A study of the dynamics of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) in a symmetric atmosphere-ocean model

A numerical model of the circulation of a coupled axisymmetric atmosphere-ocean system was constructed to investigate the physical factors governing the location and intensity of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) over oceans and over land. The results of several numerical integrations are presented to illustrate the interaction of the individual atmospheric and oceanic circulations. It is shown that the ITCA cannot be located at the equator because the atmosphere-ocean system is unstable for lateral displacements of the ITCA from an equilibrium position at the equator

The Shaky Foundation of “Statutory Platforms”: A Comment on Baier v. Alberta

In Baier v. Alberta the Supreme Court of Canada considered the validity of Alberta legislation, enacted in 2004, which established a province-wide restriction on school employees serving as school trustees on any Alberta school board. The majority of the Court upheld the validity of this statute, finding that while serving as a school trustee is an expressive activity, the province had no obligation to provide teachers with a “statutory platform for expression” and there was, the refore, no infringement of Charter section 2(b). This paper argues that the majority erred in seeing this as a freedom of expression case at all. The impugned legislation did not disqualify schoolteachers from speaking; they were free to express their views and opinions on any issues relating to education whether or not they were qualified or elected as school board trustees. What the teachers sought was neither a freedom to express their opinions nor a platform of expression, but a right to participate in the management of the schools, an activity that is not guaranteed by Charter section 2(b). While the “statutory platform” analysis may be helpful in the context of an activity that is exclusively or primarily expressive, such as voting in a referendum, it is ill fitted in the context of an activity — such as working in a particular job — which is only incidentally expressive. The paper also discusses the statutory role of school trustees as senior management of school boards and the special statutory regime that governs teachers’ collective bargaining. The Alberta restriction at issue supports the important principle of labour policy that workers and management should be free from interference from one another

Triple cascade behaviour in QG and drift turbulence and generation of zonal jets

We study quasigeostrophic (QG) and plasma drift turbulence within the Charney-Hasegawa-Mima (CHM) model. We focus on the zonostrophy, an extra invariant in the CHM model, and on its role in the formation of zonal jets. We use a generalized Fjørtoft argument for the energy, enstrophy, and zonostrophy and show that they cascade anisotropically into nonintersecting sectors in k space with the energy cascading towards large zonal scales. Using direct numerical simulations of the CHM equation, we show that zonostrophy is well conserved, and the three invariants cascade as predicted by the Fjørtoft argument

Tort Lite?: Vancouver (City) v. War and the Availability of Damages for Charter Infringements

Ward is the first case in the Supreme Court of Canada where the lower courts had dismissed the tort claim but allowed damages under the Charter, thus transforming Charter damages into a “consolation prize” for plaintiffs whose claims, as a result of the law, the evidence or the pleadings, did not meet the applicable tort law standard. While the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court appears to uphold this approach, a closer reading of the decision indicates that the Court did not stray very far from basic tort law principles. The lower court decisions appear to adopt a “strict liability” approach to certain Charter claims, but the Supreme Court’s reasons indicate that something more than mere causation will have to be proven before Charter damages will be considered “appropriate and just”. A close reading of the decision indicates that the Supreme Court would have likely come to the same conclusion had the issue before it been one of damages for negligence rather than under the Charter. Accordingly, Ward will not result in a radical expansion of governmental liability beyond that already provided by the law of tort

Moore v. British Columbia: A Good IDEA?

While the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Moore v. British Columbia was concerned with the accommodation of disability in the public school system, the authors argue that the spectre of private school funding looms over the judgment. Given the political consensus supporting public schools in Canada, several substantive and remedial elements of the Moore decision should be viewed in a cautionary light. A standard of accommodation that is rooted in comparison to the services provided by better-resourced and less diverse private schools may not be attainable by or appropriate for public schools, and should the refore be eschewed as a standard of accommodation in analyzing equal access to public school education. at the remedial stage, the awarding of compensation to Jeffrey Moore’s parents for a decade’s worth of private school tuition risks transforming human rights tribunals into purveyors of private school vouchers, an American education policy rightfully rejected by Canadian legislatures. Human rights remedies should be concerned with improving the universally accessible public school system for the benefit of all students with disabilities instead of siphoning scarce resources towards a select few students able to attend private schools. The authors argue that the Supreme Court of Canada was right to reject the Human Rights Tribunal’s systemic remedies which would have, inter alia, shifted responsibility for individual special education programs from the local school boards to the Ministry of Education by mandating greater centralization at the Ministry level of the design, delivery and oversight of individual students’ special education programs. This role is best undertaken at the local level by teachers and specialized board personnel who are in the unique position to know a student’s individual needs and abilities, and the circumstances and resources of the particular board. Concern is raised that Human Rights Tribunals can impose such broad systemic remedies affecting major public policy issues like education funding and centralization subject only to review on the standard of reasonableness

Is Money No Object: Can the Government Rely on Financial Considerations Under Charter Section 1

Government programs have increasingly been challenged under the Charter on the grounds that they are provided inappropriately to a limited number of beneficiaries and that the benefits provided are set at insufficient levels. Courts have thus been asked to determine how governments should allocate finite resources in a world of infinite need. In this paper, the authors explore the question of the place of financial considerations for the purposes of section 1 of the Charter. In Martin (2003), the government of Nova Scotia attempted to rely on financial considerations in order to justify the exclusion of chronic pain sufferers from the regular compensation scheme provided by the Workers’ Compensation Act. Relying on dicta from the Schachter (1992) and Judges’ Reference (1997) decisions, the Supreme Court dismissed this argument and held that budgetary considerations could not be put forward by governments as a free-standing pressing and substantial objective for the purposes of section 1 of the Charter. However, the Court also acknowledged that “in certain circumstances”, financial considerations may constitute a pressing and substantial objective. The Court found it unnecessary to decide this point in Martin, and the question remains unanswered. Using examples from tort and administrative law, as well as lower court Charter decisions, the authors argue that courts cannot ignore the realities imposed on governments by fiscal limitations. If courts take on a greater role in policy-making, they must give serious consideration not only to arguments based on financial considerations, but also to the financial implications of their decisions

Mechanical Translation

Contains research objectives and reports on three research projects.National Science Foundation (Grant G-16843)National Science Foundation (Grant G-13903

The asymptotic quasi-stationary states of the two-dimensional magnetically confined plasma and of the planetary atmosphere

We derive the differential equation governing the asymptotic quasi-stationary states of the two dimensional plasma immersed in a strong confining magnetic field and of the planetary atmosphere. These two systems are related by the property that there is an intrinsic constant length: the Larmor radius and respectively the Rossby radius and a condensate of the vorticity field in the unperturbed state related to the cyclotronic gyration and respectively to the Coriolis frequency. Although the closest physical model is the Charney-Hasegawa-Mima (CHM) equation, our model is more general and is related to the system consisting of a discrete set of point-like vortices interacting in plane by a short range potential. A field-theoretical formalism is developed for describing the continuous version of this system. The action functional can be written in the Bogomolnyi form (emphasizing the role of Self-Duality of the asymptotic states) but the minimum energy is no more topological and the asymptotic structures appear to be non-stationary, which is a major difference with respect to traditional topological vortex solutions. Versions of this field theory are discussed and we find arguments in favor of a particular form of the equation. We comment upon the significant difference between the CHM fluid/plasma and the Euler fluid and respectively the Abelian-Higgs vortex models.Comment: Latex 126 pages, 7 eps figures included. Discussion on various forms of the equatio

Abelian subgroups of Garside groups

In this paper, we show that for every abelian subgroup $H$ of a Garside group, some conjugate $g^{-1}Hg$ consists of ultra summit elements and the centralizer of $H$ is a finite index subgroup of the normalizer of $H$. Combining with the results on translation numbers in Garside groups, we obtain an easy proof of the algebraic flat torus theorem for Garside groups and solve several algorithmic problems concerning abelian subgroups of Garside groups.Comment: This article replaces our earlier preprint "Stable super summit sets in Garside groups", arXiv:math.GT/060258