observed. Nanoflares are, by definition, extremely small, but their aggregate energy release could represent a substantial heating mechanism, presuming they are sufficiently abundant. One way to test this presumption is via the flare frequency distribution, which describes how often flares of various energies occur. If the slope of the power law fitting the flare frequency distribution is above a critical threshold, $\alpha=2$ as established in prior literature, then there should be a sufficient abundance of nanoflares to explain coronal heating. We performed $>$600 case studies of solar flares, made possible by an unprecedented number of data analysts via three semesters of an undergraduate physics laboratory course. This allowed us to include two crucial, but nontrivial, analysis methods: pre-flare baseline subtraction and computation of the flare energy, which requires determining flare start and stop times. We aggregated the results of these analyses into a statistical study to determine that $\alpha = 1.63 \pm 0.03$. This is below the critical threshold, suggesting that Alfv\'en waves are an important driver of coronal heating.Comment: 1,002 authors, 14 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, published by The Astrophysical Journal on 2023-05-09, volume 948, page 7