Knowledge and Myths About Child Sexual Abuse in Mexican Women.

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a terrible type of maltreatment that occurs in all countries and social statuses, but due to the shame and taboo that it creates, it is still riddled with myths and false beliefs that make it difficult for the population and the authorities to adequately determine its prevalence. The objective of this work was to explore what Mexican women know about CSA. The participants were Mexican women (N = 499) who filled out a questionnaire comprising ten items referring to truths and myths about CSA, indicating their degree of agreement with them on a Likert scale. The results showed that although Mexican women have quite adequate knowledge about CSA, they still hold wrong beliefs about the child's feelings toward the abuser or the child victim becoming an adult abuser. Likewise, differences were found in the myths and truths about CSA held by women under 40 and over 40 years of age.

Child Sexual Abuse in Mexican Women: Type of Experience, Age, Perpetrator, and Disclosure.

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a type of maltreatment that occurs in practically all countries and social statuses. Due to the taboo and shame that surrounds it, CSA is a problem universally silenced despite the important consequences (both physical and psychological) that it has for the victim and their family. This work aimed to study the correlates of CSA in Mexican women. Our sample comprised 1058 women ranged from 18 to 73 years (M = 40.19; SD = 10.24). They completed an anonymous online survey including questions about all the different types of abuse, questions about who perpetrated it, at what age it happened, and whether the victim disclosed the abuse. Our results showed that, depending on the type of abuse, from 13.9% to 65.8% of the participants had suffered at least one episode of CSA throughout their childhood. The first episode typically occurred between 6 and 12 years old, with the perpetrator being a male. The youngest women reported higher rates of being shown pornography by a family member, whereas the oldest ones reported higher rates of exhibitionism by a stranger. Only 31.3% of the sample disclosed the abuse, usually to their mother or a peer. Differences among the correlates of the different types of abuse, the age of the victims, and the relationship with the perpetrator are discussed as well as the victims' feelings of being believed when they disclosed the abuse.

Factorization and Criticality in Finite XXZ Systems of Arbitrary Spin.

We analyze ground state (GS) factorization in general arrays of spins s_{i} with XXZ couplings immersed in nonuniform fields. It is shown that an exceptionally degenerate set of completely separable symmetry-breaking GSs can arise for a wide range of field configurations, at a quantum critical point where all GS magnetization plateaus merge. Such configurations include alternating fields as well as zero-bulk field solutions with edge fields only and intermediate solutions with zero field at specific sites, valid for d-dimensional arrays. The definite magnetization-projected GSs at factorization can be analytically determined and depend only on the exchange anisotropies, exhibiting critical entanglement properties. We also show that some factorization-compatible field configurations may result in field-induced frustration and nontrivial behavior at strong fields.

The mtDNA ancestry of admixed Colombian populations.

A total of 185 individuals from Colombia were sequenced for the first hypervariable region (HVS-I) of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genome, and a subset of these individuals were additionally genotyped for the second hypervariable segment (HVS-II). These individuals were collected according to their "self-reported ethnicity" in Colombia, comprising "Mestizos," "Mulatos," and "Afro-Colombians." We used databases containing more than 4,300 Native American lineages, 6,800 Africans, and 15,600 Europeans for population comparisons and phylogeographic inferences. We observe that Mulatos and Afro-Colombians have a dominant African mtDNA component, whereas Mestizos carry predominantly Native American haplotypes. All the populations analyzed have high diversity indices and there are no signatures of dramatic genetic drift episodes. Central and South America are the main candidate source populations of the Colombian Native American lineages, whereas west-central, southwest, and southeast Africa are the main original mtDNA sources for the African Colombian mtDNAs. We found that our results differ from those obtained in other studies for the same "population groups" in terms of haplogroup frequencies. This observation leads us to conclude that (i) self-reported ancestry is not a reliable proxy to indicate an individual's "ethnicity" in Colombia, (ii) our results do not support the use of outmoded race descriptions (Mestizos, Mulatos, etc.) mainly because these labels do not correspond to any genetically homogeneous population group, and (iii) studies relying on these terms to describe the population group of the individual, which then treat them as genetically homogeneous, carry a high risk of type I error (false positives) in medical studies in this country and of misinterpretation of the frequency of observed variation in forensic casework.