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Studies have been directed at explaining the 'gender gap' in the fear of crime: why do women have higher fear levels than men? Previous studies lead to the tentative conclusion that women are more fearful due to their greater vulnerability in risky environments. Yet, the differential effects of various environments on fear levels of men and women is not well understood. In this paper, theories of gender differences in fear of crime are reviewed, along with various potential fear-invoking contexts. One reason so little is known about context is that statistical software designed to better assess contextual effects-hierarchical linear modeling (HLM)-has only recently become widely available. HLM (Bryk and Raudenbush, 1992;Bryk et al., 1996) is used here to model perceived risk and fear of assault among a sample of Stockholm residents. Results show that at the contextual level, women are more influenced by aspects of the environment than are men. We are led to the conclusion that women are especially ecologically vulnerable (Sparks, 1982) whereas men personalize vulnerability.The study of the fear of crime is an important aspect of victimology (Garofalo, 1981;Junger, 1987). Largely out of fear of victimization people take action to minimize the risk of victimization by staying at home in the evenings, securing their homes with locks, avoiding certain geographic areas of a city, or even moving to safer parts of town. One of the paradoxes of fear of crime studies is that groups of people least likely to be victimized, women and the elderly, have the highest levels of fear of victimization. The high levels of fear among women has been the object of considerable theorizing and empirical works. In general it could be said that 'malestream' scholarship has portrayed women as having 'irrationally' high levels of fear of victimization (Hale, 1996;Garofalo, 1979;Stafford and Galle, 1984 ). In the present study theories of the gender gap in fear of crime are reviewed and previous published evidence evaluated. We conclude from this review that the most promising lead in explaining the gender gap in fear of crime is vulnerability theory. Specifically, those groups most vulnerable to crimes, especially crimes against person, are most likely to express fear of the contexts that invoke fear. We then analyze data from a Stockholm survey, using HLM, to explore what characteristics of environments invoke more fear in women than in men.

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This study analysed the differences on a molecular level between two segments of the deep flexor tendon, and compared the intrasynovial flexor tendon with the tendon sheath and the extrasynovial peroneus tendon in a rabbit model. The TRIspin method of RNA extraction was combined with the reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction to assess mRNA levels in the tissue segments. Significant differences were detected for all genes studied. mRNA levels for aggrecan, biglycan and collagen III were significantly higher in the fibrocartilaginous proximal segment of the flexor tendon. Collagen I was higher in the flexor tendon than the sheath and the peroneus tendon, and TGF-beta1 was significantly lower in the peroneus tendon. This study demonstrates differences at the mRNA level between different segments of tendon, indicating that the tendon tissue may be adapted to its environment.