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This study aims to draw together what is known regarding the characteristics and context of adult family violence, and to consider what practitioners and organisations in the UK might learn from the literature.

This study reviews literature on adult family violence and parricide and includes illustrative cases from a study of domestic homicide review reports involving older adults.

Adult family violence most often involves mothers killed by their adult sons. Mental health issues, alcohol/substance misuse and criminality are common themes for perpetrators. Caregiving responsibilities is a theme for both victims and perpetrators. Previous research identified two main categories of adult family homicide: perpetrators with major psychotic illness, and victims-perpetrators in complex relational contexts.

This study considers how practitioners respond to situations of adult family violence and learning for policymakers, agencies and practitioners.

This paper summarises what is known, argues that more research is needed and suggests practical ways forward for policymakers, relevant agencies and practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to review the terminology used to describe family violence involving older adults in order to stimulate a discussion that may assist in the use of a more appropriate and clearer terminology.

Different definitions of terms used to describe violence are considered and the contexts in which they are used. Two cases are described to illustrate the use of overlapping terms, the assumptions that lie behind them and the different actions that they lead to.

The authors argue that legal, relational, health (physical and mental) and social perspectives are all useful and integration contributes to a fuller understanding of violence.

The importance of terminology used to describe family violence involving older adults has been neglected in the past, yet it influences understanding about violent incidents and shapes responses to them.

Presents the scientific methodology from the enlarged cybernetical perspective that recognizes the anisotropy of time, the probabilistic character of natural laws, and the entry that the incomplete determinism in Nature opens to the occurrence of innovation, growth, organization, teleology communication, control, contest and freedom. The new tier to the methodological edifice that cybernetics provides stands on the earlier tiers, which go back to the Ionians (c. 500 BC). However, the new insights reveal flaws in the earlier tiers, and their removal strengthens the entire edifice. The new concepts of teleological activity and contest allow the clear demarcation of the military sciences as those whose subject matter is teleological activity involving contest. The paramount question “what ought to be done”, outside the empirical realm, is embraced by the scientific methodology. It also embraces the cognitive sciences that ask how the human mind is able to discover, and how the sequence of discoveries might converge to a true description of reality.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Aristotle’s ethics can be applied to the ethics of professional accountants (PAs), in relation to the approach adopted by the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), and to consider the reasons that justify the Aristotelian approach.

The paper outlines IFAC’s approach and identifies several weaknesses. Three themes of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics are applied to the work of PAs. Reasons why this perspective is more suitable for PAs are then articulated.

Several aspects of Aristotle’s ethics can be fruitfully applied to the ethics of PAs. These include the relationship between function, goals and the good, an awareness of the human goal to achieve eudaimonia, the development of both excellences of character and of intelligence, and the significance of non-rational aspects of morality, including emotions, will, responsibility and choice.

This perspective provides an alternative conceptualisation of the ethics of PAs. Although it does not provide concrete guidance regarding what the ethical approach to specific situations may be, it presents a useful counterpoint to existing approaches that are largely deontological and utilitarian.

This paper provides accountants in practice with a more comprehensive and adequate perspective on what it means for a PA to be ethical, and raises several issues related to how ethics is included in the education and training of accountants.

Investigating the philosophical basis for professional ethics approaches professional codes of ethics in a way that it is not typically considered. The paper also provides a more comprehensive application of Aristotelian ethics than previous work.

In the animal world the presence of entropy necessitates contest. Among the non‐human mammals the contests are overwhelmingly inter‐specific. On the other hand the bulk of human contests are intra‐specific. They bring about a dissipation in human systems akin to that brought on by noise in natural systems (“human noise”). Just as the engineering of natural systems hinges on the successful understanding of noise and its filtration, so the successful administration of human systems must hinge on the understanding of human noise and its filtration. In this paper, after demarcating the concepts of communication, teleology, contest and inquiry and their stochastic foundations, we shall (1) show that post‐Weber administrative theory, unlike the more classical, is delinquent in its neglect of human noise, (2) list the lacunae in the prevailing theory, (3) explain the greater efficiency of the administration of warfare in contrast to that of more humane projects, (4) expound the Parkinson maxims on the human noise specific to a Weberian bureaucracy, (5) show how this together with widespread corruption results in ineffective government, and finally, (6) suggest how systems analysts might approach this problem.

Previous criminological research has examined the causes and correlates of violent juvenile offending, but failed to explore the developmental taxonomies of crime throughout history. Theoretically, developmental trajectories of offending (i.e. life‐course persistent and adolescence‐limited offenders) should be identifiable irrespective of time and place. This study aims to examine the pre‐offense characteristics of nineteenth‐century American parricide offenders.

Using archival records of two major newspapers (New York Times, Chicago Tribune), the study examines 220 offenders who committed attempted and completed parricides during the latter half of the nineteenth century (1852‐1999).

Results reveal that a small group of adult parricide offenders displayed antisocial tendencies at an early age that persisted into adulthood. These findings are consistent with the developmental literature, thus providing support for identification of pre‐offense characteristics of parricide offenders across historical periods.

The findings reported in this paper are of value to psychologists, historians, and criminologists, for they illuminate the similarities in predictors related to violent behaviors in a small subsection of adult offenders across two centuries.

People who have yet failed to realize how serious the food situation may become are inclined to criticize the multiplication of Orders and appeals, and in some cases to contest their wisdom. Mistakes may have been made or fresh conditions may have arisen to make less urgent some particular restriction, but generally the position has grown more critical in recent weeks, and instead of looking for any relaxation of the regulations now in operation the public should be prepared for still more drastic orders. No one as a result of the restrictions on food consumption yet introduced has suffered anything more than inconvenience arising out of interference with established habits. There has been no hardship and no hunger. In Germany the rationing of bread began so long ago as January in 1915, and to‐day there is hardly an article of food which is not rationed. When the existing prohibitions, regulations, and appeals issued by LORD DEVONPORT are summarized it will be realized to how limited an extent they have disturbed the character or the quantity of the food which may be consumed without exceeding the directions of the Food Controller. The position may be stated under the following headings:—

The ecological movement has fallen short in ignoring the earth’s noospheric layer (dealt with in the second section) and the fact that the life‐destroying interactions stemming from this layer are abnormal (section 3), and that man is a fallen mammal, Homo peccator (discussed in section 4). The symbiosis of Homo sapiens, faber, peccator (see section 5) and the persistent misappropriation of economic surplus value (dealt with in section 6) creates dilemmas for the ecologist (discussed in section 7). The major noospheric pollutants are the marketing sector of capitalism (in section 8), miseducation (section 9) and the promotion of idolatry by the judicial system (see section 10). Ecological action, not evasion, on the economic, educational, communications, aesthetic and political fronts is necessary (dealt with in sections 11 and 12).

The purpose of this study was to contribute to the evidence base by analysing the characteristics and motives of homicides involving acts of dismemberment.

The current study explored offence, victim and offender characteristics and the motives for 71 homicides involving dismemberment using open source data. All cases included in this study were investigated in the UK between 1970 and 2016. A non-metric multi-dimensional scaling procedure smallest space analysis (SSA) was used to explore the characteristics and motives derived from a content analysis of homicide data sourced online.

A distinction between expressive and instrumental characteristics was observable with three thematic regions identified: instrumental – defensive, instrumental – predatory and expressive – affective. Support was found for previously identified motives for criminal dismemberment, with defensive being the most common motive identified in 63% (N = 45) of the cases.

The implications of the findings are discussed with suggestions made for future research. The findings have practical implications for assisting law enforcement and forensic and clinical practitioners in further understanding offenders who engage in homicidal dismemberment. This includes aiding homicide investigations, in terms of supporting investigators to draw upon offence, victim and offender characteristics and motives for homicides involving acts of dismemberment. Differentiation between cases of dismemberment and understanding of motives also has practical implications for the development of interventions and treatment pathways for homicide offenders who dismember victims.