Complaint and grievance mechanisms in international law: one piece of the accountability jigsaw?

In the rules and principles that guide and regulate international organisations, there has been a gradual, yet noticeable, transformation from a model premised upon a narrow conception of inter-governmentalism and formal legalism to one that is increasingly receptive to broader constitutional notions, including ideals such as enhancing legitimacy and promoting good governance.1 In this process, concepts such as accountability, transparency, public participation and due administration have become prevalent both in the rhetoric and everyday reality of international organisations. This article focuses upon one element of this wider discourse, namely the increased adoption within the international community of complaint and grievance mechanisms that operate outside the traditional legal framework

Kinematics and dynamics of the Uranian rings

The self-gravity model of apse alignment was tested by comparing its predictions about structure within the epsilon ring with an extensive set of observed occultation profiles covering a wide range of ring longitudes. The self-gravity model as presently constructed is inconsistent with the observations. The Lindblad resonance survey and Shepherd satellite ring perturbation are discussed. The kinematic model of the Uranian ring orbit was enhanced to accommodate Voyager observations as well as ground-based occultation observations

The opposition and tilt effects of Saturn's rings from HST observations

The two major factors contributing to the opposition brightening of Saturn's rings are i) the intrinsic brightening of particles due to coherent backscattering and/or shadow-hiding on their surfaces, and ii) the reduced interparticle shadowing. We utilize the Hubble Space Telescope observations for different elevation angles B to disentangle these contributions. We assume that the intrinsic contribution is independent of B, so that any B dependence of the phase curves is due to interparticle shadowing, which must also act similarly for all colors. We construct a grid of dynamical/photometric simulation models to fit the elevation-dependent part of opposition brightening. Eliminating the modeled interparticle component yields the intrinsic contribution to the opposition effect: for the B and A rings it is almost entirely due to coherent backscattering; for the C ring, an intraparticle shadow hiding contribution may also be present. Based on our simulations, the width of the interparticle shadowing effect is roughly proportional to B. This follows from the observation that as B decreases, the scattering is primarily from the rarefied low filling factor upper ring layers, whereas at larger $B$'s the dense inner parts are visible. The elevation angle dependence of interparticle shadowing also explains most of the B ring tilt effect (the increase of brightness with elevation). From comparison of the magnitude of the tilt effect at different filters, we show that multiple scattering can account for at most a 10% brightness increase as B -> 26^o, whereas the remaining 20% brightening is due to a variable degree of interparticle shadowing. The negative tilt effect of the middle A ring is well explained by the the same self-gravity wake models that account for the observed A ring azimuthal brightness asymmetry.Comment: Accepted to icaru

Australia\u27s solution to disability discrimination enforcement

[Excerpt] Until recently, Australian disability discrimination law was similar to that of the United States and much of the rest of the world: it defined disability relatively narrowly, its penalties for noncompliance were relatively paltry, and it depended on enforcement of lawsuits brought by aggrieved private citizens. In 2009, however, Australia adopted the Fair Work Act 2009 (FW Act). The FW Act defined disability much more broadly, increased substantially the penalties for noncompliance, and created a state institution to enforce disability rights. This article analyses the FW Act, compares it to the workplace disability law in the United States, and argues that the FW Act is a transformational development in the struggle to achieve workplace equality and is an approach that should attract significant international interest

The 1998 November 14 Occultation of GSC 0622-00345 by Saturn. I. Techniques for Ground-Based Stellar Occultations

On 1998 November 14, Saturn and its rings occulted the star GSC 0622-00345. We observed atmospheric immersion with NSFCAM at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Immersion occurred at 55.5\circ S planetocentric latitude. A 2.3 {\mu}m, methane-band filter suppressed reflected sunlight. Atmospheric emersion and ring data were not successfully obtained. We describe our observation, light-curve production, and timing techniques, including improvements in aperture positioning, removal of telluric scintillation effects, and timing. Many of these techniques are known within the occultation community, but have not been described in the reviewed literature. We present a light curve whose signal-to-noise ratio per scale height is 267, among the best ground-based signals yet achieved, despite a disadvantage of up to 8 mag in the stellar flux compared to prior work.Comment: LaTeX/emulateapj, 6 pages, 3 figures. Online items: The FITS-format light curve and the IDL code for the timing model are available from ApJ or the lead autho

Cellular Automata and Music: A New Representation

For millenia, we’ve thought of musical composition as a purely human activity. However, we once also thought of an activity like chess to be purely human, but Deep Blue was able to defeat Kasparov in 1995 all the same. Could there perhaps be some tool or algorithm for musical composition that can replicate to some extent what human beings can do with music? This project explores this idea through the use of a tool called a cellular automaton. A cellular automaton is a grid space with a finite number of states for each of the ”cells” or ”squares” where a simple rule is applied, and through this rule amazingly complicated patterns emerge over many time steps. We tested the potential of these systems for choosing when and what notes to play in a musical composition. In this project, we mainly focused on creating a translator between music and cellular automata that matches music theory as closely as possible. Whether or not the tracks produced are musical or not could shed light on the computer’s ability to replicate high-level human activities

The 1998 November 14 Occultation of GSC 0622-00345 by Saturn. II. Stratospheric Thermal Profile, Power Spectrum, and Gravity Waves

On 1998 November 14, Saturn and its rings occulted the star GSC 0622-00345. The occultation latitude was 55.5 degrees S. This paper analyzes the 2.3 {\mu}m light curve derived by Harrington & French. A fixed-baseline isothermal fit to the light curve has a temperature of 140 +/- 3 K, assuming a mean molecular mass of 2.35 AMU. The thermal profile obtained by numerical inversion is valid between 1 and 60 {\mu}bar. The vertical temperature gradient is >0.2 K/km more stable than the adiabatic lapse rate, but it still shows the alternating-rounded-spiked features seen in many temperature gradient profiles from other atmospheric occultations and usually attributed to breaking gravity (buoyancy) waves. We conduct a wavelet analysis of the thermal profile, and show that, even with our low level of noise, scintillation due to turbulence in Earth's atmosphere can produce large temperature swings in light-curve inversions. Spurious periodic features in the "reliable" region of a wavelet amplitude spectrum can exceed 0.3 K in our data. We also show that gravity-wave model fits to noisy isothermal light curves can lead to convincing wave "detections". We provide new significance tests for localized wavelet amplitudes, wave model fits, and global power spectra of inverted occultation light curves by assessing the effects of pre- and post-occultation noise on these parameters. Based on these tests, we detect several significant ridges and isolated peaks in wavelet amplitude, to which we fit a gravity wave model. We also strongly detect the global power spectrum of thermal fluctuations in Saturn's atmosphere, which resembles the "universal" (modified Desaubies) curve associated with saturated spectra of propagating gravity waves on Earth and Jupiter.Comment: LaTeX/emulateapj, 13 pages, 7 figure