The twilight of the Liberal Social Contract? On the Reception of Rawlsian Political Liberalism

This chapter discusses the Rawlsian project of public reason, or public justification-based 'political' liberalism, and its reception. After a brief philosophical rather than philological reconstruction of the project, the chapter revolves around a distinction between idealist and realist responses to it. Focusing on political liberalism’s critical reception illuminates an overarching question: was Rawls’s revival of a contractualist approach to liberal legitimacy a fruitful move for liberalism and/or the social contract tradition? The last section contains a largely negative answer to that question. Nonetheless the chapter's conclusion shows that the research programme of political liberalism provided and continues to provide illuminating insights into the limitations of liberal contractualism, especially under conditions of persistent and radical diversity. The programme is, however, less receptive to challenges to do with the relative decline of the power of modern states

Constitutivism

A brief explanation and overview of constitutivism

A Search for Technosignatures Around 11,680 Stars with the Green Bank Telescope at 1.15-1.73 GHz

We conducted a search for narrowband radio signals over four observing sessions in 2020-2023 with the L-band receiver (1.15-1.73 GHz) of the 100 m diameter Green Bank Telescope. We pointed the telescope in the directions of 62 TESS Objects of Interest, capturing radio emissions from a total of ~11,680 stars and planetary systems in the ~9 arcminute beam of the telescope. All detections were either automatically rejected or visually inspected and confirmed to be of anthropogenic nature. In this work, we also quantified the end-to-end efficiency of radio SETI pipelines with a signal injection and recovery analysis. The UCLA SETI pipeline recovers 94.0% of the injected signals over the usable frequency range of the receiver and 98.7% of the injections when regions of dense RFI are excluded. In another pipeline that uses incoherent sums of 51 consecutive spectra, the recovery rate is ~15 times smaller at ~6%. The pipeline efficiency affects calculations of transmitter prevalence and SETI search volume. Accordingly, we developed an improved Drake Figure of Merit and a formalism to place upper limits on transmitter prevalence that take the pipeline efficiency and transmitter duty cycle into account. Based on our observations, we can state at the 95% confidence level that fewer than 6.6% of stars within 100 pc host a transmitter that is detectable in our search (EIRP > 1e13 W). For stars within 20,000 ly, the fraction of stars with detectable transmitters (EIRP > 5e16 W) is at most 3e-4. Finally, we showed that the UCLA SETI pipeline natively detects the signals detected with AI techniques by Ma et al. (2023).Comment: 22 pages, 9 figures, submitted to AJ, revise

Physiological and Pathological Role of Alpha-synuclein in Parkinson’s Disease Through Iron Mediated Oxidative Stress; The Role of a Putative Iron-responsive Element

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common progressive neurodegenerative disorder after Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and represents a large health burden to society. Genetic and oxidative risk factors have been proposed as possible causes, but their relative contribution remains unclear. Dysfunction of alpha-synuclein (α-syn) has been associated with PD due to its increased presence, together with iron, in Lewy bodies. Brain oxidative damage caused by iron may be partly mediated by α-syn oligomerization during PD pathology. Also, α-syn gene dosage can cause familial PD and inhibition of its gene expression by blocking translation via a newly identified Iron Responsive Element-like RNA sequence in its 5’-untranslated region may provide a new PD drug target

Philosophy of action

The philosophical study of human action begins with Plato and Aristotle. Their influence in late antiquity and the Middle Ages yielded sophisticated theories of action and motivation, notably in the works of Augustine and Aquinas.1 But the ideas that were dominant in 1945 have their roots in the early modern period, when advances in physics and mathematics reshaped philosophy

Who are the new Philistines?

The National Portrait Gallery could almost serve as a metaphor for the Howard Government?s contribution to the arts ? characterized by a commitment to uncompromising artistic standards, strong financial support and accessibility to the broader public, yet little remarked and seldom acknowledged. Senator George Brandis, Minister for the Arts and Sport, addresses the National Press Club

Draft guidelines for the National Program for Excellence in the Arts

The National Program for Excellence in the Arts announced in the 2015-16 Budget will commence in early 2015-16. The draft guidelines for the Program have been released for public comment. Feedback is invited from the arts sector and broader community. INTRODUCTION The National Program for Excellence in the Arts (the Program) is administered by the Ministry for the Arts and will provide a responsive, national approach to supporting participation in and access to Australia’s high quality, diverse and vital arts and cultural sector. The Program meets the strategic priorities of supporting participation in, and access to, the arts and encouraging greater private sector support for the arts. While valuing the many secondary benefits which flow from arts activities, the Program seeks to celebrate the intrinsic capacity of the arts to engage, inspire and make meaning for all Australians. OBJECTIVES The Program will: Deliver a wide range of quality arts and cultural experiences that grow arts audiences, throughout Australia and internationally strengthen Australia’s reputation as a sophisticated and artistic nation with a confident, outward-focused arts sector encourage greater private sector support and partnership funding for the arts support collaborations to develop arts and culture initiatives including in specific regions or priority areas. 1. Endowment Incentives The endowment incentives stream will support organisations to realise medium to long term projects through financial partnerships and collaborations. Funding will be conditional on organisations leveraging funds from other sources to realise projects. Organisations will need to demonstrate evidence of financial, cash or in-kind support from sources other than the Australian Government. This stream will be open to a wide range of projects. Examples of the kind of activity which could be supported are:: co-investment through a Foundation or arts organisation to deliver a new initiative such as a fellowship program; a contribution to an infrastructure project that has other partners; and partnering in the development of new Australian works. To achieve these objectives, the Program will offer funding for arts and cultural projects and initiatives through three streams: 1. Endowment Incentives The endowment incentives stream will support organisations to realise medium to long term projects through financial partnerships and collaborations. Funding will be conditional on organisations leveraging funds from other sources to realise projects. Organisations will need to demonstrate evidence of financial, cash or in-kind support from sources other than the Australian Government. This stream will be open to a wide range of projects. Examples of the kind of activity which could be supported are:: co-investment through a Foundation or arts organisation to deliver a new initiative such as a fellowship program; a contribution to an infrastructure project that has other partners; and partnering in the development of new Australian works. 2. International and Cultural Diplomacy The International and Cultural Diplomacy stream will support arts and cultural organisations to expand audiences for Australian artistic and creative works through international tours, exhibitions, partnerships and exchanges. It will also support Australian arts organisations to bring internationally significant art and artists to Australia, thus giving Australian audiences greater opportunities to experience the world’s finest performances and exhibitions. 3. Strategic Initiatives The Strategic Initiatives stream will assist arts and cultural organisations to respond to new opportunities, challenges and issues. It will be flexible and responsive to enable organisations to maximise the potential outcomes of new opportunities. It will also support organisations to deliver outcomes against planned and developing priorities. It will support projects enabling regional and remote audiences, to have new opportunities for access to a wide range of art forms. It is from this stream that the Australian Government will directly fund appropriate major initiatives. FUNDING The Australian Government will provide approximately $20 million each financial year for the Program. The level of funding provided for each stream will be demand driven allowing the Program to be most responsive to the needs of the sector

Constitutional law 2005

Papers and audio from the 2005 Constitutional Law Conference and Dinner, held on 18 February, are now available online. Speakers include Anne Twomey, John Uhr, Senator George Brandis, Andrew Lynch, Arthur Glass and George Williams