The age of criminal responsibility of children in the Islamic Penalties Act has been determined as religious Bulugh (puberty) Nasab. According to this, criminal authorities hold girls criminally liable and punishable at 9 complete lunar years and boys at 15 complete lunar years. Unfortunately, our legislator has set criminal responsibility of children based on sexual maturity; therefore, thousa...

OBJECTIVE To provide clinically meaningful, normative reference data that describe the timing of sexual maturity indicators among a national sample of US children and to determine the degree of racial/ethnic differences in these estimates for each maturity indicator. METHODS Tanner staging assessment of sexual maturity indicators was recorded from 4263 non-Hispanic white, black, and Mexican A...

In this study, the reproductive biology of chub population in Hafik Lake was investigated. 242 samples were caught between April and November 2009. The age of S. cephalus samples were found to range between I-VIII in addition, 153 of them were female and 89 were male. Their fork lengths changed between 114-332 mm, and body weights were between 22.5 and 550.3 g. Male specimens were determined t...

In this study, the reproductive biology of chub population in Hafik Lake was investigated. 242 samples were caught between April and November 2009. The age of S. cephalus samples were found to range between I-VIII in addition, 153 of them were female and 89 were male. Their fork lengths changed between 114-332 mm, and body weights were between 22.5 and 550.3 g. Male specimens were dete...

Onset of sexual maturation is a trait of extreme importance both evolutionarily and economically. Unsurprisingly therefore, domestication has acted to reduce the time to sexual maturation in a variety of animals, including the chicken. In comparison with wild progenitor chickens [the Red Junglefowl (RJF)], domestic layer hens attain maturity approximately 20% earlier. In addition, domestic laye...

In many animal species, males and females attain different adult body sizes. The processes underlying such sexual differences are undoubtedly complex and may involve an interplay between adaptive, exaptive, and nonadaptive genetic influences on the one hand and environmental variables on the other. For example, large body size may be shown by males because genes for that character confer a sele...

I review methodological problems that can lead to false evidence for selection on secondary sexual characters and present a study of selection in rubyspot damselflies (Hetaerina americana) that avoids these pitfalls. Male rubyspots have a large red spot on each wing that grows to a terminal size after sexual maturity. Selection gradient analyses revealed evidence for positive sexual and surviva...

Egg-laying strains of chickens are highly susceptible to osteoporosis, a noninfectious disease characterized by a decrease in structural bone as hens age. To minimize the onset of osteoporosis, it was hypothesized that a delay in sexual maturity may allow a pullet to develop a stronger skeletal frame before egg laying, leading to improved skeletal mineralization at end of lay. One management to...