Difficulties with age estimation of internet images of south‐east Asian girls

Community paediatricians are increasingly asked to provide expert opinion on internet child pornography related to ‘sex tourism’, mostly in south‐east Asian countries. The girls involved are often prepubertal, and the main legal question is to establish whether they are under 13 years of age. This paper provides a review of the literature related to this question. Although there are limited data of age of menarche from the countries at risk of ‘sex tourism’, one recent study from the Philippines showed that the mean age of menarche was similar to the mean age of British girls born between 1982 and 1986. There are no data in the above countries on the early pubertal changes in breast development, but studies from India and China suggested that these might be more prolonged than for British girls. In particular, the interval between B2 stage (early pubertal breast development) and menarche was nearly 3 years in these developing countries, compared with 2 years for the British girls. Maternal malnutrition and girls small for gestational age at birth resulted in an earlier menarche, while chronic malnutrition, severe enough to cause stunting in preschool years, caused a delay in menarche. Taking into account information from the existing studies, we estimated that 97.5% of south‐east Asian girls will show pubertal changes of B2 stage by the age of 13.7 years. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Temporal Aspects of Facial Displays in Person and Expression Perception: The Effects of Smile Dynamics,Head-tilt,and Gender

Recent work suggests that temporal aspects of facial displays influence the perception of the perceived authenticity of a smile. In the present research, the impact of temporal aspects of smiles on person and expression perception was explored in combination with head-tilt and gender. One hundred participants were shown different types of smiles (slow versus fast onset) in combination with three forms of head-tilt (none, left, or right) exhibited by six computer-generated male and female encoders. The encoders were rated for perceived attractiveness, trustworthiness, dominance, and the smiles were rated for flirtatiousness and authenticity. Slow onset smiles led to more positive evaluations of the encoder and the smiles. Judgments were also significantly influenced by head-tilt and participant and encoder gender, demonstrating the combined effect of all three variables on expression and person perception.

A Review of: “Handbook of the Evolution of Human Sexuality. Edited by Michael Kauth.”

This study explores the role of the hostess club culture in the creation and maintenance of masculinity in Taiwan. The article focuses on flower drinking (the consumption of alcohol in bars, often integrated with prostitution), which is a common practice in Taiwan. Data were obtained from 58 in-depth interviews with men from a variety of occupations and social backgrounds (mean age = 38.50, SD = 11.00) and 73 questionnaires administered to soldiers (mean age = 21.00, SD = 1.10). Findings indicated that demonstration of skill at flower drinking and facility with the related social etiquette are important channels for male bonding that were central to the mid- to upper-class participants' professional development. Flower drinking also provided a method of discriminating men from other men through their choices of why and where to go and how to behave while there. Specific ways that Taiwanese masculinity differs from Western and from Japanese masculinity, and support for the continuing relevance of the traditional Confucian ideal of masculinity, wen-wu, are discussed.     

The Psychological Effects of Considering a Move into Residential Care: An Age-Related Study

This study employed a cross-sectional design to examine the psychological effects of considering a move into supported housing. It sought to explore the wistful “prefactual/counterfactual” evaluation of “if only” scenarios. A Time, Environment, Motivation, Personality, and Outcome (TEMPO) model was applied to investigate whether individuals moving closer in time to a prefactual scenario (a hypothetical vignette about two older adults facing a move toward residential care) expressed increased prefactual/counterfactual statements. Additional hypotheses explored the impact of personality and outcome. Thirty-three older adults (65 and older) and 33 adults (aged 18 to 64) were asked to write what could be better or worse about each scenario. The older-adult group generated a significantly higher number of counterfactual/prefactual statements. Effect sizes were medium-large. The implications of these findings, particularly concerning the emotional impact, were explored.     

Emotional Knowledge for Child Welfare Practice: Rediscovering Our Roots

Child protection is arguably in a state of crises, with indications that current approaches to practice are failing to protect children and support families. A variety of competing approaches have been put forward to address the current inadequacies, such as evidence‐based social work and antioppressive approaches to social work. These approaches to practice promote rational and technical analyses of social work with little attention to what lies beneath the surface in the encounter between social worker and client. In this paper we consider the value of psychoanalytic concepts for child protection practice. Notions of ambivalence, transference, and counter‐transference might offer a much needed source of insight for child protection practice that might help to address some of what has been lost in the field over the last few decades.     

Simultaneous Pitman closeness of progressively type-II right-censored order statistics to population quantiles

In this work, we extend prior results concerning the simultaneous Pitman closeness of order statistics (OS) to population quantiles. By considering progressively type-II right-censored samples, we derive expressions for the simultaneous closeness probabilities of the progressively censored OS to population quantiles. Explicit expressions are deduced for the cases when the underlying distribution has bounded and unbounded supports. Illustrations are provided for the cases of exponential, uniform and normal distributions for various progressive type-II right-censoring schemes and different quantiles. Finally, an extension to the case of generalized OS is outlined.