Consent to Treatment for Transgender Youth: The Next Chapter – Bell & Anor v The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust & Ors

In September 2021, the Court of Appeal reversed the controversial decision of Quincy Bell v Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in a victory for transgender rights. At first instance, the Divisional Court had set a high legal threshold for transgender children to attain Gillick competence to consent to treatment with puberty blockers – effectively restricting access to treatment for many. On appeal, the Court of Appeal held that children are capable in law of giving valid consent to treatment for gender dysphoria, and court authorisation would not be routinely required before children could access such treatment. This note considers the implications of the Court of Appeal decision for the law on minors and consent to medical treatment in the transgender health context.     

Analyzing Data Remnant Remains on User Devices to Determine Probative Artifacts in Cloud Environment

Cloud storage service allows users to store their data online, so that they can remotely access, maintain, manage, and back up data from anywhere via the Internet. Although helpful, this storage creates a challenge to digital forensic investigators and practitioners in collecting, identifying, acquiring, and preserving evidential data. This study proposes an investigation scheme for analyzing data remnants and determining probative artifacts in a cloud environment. Using pCloud as a case study, this research collected the data remnants available on end‐user device storage following the storing, uploading, and accessing of data in the cloud storage. Data remnants are collected from several sources, including client software files, directory listing, prefetch, registry, network PCAP, browser, and memory and link files. Results demonstrate that the collected remnants data are beneficial in determining a sufficient number of artifacts about the investigated cybercrime.     

A Cross-National Examination of the Techniques of Neutralization to Account for Hacking Behaviors

Abstract

The global spread of technology and the Internet has produced unique threats that previously did not exist, such as computer hacking and the spread of malicious software to compromise computer systems. These acts have considerable economic and social consequences, leading them to be criminalized in most countries. Recent research with U.S. college samples have found that peer behavior and attitudes supportive of offending are correlated with involvement in hacking. Few have considered these relationships in a cross-national context, particularly with respect to the creation of malicious software. This study addresses these limitations through an examination of college students across three regions: the United States, Taiwan, and South Africa (N = 1,065). The findings from this study demonstrate differences in the neutralizations and definitions associated with both hacking and malware use as well as regional influences on offending. The implications of this study for research on the techniques of neutralization are discussed in detail.     

Epidemiology of completed suicides in Singapore for 2001 and 2002

This study provides an analysis of 640 completed suicide cases in Singapore for the years 2001 and 2002, compared to previous years and in relation to demographic and socioeconomic factors, as well as to the characteristics of a subgroup of suicide victims with prior psychiatric illness. There was little change in the suicide pattern over the 2 years studied compared to previous years. The sex ratio was constant at 1.5. Population-adjusted ratios were 1 for Chinese, 0.5 for Malays, and >1 for both Indians and other ethnic groups. Falling from heights ranked first in terms of method adopted for both years. A disproportionately higher number of suicides were recorded for the 25-34 and the > or =75-year-old age groups. A total of 47 (17.2%) in 2001 and 74 (20.2%) in 2002 of the cases had a history of prior psychiatric illness, with psychotic disorders being the most common diagnostic category. There was also a statistically significant correlation between unemployment and incidence rates. Although the overall rate of elderly suicides had gone down since the 1990s, prevention strategy should focus on the elderly as this rate is still about 3-4 times the national average.     

Veto Players Revisited: Internal and External Factors Influencing Policy Production

Veto player models generally rely on two assumptions: (1) collective actors like political parties behave as individual actors; and (2) all actors influencing policy production are domestic. Yet these are often violated by empirical reality. Under certain institutions, parties are less cohesive and may not behave as individuals, and international regimes can have considerable influence over legislation. Using data on labor‐law production in Europe, we find that the effects of veto players are conditional on both party cohesion and international regimes. Future conceptualizations of veto players should be more sensitive to both internal and external institutional configurations.     

Trust and the protection of property rights: evidence from global regions

In this study, we address the issue of whether trust enhances institutional quality. Despite accumulated research on the topic, comparative studies examining whether such a relationship holds across different regions are rare. Consequently, in this study, we focus on the heterogeneous effect of trust on the protection of property rights worldwide. According to our research, in Western democracies, owing to relatively effective legal systems, trust facilitates cooperation among citizens in utilizing public means to collectively secure properties. In contrast, in other parts of the world, owing to less effective legal systems, citizens with high levels of trust, who presumably have access to many social resources, utilize private means such as informal networks, for protecting property rights. Our empirical analysis of time-series cross-sectional data, and individual-level survey data yields evidence supporting the aforementioned assertion. Moreover, we find suggestive evidence of a causal mechanism linking trust and institutional quality.

     

Analysis of the impurities in the methamphetamine synthesized by three different methods from ephedrine and pseudoephedrine

Organic impurities of methamphetamine may show different patterns by synthesis. In the present study, we tried to find the impurities reflecting the conditions of synthesis by comparing impurity patterns of the methamphetamine samples synthesized by different methods. Sixteen methamphetamine samples were synthesized from ephedrine and pseudoephedrine by the three different manufacturing methods of Emde, Nagai and Moscow. The synthesized samples were extracted with ethyl acetate containing four internal standards, and the patterns of the organic impurities were investigated by GC-MS and GC-FID . Through the investigation, we found 10 peaks appearing in the latter part of GC chromatograms are characteristic to synthesis. The areas of the selected peaks were converted to the variables suitable for the statistical calculation, and the synthesized samples could be classified into four groups through the resultant cluster analysis.     

The Vernacular Mobilization of Human Rights in Myanmar's Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Movement

This article examines how activists build a movement for sexual orientation and gender identity minorities in Myanmar, a country that is known for violent suppression of protests and is undergoing political reform. Based on original fieldwork, it finds that activists deploy a strategy of “vernacular mobilization of human rights” to persuade others to join their cause despite the risks to personal safety and to get around political constraints on collective organizing. Conceptualized at the intersection of the cultural study of human rights and social movements scholarship, “vernacular mobilization of human rights” theorizes the relationship between vernacularization—the translation and local adaptation of human rights—and movement micromobilization, specifying how the former unfolds as collective action framing processes. Through vernacularization activities, such as human rights workshops, movement leaders reframe grievances and shift the attribution of blame to empower and recruit new activists. Furthermore, with these framing processes, they generate a political community with a collective identity and social networks that they use to continue expanding the movement. The article enriches debates about the implications of implementing human rights and understandings of the relationship between human rights and movement mobilization, especially under repressive or uncertain political conditions.