Sacred Texts and Profane Realities:Islamic Criminal Laws (Ḥudūd) and Children’s Rights in Pakistan

This article examines the impact of Islamic criminal laws (ḥudūd), particularly the Zina Ordinance, on children’s rights in Pakistan. By analyzing the judgments of the Federal Shariat Court (FSC) and the Shariat Appellate Bench (SAB) of the Supreme Court, the study identified three key trends in case law. First, ambiguity in defining adulthood—whether based on statutory age limits or biological puberty—has resulted in inconsistent judicial decisions. Second, the judicial approach on minors’ consent in sexual offenses evolved over time, shifting from accepting consent to rejecting it, aligning with the principle of statutory rape. Third, while leniency in sentencing underage offenders reflects an emphasis on rehabilitation, it raises questions about deterrence and consistency. The findings of this research underscore the critical role of procedural laws and legal certainty in safeguarding children’s rights within a mixed legal framework of Islamic laws and common law tradition

Responsible Digital:Co-Creating Safe, Wise and Secure Digital Interventions with Vulnerable Groups

The notion of “Responsible Digital” emphasises the ethical and responsible design and use of digital technologies. Having the knowledge and skills to navigate the digital world safely, wisely and securely becomes critical when digital literacy and access to technologies are limited and livelihood possibilities are precarious such as in the context of vulnerable migrants. We use the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) framework in its operationalised version called AREA Plus as a lens to reflect on our research-practice in relation to two projects in sensitive contexts that were designed with vulnerable groups to co-create digital interventions aimed at improving their lives. In so doing, we introduce a new ‘sustainability’ dimension to AREA Plus to develop what we term the AREAS framework. We contribute to knowledge by using the AREA Plus framework in the context of Africa, South East Asia and South America migration and by further enhancing it; to methodology by highlighting the procedures followed when working with vulnerable groups; and to practice through the promotion of responsible digital practices

A Square Kilometre Array Pulsar Census

Most of the pulsar science case with the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) depends on long-term precision pulsar timing of a large number of pulsars, as well as astrometric measurements of these using very long baseline interferometry (VLBI). But before we can time them, or VLBI them, we must first find them. Here, we describe the considerations and strategies one needs to account for when planning an all-sky blind pulsar survey using the SKA. Based on our understanding of the pulsar population, the performance of the now-under-construction SKA elements, and practical constraints such as evading radio frequency interference, we project pulsar survey yields using two complementary methods for a number of illustrative survey designs, combining SKA1-Low and SKA1-Mid Bands 1 and 2 in a variety of ways. A composite survey using both Mid and Low is optimal, with Mid Band 2 focused in the plane. We find that, given its much higher effective area and survey speed, the best strategy is to use SKA1-Low to cover as much sky as possible, ideally also overlapping with the areas covered by Mid. In our most realistic scenario, we find that an all-sky blind survey with Phase 1 of the SKA with the AA* array assembly will detect $\sim10,000$ slow pulsars and $\sim 800$ millisecond pulsars (MSPs) if SKA1-Mid covers the region within $5°$ of the plane, while higher latitudes will be covered with SKA1-Low. The yield with AA4 is $\sim 20\%$ higher. One could increase these numbers by increasing the range covered by SKA1-Mid Bands 1 and 2, at the cost of a considerably longer survey. The pulsar census will enable us to set new constraints on the uncertain physical properties of the entire neutron star population. This will be crucial for addressing major SKA science questions including the dense-matter equation of state, strong-field gravity tests, and gravitational wave astronomy

Bias Control for Mach-Zehnder Modulators:A Gradient-Based Optimization Approach

In this paper, we explore the use of gradient basedoptimization algorithms for automated bias control in Mach-Zehnder Modulators (MZM). We present and demonstrate, experimentally,five gradient descent algorithms; Stochastic GradientDescent (SGD), Stochastic Gradient Descent with Momentum(SGD+M), Adagrad, RMSProp, and Adam, applied to the biascontrol problem in MZMs. We present a method of creating anerror signal from the measured output of an MZM with a lowfrequency pilot tone, and provide a detailed explanation of howeach algorithm is used to both identify the set bias conditionand track the bias condition in the presence of disturbances.Our implementation is capable of identifying and holding thenull condition and the quadrature condition. We evaluate thebias point identification for each algorithm by measuring andanalysing the step response for each method. We test the biastracking of each algorithm using three forms of disturbance;RF power disturbances, temperature disturbance, and long-termbias drift. All tests were conducted at 20GHz. To the best ofour knowledge, this is the first investigation into the applicationon gradient based learning approaches for MZM bias control.This work has great importance on future bias control designand implementations for telecommunications, the space sector,Microwave Photonics (MWP), and defence