Human Rights and the National Interest: The Case Study of Asylum, Migration, and National Border Protection

Since World War II, Australia has been the destination of hundreds of thousands of migrants from countries all over the world. Throughout this time, the government has engaged in different policies of border monitoring, protection, and enforcement. This Essay contends that the government should not waiver in its enforcement of its border, and it should continue to prevent the illegal entry of migrants into Australia. It, however, must do so fairly and compassionately in order to ensure that it protects the human rights of migrants. This argument is supported by the fact that the current international legal order doesn’t provide any further obligations on the state to migrants. Asylum seekers, however, have distinct legal rights from migrants, but distinguishing asylum seekers from migrants is not easy because no bright line exists. By examining the policies of the United States and the European Union while considering the religious discourse of refugees, this Essay concludes that Australia must reexamine its current approach to stopping the boats

Standing Mute at Arrest as Evidence of Guilt: The \u27Right to Silence\u27 Under Attack

It is commonly understood that an arrested person has a right to remain silent and that the government may not use his or her silence to prove guilt at trial. Three Circuit Courts of Appeal, however, reject this understanding. They allow the prosecution to use an arrested person\u27s pre-Miranda silence as direct evidence of guilt. This article argues that those Circuits are wrong. The article, first, demonstrates the historical antiquity of the Common Law principle that a detained person has the right to stand mute. Though the right was limited by statutory incursion and in tension, at times, with the evidentiary principle of tacit admissions an arrested person\u27s right to stand mute has never been so attenuated that a defendant\u27s mere silence upon arrest can give rise to an inference of guilt. Two of the Circuits that permit the use of post-arrest pre-Miranda silence to prove guilt neglect the distinction between the impeachment use of silence, which the Supreme Court has sanctioned, and the substantive use of silence. A third Circuit has confused the giving of Miranda warnings with the inception of the right to remain silent. Four other Circuits bar the prosecution from using post-arrest pre-Miranda silence to prove guilt. These courts correctly perceive that the right against self-incrimination protects a person at least from the moment he or she is detained

Disasters and Development: Natural Disasters, Credit Constraints and Economic Growth. ESRI WP411. October 2011

We demonstrate, using a simple two‐period equilibrium model of the economy, the potential effects of extreme event occurrences - such as natural or humanitarian disasters - on economic growth over the medium- to long-term. In particular, we focus on the effect of such shocks on investment. We examine two polar cases; an economy in which agents have unconstrained access to capital markets, versus a credit-constrained version, where the economy is assumed to operate in financial autarky. Considering these extreme cases allows us to highlight the interaction of disasters and economic underdevelopment, manifested through poorly developed financial markets. The theoretical analysis shows that the shock of a disaster occurrence could have lasting effects on economic growth only if agents face borrowing constraints. The predictions of our theoretical model are then tested using a panel of data on natural disaster events at the country-year level, covering the period 1979-2007. We find that for countries with low levels of financial sector development, natural disaster events exert a significant negative impact on economic growth. In particular, where access to credit is problematic, the negative effects of disasters on growth are persistent over the medium-term. These results are robust to various checks. Our findings suggest that natural disasters do represent significant threats to economic development in poor countries

Investigation of the high momentum component of nuclear wave function using hard quasielastic A(p,2p)X reactions

We present theoretical analysis of the first data on the high energy and momentum transfer (hard) quasielastic $C(p,2p)X$ reactions. The cross section of hard $A(p,2p)X$ reaction is calculated within the light-cone impulse approximation based on two-nucleon correlation model for the high-momentum component of the nuclear wave function. The nuclear effects due to modification of the bound nucleon structure, soft nucleon-nucleon reinteraction in the initial and final states of the reaction with and without color coherence have been considered. The calculations including these nuclear effects show that the distribution of the bound proton light-cone momentum fraction $(\alpha)$ shifts towards small values ($\alpha < 1$), effect which was previously derived only within plane wave impulse approximation. This shift is very sensitive to the strength of the short range correlations in nuclei. Also calculated is an excess of the total longitudinal momentum of outgoing protons. The calculations are compared with data on the $C(p,2p)X$ reaction obtained from the EVA/AGS experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory. These data show $\alpha$-shift in agreement with the calculations. The comparison allows also to single out the contribution from short-range nucleon correlations. The obtained strength of the correlations is in agreement with the values previously obtained from electroproduction reactions on nuclei.Comment: 30 pages LaTex file and 19 eps figure

Binding of Polarons and Atoms at Threshold

If the polaron coupling constant $\alpha$ is large enough, bipolarons or multi-polarons will form. When passing through the critical $\alpha_c$ from above, does the radius of the system simply get arbitrarily large or does it reach a maximum and then explodes? We prove that it is always the latter. We also prove the analogous statement for the Pekar-Tomasevich (PT) approximation to the energy, in which case there is a solution to the PT equation at $\alpha_c$. Similarly, we show that the same phenomenon occurs for atoms, e.g., helium, at the critical value of the nuclear charge. Our proofs rely only on energy estimates, not on a detailed analysis of the Schr\"odinger equation, and are very general. They use the fact that the Coulomb repulsion decays like $1/r$, while `uncertainty principle' localization energies decay more rapidly, as $1/r^2$.Comment: 19 page

Stable prediction of mood and anxiety disorders based on behavioral and emotional problems in childhood: a 14-year follow-up during childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood

OBJECTIVE: The goal of this study was to predict the onset of mood and anxiety disorders from parent-reported emotional and behavioral problems in childhood across a 14-year period from childhood into young adulthood. METHOD: In 1983, parent reports of behavioral and emotional problems were obtained with the Child Behavior Checklist for children and adolescents 4-16 years of age from the Dutch general population. At follow-up 14 years later, lifetime mood and anxiety diagnoses were obtained by a standardized DSM-IV interview for 1,580 subjects. Cox proportional hazards models were used to predict the incidence of mood and anxiety disorders from childhood problems and demographic covariates. RESULTS: Mood disorders were significantly predicted by high scores on the anxious/depressed scale and on the internalizing composite (withdrawn, somatic complaints, and anxious/depressed). Anxiety disorders were significantly predicted by the social problems scale and the externalizing composite (delinquent behavior and aggressive behavior). Anxiety disorders predominantly started in childhood and early adolescence, whereas the incidence of mood disorders increased sharply in adolescence and young adulthood. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest different developmental pathways for mood and anxiety disorders. The predictions based on problem behavior remained stable during the 14-year period across adolescence and young adulthood. The results therefore underline the importance of early intervention and prevention of behavioral and emotional problems in childhood

The role of smoking in social networks on smoking cessation and relapse among adults: A longitudinal study

Understanding the spread of smoking cessation and relapse within social networks may offer new approaches to further curb the smoking epidemic. Whether smoking behavior among social network members determines smoking cessation and relapse of adults however, is less known. For this study, longitudinal data of 4623 adults participating in the Dutch Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social sciences (LISS) panel were collected in March 2013 with a follow-up in 2014. Logistic regression was used to examine the association between the proportion of smokers in social networks, and (1) smoking cessation (n = 762) and (2) smoking relapse (n = 1905). Analyses were adjusted for the size of the network, age, sex, and education. Respondents with the largest proportion of smokers in their social network were less likely to quit smoking (OR = 0.25; 95% CI = 0.11–0.66) and more likely to experience a relapse (6.08; 3.01–12.00). Smoking cessation and relapse were most strongly associated with the proportion of smokers among household members and friends. The proportion of smokers in family outside the household was not related to smoking cessation and smoking relapse. In conclusion, smoking behavior in social networks, especially among household members and friends, is strongly associated with smoking cessation and relapse. These findings further support the spread of smoking within social networks, and provide evidence for network-based interventions, particularly including household members and friends

Differences in fruit and vegetable intake and determinants of intakes between children of Dutch origin and non-Western ethnic minority children in the Netherlands - a cross sectional study.

BACKGROUND: Fruit and vegetable consumption is low in the Netherlands and a key target in healthy diet promotion. However, hardly any information is available on differences in fruit and vegetable consumption between Dutch children and ethnic minority children. Therefore, the aim of present study was to determine differences in usual fruit and vegetable intake between native Dutch and non-Western ethnic minority children and to study differences in and mediating effects of potential psychosocial and environmental determinants. METHODS: Ethnicity, usual fruit and vegetable consumption, psychosocial and environmental determinants and mothers' educational level were measured with a self-administered questionnaire during school hours in primary schools in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Complete data was available for 521 10-11 year-old-children, of which 50.5% of non-Western origin. Differences between the groups regarding potential determinants and fruit and vegetable intake were assessed with Mann Whitney tests or multiple regression analyses. Multiple regression analyses were also conducted to assess mediating effects. RESULTS: Ethnic minority girls ate fruit more frequently (1.41 +/- 1.0 times/day) than Dutch girls (1.03 +/- 0.82 times/day); no differences in frequency of intake were found for vegetables or among boys. Ethnic differences were found for almost all potential determinants. The Dutch children reported lower scores on these determinants than the ethnic minority children, except for perceived self-efficacy and barriers to eat fruit and vegetables. Knowledge of recommendations and facilitating behaviors of the parents mediated the association between ethnicity and fruit consumption among girls. CONCLUSION: Ethnic minority girls in the Netherlands appear to have more favorable fruit intakes than Dutch girls, and ethnic minority children in general show more positive prerequisites for fruit and vegetable consumption. Interventions addressing multi-ethnic populations of children must take such differences into account

Localization, Coulomb interactions and electrical heating in single-wall carbon nanotubes/polymer composites

Low field and high field transport properties of carbon nanotubes/polymer composites are investigated for different tube fractions. Above the percolation threshold f_c=0.33%, transport is due to hopping of localized charge carriers with a localization length xi=10-30 nm. Coulomb interactions associated with a soft gap Delta_CG=2.5 meV are present at low temperature close to f_c. We argue that it originates from the Coulomb charging energy effect which is partly screened by adjacent bundles. The high field conductivity is described within an electrical heating scheme. All the results suggest that using composites close to the percolation threshold may be a way to access intrinsic properties of the nanotubes by experiments at a macroscopic scale.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, Submitted to Phys. Rev.

Numerical Portrait of a Relativistic BCS Gapped Superfluid

We present results of numerical simulations of the 3+1 dimensional Nambu - Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model with a non-zero baryon density enforced via the introduction of a chemical potential mu not equal to 0. The triviality of the model with a number of dimensions d>=4 is dealt with by fitting low energy constants, calculated analytically in the large number of colors (Hartree) limit, to phenomenological values. Non-perturbative measurements of local order parameters for superfluidity and their related susceptibilities show that, in contrast to the 2+1 dimensional model, the ground-state at high chemical potential and low temperature is that of a traditional BCS superfluid. This conclusion is supported by the direct observation of a gap in the dispersion relation for 0.5<=(mu a)<=0.85, which at (mu a)=0.8 is found to be roughly 15% the size of the vacuum fermion mass. We also present results of an initial investigation of the stability of the BCS phase against thermal fluctuations. Finally, we discuss the effect of splitting the Fermi surfaces of the pairing partners by the introduction of a non-zero isospin chemical potential.Comment: 41 pages, 19 figures, uses axodraw.sty, v2: minor typographical correction