Child protection and family support practice in Ireland: a contribution to present debates from a historical perspective

This paper takes the opportunity of the current child welfare system change in Ireland to promote the value of learning from history to better understand the interface between family support and child protection. The paper draws from the histories of child protection and family support to illuminate the commonalities and differences that have come to define the two practices. Using findings from two historical studies – one on family support and the other on child protection – the paper demonstrates the unique features and the many integrated elements of family support and child protection in Ireland. It is argued that students and practitioners need to be provided with a stronger sense of the historical developments that have shaped the present. This will enable comprehension of the complex context within which current relations between ‘protection’ and ‘support’ are negotiated and help to avoid operating in a vacuum of a present only viewpoint. The paper concludes with reference to the need for students and practitioners to navigate the complex relationship between family support and child protection at practice, policy and organizational level through a well‐informed knowledge of the historical as well as the present context.     

Evaluation of Research Ethics Committees: Criteria for the Ethical Quality of the Review Process

Repeatedly, adequacy, performance and quality of Ethics Committees that oversee medical research trials are being discussed. Although they play a crucial role in reviewing medical research and protecting human subjects, it is far from clear to what degree they fulfill the task they have been assigned to. This eventuates in the call for an evaluation of their activity and, in some places, led to the establishment of accreditation schemes. At the same time, IRBs have become subject of detailed legislation in the process of the ongoing global juridification of medical research. Unsurprisingly, there is a tendency to understand the evaluation of RECs as a question of controlling their legal compliance. This paper discusses the need for a quality evaluation of IRBs from an ethical point of view and, by systematically reviewing the major ethical guidelines for IRBs, proposes a system of criteria that should orientate any evaluation of IRBs.     

Urban aquatic ecosystems: Habitat loss and depletion of native macrophyte diversity during the 20th century in four Swiss cities

Urban areas are among the most affected by human activities. In Europe, urbanization has essentially occurred since the end of the 19th century. However, the influence of this dramatic process on aquatic ecosystems has rarely been quantified and analyzed using historical data. In this study, we investigate the evolution of the hydrological system and native aquatic macrophytes in urban areas between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 21st century. Four urban areas in Switzerland were chosen for the analyses, Zürich, Basel, Lausanne and Fribourg, and we analyzed the changes in aquatic plant diversity based on the historical and recent floristic data available for the same areas and the same time periods. Our results show that a significant proportion (～30 %) of aquatic habitats has disappeared from the investigated locales during the last 130 years and that the extinction rate of the aquatic plant species is notably higher in the studied cities (28 %) than in Switzerland as a whole (2 %). Thus, between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 21st centuries, urban development in Swiss cities has prompted a degradation of aquatic habitats that resulted in a significant reduction of the aquatic biodiversity. However, our study shows that urban areas still have the capacity to shelter a large diversity of aquatic organisms, including some of the most threatened species. Thus, it is important to integrate urban areas in the conservation strategies for these species.     

Enabling high-dimensional range queries using <Emphasis Type="Italic">k</Emphasis>NN indexing techniques: approaches and empirical results

Many modern search applications are high-dimensional and depend on efficient orthogonal range queries. These applications span web-based and scientific needs as well as uses for data mining. Although k-nearest neighbor queries are becoming increasingly common due to mobile and geospatial applications, orthogonal range queries in high-dimensional data remain extremely important and relevant. For efficient querying, data is typically stored in an index optimized for either kNN or range queries. This can be problematic when data is optimized for kNN retrieval and a user needs a range query or vice versa. Here, we address the issue of using a kNN-based index for range queries, as well as outline the general computational geometry problem of adapting these systems to range queries. We refer to these methods as space-based decompositions and provide a straightforward heuristic for this problem. Using iDistance as our applied kNN indexing technique, we also develop an optimal (data-based) algorithm designed specifically for its indexing scheme. We compare this method to the suggested naïve approach using real world datasets. The data-based algorithm consistently performs better.     

The experience of gender dysphoria for pre‐pubescent children and their families: a review of the literature

In recent years, the experience of gender dysphoria has gained public prominence through an explosion of sensationalized interest in the popular media. However, childhood gender dysphoria remains poorly understood and both parents and children often find themselves having to educate professionals around them. This not only creates a sense of disconnect between family and professionals, but also means that social workers can often be unaware of the myriad of competing perspectives that seek to explain gender variance. This review of the literature seeks to provide interested social workers with an overview of gender dysphoria, current research in the field and theoretical paradigms, with a view to promoting understanding and better practice with families in this little understood field.     

RE-CANONIZING MARX

In this article, I underline the continuing intellectual force and rhetorical sophistication of The Communist Manifesto. Both in terms of its explanatory and normative strategy, and in terms of the way it handles the discursive balance between monologue and dialogue, there are, remarkably, still fresh things to say about the way Marx's thought works in this text. The favourable reception given to the Manifesto on its sesqui-centenary is also due to the increased awareness in today's audience of the apparently uncontrollable character of global capitalism, and the deep inequalities and uncertainties it continues to produce. Renewed appreciation of Marx's discursive quality, together with the new-found resonance of aspects of his substantive theories, raises again the question of Marx's status in cultural studies and sociological theory. This study discusses Marx in the light of the whole question of canonicity, and argues that Marx's re-canonization, if that is what is happening, is inevitably double-edged. On the one hand, it is indeed salutary to return to Marx after a prolonged phase of reflexivity, while at the same time the shift towards questions of discourse and affect in the human sciences has itself been responsible in part for sensitizing us to the distinctive effect of Marx's words. If the return of Marx properly radicalizes once more our sense of the point and practice of the human sciences, his legacy is nevertheless unlikely to regain exclusive authority among the plurality of sources for critique and action.     

Polygenic Influences on Pubertal Timing and Tempo and Depressive Symptoms in Boys and Girls

This study used polygenic scoring (PGS) to test whether puberty‐related genes were correlated with depressive symptoms, and whether there were indirect effects through pubertal maturation. The sample included 8,795 adolescents from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (measures of puberty drawn ages 8–17 years; of depressive symptoms at age 16.5 years). The PGS (derived from a genome‐wide meta‐analysis of later age at menarche) predicted boys’ and girls’ later pubertal timing, boys’ slower gonadal development, and girls’ faster breast development. Earlier perceived breast development timing predicted more depressive symptoms in girls. Findings support shared genetic underpinnings for boys’ and girls' puberty, contributing to multiple pubertal phenotypes with differences in how these genetic variants affect boys' and girls' development.