PresenceAbsence: An R Package for Presence Absence Analysis

The PresenceAbsence package for R provides a set of functions useful when evaluating the results of presence-absence analysis, for example, models of species distribution or the analysis of diagnostic tests. The package provides a toolkit for selecting the optimal threshold for translating a probability surface into presence-absence maps specifically tailored to their intended use. The package includes functions for calculating threshold dependent measures such as confusion matrices, percent correctly classified (PCC), sensitivity, specificity, and Kappa, and produces plots of each measure as the threshold is varied. It also includes functions to plot the Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC) curve and calculates the associated area under the curve (AUC), a threshold independent measure of model quality. Finally, the package computes optimal thresholds by multiple criteria, and plots these optimized thresholds on the graphs.

Female genital mutilation

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is a procedure involving partial or total removal of genitalia for cultural or non-therapeutic purposes. It is practiced for economic, traditional and religious reasons in different countries around the globe. What policies and legislation have been used to prevent the practice and how Australia deals with it is among some of her migrant population is the purpose of this study. The study shows that the practice of FGM in other countries must be viewed with caution, within the context of social, economic and traditional structures of these societies. Faced with the dilemma of one's right against the horm of the tradition, western societies has now embarked on preventative measures through education and changes in behaviour

The EEC Convention on Jurisdiction and Enforcement of Civil and Commercial Judgments

As the result of a Protocol to the EEC Convention on Jurisdiction and Enforcement of Civil and Commercial Judgments, the European Court of Justice was express given jurisdiction to interpret the Convention\u27s provisions. The European Court, in interpreting the Convention, has adopted Community solutions and common Community law definitions. In addition, the European Court has narrowly construed exceptions to the Convention\u27s basic principles. The Court has also attempted to guarantee equality of treatment. In this article, Mrs. Freeman examines the European Court\u27s application of these principles in light of the Convention\u27s purpose and structure

Sex Differences in Aripiprazole Sensitization from Adolescence to Adulthood

The present study investigated the potential sex differences in repeated aripiprazole (ARI) treatment-induced behavioral sensitization from adolescence to adulthood, and to determine whether ARI sensitization can be transferred to olanzapine (OLZ) and/or clozapine (CLZ) using the conditioned avoidance response (CAR) and phencyclidine-induced (PCP) hyperlocomotion tests of antipsychotic activity. Male and female Sprague-Dawley adolescence rats (P46) were first treated with ARI (10 mg/kg) for 5 consecutive days (P46–50) and tested for avoidance response and ARI-induced inhibition of PCP-induced hyperlocomotion. After they became adults (\u3eP68), rats were challenged with ARI (1.5 mg/kg, sc) (P70), OLZ (0.5 mg/kg, sc; P73), CLZ (5 mg/kg, sc; P76) and again with ARI (1.5 mg/kg, sc; P84) and tested for avoidance response and ARI-induced inhibition of PCP-induced hyperlocomotion again. During the drug treatment period in adolescence, repeated ARI treatment suppressed avoidance response, inhibited the PCP-induced hyperlocomotion, and these effects were progressively increased across the 5-day period in both males and females, confirming the induction of ARI sensitization. On the challenge days, rats previously treated with ARI in adolescence also had significantly lower avoidance and lower PCP-induced hyperlocomotion than the previous vehicle rats, confirming the expression of ARI sensitization and its persistence into adulthood. More importantly, female rats made significantly more avoidances than males in both ARI and vehicle groups, indicating higher sensitivity to the acute and long-term effects of ARI. Further, on the OLZ and CLZ challenge days, prior ARI treatment seemed to increase sensitivity to OLZ exposure, however, this increase was not significant. Similarly, rats also showed an ARI sensitization to OLZ and CLZ on challenge days. Collectively, results from this experiment demonstrated a sex difference in response to ARI and enhanced inhibition of PCP-induced hyperlocomotion in animals that were pretreated with ARI as compared to controls