The effects of common medications on volumetric phallometry

Abstract

Phallometry is a physiological measure of sexual response widely used for the assessment of paedophilia among sexual offenders. Although many medications decrease penile response sufficiently to interfere with sexual intercourse, it is unknown to what extent such medications might interfere with phallometric testing. In the current study, we utilized a naturalistic convenience sample of 1078 men who attended a clinic for assessment of sexual preferences, mostly related to sexual offence convictions. In the present analyses, we quantified the differences in penile response during phallometric assessment associated with taking a range of common medications. Participants on medication typically showed less penile output than participants not taking medications; however, differences were largely accounted for by age rather than by medication status. Though most medications were associated with decreases in penile responsivity during volumetric phallometric testing, such changes were small in absolute terms and appeared to be associated with ageing rather than with the medications themselves.     

Politics and Mass Media: A Response to John Street

This short article is a response to an overview of research on media-political relations written by John Street and published in the Political Studies Review in 2005. The usefulness of the exercise is recognised but issue is taken both with the organising concepts of Street's account and the way he excludes a significant body of research from his assessment, raising questions about his characterisation of the field under scrutiny. A case is made for assessing the tensions and the varieties of work in this broad area by the use of other categories, including the play-off between media-centric and politics-centric accounts, the continuing strand of work informed by critical theory and the sheer variety of the topics upon which researchers have chosen to focus as a way into a broader agenda. The importance of work engaging with issues at an international level is emphasised together with the value of new comparative studies. In conclusion, the state of the area is judged more positively than in Street's assessment. Questions of power are argued to be the principal point at issue in comparing research approaches and the need for further explicitness and clarity here is noted.     

The Politics of Russia's Partial Democracy

This review looks at the failure of Russia to consolidate democracy over the past decade. Most explanations of this failure concentrate on the role of institutions, particularly the influence of the presidency. The design of Russian democracy has undermined democratic governance and lessened the chance of democratic consolidation in the future by weakening two preconditions for democratic maturity in Russia, the development of a common legal and political space through the improvement of the federal system and the construction of a national market economy. The review concludes by asking whether, and in what dimensions, Russia's partial democratic system can be stable.     

Reification and Theoreticism in the Study of Globalisation,Imperialism and Hegemony: Response to Kiely,Pozo-Martin and Valladão

This commentary critiques the nation-state framework of analysis that informs papers published by Ray Kiely, Gonzalo Pozo-Martin and Alfredo Valladão in a section appearing in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 19:2 (2006), on the theme of globalisation, imperialism and hegemony. Kiely, Pozo-Martin and Valladão reify the state and the inter-state system by giving them an agency independent of historical social forces. They fail to put forward a conception of agency and institutions that could address the central problematic of the political management, or rule, of global capitalism. They presuppose a state-based understanding of global politics that ignores the reality of transnational capital and transnational social forces and that reduces global capitalism to international capitalism. We should focus not on states as fictitious macro-agents but on historically changing constellations of social forces operating through multiple institutions, including state apparatuses that are themselves in a process of transformation as a consequence of collective agencies.     

Toneline bite mark photography.

In bite mark analyses, the initial photograph is critical for the collection and presentation of evidence. A high-contrast film technique previously used primarily in the graphic arts field has been refined and applied to forensic odontology. The process, called toneline, reduces the interpretational bias of the investigator and yields a transparent overlay with a photographic outline of the bite mark which can be directly compared with models of the suspect's teeth.     

How Not to Enhance the Confidence—Accuracy Relation: The Detrimental Effects of Attention to the Identification Process

This study (N = 218) examines potential moderators of the confidence–accuracy (CA) relation in eyewitness identifications. The design included five experimental interventions (accountability, context reinstatement, retrospective narration, hypothesis disconfirmation, and hypothesis generation), as well as one trait measure (public self-consciousness). Although the interventions were hypothesized to enhance the CA relation relative to a control condition, they did not do so. In fact, quite contrary to our initial expectations, only participants in the control condition displayed unqualified insight into their identification accuracy. We conclude that attempts to enhance awareness of the thoughts and reasoning process involved in an identification decision may frequently have minimal, or even counterproductive, effects. Instead, results of decision process measures suggest that the CA relation might be more effectively enhanced by increasing the salience of relatively automatic decision criteria (e.g., “did his face 'pop out' at me?”) and decreasing the salience of algorithmic identification strategies (e.g., “was I thorough in making my decision?”).

     

Civic Hackathons: Innovation,Procurement, or Civic Engagement?

At all levels, governments around the world are moving toward the provision of open data, that is, the direct provision to citizens, the private sector, and other third parties, of raw government datasets, controlled by a relatively permissible license. In tandem with this distribution of open data is the promotion of civic hackathons, or “app contests” by government. The civic hackathon is designed to offer prize money to developers as a way to spur innovative use of open data, more specifically the creation of commercial software applications that deliver services to citizens. Within this context, we propose that the civic hackathon has the potential to act in multiple ways, possibly as a backdoor to the traditional government procurement process, and as a form of civic engagement. We move beyond much of the hype of civic hackathons, critically framing an approach to understanding civic hackathons through these two lenses. Key questions for future research emphasize the emerging, and important, nature of this research path.