275 research outputs found
Mandatory Minimum Sentences and Women with Disabilities
This article examines the issue of mandatory minimum sentencing from the unique perspective of women with disabilities. Concerns about the discriminatory application of mandatory minimum sentences are outlined and analyzed from a gendered disability perspective, as are concerns about the devaluation of the lives of persons with disabilities through the support of reduced sentences for those convicted of murdering persons with disabilities. This examination makes it clear that the different concerns of women with disabilities are difficult to reconcile, as they mandate contradictory positions with respect to the possible abolition of the sentencing practice. The challenges inherent in the development of a position that addresses all of the concerns of women with disabilities relating to the practice of mandatory minimum sentencing, and its possible abolition, are analyzed. The author concludes that if the practice of mandatory minimum sentencing is abolished, it must be replaced with a sentencing mechanism designed to ensure that sentencing discretion is exercised in accordance with Charter values, in order to protect the equality rights of all persons, including women with disabilities
Mandatory Minimum Sentences and Women with Disabilities
This article examines the issue of mandatory minimum sentencing from the unique perspective of women with disabilities. Concerns about the discriminatory application of mandatory minimum sentences are outlined and analyzed from a gendered disability perspective, as are concerns about the devaluation of the lives of persons with disabilities through the support of reduced sentences for those convicted of murdering persons with disabilities. This examination makes it clear that the different concerns of women with disabilities are difficult to reconcile, as they mandate contradictory positions with respect to the possible abolition of the sentencing practice. The challenges inherent in the development of a position that addresses all of the concerns of women with disabilities relating to the practice of mandatory minimum sentencing, and its possible abolition, are analyzed. The author concludes that if the practice of mandatory minimum sentencing is abolished, it must be replaced with a sentencing mechanism designed to ensure that sentencing discretion is exercised in accordance with Charter values, in order to protect the equality rights of all persons, including women with disabilities
La tierra baldĂa: significado y multiplicidad
La “basura pétrea ... / un montón de imágenes rotas” de T.S. Eliot se caracteriza a menudo
tanto por ser el tema de La tierra baldĂa como por la tĂ©cnica que “conecta” aspectos de la
modernidad. Al leer el poema desde la tradiciĂłn lĂrica inglesa del siglo xxi admiramos el
modo en que dicha teselación crea un conjunto literario. ¿Qué lecciones se pueden extraer
para la poética contemporánea, en una época caracterizada posiblemente menos por la
ruptura de significados que por la multiplicaciĂłn de los mismos: en las mĂşltiples fuentes
de autoridad que ofrecen las polĂticas de identidad o el periodismo ciudadano; en los discursos
pĂşblicos que compiten entre sĂ; en las identidades ramificadas que un individuo
puede adquirir al ocupar una serie de roles sociales o emocionales? Si el impulso de la poesĂa
lĂrica es unir todos estos aspectos buscando cierta coherencia, una voz unificadora crea con
demasiada frecuencia una perspectiva unificadora. ÂżEs posible que La tierra baldĂa ofrezca
un contraejemplo?T.S. Eliot’s “stony rubbish ... / A heap of broken images” is often characterised as both The
Waste Land’s theme, and the technique it employs to “connect” aspects of modernity. To
read the poem from within the British twenty first century lyric tradition is to admire the
way that such tessellation creates a literary whole. What lessons can be learnt for contemporary
poetics, in an era characterised arguably less by a breakdown in meaning than by
a multiplication of meanings: in the multiplying sources of authority offered by identity
politics, or citizen journalism; in competing public discourses; in the ramifying identities
one individual may acquire as they occupy a number of social or emotional roles? If the
impulse of lyric poetry is to “sing” these into a kind of coherence, a unifying voice too often
creates unifying perspective, is it possible that The Waste Land offers a counterexample
Engineering simulations for cancer systems biology
Computer simulation can be used to inform in vivo and in vitro experimentation, enabling rapid, low-cost hypothesis generation and directing experimental design in order to test those hypotheses. In this way, in silico models become a scientific instrument for investigation, and so should be developed to high standards, be carefully calibrated and their findings presented in such that they may be reproduced. Here, we outline a framework that supports developing simulations as scientific instruments, and we select cancer systems biology as an exemplar domain, with a particular focus on cellular signalling models. We consider the challenges of lack of data, incomplete knowledge and modelling in the context of a rapidly changing knowledge base. Our framework comprises a process to clearly separate scientific and engineering concerns in model and simulation development, and an argumentation approach to documenting models for rigorous way of recording assumptions and knowledge gaps. We propose interactive, dynamic visualisation tools to enable the biological community to interact with cellular signalling models directly for experimental design. There is a mismatch in scale between these cellular models and tissue structures that are affected by tumours, and bridging this gap requires substantial computational resource. We present concurrent programming as a technology to link scales without losing important details through model simplification. We discuss the value of combining this technology, interactive visualisation, argumentation and model separation to support development of multi-scale models that represent biologically plausible cells arranged in biologically plausible structures that model cell behaviour, interactions and response to therapeutic interventions
Are women with pathogenic variants in PMS2 and MSH6 really at high lifetime risk of breast cancer?
We read with some concern the recent article in Genetics in Medicine reporting a high lifetime risk of breast cancer in pathogenic variant (PV) carriers for PMS2 and MSH6 (ref. 1). Although the reported odds ratios for breast cancer were given as MSH6 (2.11; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.56–2.86) and PMS2 (2.92; 95% CI = 2.17–3.92) the cumulative risks to age 60 were given as 31.1% (95% CI, 21.9–40.7) and 37.7% (95% CI, 27.5–47.8) respectively. These are equivalent to UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) defined high lifetime risks. These two analyses are inaccurate given that the risk of breast cancer to the age of 60 years in the UK and United States is 5–6%. Therefore, if the risks from incidence ratios and Kaplan–Meier were equivalent, the odds ratios would be over 6-fold for PMS2 and >5-fold for MSH6
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