Expert Evidence of "Risk Assessments" and the Preventive Detention of "Dangerous Prisoners".

The Dangerous Prisoners (Sexual Offenders) Act 2003 (Qld) provides for the preventive detention of a prisoner if there is "acceptable, cogent evidence" to a "high degree of probability" that the prisoner is a "serious danger to the community" because of an "unacceptable risk" that the prisoner will commit a "serious sexual offence". In preventive detention cases courts rely on the expert opinion of psychiatrists and psychologists who often use actuarial risk assessment instruments. In Black v Attorney-General (Qld) [2022] QCA 253 the Queensland Court of Appeal considered a decision to detain an offender who had a history of possessing and trading child sexual exploitation material but who had not previously been proved to have committed a contact offence against a child.

The marriage of psychology and law: testamentary capacity.

[1870. LR 5 QB 549 (Eng.)] is almost 150 years old, yet still stands as authority for the principle that unsoundness of the mind will not rebut testamentary capacity where it does not affect the will itself.

Legal risk management and injury in the fitness industry: the outcomes of focus group research and a national survey of fitness professionals.

The Australian Fitness Industry Risk Management (AFIRM) Project was set up to explore the operation of rules and regulations for the delivery of safe fitness services. This article summarises the results of recent focus group research and a national survey of risk management practices by the AFIRM Project. Our focus group research in four States identified the following most important concerns: (1) the competency of fitness professionals; (2) the effectiveness of pre-exercise screening and the management of de-conditioned clients; (3) poor supervision of fitness service users and incorrect use of equipment; (4) fitness trainers failing to remain within their scope of practice; (5) equipment misuse (as distinct from incorrect use); and (6) poor fitness training environments.

Confocal imaging of fluorescently labeled proteins in the Drosophila larval neuromuscular junction.

The Drosophila larval neuromuscular junction (NMJ) consists of a presynaptic motor neuron terminal and a postsynaptic muscle cell that offer an accessible and popular model system for the analysis of synaptic growth and function. I describe techniques for visualizing fluorescently labeled proteins within dissected, formaldehyde-fixed second to third instar larval NMJs. In addition, I present two strategies using confocal microscopy to solve a particular problem in NMJ analysis: distinguishing fluorescence in the presynaptic nerve terminal from that in the adjacent postsynaptic muscle cell.

Nervous wreck, an SH3 adaptor protein that interacts with Wsp, regulates synaptic growth in Drosophila.

We describe the isolation and characterization of nwk (nervous wreck), a temperature-sensitive paralytic mutant that causes excessive growth of larval neuromuscular junctions (NMJs), resulting in increased synaptic bouton number and branch formation. Ultrastructurally, mutant boutons have reduced size and fewer active zones, associated with a reduction in synaptic transmission. nwk encodes an FCH and SH3 domain-containing adaptor protein that localizes to the periactive zone of presynaptic terminals and binds to the Drosophila ortholog of Wasp (Wsp), a key regulator of actin polymerization.