Diminished responsibility and the Scottish criminal law tradition

This thesis examines the history and development of diminished responsibility in Scots criminal law and asks what the doctrine’s evolution within the practice of the High Court might reveal about the Scottish criminal law tradition more broadly. For important historical and political reasons, the concept of “tradition” has long been central to the way in which Scots law and the Scottish legal system is described. This tradition, however, has habitually been framed in idealised, nationalistic and ultimately misleading terms. The criminal law, commonly regarded as an especially “Scottish” part of the legal system, sits in the foreground of this picture. The present thesis aims to engage with the Scottish criminal law tradition in a more rational, dispassionate and verifiable sense, by focusing more narrowly on the character of the legal rules themselves. To this end, it adopts the doctrine of diminished responsibility – long heralded as a distinctly Scottish creation – as a case study. The thesis begins by locating the position occupied by diminished responsibility within the broader landscape of Scots criminal law, before introducing the concept of “the Scottish legal tradition” and outlining one popular account of its character. Attention then turns to the nature of the criminal law. The foundational Scottish literature is examined, and four key themes extracted: the significance of the High Court’s power to declare conduct newly criminal; the emphasis placed on practicality; the purported humanity of the Scottish criminal justice system; and the posited link between criminal law and community values. Each of these themes, it is suggested, provides us with a clue as to the nature of the law itself. Four possible characteristics are deduced: flexibility; pragmatism; leniency; and non-technicality. Finally, the development of diminished responsibility in the Scottish courts is analysed, and the applicability of these four characteristics assessed. It is concluded that the doctrine’s development tells us much about the nature of the broader Scottish tradition

The PSIPRED Protein Analysis Workbench: 20 years on

The PSIPRED Workbench is a web server offering a range of predictive methods to the bioscience community for 20 years. Here, we present the work we have completed to update the PSIPRED Protein Analysis Workbench and make it ready for the next 20 years. The main focus of our recent website upgrade work has been the acceleration of analyses in the face of increasing protein sequence database size. We additionally discuss any new software, the new hardware infrastructure, our webservices and web site. Lastly we survey updates to some of the key predictive algorithms available through our website

Binar Space Program: Binar-1 Results and Lessons Learned

The Binar Space Program is a recently formed space research and education group part of the Space Science and Technology Center at Curtin University in Western Australia. Recently launching the first CubeSat from the state, Binar-1, the team is making steps towards creating a sustainable mission schedule for research and education. The Binar-1 mission primary objective was to demonstrate the custom designed systems made by PhD students and engineers at the university. The main technology being demonstrated was the integrated Binar CubeSat Core, which compacted the Electrical Power System, Attitude Determination and Control System, and flight computer system into 0.25U. Alongside this, the team also aimed to learn about end-to-end spacecraft mission design and engage with the public to build an understanding of the importance of space industry and research in the country. Binar-1 was deployed from the International Space Station on the 6th of October 2021, and initially was silent for 15 days until the Binar team was able to make contact by enabling a secondary beacon. This paper will present the Binar-1 mission including the custom design, operations, failure analysis, and results before finally summarizing the lessons learned by the team while flying Western Australia’s first space capability

Predictions of Backbone Dynamics in Intrinsically Disordered Proteins Using De Novo Fragment-Based Protein Structure Predictions

Intrinsically disordaered proteins (IDPs) are a prevalent phenomenon with over 30% of human proteins estimated to have long disordered regions. Computational methods are widely used to study IDPs, however, nearly all treat disorder in a binary fashion, not accounting for the structural heterogeneity present in disordered regions. Here, we present a new de novo method, FRAGFOLD-IDP, which addresses this problem. Using 200 protein structural ensembles derived from NMR, we show that FRAGFOLD-IDP achieves superior results compared to methods which can predict related data (NMR order parameter, or crystallographic B-factor). FRAGFOLD-IDP produces very good predictions for 33.5% of cases and helps to get a better insight into the dynamics of the disordered ensembles. The results also show it is not necessary to predict the correct fold of the protein to reliably predict per-residue fluctuations. It implies that disorder is a local property and it does not depend on the fold. Our results are orthogonal to DynaMine, the only other method significantly better than the naïve prediction. We therefore combine these two using a neural network. FRAGFOLD-IDP enables better insight into backbone dynamics in IDPs and opens exciting possibilities for the design of disordered ensembles, disorder-to-order transitions, or design for protein dynamics

Experience of overseas-trained health professionals in rural and remote areas of destination countries: A literature review

This study aimed to review and synthesise existing literature that investigated the experience of overseastrained health professionals (OTHPs) in rural and remote areas of destination countries. A systematic literature review was conducted using electronic databases and manual search of studies published from January 2004 to February 2011. Data were analysed from the final 17 original report articles that met the inclusion criteria. The reviewed research studies were conducted in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the USA. Overseas-trained medical practitioners were the most frequently researched (n = 14); two studies involved nurses and one study included several health professionals. Three main themes emerged from the review and these were: (i) expectations; (ii) cultural diversity; and (iii) orientation and integration to rural and remote health work environment. The OTHPs were expected to possess the appropriate professional and cultural skills while they themselves expected recognition of their previous experiences and adequate organisational orientation and support. A welcoming and accepting community coupled with a relaxed rural lifestyle and the joy of continued patient care resulted in successful integration and contributed to increased staff retention rates. Recognition of expectations and cultural diversity by all parties and comprehensive orientation with sufficient organisational support are important elements in the integration of OTHPs and subsequent delivery of quality health care to people living in rural and remote areas

Binar Space Program: Mission Two Payloads and Operations Plan

The second mission of Western Australia’s Binar Space Program consists of three 1U CubeSats targeting a 2023 launch. Aiming to improve the platform for future missions, the primary purpose of Binar 2, 3 and 4 is on-orbit testing of radiation shielding alloys developed by CSIRO. In this first-of-its-kind experiment, all three simultaneously deployed Binar spacecraft will contain radiation sensing payloads to assess the efficacy of various compositions of Australian made radiation shielding alloys. Alongside this, hardware changes to the Binar platform are discussed, including deployable solar arrays, additional communications solutions, and a removable payload bay. The Iridium network will be leveraged to test its suitability for CubeSat targeted re-entry. Several software-based payloads are implemented, including on-board hardware emulation, enabling an industry partner to control the spacecraft in a demonstration of remote operations capability. An undergraduate student lead project will continue on from Binar-1 to see a star tracker flown for testing alternative methods of attitude determination. From a community perspective, strengthening the engagement between amateur radio operators and the Binar Space Program will be explored by expanding on what amateurs can do with on-orbit satellites. Lastly, autonomous agile mission planning will be tested through an on-board multipurpose simulation running on the dual-core flight computer