Conception and the Irrelevance of the Welfare Principle

This article challenges the assumption that their future children's welfare is a relevant consideration when deciding whether to provide a person with assisted conception services. It does not argue that infertility treatment ought to be available as of right. Rather, this article's proposal is that section 13(5) – which specifies that no-one shall receive assistance with conception unless account has first been taken of the welfare of any child who might be born – should be deleted from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. Extending the 'welfare principle' to decisions taken prior to a child's conception is shown to be unjust, meaningless and inconsistent with existing legal principle.     

Confronting Islamist Insurgencies in Africa: The Case of the Islamic State in Mozambique

The proliferation of Salafi-jihadi insurgencies across Africa challenges the United States’ counterterrorism approach. From its inception, the insurgency in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique was driven by local and foreign dynamics, which have been complicated by additional external intervention in the conflict. Using the Cabo Delgado insurgency, we demonstrate how efforts to address its global dimensions, such as the group's affiliation with the Islamic State, can work against attempts to mitigate its local drivers. We conclude with recommendations for a more effective U.S. response that takes both the local and global dynamics into account. This article builds on our February 2021 report “Combating the Islamic State's Spread in Africa: Assessment and Recommendations for Mozambique,” published by the American Enterprise Institute.     

Development of a Novel Finger-Trigger Interface for Trigger Pull Measurement

Trigger pull is the force that needs to be exerted on the trigger to discharge a firearm. The measurement of trigger pull can assist in the evaluation of the safety, function, and manufacturing characteristics associated with a firearm during the forensic firearm examination process. Nonetheless, the accuracy and uncertainty of trigger pull measurements may be affected by the measuring device, test procedure, and environmental conditions. In this work, an innovative finger-trigger interface device was developed to facilitate accurate trigger pull measurements. The idea was to reduce the variation related to the position of the measurement device on the trigger in existing measuring methods and devices. Three force sensors based on different technologies were initially evaluated. While two of the three sensors failed to produce data, the miniature capacitive plate sensor exhibited high precision and a linear response over the range of typical trigger pulls. To examine the effects of the finger-trigger interface on trigger pull measurement, different sensor housing prototypes were designed in silico and 3D printed for the construction of three finger-trigger interface devices. The performance of each finger-trigger interface device was evaluated by measuring the trigger pulls of several selected firearms and comparing the data to a previously published study. Our preliminary results demonstrated the novel finger-trigger interface device offered a new way to measure trigger pull in situ with acceptable accuracy and precision.     

Individual Differences in Adolescents’ Emotional Reactivity across Relationship Contexts

Understanding individual differences in adolescents’ ability to regulate emotions within interpersonal relationships is paramount for healthy development. Thus, the effect of individual vulnerabilities (depressive affect, social anxiety, self-blame, and coping efficacy problems) on the transmission of emotional reactivity in response to conflict from family to peers (friends and romantic partners) was prospectively examined across six waves of data in a community-based sample of 416 adolescents (M_age Wave 1?=?11.90, 51% girls). Multiple-group models estimated in structural equation modeling suggested that youth who were higher in social anxiety or coping efficacy problems were more likely to transmit emotional reactivity developed in the family-of-origin to emotional reactivity in response to conflict in close friendships. Additionally, those youth higher in self-blame and depressive affect were more likely to transmit emotional reactivity from friendships to romantic relationships.     

Moving beyond ideas of laddism: conceptualising ‘mischievous masculinities’ as a new way of understanding everyday sexism and gender relations

Abstract

This article engages with current debates on ‘lad cultures’ by questioning how we understand the term in the specific context of everyday sexism and within groups of men varying in age. Further to this, using a feminist and critical masculinity studies perspective, the article will explore how men do not necessarily comprehend their behaviour within the framework of lad culture or within the continuum of sexual violence. Through discussion of ethnographic and interview data collected over a year at a site historically associated with lad cultures, that of a Rugby Union club in Northern England, an alternative way of conceptualising masculinity and everyday sexism, ‘mischievous masculinities’, is proposed. Men in the research practiced what I term mischievous masculinities, whereby they implemented ‘banter’ to aid in both the construction and de-construction of sexist ideas within the rugby space. Performing mischievous masculinity enabled men of all ages to both engage in and simultaneously challenge everyday sexism in ways they understood to be ‘innocent’. However, the continual framing of banter as ‘just a laugh’ demonstrated that this form of sexism can be construed as problematic, due, in part, to its subtlety, in relation to more overt and violent sexist practices. A key difference between the men in my research and previous theorising of ‘lad culture’ is the recurring theme amongst older participants that ‘I should know better’, demonstrating consciousness of the sexist and problematic connotations which could be drawn from this interaction. This notion of mischievous masculinities then, in the context of a life course perspective, can be seen to challenge more established notions of an unreflexive lad culture, thus affording a more nuanced understanding of everyday sexism amongst more diverse groups of men than currently exists, as well as allowing for men’s agency in a specific site.