text:
On the concept of totty
While creating the links for my previous post, I came upon this quite unpleasant post from right-wing blogger Tim Worstall, in which he introduces the concept of "underage totty".
Underage totty in Worstall's world is, as far as I can establish, a female who is a child in law and therefore with a right to legal protection from sexual predators, but who by dint of some pro-active display of her sexuality, can be seen not to be in need of that protection. Or something. From what he goes on to say about how 14, 15 and 16 year olds should be treated under law, Worstall seems to be suggesting that a physical capacity to act or appear in a sexual or sexualised manner should be the main indicator of when a young person should be regarded as an adult in law, when it comes to sexual consent.
Now Worstall's ignorance of or wanton disregard for how wealth, power and gender status* come together to create the concept of "totty" in the first place need not detain us too long – he revels in his non-PC status and a bit of online trolling of a possible victim of serious sexual abuse is presumably all part of the act – but his post does give cause for reflection over what age should be the age to which young people still need protection under the law (we will leave aside here Worstall's apparent confusion between the age of consent and protection from harm).
In fact, while Worstall seems to suggest that the age of protection should be lowered on the basis that young women can appear physically older, actual research suggests public and legal policy might be better going the other way, and creating protective mechanisms for young people for longer. If we look at brain, as opposed to breast, formation, longitudinal tracking of adolescents and young people's brains indicates that the parts of the brain associated with judgment, especially in "hot" circumstances, continues well into a young person's third decade:
Most research to date has captured information in conditions of "cold cognition" (e.g., low arousal, no peers, and hypothetical situations). Like impulse control and sensation seeking, hot and cold cognition are subserved by different neuronal circuits and have different developmental courses [30]. Thus, adolescent maturity of judgment and its putative biological determinants are difficult to disentangle from socioemotional context.
I don't, of course expect pointing to actual research about how young people develop, and how public policy might need to change in the light of newish data, will do much to change the views of Worstall and the similarly-minded on what's permissible if you're a rich, white bloke. But, as someone who remains unapologetically and old-fashionedly PC about the rights of both women and children, I do feel bound to point it out.
* I am alerted by Justin to the fact that other rich, white folk, such as chess champion Nigel Short, have similar views.
Reflections on Rotherham: part 3 of 3
In parts 1 and 2 of this critique of Alexis Jay's report into child sexual exploitation (CSE) I made the case that, while there is a political imperative to regard the report as gospel – reflected in the almost immediate drafting of Jay as specialist adviser into the public inquiry to be chaired by the Lord Mayor of London – the report isn't actually all that good. While there is a good level of detail, the analysis is weak in many places, and in relation to "the ethnicity issue" and the question of organisational failure in the council in particular, this weak analysis has created the conditions for a misguided and ultimately counterproductive response to the very real and very growing problem of CSE.
In summary form, Jay a) kowtows, in spite of evidence to the contrary which she herself sites, to the idea that some kind of 'assault on political correctness' will be a helpful response; b) fails to take into proper account the failures of managerialism in the 1990s and 2000s, with the result that the response is likely to involve greater managerialism at the expense of what is really needed, which is greater professional autonomy.
There is, though, one other big flaw in the report, and it's to this that part 3 now turns. It's left till last partly because it has not to date even seen as a issue worthy of note, but also because an analysis of it opens the door to actual solutions to the CSE crisis being experienced across the country.
Here's the key sentence, at para 9.4, describing the approach of Risky Business the voluntary, youth worker-led agency which was financially supported by the Council:
Risky Business adopted an outreach approach, based on community development principles. That is, it started where the young person was; it concerned itself with the whole person and addressed any issues that the young person brought to the relationship; it did not prescribe or direct. Its methods were complementary to those of the statutory services. Its success depended upon the skills of the individual worker and the level of trust which young people were willing to commit to it.
Quite simply, Jay is wrong. While it seems clear that Risky Business has been an innovative organisation doing some really good work with vulnerable young people, what is described here is not a community development approach; it may be a client-led approach, it may even be validly called an advocacy-based approach, but it's not an approach which develops the community.
So what is community development, how is it different from what Risky Business do, and why is that important now [1]?
For me, community development is one or more of the following, often interrelated acts:
a) organising with other people so that what comes of our actions is greater than the sum of its parts;
b) organising with other people (the "community") to develop support structures and 'fight back' options for (ex-)vulnerable people, which kick in as and when the state fails or isn't there ;
c) organising with other people to require that the state changes its systems so that needs are better met;
d) organising with other people to require that the state acknowledge the legitimacy of what you have set up as part of a) and b) with other people, and support it.
Now of course this rough definition can be contested and refined, but what seems clear is that Risky Business wasn't involved in any of those things, at least in term of its CSE work. They identified and worked well with vulnerable young people, referred them into the social care system and got appropriately angry/advocational when those young people remained at risk, but they weren't in the business of organising systems change or community-wide resilience and fight-back.
Jay's key conceptual mistake, then, is to suggest that community development as a response to CSE was available but untapped by the social care system. It wasn't. But in making this mistake, Jay does unknowingly do us a service, because, at least to the critical reader, she identifies the space that needs to be filled in future by social work professionals.
This for me, as someone now quite involved in child protection innovation, is the most important challenge which this critical engagement with the Jay report. The challenge for social workers, and social work educators behind them, is to start to fill the community development space, such that communities themselves generate safer, happier environments for children and young people.
There isn't space here for a full exposition of the theory and practice of a move by social workers to (re)fill the community development space [2], but the key features I would want to see are:
i) an approach embedded in a coherent theory of practice, based on Sen's capabilities approach and inclusive of his too often disregarded social choice element, whereby social workers facilitate debate and agreement with local communities about how they come together to achieve their agreed 'common good';
ii) social workers as unashamed agents for systems change [3], using their 'all round' skills and competencies to draw in and motivate not just local people but other agencies, such as Risky Business-style youth workers;
iii) an understanding that, when it comes to CSE, the scale of the problem is not just huge in itself as a result of the societal change I wrote about in part 1 [4] but also because it is linked to a growing trend of inter-child sexual abuse, where girls become vulnerable about their own identity (effectively convinced they are are little more than sexual playthings) even before or as they become exposed to exploitation by adults. Related to this is the acceptance of and strategies to cope with the fact that the problem is simply too large for their to be anything other than a community-based response;
iv) a strategy for community development which is resolutely race-blind so as to avoid the consequences of social stereotyped responses, but is 'network alert' i.e. understands and is able to target the actual networks perpetrators use, irrespective of ethnicity.
v) builds on the best of the Sure Start model in terms of working with local communities as above, but sees the possible locus of action in much wider terms, so that; social choice; agreements, for example, are developed in local retail (and here the union movement will be vital), in and around transport hubs etc. (here we are talking about child protection in general as well as CSE). Thus, while it's good to recognise the work that people like Risky Business have done in training e.g. taxi drivers and dog walkers, we need to recognise that without the community development catalysm integrated into that training, such work will not be very effective.
vi) an acceptance that such a dramatic shift in social work practice will not go unchallenged by those who have a vested interest in creating a new, 'shallower' form of social worker who is less interested in the 'social', and more in forms of control over 'troubled families'.
[1] It's also worth noting, though less crucial a background to what I advocate in terms of a renewed community development approach from social workers, that Jay also talks uncritically of a 'child protection approach', adopted by social work teams and in supposed opposition to the community development approach she ascribes to Risky Business. It's never actually clear what she means by 'child protection model' (para. 9.14) but we can assume she's referring to the process of risk assessment and intervention that she describes within the report. I think to call this THE child protection approach is wrong, as it's just as valid to describe the community development , Sen-based approach as an (effective) child protection approach.
[2] I am currently working on a document for DfE which does exactly that, and may publish a version of it here next month
[3] I actually prefer the term "institutional architects" but it needs more of a narrative before it's used more widely.
[4] I now recognise that in setting out these social changes I didn't refer sufficiently to the phenomenon of male 'emasculation' and its connection to a misogynic attitudes. Reading Phil's useful piece on Rotherham reminded me of that.
Reflections on Rotherham: part 2 of 3
Introduction to part 2
In part 1 of this critical engagement Professor Alexis Jay's report on Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) in Rotherham, the focus was mainly on the factors which drove the upsurge in CSE in the late 1990s and 2000s, rather than the council's and other agencies' response to that upsurge. Clearly, though, the way in which those 'external' factors took effect during the period had an effect on the appropriateness, or otherwise, of the response by those agencies.
In part 1, I made two main points in particular about the weaknesses in the Jay report in respect of these factors. Here in part 2, I'll expand somewhat on the implications of these, and of how the reports interprets them, before moving on to the 'internal' institutional dynamics of the agencies response to CSE, and will again suggest that the analysis by Jay is inadequate, and indeed potentially counterproductive at a national level, given her new role as adviser to the public inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse announced in July.
In part 3, I'll move on to what I think is the biggest conceptual flaw in the Jay report – the failure to grasp what community development actually is – and I'll finish with an assessment of what does actually need to be done to stop and prevent the growth of CSE (and child abuse more generally), and offer some suggestions on how we might move in that direction. Needless to say, these suggestions won't involve manadatory reporting, which is at best a distraction, or fabricating evidence so that staff can be disciplined, as the MP for Rotherham is now apparently suggesting. Sadly, Labour has been utterly useless in its response so far, and this is my attempt to help it respond better, before it is too late.
Ethnicity and political correctness
In part 1 I suggested that the report lacked the courage of some of its convictions about the "issue of ethnicity" (as one of the report chapters is entitled), with Jay going to lengths to say that ethnicity cannot possibly be seen as a predictor of child abuse perpetration, before backtracking and accepting that future work to combat CSE may have to confront 'cultural issues'. I then set out an alternative way of approaching the matter, in a way that not only allows for a 'race-blind' approach to tackling CSE, but which is actually more effective because it is race-blind i.e. it is not caught up by extraneous issues of ethnicity, but focuses on the actual material circumstances which are predictive of CSE [1].
This is important stuff because, if we accept that race-blind intervention to stop and then prevent CSE is not only possible but more effective than ethnicity-focused intervention [2], much of the criticism, itself based in the report on little more than hearsay, that police, council staff and councillors betrayed children because they weren't courageous enough to 'take on political correctness' – becomes an irrelevance.
Maybe, just maybe, the managers and councillors were correct in their approach. Maybe, just maybe, being politically correct can be correct in terms of lived outcomes as well as votes.
That's not to say that sending the Home Office researcher off on diversity training course for using the word 'Asian' in a report was the correct thing to do; this does sound cack-handed, as it is pretty well impossible to imagine a Home Office researcher into CSE having anything other than a good understanding of diversity issues, and therefore open to a reasonable debate, based on the kind of evidence I produced in part one about circumstance being the overriding predictor, about whether her approach was reasonable. Her mistreatment, though, may have more to do with the dominant masculine managerialism referred to in the Jay report (and which I analyse below) than with the fact that she was right and they were wrong about the fundamentals of the best way to tackle the CSE epidemic.
Maybe it was the other way round. Maybe the managers were right. Maybe she was wrong.
Let"s be blunt, then. Even though the report hedges it is bets – "Recommendation 14 reads: The issue of race should be tackled as an absolute priority if it is a significant factor in the criminal activity of organised child sexual abuse in the Borough)" – this very hedging means that the media and popular reaction to the report has focused on the need to overcome political correctness and focus on ethnicity a way to prevent further abuse.
The Jay report may therefore end up doing children currently being exploited and at risk of exploitation more harm than good.
The perfect storm: external meets internal
Also in part 1, suggested that a key weakness in the Jay report – though this may have more to do with the terms of reference and timescales than Jay and her team's own capacities – is the failure to assess why the incidence of CSE has risen. My own answer to this question is linked to the argument above about circumstance over ethnicity, and argues that the rise of mobile and social media technology, plus the easy availability of internet porn as a progressively misogynsing factors [link to Us article], creates both the 'motivation' and opportunity to develop exploitative techniques. Jay's relative failure to assess the surge in incidence feeds into the over-emphasis on ethnicity. It also incidentally allows her a route out of commenting properly on the horribly inequitable funding of the council as a whole; while she notes the 33% loss of spending power in Rotherham in comparison with 4.8% in Buckinghamshire (para 12.14) , there is no recommendation as to what might be done about such clear inequity.
But this is just one part the 'perfect storm' that hit those principally and statutorily responsible for protecting children – frontline social workers. The other factors which hit children's social care staff in the crucial period were understaffing – I'm not sure how any council department might be expected to operate with a vacancy rate of 43% (para 12.2) – and the rampant managerialism which took hold of public services delivery in the 1990s and 2000s.
I should be clear what I mean by managerialism, a term not used in the Jay report itself but which I use here to reflect the kind of events she describes (but doe not fully analyse) in her report.. I mean the ideologically-motivated assumption that if public services (indeed services of any kind) are subject to improved management targets and controls, then the quality of that services is bound to improve. This assumption, as Chris Dillow has set out on his blog and in his fine book New Labour and the folly of managerialism is wrong, not least because what may be gained through 'efficiencies' is lost through diminished professional/worker autonomy.
This we can see from the Jay report, is precisely what happened in Rotherham in the 2000s. The account at paras 6.21-6.24 about how social worker time was remorselessly squeezed away from both preventative and vital followup work is not just an account of understaffing. When I asked frontline social workers in my area about this section, they actually burst out laughing at the idea that there might not have been downward pressure to increase "throughput" (the beautifully managerial term used by Jay at para. 6.23); of course frontline professionals would deny that they had submitted to such pressures, they told me, as that would make them look unprofessional in the eyes of Jay's team (and therefore open to disciplinary measures for loss of professional standards), but of course they will have submitted to pressures – how, if there were no such pressures, would have the question of such pressure have arisen in the first place?
Perhaps even more revealingly, Jay covers the role played by Barnardo's in the removal of professional autonomy, through the introduction of a "numeric scoring system" (para 6.38). Jay detiails how, while managers may claim otherwise in their interviews (again, understandably in the view of possible sanctions), frontline social workers make it quite clear that there was little room for them to exercise professional judgment and override the scoring system where they felt the scoring was underplaying the actual risk at which children found themselves.
Again, I asked experienced children's social workers, with whom I come into contact for me work, what they thought of these paragraphs in the Jay report (they had not read the report at that stage, so I paraphrased Jay but referred specifically to the Barnardo's scoring system, which is well-known and in widespread use. These colleagues answered to the effect that the Barnardo's scoring model is deficient not just because it doesn't, of itself, allow for professional judgment alongside the scoring, but that professional judgment is actively excluded by the insistence on the need, within the scoring process, for concrete evidence.
The (recent) example I was given of a teenage girl who had been found by police (involved in other crime detection work) on an edge-of-town caravan park, miles from home, and in a place unfamiliar to her family. There was no evidence that she was on that night subject to sexual exploitation and so, despite the putting of two and two together by social workers, the risk assessment as scored downplayed a risk obvious to pretty well everybody involved in the case.
It is not always thus. One of the local authorities that my work connects with had looked at the Barnardo's mode in the mid-2000s and, because they remained open to some real frontline social worker interaction, had chosen not to go with the 'best practice' Barnardo's model, but instead asked frontline social workers to develop their own model for standardised assessment.
What to make of all this? Well, the first thing to mention is the level of control that Barnado's, a voluntary sector organisation dominated by a controversial Chief Executive, appear to have had not only over Rotherham but across a swathe of local authorities in England. While a voluntary organisation in legal definition, Barnardo's size and capacity to undercut smaller organisations and in-house provision, combined with its clever marketing means that it has become something of an untouchable. Even here, where the finger has been pointed at Barnardo's for the introduction of a scoring model which is demonstrably not 'best practice', or even good practice, the (otherwise very good) Rotherham Council response to the Jay report continues to refer to it in these hallowed terms, and to make clear that it use will continue. Here is not the place to delve in detail into the relationship between Barnardo's (and its arc-rival NCH) and the state, but it is worth stressing that if you are going to act effectively as an arm of the state, then you really need to be held to the same standards as the state. On this occasion, at least, this hasn't happened.
The second, broader, point to make about this section of the Jay report is that, while Jay set out well the way frontline social worker were subject to managerialist influences to the detriment of their professional judgement [3], she probably fails to reach the correct conclusions on the basis of these findings. Instead of pointing out how the managerialism which spread across local authorities in the 1990s and 2000s at the expense of professional autonomy – some of this because of contracting out to bodies like Barnardo's – may have caused the practice failures she uncovers, Jay instead opts for another broad explanatory factor: the aggressive. 'macho' culture which dominated the council in the same period. Yet no direct link is apparent between this macho culture and poor practice outcomes for children.
It seems to me that a more indirect explanation is brought forward while an indirect one is ignored, either because it is inconvenient or – I suspect more likely – the idea that managerialism night be a problem lies beyond Professor Jay's conceptual paradigm of how a local authority should operate. This is not to say that councillor and senior officer misogyny and aggression did played no part in what happened, but it is also possible that this cultural aspect of the council's failure was fed and watered by the ideological and institutional factors which came into local government from Thatcher onwards, whereby management efficiencies become more important than professional relationships in a way which then fostered 'black box'-style – I don't care how the target is met, just meet the target – approaches to management [4].
Again, this is not just esoteric wondering about the background causes to the Rotherham failures; establishing why the failures happened is essential to ensuring that they don't happen in future. If the public eqnuiry on which Professor Jay will act as a key adviser and is chaired by a key proponent of privatization, accepts her analysis that macho, male-dominated councils are at the heart of the problem, then the solution will lie in human resources practice to ensure that more women are in top positions and /or that macho practice is trained and developed out of people. If, as I contend we should, the key problem is actually that professional autonomy has been stripped away from professionals (and from professional training), then the answers lie elsewhere. This will be a key battleground in the inquiry process, but at the moment the managerialists hold the higher ground.
That's enough for part 2. Part 3, covering the key conceptual failure of the Jay report, and recommendations for action on the part of those willing to think and act in the interests of children, as opposed to the need to be seen to be angry, will follow soon.
[1] There is a straight analogy with the application of English law here. The basic principle is that an offender is prosecuted for an offence, not for the type of offender s/he is, although when assessing the level of offence it is leigtimate to take into account other offences committed to establing an offending pattern. It seems odd therefore, for people interested in 'British values' to be arguing that there should be a focus on offender profiling rather than offence profiling when it comes to CSE.
[2] Another question arises here about the 'issue of ethnicity": if CSE were in fact ethnic culture-driven, rather than circumstance-driven, what would we actually do about it? Is Jay actually suggesting that priority should be given to changing culture in some way, over and above measures to intervene tactically in the circumstances which we know actually create CSE opportunities? If so, this would seem to be anti-PC gone maaaad, a desperate attempt to paficy the Islam-correlates-with-rape crowd at the expense of children's futures?
[3] It occurs to me that this may seem like too strong a defence of frontline social workers. After all, whatever managerialist influences they were subject to, they are still professionals, with professional standards, so should n't we have expected them to stand up better to their bosses. The answer to this question is yes, we should, but my argument here (as elsewhere) is that moral condemnation of staff – and their sacking – does nothing about professional competence in the long term; we need to establish why and how professional didn't feel able to act up to professional standards, and a failure to do so will be a like act of gross political failure (as well as failure in social work training, which i'll cover in part 3)
Here is not the place to go into loss of professional ethics and standards in detail, other than to say that there is a rich seam of ressearch literature on the subject, for those politically professional enough to engage with it. It's called, broadly, Implementation Studies, and starts with the seminal work of Michael Lipsky (1980), which details how frontline professionals move, in certain circumstances, from autonomy and advocacy towards alienation and disregard for their clients as whole human beings. It ends, for me at least for now, with this detailed qualitiative study of how even Finnish welfare professionals are subject to managerialism and see their work get worse as a result.
[4] The best read I know on this post-Thatcher trend, other than Chris Dillow's book, is Gerry Stoker's (2004) Transforming Local Governance: From Thatcherism to New Labour. Here's how he summaries managerialism:
Managerialism……..began in the 1980s and 1990s to take an increasingly strong hold in local government. This ideology saw political leadership as important in setting direction but beyond that a potential source of inefficiency. Politicians should set goals but not dictate the means to achieve them. The key to managerialism is its emphasis on the right of managers to mange against inappropriate interference from politicians or, for that matter, the special pleading of professional groups (p.13, my italics)
Reflections on Rotherham: part 1 of 3
I've read and re-read the Alexis Jay report into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, and now feel able to comment. Actually reading a report properly before commenting on it is, I well understand, something of a minority sport nowadays, but one I grew used to in the days before the absolute need to offer comment within minutes of publication.
Anyway, There are a number of things that stand out for me, and which I'll cover in two longish commentaries:
1) The reports's good, but not that good, and shouldn't be taken as gospel
The Francis report into the poor care at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust was immediately hailed as everything that needed to be known and done about both mid-Staffs and the NHS in general. In parliament, Labour called for the implementation of all the report's recommendations even before it was physically possible to have read it. In fact, it turned out that some of the recommendations were misguided, and reflected a good deal of ignorance on the part of Francis and his team.
The Jay report, while more limited in scope (it makes no national level recommendations, as it was commissioned by the local authority) falls into the same bracket, because it can be bent – knowing that most people won't actually read it) to most pre-established agendas: it's all about race; it's not all about race; it's all about leadership; it's all about reporting. Whatever your agenda is, you'll find something in there to back your claim.
In fact, the report's a good report, especially given the tight time constraints against it which it was battered out (the grammatical errors are testament to that), and offers very important insights and details, but it's far from a great report, carrying great authority (to be fair to Jay, such authority is never claimed).
While it's very good on both the institutional attempts and failures to get to grips with the situation, and on the the harrowing details of the exploitation of young people, the analysis in several places in inconsistent or non-existent. This is crucial when it comes to the ethnicity issue (see below), to which a specific chapter is devoted, precisely because it now allows those with pre-set agendas to cherry-pick, but it several other areas too the report provides more questions than answers.
Perhaps the best that can be said of the report is that while it doesn't format those questions well itself, a reasonable critical analysis of the findings should contribute to the formulation of a good set of questions for the fuller public inquiry into nationwide child sexual exploitation, which Labour is now (rightly) proposing and which should be allowed to build on rather than replace the work being done by the Office of the Children's Commissioner (which is properly referenced in the Jay report).
2) The question of ethnicity
The question of whether being an Asian man makes you more likely to sexually exploit children because of your "culture" is the one that has dominated the media. The Jay report itself appears conflicted. The chapter on ethnicity starts with a categorical enough statement:
As has been stated many times before, there is no simple link between race and child sexual exploitation, and across the UK the greatest numbers of perpetrators of CSE are white men (para 11.2).
This suggests that those arguing for 'race-blind' protection and prosecution. Sunny Hundal, for example, argues, using the same assertion in the Jay report that:
There is certainly a problem here but its not about race or religion – it is about misogyny and a desire to subjugate women……The men preyed on these girls because they were weak or because they were physically or mentally intimidated, not because of the colour of their skin.
Yet just a few paragraphs later, the Jay report appears to backslide on its evidence-based position:
The issue of race, regardless of ethnic group, should be tackled as an absolute priority if it is known to be a significant factor in the criminal activity of organised abuse in any local community. There was little evidence of such action being taken in Rotherham in the earlier years.(11.11)
This backsliding (which actually dominates the executive summary to chapter 11) opens the door to those, such as Ben Cobley and now (in practice rather than Ben's theory) the BNP/EDL are keen to peddle their nonsense about embedded "ethnic favouritism" (the argument presumably being that if this allleged favouritism were removed from public policy, child sexual exploitation would magically cease).
This is unfortunate, since there is a perfectly coherent explanation as to why perpetators in one area may tend to be one ethnic group rather than another, and indeed why perpetators identified may come from certain ethnic groups in numbers which are disproportionate to their numbers within the overall population. It is an explanation which allows for prosecution and protection to remain as 'race-blind' as it should be, while still ensuring that the local contexts for perpetration, which mean that perpetrators come disproportionately are of a single ethnicity, are still appropriately taken into account.
It's not rocket science. When I discussed the 'issue of ethnicity' with a senior social worker colleague the other day, she was quite clear: Asian men in some Northern towns may be the main perpetrators of child sexual exploitation not because of their 'culture', but because of the particular "infrastructure" that their working lives provides. In simple terms – they drive taxis, or have friends who do; they work in/own kebab joints, where young people (especially those unsafe and/or unhappy at home) congregate; they work irregular hours in family businesses, in which the don't clock on or off, and in which absences of two or three hours go unremarked.
Now of course, taxi driving and kebab shop owning can be seen as a part of an Asian 'culture', but it is more historically accurate to see it as a structural feature of changes in the economy, and the racial discrimination that accompanied those changes, which just happens to provide, in conjunction with the growth of mobile technology and social media over the last 15 years, the opportunity for people who happen to be of Asian ethnicity to become involved in exploitation. As Arun Kundnani sets out (see references here) in relation to Northern mill towns [1]:
As the mills declined, entire towns were left on the scrap-heap. White and black workers were united in their unemployment. The only future now for the Asian communities lay in the local service economy. A few brothers would pool their savings and set up shop, a restaurant or a takeway. Otherwise there was minicabbing, with long hours and the risk of violence, often racially motivated. With the end of the textile industry, the largest employers were now the public services but discrimination keptmost of these jobs for Whites (2001:106)
If this analysis is taken on board [2], it becomes perfectly reasonable to construct child protection and perpetrator prosecution processes which are both 'race blind' and context aware. If more Asians are prosecuted, so be it – being forced into the taxi business by employment discrimination a generation ago does not legitimise heinous actions – but it can still be accepted that there is no direct relationship between ethnicity and a desire to have sex or sell sex with underage girls (and of course this analysis leaves aside that taxi drivers may be prosecuted because they are easier to identify than people who do not go out onto the streets late at night but have the same intent).
3) Rotherham may turn out to be better than the rest
Rotherham: "the nation's exploitation capital of England", screamed the Guardian headline to one of the many fact and thought-free commentaries which appeared in the first days after publication of the report.
This is what the report actually says:
At the time of the Inquiry there was no standardised reporting of child sexual exploitation that would allow reliable judgements about whether child sexual exploitation was more or less prevalent in Rotherham than in other parts of the country and the very nature of the problem means that accurate reporting will continue to be a challenge. It seems likely that the existence of the Risky Business project, its ability to attract referrals directly from children and parents affected by sexual exploitation, and the attention given to child sexual exploitation at a multi-agency level over the years meant that the problem would have been more visible in Rotherham than in some other parts of the country (para 4.11)
In short, Rotherham is almost certainly no worse in terms of numbers of sexually exploited children, and probably a good deal better (although the massive under-resourcing of the council reported by Alexis Jay certainly had an impact on Rotherham. Whether or not that will in time be evidenced is open to doubt, but there is simply no evidence – and this follows from the analysis above – that Rotherham has a unique toxic mix of people and circumstance which makes it more prone to a sex exploitation epidemic than anywhere else in the country.
The issue of "standardised reporting" is an important one. When I discussed this point in the report with social workers who had not read the report last week, they immediately stressed a point made elsewhere in the report (para 13.13) – the tendency for actual child sexual exploitation to be hidden by figures and reports relating to guns and gangs; that is, just as in Rotherham until fairly recently, there are still lots of areas in the country – including London – where children being raped is seen as either incidental to 'more serious' crime patterns, or remains simply not known.
In general, right across the country, there are senior council officers and police commanders in a state somewhere between panic at being found out and continuing denial. It waits to be seen what happens next in relation to a possible public inquiry, but I think it's better to prepare for more and bigger shocks.
4) The perfect storm
But shock at new revelations will not be enough. As other horrors are exposed, we need to understand better why there has been this apparent nationwide explosion in abuse and exploitation.
The Jay report gets halfway there. It acknowledges, as best it can in the context of limited data, that the actual incidence of child sexual exploitation is likely to be higher in the 200os and 2010s than it was in the 1990s, when it was largely still wrongly referred to as child prostitution, but it makes no effort to establish why, because the focus of the report is instead on why the authorities failed to respond to the information they were getting from Risky Business and others.
The reason for the upsurge, though, is not that hard to find. Across the country new online pornography and mobile technologies, and arguably also imported rap discourses, have created a toxic mix of deeply misogynist attitudes, whereby girls (of any ethnicity) are regarded without due humanity, and new opportunities and tools to engage in sordid sexual (and increasingly financial) gratification. A vital aspect of this toxic mix is the stripping away from young girls of their self-esteem, such that they become compliant in their own abuse – witness the details in the report of how abused girls cling to the notion that they are in a loving relationship.
This isn't just happening in adult-child exploitation situations; perhaps even more alarming is the normalisation of sexual violence and exploitation between children, where sexual degradation of 13 and 14 year olds through repeated sex acts has become a normalised part of growing up.
If we are to move on from Rotherham, we need to accept that, while the council and police institutions may have failed, they (and lots of others around the country) have partly failed because they were hit by this perfect storm of 'modernity', of the type Giddens (1991) describes so presciently, in which whole tranches of the population find themselves, through the collapse of time and space, utterly 'disembedded', prey to 'ontological insecurities' of the type my and previous generations never were, and then 're-embedded' in weirdly perverted social norms. Of course, it is those who are materially powerless – poor families in Rotherham spring to mind – who suffer most from in these reformed social relations.
5) Moving on from Rotherham
That's enough for today. In parts 2 and 3, I'll explore how we, a society as a whole but led (I suggest) by a re-energised, re-focused, even re-professionalised social work profession, might start to tackle some of the social 'disembedding' that has led (in part at least) to what we now see in Rotherham. That involves putting the social back in social work (via Amartya Sen).
In setting out this agenda, Ill keep coming back to the Jay report, looking in particular at the sections on management failure and loss of professional autonomy (not least Barnardo's part in that), and at the mistakes assumptions Jay makes about what she sees as two ends of the spectrum – the "community development model" she wrongly ascribes to Risky Business, and the "child protection model" which she acribes, without due critique, to Rotherham's social workers.
There'll also be a section on Jay's wrong-headed dismissal as irrelevant the fact that CSE cases made up just 2-3% of all children's social care cases.
[1]Rotherham is not of course a mill town (though it has had some textile industry), but some of the same processes have taken place, and this is an analysis of the wider position in the North of England.
[2] And for those who refuse/are unable to grasp the concept, it may be worth asking why it always seems to be bankers, and almost never postmen, who commit bank fraud.
Why the throat?
I try not to join in twitterstorms, but the one about Michael Fabricant MP's threat to punch a woman in the throat does bring with it an interesting question.
Why the throat? Why not the more common concept of a punch to the face or the nose?
Domestic violence-focused literature more than hints at a possible reason: this study finds that 68% in the ( fairly small) sample of women who suffered domestic violence have suffered from strangulation, and here's one showing that violent death by strangulation is 6 times more likely for women than men.
The Fabricant tweet may reflect less sudden rage, and more a desire to subjugate, control and make defenceless, and be specific to women. That's what makes the tweet more disturbing.
Now, I'm not suggesting that Fabricant is someone prone to violence against women, and of course punching is not strangling.. But I am suggesting that, as part of his making amends as best as he can, he might want to explore why he wanted to go for the throat, and make that exploration public. That might be a useful service.
Improving child protection and family support
While it's utterly scandalous that the tabloid media has apparently gone and done a cheap photoshop on the picture of Ed Miliband getting ready to get to grips with our submission to the Labour policy review, the important thing is that it has been lodged and that he is clearly taking a keen interest.
The submission is online at the party's policy review website 'Your Britain' (see below if you're not registered). If you do read it and support the nine recommendations made, please do take a moment to leave a comment, as evidence of online support is important in getting it up the league table of submissions to be taken seriously.
And it is a very serious submission.
Fisking the fisker
I'm not blogging much at the moment, but I still abide by my golden rule of blogging: if I happen to come across some twat misusing PISA results in defence of Gove, then I will always make a point of calling her/him out, if I can be arsed.
So there's a total twat, Toby Young by name, misusing PISA results in defence of Gove, and I can be arsed.
Young says, in a piece 'fisking' the apparently "hysterical" Suzanne Moore*:
Ah. Here we go. Her [Moore's] views are "evidence-based", Gove's are "ideological". Odd line of argument for a former employee of Marxism Today to pursue, but there it is. In fact, there's plenty of evidence to support Gove's policies. Here's evidence that standards fell during Labour's 13 years in office. Here's evidence that free schools have raised standards in Sweden. Here's evidence that increasing school choice has raised standards in England. Here's evidence that the academies programme is raising standards in England.
The first link is to the wikipedia entry on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).
And this is what the Chair of the UK Statistics Authority had to say about the blatant misuse of PISA data by Ofsted and the DfE:
While I understand that some users of these data would like to make comparisons between the first PISA study in 2000 and the most recent in 2009, the weaknesses relating to the response-rate standard in earlier studies should not be ignored. The validity of comparisons of national rankings as a result of an increase in the number of countries covered by the PISA study, and the degrees of uncertainty in country scores attributed to sampling and measurement error are also important in this regard.
That is, Young is totally and utterly wrong**. More on why he's wrong here***, here, here and, just for completeness sake, the National Foundation for Educational Research review of the PISA 2009 study:
England's performance in 2009 does not differ greatly from that in the last Pisa survey in 2006.
* Readers may wish to note James Delingpole's delightful metaphor on twitter for Young's attempted fisking of the "hysterical" Moore. I can't remember where I put it though. Anyway, it's bound to cause a twitterstorm so you may see it before I see it again.
** Of course, it's not just that he's deliberately misusing the PISA data. His logic is also utterly at sea. Even valid evidence that England may have fallen down the international ranking wouldn't be proof that standards have fallen. It might be as easily explained by other countries getting better (oh, and the huge increase in the number of countries in the rankings).
*** , I note that I asked, in this post about the Chair of the UK Statistics Authority's October '12 letter:
Will they continue to peddle the same untruths, secure in the knowledge that the "plummeting down the international league tables" is now well entrenched as a result of lies to date, and much more likely to gain press coverage than a letter from the UK Statistics Authority?
I think we now know the answer.


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Calamata Olives: How to Identify a Calamata Olive
In the last segment on Olives, Anthony briefly explains how to identify a true Calamata olive. Real Calamatas are deep purple to eggplant in color, with an almond-shaped body and elongated tip. Learn the field marks in this video. Visit our Olive Catalogue to purchase Calamatas or one of the dozens of other olive varieties from around the world! If you'd like to learn more about the olives that become our delicious Stuffed Olives, check out the California Olive video series

subset: commoncrawl


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adidas ClimaCool Cushion Low Cut Socks 2 Pair Socks
These socks greatly improve comfort by cushioning your every step while pulling heat and sweat away from your foot. For best results wear with a shoe with ventilated construction. Two pair per pack, acrylic / cotton / polyester / rubber / nylon / spandex.


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April 29, 2010
Ad Targets Hopkins' Use of Class B Dogs and Cats
An advertisement running in The Johns Hopkins University student newspaper targets the school's continued relationship with Class B dealers.
February 18, 2010
Congress Considers Closing Down "Class B" Dealers
Sales of pet dogs and cats from "random sources" for biomedical research may end
November 20, 2009
Research Proposal: Don't Buy Dogs, Cats from B Dealers
Wayne Pacelle asks animal lovers to take action for dogs and cats sold to research institutions by Class B dealers for use in harmful experiments
November 17, 2009
Dogs, Cats Used in Experiments
The HSUS is urging 50 research institutions to stop buying dogs and cats from "Class B" dealers. The dealers are licensed by the USDA to round up dogs and cats from animal shelters, individuals and other "random sources" and then sell them for experimentation. The HSUS released a study identifying the institutions that still purchase from these dealers.
October 23, 2009
The HSUS Applauds Congress for Introducing Bill to Prevent Pet Theft, Abuse
The Humane Society of the United States praises U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, and U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pa., for introducing the Pet Safety and Protection Act to finally put an end to the practice of animal dealers rounding up "random source" dogs and cats — often family pets — and selling them for experimentation.
May 29, 2009
Class B Dealer System Unnecessary and Unenforceable, Says National Academies Report
The Humane Society of the United States hails a National Academies report, which concludes that Class B dealers are not necessary to provide dogs and cats for research.
April 27, 2009
The HSUS Applauds Montcalm County, Mich. for Ending Sale of Shelter Pets for Research
The HSUS applauds Montcalm County, Mich. for voting to end the practice of providing dogs and cats to an animal broker that sells them for research.
April 20, 2009
Okla. State University Vet School To End Terminal Surgeries of Dogs
The HSUS applauds the Okla. State University College of Veterinary Medicine's decision to eliminate "terminal surgeries" from a surgery curriculum.
January 26, 2009
Michigan County Urged to Stop Providing Shelter Pets to Research
The Montcalm County, Mich. Commissioners will meet today to decide whether to continue giving pets to a Class B dealer, which then sells them for research.


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Sudeley Castle Spring Grand Sale 2012
Anne and Rachael will be on the Absolute-Academy, School of Interior Design stand (number 31) at Sudeley Castle Spring Grand Sale, Sudeley, Gloucestershire – from Thursday 26th to Sunday 29th April. It is a wonderful event with inspiring things to buy for the home and garden. We would love to meet anyone who wants to […]Read more


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Florence Defelice
Published: Friday, October 12, 2007 at 1:33 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, October 11, 2007 at 11:00 p.m.
Florence Ann Lodrigue Defelice, 62, a native of Terrebonne Parish and resident of Grand Caillou, died at 8:37 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2007.
Visitation will be from 4 to 10 p.m. today and from 8 a.m. to funeral time Saturday at Chauvin Funeral Home. Religious service will be at 10 a.m. Saturday at the funeral home chapel, with burial in Garden of Memories Cemetery.
She is survived by her husband, John Sidney Defelice of Grand Caillou; her mother, Bessie Marie Lacabon Lodrigue of Houma; one son, Brad J. Defelice and wife, Heidi, of Houma; three daughters, Caroline M. Montoto and husband, Henry, of Colorado Springs, Colo., Jackie D. Leco and husband, Mark, and Carol D. Duplantis and husband, Johnny, of Houma; three brothers, Anthony Lodrigue Jr. of Houma, Lawrence Lodrigue of Grand Caillou and Jimmy Lodrigue of Houma; two sisters, Gloria Crappel of Harvey and Mary Gregoire of Houma; 12 grandchildren, Danielle L. Duplantis, Samuel R. Parfait Jr., Kandy R. Parfait, Sydney M. Duplantis, Mark A. Leco Jr., Christie A. Defelice, Bradley J. Defelice, Savannah L. Leco, Seth M. Defelice, Trey M. Defelice, Joshua J. Montoto, Christian L. Montoto and one on the way; and one great-grandchild, Tori C. Parfait.
She was preceded in death by her father, Anthony Joseph Lodrigue; her grandparents, Florence and William Lacobon, and Anjelic and William Lodrigue; two brothers, Henry Lodrigue and infant brother, Lodrigue; and two sisters, Effie McVay and Bessie Mae Welch.
She was a homemaker.
Chauvin Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.
Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged.
Comments are currently unavailable on this article


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Welcome to the Veritas Institute. A community rpg based around the supernatural and an organization dedicated to learning and protecting the supernatural. So take a look around if you are interested in joining. We are a nice, open, and friendly group of people, so if you have any questions, feel free to put something in the c-box or PM an admin and we will do our best to answer! When you register please do so in proper caps.
1st Staffer
2nd Staffer
3rd Staffer
to fill in


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We have several Spanish immersion Schools so you can learn spanish in argentina, Peru and Chile to help you take huge strides toward Spanish fluency with our lessons and by having real conversations with real people.
We can ensure you that Ecela is not just all work and no play. You'll participate in activities that allow you to explore local surroundings, try new foods, visit historical sites and more.
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OCT 19, 2013 - Huffington Post
A Must Read - Share
Hours after Senate-elect Cory Booker (D-N.J.) learned he was headed to Washington, he appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," voicing how frustrations with Congress could be channeled into change.
"I think everybody feels there's fatigue and frustration with how things are, which creates a great climate for change," Booker said. ''Often before you have great victory, you have to have great frustration."
Look no further than Booker's place in history. With Wednesday's win, he became just the second black member currently in the U.S. Senate, along with Tim Scott (R-S.C.). On another historic
Read More
Editor's Picks
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text: Creamy eye shadow glides on effortlessly and dries to a shimmering finish with soft texture. (slim, convenient to carry stick) Description *Clear Color Powder And Silver Glitter Pearl 1. Clear Color Powder (Longer lasting color all day) : Creates more vivid And clear color by diffused reflection effect 2. Silver Glitter Pearl : Excellent adhesive power : Unexaggerated pearl particles --> Gives overall glow, no overwhelming sparkles. *Soft And Silky texture : Creates very thin, light film that glides on evenly without clumps. *Hydrating Effect : Contains tocophryl acetate (Vitamin E): Provides superior hydration


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MUMBAI: The National Stock Exchange's Nifty pared some of the intraday gains as weakness in European markets dampened sentiments. Gains in auto, pharmaceuticals and metals were offset by losses in realty and FMCG space.
At 2:50 pm; the Nifty was at 5314.15, up 24.45 points or 0.46 per cent. It touched a high of 5342 and low of 5301.15 in trade so far.


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Design Notes
November 07, 2013
Special Event: Luck of the Draw!
Grand Prize: Fallen Warlord Set by Dage the Evil!
Feelin' lucky? I hope so—because every time you spin the Wheel of Doom and the Wheel of Destiny until 12 AM November 11, 2013 (11/11 midnight server time), you will be entered into the Luck of the Draw prize pool! /Join Doom to talk to Swaggy and spin the Wheel of Doom. Likewise, /join Destiny and talk to Shiny to spin the Wheel of Destiny! Pull the lever, see your reward, and get a chance to win!
Every spin is tracked, and once the event ends on November 11, we will put together a list of the winners and put prizes directly into their inventories!
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Best of luck to you hero, and may your luck shine as bright as your smile =D
xoxo Beleen


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Penguin Random House
Wine Tasting Bundle (3 PC)
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
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- 12
Description: Wine Tasting Uncorked
Each is a guide to wineries where you can find excellent handcrafted wines made by on-site proprietors, often with only a local distribution and limited production, places where wine tasting gets down-to-earth–no one needs to show off how developed his or her palate is. These are often also where sustainable and organic viticulture is being pioneered. Above all, these are wines that are likely to be a new experience
These paperback books measure 4 3/5 inches in width by 6 inches in height. Published March 2009.
Wine Bar Food
In Wine Bar Food, acclaimed restaurateurs Cathy and Tony Mantuano show you how to re-create this irresistibly appealing part of the Mediterranean lifestyle at home. Organized by city, from Lisbon to Rome, and paired with accessible wines from each region, the delightfully unpretentious, simply prepared dishes can be shared as small plates by many or make a sit-down dinner for two or more. The 100 recipes emphasize flavor and ease of preparation over strict authenticity, so you'll be able to round up the ingredients effortlessly to create delicious meals any night of the week. Published April 2008.
Cheese Deck
As the maître fromager of New York City's acclaimed Picholine restaurant, Max McCalman has selected, tasted, and studied hundreds of cheeses, serving them to thousands of cheese lovers. This deck contains fascinating and practical information about fifty of his most highly rated cheeses: how each one is made, who the best producers are, where to store it, and how to serve it for maximum enjoyment (including unprecedented guidance on which wines are most compatible with each cheese). Published October 2007.
Brand: Penguin Random House


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Platform beds are well-liked in Europe, Scandinavia and Japan. in the occasion you are within the industry for any Platform Bed, drawing up programs could possibly be the most beneficial idea. Pursue as a whole lot of variations as feasible for being particular the last option is nicely believed out. The platform's height could be the most imperative choice to produce considering that it determines the all round height after you include the mattress. That helps make the mattress an imperative element as well. The product employed to construct the Platform Bed does not must be good lumber; plywood performs just as well.
Tips & Warnings
Leave a amount of pieces in the lumber loose to supply entry for the room below the platform..Do not utilize a accomplish for the Platform Bed frame without having correct ventilation..
Read more: Do it Yourself to build Platform Bed Projects: Platform Bed Plans
Things You'll Need:
Lumber or plywood Table saw (optional) round saw 4-penny accomplish nails Variable pace drill Philips mind screw suggestion Piano hinge Drywall screws
Determine the wanted height of your Platform Bed. Construct the frame in the Platform Bed with good lumber when the height is much less than 11? inches. If it is a whole lot more than 11?, inches, rip 4 pieces of plywood using a table saw or round saw to produce the 4 frame pieces.
Plan the width pieces to match in between the period pieces. established them in between the period pieces on both finish to type a rectangular or rectangle depending for the dimension of system required with the selected mattress. safe them to every single other with both drywall screws or 4-penny (1?-inch) accomplish nails.
Cut numerous pieces using a table saw or round saw to match within the frame as facilitates with the platform. maintain them inside 24 inches of every single other for highest support. These pieces both could be cost-free floating or secured for the frame.
Measure the width and period in the system frame. reduce the system from the sheet of plywood and safe it for the frame with 4-penny accomplish nails. As an alternative, attach a piano hinge to a single borders in the plywood and also the frame using the screws offered using the piano hinge along with a variable pace drill and screw tip. This permits entry to safe-keeping room that could otherwise be inaccessible.
Arrange as a whole lot of pieces of good lumber as required to include the best in the frame. These pieces serve a similar objective since the plywood pointed out before. safe the lumber for the frame with accomplish nails or drywall screws.
Read more: Do it Yourself: Platform Bed Plans
Read more: bunk bed plans,woodworking bed plans in my blog.


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Relax at the consistently enjoyable Microtel Inn and Suites by Wyndham Atlanta/Perimeter Center conveniently located near prime dining, shopping and entertainment. Visit the CNN Tower just minutes away, or head to World of Coca-Cola and experience many versions of the beloved soft drink. Ideal for business and leisure, this smoke-free hotel offers a seasonal outdoor pool, guest laundry facilities, complimentary newspaper, and on-site gym. Host your next business or social event at the meeting room, and take advantage of the complimentary guest copy and fax services. Enjoy the complimentary continental breakfast, and keep in touch with the complimentary wireless Internet access. Guest room amenities include desk and TV with HBO. Suites and handicapped-accessible rooms are also available. There is no charge for children 17 and under with an adult.
Accessible facilities
Adjoining rooms
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Closets in room
Coffee/Tea maker
Coin operated laundry
Complimentary continental breakfast
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Conference facilities
Desk with lamp
Dry cleaning
Exercise gym
Family/oversized room
Free high speed internet connection
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Free parking
Free parking
High speed internet access
High speed internet access for laptop in public areas
High speed internet connection
Ice machine
Internet services
Ironing board
Ironing board
Meeting rooms
Non-smoking rooms (generic)
Outdoor pool
Ramp access
Remote control television
Rollaway bed
Safe deposit box
Vending machines
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Wireless internet connection in public areas
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text:
Striped-pro is 1+0.
Concatanated is a little different, in that it doesn't fall into a standard
"RAID" category.
Assuming that you understand how raid-0 works (striped).. concatanation
differs in that the resultant virtual device uses the first slice contiguosly
until the end of that device and then starts using the next device and so on,
whereas striped will only access a stripe unit worth of data from the first
device then move on to the next device.
Striping: Advantages - reads and writes hit all spindles in the volumes.
Disadvantages: All subdisks making up the subdisk must all be the same size.
Concat - (The opposite)
So, what then is concatanated pro? It is mirroring then concating across
those layered volumes, as striped pro is mirroring and then striping across
the layered volumes.
Ok, as for your question as to can you convert from 0+1 to 1+0. The answer is
maybe, veritas is capable of doing it, but it is a messy procedure that
requires lots of free temporary disk space for veritas to use. I almost
always will rebuild the volumes in question.
-Brian Gupta
Senior Systems Engineer
Unix Engineering
Time Inc.
pankaj wrote:
> Hi All ,
> Just need a little help.
> Striped Pro is 1+0
> Concatenated Pro is 0+1
> Is this right or is it the other way around ?
> I would RTFM but am on site which has old veritas Course notes and my new
> one's are back at home.
> Other question would be if the above is wrong can I change my current
> volumes to 1+0 if they are 0+1 without having to remove them all and start
> again. If so how ?
> Cheers
> Pankaj


text:
Location: Natural Products Utilization Research
2013 Annual Report
Objective 1: Discover new leads from plant-based natural resources with anti-infective and anti-cancer, immunomodulator and anti-inflammatory activities using cell-based screens and mechanistic assays using molecular target-based approaches. Sub-objective 1A: Source novel natural resources from terrestrial plants, marine organisms and microbes from around the world for biological testing. Sub-objective 1B: Prepare, maintain and manage Natural Products Repository and Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS). Sub-objective 1C: Evaluate natural product extracts and natural product derived pure compounds for potential anti-cancer, anti-infective, anti-inflammatory, and anti-diabetic properties, and for utility in metabolic and immune disorders. Sub-objective 1D: Isolation and structural elucidation of lead compounds.
Objective 2: For the best candidates, characterize mechanisms of action, selectivity, toxicity, functional activity in secondary assays and in animal models of plant-based anti-infective and anti-cancer, immunomodulator and anti-inflammatory compounds. Sub-objective 2A: Characterization of mechanisms of action and functional activity of leads. Sub-objective 2B: Characterization of selectivity and toxicity of lead compounds.
Objective 3: Develop methods for analysis of bioactive or medicinally important plants and quality control of their derived products.
Objective 4: Assess selected medicinal or aromatic plants for cultivation, harvest and processing to optimize yields of biomass and active principles.
Review Publications
Herath, W., Khan, S.I., Khan, I.A. 2012. Microbial metabolism Part 14 Isolation and bioactivity evaluation of microbial metabolites of resveratrol. Natural Product Research. 32:1377-1382.
Wang, M., Avula, B., Zhao, J., Parcher, J.F., Khan, I.A. 2012. Fatty acid analysis of saw palmetto (Serenoa repens) and pygeum (Prunus africanum) in dietary supplements by mass spectrometry in the selected ion monitoring mode. Planta Medica. 77:84-90.
Mikell, J.R., Khan, I.A. 2012. Bioconversion of 7-hydroxyflavanone: isolation, characterization and bioactivity evaluation of twenty-one phase I and phase II microbial metaboites. Chemical and Pharmaceutical Bulletin. 60(9):1139-1145.
Machumi, F., Yenesew, A., Midiwo, J.O., Heydenreich, M., Kleinpeter, E., Tekwani, B.L., Khan, S.I., Walker, L.A., Muhammad, I. 2012. Antiparasitic and anticancer carvotacetone derivatives of Sphaeranthus bullatus. Natural Product Communications. 7(9):1123-1126.
Raman, V., Galal, A.M., Khan, I.A. 2012. An investigation of the vegetative anatomy of Piper sarmentosum, and a comparison with the anatomy of Piper betle (Piperaceae). American Journal of Plant Sciences. 3:1135-1144.
Ilias, M., Samoylenko, V., Machumi, F., Zaki, M.A., Gillum, V. 2013. Preparation and application of reversed phase chromatorotor for the isolation of natural products by centrifugal preparative chromatography. Journal of Chromatography A. 8(3):311-314.
Machumi, F., Midiwo, J.O., Jacob, M.R., Khan, S.I., Tekwani, B.L., Zhang, J., Walker, L.A., Muhammad, I. 2013. Phytochemical, antimicrobial and antiplasmodial investigations of Terminalia brownii. Natural Product Communications. 8(6):761-764.
Peddikotla, P., Khan, I.A., Chittiboyina, A.G. 2013. Synthesis of pterostilbene by Julie Olefination. Synthetic Communications. 78:43-50.
Mohamed, Z., Balachandran, P., Khan, S., Wang, M., Mohammed, R., Hetta, M.H., Pasco, D.S., Muhammad, I. 2013. Cytotoxicity and modulation of cancer-related signaling by (Z)- and (E)- 3,4,3´,5´ tetramethoxystilbene isolated from Eugenia rigida. Journal of Natural Products. 76:679–684.
Pugh, N.D., Jackson, C.R., Pasco, D.S. 2012. Total bacterial load within Echinacea purpurea, determined using a new PCR-based quantification method, is correlated with LPS levels and In vitro macrophage activity. Planta Medica. 79:9-14.


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A 16-year-old girl was killed in a crash on a street Hiram residents say is extremely dangerous. WMTW News 8's Aly Myles reports.
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This volume represents an amplification of the chapter on biologic oxidations in Oppenheimer's more general work on enzymes. There has been a need for a comprehensive theoretical treatment of this subject and the volume under review meets a part of that need. The historical method of development of the subject is used, which leads to some confusion in presentation. Some confusion results from developing the subject in terms of the Wieland-Warburg argument. That controversy is now a matter of history and a straightforward presentation of theory with supporting facts would be more intelligible to the serious beginning student. On the whole, however, the theory is presented in fundamental terms and can be followed by any one who has a moderately good background in modern physical chemistry. The book is written as a guide for beginning investigators in the field and as a critical digest of existing information for others. There
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The load also has an effect on the pattern of your gun. Within any cloud of shot, individual pellet placement is entirely random, and no given pellet or group of pellets can be precisely directed. However, if this scatter of pellets is dense enough, the sheer number defeats random positioning and can produce multiple pellet strikes to down the bird.
Choke tubes are essential in this regard, but without a satisfactory load to allow the choke to do its job, you won't see improvement. So how do you find a load to match your choke? According to Roberts, it's a trial-and-error process.
"If you don't feel like getting it professionally done, which I would recommend, the easiest thing to do is to go out and buy a couple of different boxes of shells that you would want to use during the season and go to work," says Roberts. "Find out which type of shell patterns best."
Even though it is feasible for a hunter to generate a good pattern with basic knowledge of how it works, it's also important to understand that it's not as simple as buying an aftermarket choke tube. Do your research to see which choke best matches your gun.
In many cases, it would be a good idea to have a professional modify and outfit your gun with a choke tube. Roberts suggests a precision custom choke installation and individually fit choke tubes, which will have none of the limitations present in mass-produced or aftermarket choke tubes.
A custom choke will be more likely to be in line with the point of aim when the tube is in alignment with the shotgun bore. The patterns are likely to be more uniform when the shot is constricted evenly through the entire choking action. An off-center choke, which can be found in some factory or aftermarket choke tubes, will have the shot strike first on one side of the choke and have an uneven action.
"Nothing could be more detrimental to one's hunting experience than blatantly overlooking the importance of your shotgun's performance, especially that of the gun's patterning ability with respect to choke tubes and load selection," Roberts concludes.
However, none of this is to say that some quality time with your favorite shotgun can't produce nearly professional results.
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President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp Act into law.
First duck stamp, designed by Pulitzer-prize winning editorial cartoonist, Jay N. "Ding" Darling, issued.
Prairie drought peaks.


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APR 30, 2014 - Kansas City Star
A Must Read - Share
Members of the U.N. Security Council say they fear that no progress will be made on getting desperately needed humanitarian aid into Syria as long as Russia opposes any actions against the Assad regime.
Editor's Picks
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Running low on fuel at gas pumps has spurred French consumers to choose electric vehicles as an alternative. Strikes by oil industry workers has brought production to a standstill in France. Shortages of "petrol," or gasoline and diesel, have led to long lines at gas pumps It's presented an opportunity for automakers to sell more […]+ Read More
Since 2009 only half a dozen plug-in electrified vehicles (PEVs) have sold more than 25,000, and last month three more were added to the list. The sales volumes of the BYD Qin plug-in hybrid, all-electric Renault Zoe, and all-electric BMW i3 and i3 REx are the result of regional markets for two of them, with […]+ Read More
Car sharing provider E-Car Club is launching in Scotland with a fleet of Renault electric vehicles. E-Car Club will be partnering with St. Andrews University and Transport Scotland in St. Andrews.The UK car sharing club has chosen a fleet of eight ZOE EV hatchbacks and two all-electric Kangoo Van Z.E. for its first launch in […]+ Read More
Renault took the win at the 2015 ZENN Monte-Carlo Rally with four of its ZOE EV taking the four top places. This result follows last year's win, which was also the first time the ZOE participated in the rally. 2015 marked the 6th edition of this EV rally. SEE ALSO: EVs Racing Around Monte-Carlo According […]+ Read More
The 6th ZENN Monte-Carlo Rally, an event for electric vehicles, will be held March 20 to 22. ZENN is short for "zero emissions, no noise;" the rally is a motorsport competition open exclusively to electric cars with a range of under 250 kilometers (155.34 miles). Like its renowned parent competition, the Monte-Carlo Rally, the ZENN […]+ Read More
The Renault-Nissan Alliance will supply major telecom provider Orange with a fleet of 200 electric vehicles for its needs in France. Renault-Nissan said it will provide the 200 electric vehicles to Orange by 2015. Orange added it will use the electric vehicles mostly for car-sharing purposes between its buildings and installations in France. Orange said […]+ Read More
A lot of us have known electric cars in their simplest form when we were young: the Scalextric tracks. Renault decided to have fun combining its Zoe electric vehicles and the good old Scalextric race tracks in a video. Renault and electric vehicles are no strangers to motorsport – either in full-size racing, as Renault […]+ Read More
The Renault-Nissan alliance's French side entered in a partnership with wireless service provider Orange in order to explore uses for 4G on future vehicles. The partnership will provide Renault and Orange with a real-life testing framework for exploring new connectivity applications on vehicles using high-speed technologies. Everyone foresees tomorrow's vehicles will be hyper-connected. It is […]+ Read More


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Young Adults
You're in your best years - this is the time you're taking charge of your life, building your career, and establishing yourself in your community. We're here to help you with resources and tools for you to make the most of your finances. You're technologically savvy, in a perfect place to take advantage of convenience services such as home banking and bill pay. Manage your accounts online, transfer funds, and pay your bills all when it's convenient for YOU. Plus, with products like free checking, free VISA Check Card, and shared branching, you can access your account at over 2,000 locations nationwide (and in some cases even overseas!) so whether you're home, or off at college your credit union is always near!
Links of interest:
CU Swirl Shared Branching
Aurora Borealis Rotaract (Fairbanks)
Capital City Rotaract (Juneau) - For information about the group, call president Melissa Griffiths at 364-5201 or send e-mail to firstname.lastname@example.com.
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World AIDS Day in Atlanta and Georgia
By Patrick Sanders Georgia Voice | 11/29/2013, 6 a.m.
The AIDS epidemic erased a generation of gay men, and while the symptoms are easier to manage, the startling rate of infection proves that the work is not nearly done. So organizations, schools, churches and more have a full slate of events planned throughout the metro Atlanta area beyond and to recognize World AIDS Day on Dec. 1.
Team Friendly Atlanta is joining forces with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to present a candlelight vigil and remembrance on the Beltline on Dec. 1. "We're two-and-a-half decades into this and although it's manageable and not a death sentence, it's still a major problem," says Randy Prophater, Chair of Team Friendly Atlanta, citing a recent study showing 28 percent of all new HIV infections in the U.S. occur in the South.
Many area organizations are opening their doors for free HIV testing, including The MISTER Center and Cobb County Health. AID Atlanta has a week-long calendar of events planned, including free HIV testing, a candlelight vigil at Saint Mark United Methodist Church, and a lunch and learn.
Organizations aren't ignoring the power of social media, either. AIDS.gov and the Greater Than AIDS campaign have designed World AIDS Day logos for people to upload to their social media profiles, and AID Atlanta is encouraging individuals, congregations and other organizations to commemorate the day by sharing pictures of their events and activities via Facebook and Twitter using the tag #Uand2.
The tag is AID Atlanta's theme for World AIDS Day this year, with the goal of encouraging the community to get tested, get education, support the cause financially, and invite two others to participate with them.
"The spotlight has moved away from the issue but the disease and the ways people get it are still exactly the same," Prophater says. "It's important to remember those that are in the early stages of it, but also those we've lost so we learn not to repeat it."
*Unless specified otherwise all listings are slated for Atlanta.
Free HIV Testing
Nov. 30, 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.
The MISTER Center
60 Eleventh St.
Free HIV Testing
Dec. 1, 9:45 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Saint Mark United
Methodist Church
781 Peachtree St.
AID Atlanta #Uand2
Candlelight Vigil
Dec. 1, 5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
Saint Mark United
Methodist Church
781 Peachtree St.
AIDS Memorial Quilt
Dec. 1
Central Congregational United Church of Christ
2676 Clairmont Rd.
World AIDS Day Mass
Dec. 1, 5:30 p.m.
Holy Cross Catholic Church
3175 Hathaway Court, NE
Candlelight Vigil & Remembrance
Dec. 1, 6 p.m. - 7 p.m.
The Beltline between Monroe Ave. and the Old Fourth Ward
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and Team Friendly Atlanta are presenting this vigil and
remembrance, where a prayer will be held and people will be given the opportunity to recognize those
they have lost to the disease.
Someone Cares Condom Distribution Drive
Dec. 1, All Night
Jungle Atlanta, Rain Nightclub & Lounge, Phase One, LeBuzz
Someone Cares Inc. of Atlanta's HIV prevention outreach team will be distributing condoms and


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We want you to help us raise awareness in the fight against heart disease in women, so show us the red you're wearing on National Wear Red Day, February 7, 2014.
Upload your photos to the Events, Go Red Day category to appear in the slideshow above. You can also upload your photo to Instagram using the hashtag #wmtwgored to find them on u local!
Start sharing your photos today! Not a member? Click here to join u local, it's quick and easy.


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ACAMPO — A video of a woman apparently being forced to jump from an airplane at the Parachute Center near Lodi has gone viral on the Internet. The incident took place last May, and the Federal Aviation Administration confirmed Friday it is now investigating and only recently received the video, according to a Sacramento television station.
In the video, the woman is shown clinging to the sides of the aircraft before being forced to jump with an unidentified instructor. She appeared to nearly come out of her harness during the descent.
The owner of the center, Bill Dause, said no one got hurt and the equipment didn't malfunction. He added the matter was handled internally but did not elaborate before declining further comment.
Location, ST | website.com


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Myhre, G, Kvalevag, MM, Schaaf, CB (2005). Radiative forcing due to anthropogenic vegetation change based on MODIS surface albedo data. GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, 32(21), L21410.
AbstractIn this study we use the capabilities of the MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer ( MODIS) land surface product to estimate the radiative forcing due to surface albedo changes caused by anthropogenic vegetation changes. We improve the representation of the present surface albedo by using data retrieved from MODIS. The change in surface albedo is based on the current vegetation land cover from MODIS, the MODIS surface albedos for those vegetation types, and a data set for potential natural vegetation. We arrive at a radiative forcing due to anthropogenic vegetation changes of - 0.09 Wm(-2) since pre-agriculture times to present, weaker than most earlier published results for this climate forcing mechanism. This is mainly due to a lower surface albedo associated with cropland and further with the use of MODIS data to allow us to constrain the surface albedo change.
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JIMCO Opens Charleston Bulk Transload FacilitySeptember 28, 2011 · GoWP Support · News · Comments Off on JIMCO Opens Charleston Bulk Transload Facility
Charleston, SC – The JIMCO Group has opened a bulk transload operation in the Port of Charleston to serve growing demand for U.S. exports of agricultural and other bulk products.
JIMCO's new facility is located adjacent to the North Charleston Terminal at the South Carolina Public Railways' Remount Road facility. It will receive product — such as agricultural bulk commodities — by rail or truck and convey it into international shipping containers for export.
Increased global consumption, particularly in Asia, is pushing commodity exports. Strong demand for empty containers in the U.S. interior to serve growing exports is another factor driving the local transload operation in the Port of Charleston, where there is an ample supply of empty equipment for exports.
"JIMCO is proud to join the Port of Charleston community," said Jimmie Collins, president and founder of JIMCO. "Our new Charleston facility gives farmers, agricultural interests and other bulk cargo shippers a new, cost-effective way to get their product to overseas buyers through a productive, deep-water port."
"The Port of Charleston and South Carolina welcome JIMCO to our State," said Paul McClintock, senior vice president and chief commercial officer of the South Carolina Ports Authority. "We expect that exports will continue to increase, and Charleston is well-positioned to serve this growing business."
South Carolina Public Railways (SCPR) is central to the project. JIMCO's Charleston operation is located on property owned by SCPR, and SCPR will provide on-site switching services. Both Norfolk Southern and CSX serve the site.
"We are pleased to have JIMCO operating at Public Railways, utilizing the Port of Charleston, and supporting the economic viability of our State," said Jeff McWhorter, president and chief executive officer of SCPR.
With the region's deepest channels, ocean carriers in Charleston can take on more and heavier export loads before sailing vessels at actual drafts up to 48 feet. Rail-to-container transloading of agri-bulk cargos, which are typically denser and heavier than import loads, can reduce transportation costs.
The JIMCO Group is an industrial services company based in Savannah, GA with facilities and operations across the eastern U.S.
From South Carolina Ports — View PDF


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muzgo (from irc) was playing around with /net in qemu and came across this gem:
on drawterm:
cpu% cd /net/tcp
cpu% cat clone
23cpu% cd 23
cpu% echo connect 10.0.2.1!12345 >ctl
cpu% cat status
Finwait2 qin 0 qout 0 srtt 0 mdev 0 cwin 1461 swin 32850>>0 rwin
65535>>0 timer.start 10 timer.count 10 rerecv 0 katimer.start 200
katimer.count 159
cpu% echo connect 10.0.2.1!12345 >ctl
this causes CPU server to reboot with:
panic: timerstate1
panic: timerstate1
dumpstack disabled
cpu0 exiting
The usage of /net is invalid, but you wouldn't really expect that to
reboot the machine (or maybe it's a holdover from before /dev/reboot
existed? ;) ).
Just tried it on my cpu server and got the same panic, so we can rule
qemu out. I adjusted the ip!port to something that would accept my
connection, and my status was something like Timedwait rather than
Finwait2. Second time around I skipped the cat status and still hit
the panic so the status read isn't affecting things (which is probably
blindingly obvious to anyone familiar with the /net code, but oh
I appear to be running a realtek 8169 nic:
#l0: rtl8169: 100Mbps port 0xE400 irq 11: 000aeb2ff32c
Don't know what muzgo was using in qemu, but let me know if I can
provide any useful information.


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Richardson Lake Highlands
Photos: High school football in Richardson, Lake Highlands
Photo: DOUG KOVAL/Contributor
Pearce quarterback Hank Hughes (left)scrambles to complete a pass during the Aug. 30 game against Lake Dallas at Richardson's Eagle-Mustang Stadium.
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"Vampire Diaries" Alum Confirmed to Play Savitar on "The Flash" S3
Comic Books, TV
The announcement late last month that digital distributor Graphicly would close and its key employees join self-publishing platform Blurb was met immediately by questions, many of which centered on whether the company's clients will be paid what they're owed.
Originally envisioned as "iTunes for comics," Boulder, Colorado-based Graphicly was soon overshadowed by competitor comiXology, and in 2012 shuttered its comics app to focus instead on providing visually based books and comics to eBook platforms. In its most recent incarnation, Graphicly was a digital conversion and distribution service: For a fee of $150, the company would convert a comic to ePub and other formats and distribute it to digital platforms such as Amazon's Kindle, Barnes & Noble's Nook and Apple's iBooks. Graphicly would then act as middleman, collecting money from sales on those platforms and passing it along to the creators. Unlike other digital comics distributors, Graphicly didn't take a cut of sales on eBook platforms, just the upfront fee.
Since Graphicly announced its closing on May 27, a number of creators have asserted publicly that the company wasn't tracking sales correctly and hasn't paid them what they're owed from sales. Bleeding Cool spoke to Dave Dellecese and representatives of Th3rd World Studios, as well as a former Graphicly employee. At The Beat, Marc Ellerby and Mike Garley told similar stories, and Eric Grissom and Dara Naraghi added their names in the comments. Ellerby tweeted:
In what VentureBeat dubs an acqui-hire, digital comics distributor turned eBook distributor Graphicly will shut down as its key employees, including co-founder Micah Baldwin, join self-publishing platform Blurb.
"None of the assets per se are coming over, but we are talking to publishers who were on Graphicly," Baldwin told TechCrunch. "We are hopeful that Graphicly users will take their content and manage it with Blurb, and maybe print their books there, too."
A digital-comics pioneer, Graphicly was initially envisioned as "iTunes for comics," a phrase commonly associated with competitor comiXology, which, aided by early deals with Marvel and DC Comics, came to dominate the market. Graphicly, which for nearly three years owned comics news/podcast site iFanboy, announced in April 2012 that it would move away from distributing comics on its own app and instead focus on providing visually based books and comics to eBook platforms like Apple's iBooks, Amazon's Kindle and the Barnes & Noble Nook.
"After spending four years working on digital publishing, it became clear that we were telling half the story," Baldwin said in a statement. "Print is not dead, it's wildly important in the natural growth of creators, but it too is only half the story for self-publishers now. Combining the best in class print platform from Blurb, with all the ebook learning the Graphicly team has accrued over the past four years, was just too compelling an opportunity to pass up."
According to Blurb, the addition of the six Graphicly employees will double the size of its eBook team.


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Take a sneak peek at the new NIST.gov and let us know what you think!
(Please note: some content may not be complete on the beta site.).
NIST Authors in Bold
|M I. Al-Sheikhly; Dianne L. Poster; Jung-Chul An; Pedatsur Neta; Joseph Silverman; Robert E. Huie;
|Ionizing Radiation-Induced Destruction of Benzene and Dienes in Aqueous Media
|March 28, 2006
|Pulse radiolysis with spectrophotometric and conductometric detection was utilized to study the formation and reactions of radicals from benzene and dienes in aqueous solutions. The benzene OH adduct, C6H6OH, reacts with O2 (k = 3 x 108 L mol-1 s-1) in a reversible reaction. The peroxyl radical, HOC6H6O2 , undergoes O2 - elimination, bimolecular decay, and reaction with benzene to initiate a chain reaction, depending on the dose rate, benzene concentration, and pH. The occurrence of the chain reaction is demonstrated in low-dose-rate gamma radiolysis experiments where the consumption of O2 was monitored. 1,4-Cyclohexadiene, 1,4-hexadiene, and 1,4-pentadiene form OH-adducts and undergo H-abstraction by O - radicals. The OH-adducts react with O2 to form peroxyl radicals. These peroxyl radicals, however, do not undergo unimolecular O2 - elimination but rather decay by second order processes, which lead to subsequent steps of O2 - elimination.
|Environmental Science & Technology
|pp. 3082 - 3088
|alkyl radicals,Benzene,dienes,O2-elimination,OH-adducts,peroxyl radicals,pulse radiolysis
|Research Areas:
|Organic Analytical Chemistry, Pollution/Indoor Air Quality, Marine Health, Environment/Climate, Chemistry, Environmental Technologies
|PDF version:
|Click here to retrieve PDF version of paper (207KB)