Sex-related differences in chromatic sensitivity

Generally women are believed to be more discriminating than men in the use of colour names and this is often taken to imply superior colour vision. However, if both X-chromosome linked colour deficient males (~8%) and females (<1%) as well as heterozygote female carriers (~15%) are excluded from comparisons, then differences between men and women in red-green colour discrimination have been reported as not being significant (e.g., Pickford, 1944; Hood et al., 2006). We re-examined this question by assessing the performance of 150 males and 150 females on the Colour Assessment and Diagnosis (CAD) test (Rodriguez-Carmona, 2005). This is a sensitive test that yields small colour detection thresholds. The test employs direction-specific, moving, chromatic stimuli embedded in a background of random, dynamic, luminance contrast noise. A four-alternative, forced-choice procedure is employed to measure the subject’s thresholds for detection of colour signals in 16 directions in colour space, while ensuring that the subject cannot make use of any residual luminance contrast signals. In addition, we measured the Rayleigh anomaloscope matches in a subgroup of 111 males and 114 females. All the age-matched males (30.8 ± 9.7) and females (26.7 ± 8.8) had normal colour vision as diagnosed by a battery of conventional colour vision tests. Females with known colour deficient relatives were excluded from the study. Comparisons between the male and female groups revealed no significant differences in anomaloscope midpoints (p=0.709), but a significant difference in matching ranges (p=0.040); females on average tended to have a larger mean range (4.11) than males (3.75). Females also had significantly higher CAD thresholds than males along the red-green (p=0.0004), but not along the yellow-blue discrimination axis. The differences between males and females in red-green discrimination may be related to the heterozygosity in X-linked cone photopigment expression common among females

Solvi Sogner, (Ed.), Fact, Fiction and Forensic Evidence : the Potential of Judicial Sources for Historical Research in the Early Modern Period

In October 1996 the Department of History at the university of Oslo organised an Anglo-Norse seminar aimed at bringing together researchers on early modern court records. Fact, Fiction and Forensic Evidence is a collection of the papers delivered at that seminar. These papers demonstrate a wide variety of approaches to the subject, which is in any case a very wide one : but there is sufficient overlapping of themes and perspectives to provide intellectual coherence, and the collection is an e..

Benoît Garnot (ed.), L'Infrajudiciaire du Moyen-Âge à l'époque contemporaine : Actes du colloque de Dijon 5-6 Octobre 1995

Although the practices it comprehends are well known to Anglophone historians, the term ’l'infrajudiciaire’ has no exact equivalent in English, and is perhaps best translated for the purposes of this review as ’infrajudicial practices' ; that is to say, the practices by which disputes which have or might normally be resolved through the judicial process are settled by practices operating within or in parallel to the normal machinery and practices of the law. Almost every student of medieval o..

The Justicing Notebook (1750-64) of Edmund Tew, rector of Boldon, ed. Gwenda Morgan and Peter Rushton

One of the more peculiar forms of documentation created by the English criminal justice and local administrative systems of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the justice’s notebook. The justices of the peace, those local gentry and other notables upon whose efforts as amateur administrators so much depended, were encouraged to keep notebooks in which they would record their activities. A few of these notebooks survive, and the best of them provide useful and at times fascinating in..

Eva Österberg and Sølvi Bauge Sogner (eds.), People meet the Law: Control and Conflict – Handling in the Courts. The Nordic Countries in the post – Reformation and pre – industrial Period

This important and illuminating collection of essays is the result of a Nordic Research Project, funded by the Joint Committee of the Nordic Research Councils for the Humanities. The Joint Committee can rest assured that its support for this project was well founded. The collection brings together a number of contributions which demonstrate both a willingness to engage with archival materials and an ability to confront broader conceptual and theoretical issues. The collection begins with an i..

Yves Cartuyvels, D'où vient le code pénal?: une approche généalogique des premiers codes pénaux absolutistes au XVIIIe siècle / Michel Porret, (Ed.), Beccaria et la culture juridique des Lumières

It is encouraging to see how work currently in progress is opening up our understanding of the significance and operation of the law in Ancien Régime Europe, a trend which is illustrated by the two books, each of them well researched and well thought out works which add much to grasp of such matters, under review here. Both of them, of course, deal with fairly familiar topics : everyone who has studied the history of European law will have heard of Beccaria, while the law codes created by enl..

Benoît Garnot (ed.), L'Infrajudiciaire du Moyen-Âge à l'époque contemporaine : Actes du colloque de Dijon 5-6 Octobre 1995

Although the practices it comprehends are well known to Anglophone historians, the term ’l'infrajudiciaire’ has no exact equivalent in English, and is perhaps best translated for the purposes of this review as ’infrajudicial practices' ; that is to say, the practices by which disputes which have or might normally be resolved through the judicial process are settled by practices operating within or in parallel to the normal machinery and practices of the law. Almost every student of medieval o..

Eva Österberg and Sølvi Bauge Sogner (eds.), People meet the Law: Control and Conflict – Handling in the Courts. The Nordic Countries in the post – Reformation and pre – industrial Period

This important and illuminating collection of essays is the result of a Nordic Research Project, funded by the Joint Committee of the Nordic Research Councils for the Humanities. The Joint Committee can rest assured that its support for this project was well founded. The collection brings together a number of contributions which demonstrate both a willingness to engage with archival materials and an ability to confront broader conceptual and theoretical issues. The collection begins with an i..

Malcolm Gaskill, Crime and mentalities in early modern England

Malcolm Gaskill is one of a number of young British historians who have studied crime and related matters in the early modern period, and is the author of a number of incisive articles in the field. The publication of this book, in effect a revised and expanded version of his Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, marks an important addition to the literature on the subject. Gaskill concentrates on three aspects of serious crime: witchcraft, coining, and homicide. In all three areas, he is anxious to distan..

Solvi Sogner, (Ed.), Fact, Fiction and Forensic Evidence : the Potential of Judicial Sources for Historical Research in the Early Modern Period

In October 1996 the Department of History at the university of Oslo organised an Anglo-Norse seminar aimed at bringing together researchers on early modern court records. Fact, Fiction and Forensic Evidence is a collection of the papers delivered at that seminar. These papers demonstrate a wide variety of approaches to the subject, which is in any case a very wide one : but there is sufficient overlapping of themes and perspectives to provide intellectual coherence, and the collection is an e..