The One-State as a Demand of International Law: Jus Cogens

This article provides the initial contours of an argument that uses International Law to challenge the validity of Israeli apartheid. It challenges the conventional discourse of legal debates on Israel’s actions and bordersand seeks to link the illegalities of these actions to the validity of an inbuilt Israeli apartheid. The argument also connects the deontological doctrine of peremptory norms of International Law (jus cogens), the right of self-determination and the International Crime of Apartheid to the doctrine of state recognition. It applies these to the State of Israel and the vision of a single democratic state in historic Palestine

Decolonising the curriculum is an ongoing and collective effort: Responding to Townsend (2020) and Gibson and Farias (2020)

This paper responds to Townsend (2020), and Gibson and Farias (2020), who were invited to write commentaries regarding Simaan’s (2020) ‘Decolonising occupational science education through learning activities based on a study from the Global South’. My reply acknowledges work done by scholars in the Global North and South, both in and outside occupational science, that critiques Western-centric hegemony in academia. It recognises the multiple aspects of decolonial work in occupational science education, and its collective and continuous nature. I argue that my objective of stimulating reflections and discussion about decolonising occupational science education and knowledge has been achieved by this collective effort to extend this discourse. Future reflections, research, and activism in this area are of paramount importance if we are to truly decolonise occupational science

ACO2 homozygous missense mutation associated with complicated Hereditary spastic paraplegia

Objective: To identify the clinical characteristics and genetic etiology of a family affected with hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP). Methods: Clinical, genetic, and functional analyses involving genome-wide linkage coupled to whole-exome sequencing in a consanguineous family with complicated HSP. Results: A homozygous missense mutation was identified in the ACO2 gene (c.1240T>G p.Phe414Val) that segregated with HSP complicated by intellectual disability and microcephaly. Lymphoblastoid cell lines of homozygous carrier patients revealed significantly decreased activity of the mitochondrial aconitase enzyme and defective mitochondrial respiration. ACO2 encodes mitochondrial aconitase, an essential enzyme in the Krebs cycle. Recessive mutations in this gene have been previously associated with cerebellar ataxia. Conclusions: Our findings nominate ACO2 as a disease-causing gene for autosomal recessive complicated HSP and provide further support for the central role of mitochondrial defects in the pathogenesis of HSP

Fast Encryption Techniques for Multimedia Contents

The evolution of wireless handsets from simple mobile phones to smart devices, capable of capturing multimedia information and accessing Internet, has enabled its users to share multimedia contents with other network-capable devices in the vicinity or across the Internet. However, multimedia contents may include private information that a user would share only if it is secure from sniffing and other digital attacks. The same scenario is factual for video transmission from security IP cameras as it may be open to public and many other applications unless secured. Achieving security by fully encrypting multimedia contents (using Virtual Private Networks or otherwise) is not a viable solution, particularly for mobile devices, as they run on limited battery power and employ relatively slower processors compared to their desktop counterparts. These limitations have forced the handsets manufacturers to move the security operations to other parts of the networks thus compromising scalability as well as privacy. This dissertation investigates scalable, power efficient selective encryption techniques for secure real-time streaming of multimedia contents coded using different audio and video codecs. Specifically, selective encryption techniques are proposed for RTP streams, OGG streams, G-729 coded VOIP streams, and VLC coded multimedia streams. The structural properties of codecs and network containers are exploited to identify a subset of bits in the media that are important for the decoding process. Subsequently only these subsets are encrypted to realize security of the entire bit stream. The proposed solutions do not require media decoding, and encrypt on the average less than 5% of the packet load, while still providing robust security equivalent to that of a fully encrypted bit stream. These schemes are ubiquitous to the end users and can be deployed at any node in the network without compromising privacy of the contents. The security properties of the proposed schemes are demonstrated by analyzing the computation complexity for different digital attacks on the partially encrypted streams. The results show that it will take exhaustive combinations/trials to play out the digital media in the absence of encryption key. The performance evaluation is conducted on different platforms such as desktop computers, laptops, netbooks, and handlheld smart devices to consider the effects of computation power and battery capacity. The proposed scheme is compared with full encryption schemes based on different encryption methods, including AES and Chaotic maps