The first women police: a force for equality or infringement?

After the United States, Canada was the country the most severely hit by the economic crisis of the thirties. Yet few studies have tried to evaluate its effects on the family economy and the work performed by women within the private sphere. To fill this gap, the author has interviewed 30 francophone women who married before 1934 and were living in Montréal (Québec) during the Great Depression. This article presents the main conclusions of her study. It reveals the impact of the economic crisis on the different components of women's work within the family, and the role played by women in family survival during that decade. It brings forward a new dimension of the crisis and shows that for many working‐class housewives, hardship was nothing new.

     

Suicidal ideation and self-determination in institutionalized elderly

The right to self-determination is central to the current debate on rational suicide in old age. The goal of this exploratory study was to assess the presence of self-determination in suicidal institutionalized elderly persons. Eleven elderly persons with serious suicidal ideations were matched according to age, sex, and civil status with 11 nonsuicidal persons. The results indicated that suicidal persons did not differ from nonsuicidal persons in level of self-determination. There was, however, a significant difference between groups on the social subscale. Suicidal elderly persons did not seem to take others into account when making a decision or taking action. The results are discussed from a suicide-prevention perspective.     

Prediction of Projectile Ricochet Behavior After Water Impact*

Abstract: Although not very common, forensic investigation related to projectile ricochet on water can be required when undesirable collateral damage occurs. Predicting the ricochet behavior of a projectile is challenging owing to numerous parameters involved: impact velocity, incident angle, projectile stability, angular velocity, etc. Ricochet characteristics of different projectiles (K50 BMG, 0.5‐cal Ball M2, 0.5‐cal AP‐T C44, 7.62‐mm Ball C21, and 5.56‐mm Ball C77) were studied in a pool. The results are presented to assess projectile velocity after ricochet, ricochet angle, and projectile azimuth angle based on impact velocity or incident angle for each projectile type. The azimuth ranges show the highest variability at low postricochet velocity. The critical ricochet angles were ranging from 15 to 30°. The average ricochet angles for all projectiles were pretty close for all projectiles at 2.5 and 10° incident angles for the range of velocities studied.