Countering Home-Grown Terrorists in Australia: An Overview of Legislation, Policy and Actors Since 2001

This article explores the impact of counter-terrorism legislation and policy in Australia. In particular it explores how legislation facilitated prosecution and conviction of persons involved in home-grown terrorism, including analysis of investigation and prosecution policy surrounding the ul-Haque and Haneef cases. Particular attention is given to the terrorism trials involving Benbrika & Ors and Elomar & Ors. What makes these trials intriguing is the fact that most of those convicted could be more easily described as more vulnerable than menacing. Sentencing of those convicted was cognate with no policies for rehabilitation. The small number of convictions under the legislation when considered against the increased funding of counter-terrorism, loss of traditional rights and privileges and Australia’s involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq raises issues about adequate policy setting in this area

Assortative Mixing Equilibria in Social Network Games

It is known that individuals in social networks tend to exhibit homophily (a.k.a. assortative mixing) in their social ties, which implies that they prefer bonding with others of their own kind. But what are the reasons for this phenomenon? Is it that such relations are more convenient and easier to maintain? Or are there also some more tangible benefits to be gained from this collective behaviour? The current work takes a game-theoretic perspective on this phenomenon, and studies the conditions under which different assortative mixing strategies lead to equilibrium in an evolving social network. We focus on a biased preferential attachment model where the strategy of each group (e.g., political or social minority) determines the level of bias of its members toward other group members and non-members. Our first result is that if the utility function that the group attempts to maximize is the degree centrality of the group, interpreted as the sum of degrees of the group members in the network, then the only strategy achieving Nash equilibrium is a perfect homophily, which implies that cooperation with other groups is harmful to this utility function. A second, and perhaps more surprising, result is that if a reward for inter-group cooperation is added to the utility function (e.g., externally enforced by an authority as a regulation), then there are only two possible equilibria, namely, perfect homophily or perfect heterophily, and it is possible to characterize their feasibility spaces. Interestingly, these results hold regardless of the minority-majority ratio in the population. We believe that these results, as well as the game-theoretic perspective presented herein, may contribute to a better understanding of the forces that shape the groups and communities of our society

Complementary cooperation, minimal winning coalitions, and power indices

We introduce a new simple game, which is referred to as the complementary weighted multiple majority game (C-WMMG for short). C-WMMG models a basic cooperation rule, the complementary cooperation rule, and can be taken as a sister model of the famous weighted majority game (WMG for short). In this paper, we concentrate on the two dimensional C-WMMG. An interesting property of this case is that there are at most $n+1$ minimal winning coalitions (MWC for short), and they can be enumerated in time $O(n\log n)$, where $n$ is the number of players. This property guarantees that the two dimensional C-WMMG is more handleable than WMG. In particular, we prove that the main power indices, i.e. the Shapley-Shubik index, the Penrose-Banzhaf index, the Holler-Packel index, and the Deegan-Packel index, are all polynomially computable. To make a comparison with WMG, we know that it may have exponentially many MWCs, and none of the four power indices is polynomially computable (unless P=NP). Still for the two dimensional case, we show that local monotonicity holds for all of the four power indices. In WMG, this property is possessed by the Shapley-Shubik index and the Penrose-Banzhaf index, but not by the Holler-Packel index or the Deegan-Packel index. Since our model fits very well the cooperation and competition in team sports, we hope that it can be potentially applied in measuring the values of players in team sports, say help people give more objective ranking of NBA players and select MVPs, and consequently bring new insights into contest theory and the more general field of sports economics. It may also provide some interesting enlightenments into the design of non-additive voting mechanisms. Last but not least, the threshold version of C-WMMG is a generalization of WMG, and natural variants of it are closely related with the famous airport game and the stable marriage/roommates problem.Comment: 60 page

Genetic association of zinc transporter 8 (ZnT8) autoantibodies in type 1 diabetes cases

Autoantibodies to zinc transporter 8 (ZnT8A) are associated with risk of type 1 diabetes. Apart from the SLC30A8 gene itself, little is known about the genetic basis of ZnT8A. We hypothesise that other loci in addition to SLC30A8 are associated with ZnT8A. The levels of ZnT8A were measured in 2,239 British type 1 diabetic individuals diagnosed before age 17 years, with a median duration of diabetes of 4 years. Cases were tested at over 775,000 loci genome wide (including 53 type 1 diabetes associated regions) for association with positivity for ZnT8A. ZnT8A were also measured in an independent dataset of 855 family members with type 1 diabetes. Only FCRL3 on chromosome 1q23.1 and the HLA class I region were associated with positivity for ZnT8A. rs7522061T > C was the most associated single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the FCRL3 region (p = 1.13 x 10(-16)). The association was confirmed in the family dataset (p a parts per thousand currency signaEuro parts per thousand 9.20 x 10(-4)). rs9258750A > G was the most associated variant in the HLA region (p = 2.06 x 10(-9) and p = 0.0014 in family cases). The presence of ZnT8A was not associated with HLA-DRB1, HLA-DQB1, HLA-A, HLA-B or HLA-C (p > 0.05). Unexpectedly, the two loci associated with the presence of ZnT8A did not alter risk of having type 1 diabetes, and the 53 type 1 diabetes risk loci did not influence positivity for ZnT8A, despite them being disease specific. ZnT8A are not primary pathogenic factors in type 1 diabetes. Nevertheless, ZnT8A testing in combination with other autoantibodies facilitates disease prediction, despite the biomarker not being under the same genetic control as the disease

Rehabilitación cognitiva en trastornos psiquiátricos graves: aplicación de los subprogramas cognitivos de la terapia psicológica integrada (IPT).

El objetivo del estudio fue conocer los efectos de los subprogramas cognitivos de la Terapia Psicológica Integrada (IPT) en pacientes con trastornos psicóticos. La investigación, de tipo experimental, midió los cambios en los procesos cognitivos básicos y, a su vez, en la sintomatología, las habilidades sociales y de resolución de problemas. Los participantes fueron 32 pacientes en tratamiento ambulatorio diagnosticados de esquizofrenia y trastorno esquizoafectivo (F20 y F21), divididos en dos condiciones: experimental y control. Los participantes del grupo experimental asistieron a un programa de IPT durante seis meses, a razón de dos sesiones semanales. El grupo control no recibió ningún programa terapéutico de rehabilitación. En el análisis de las medidas pre-post tratamiento para el grupo experimental, encontrándose una mejoría estadísticamente significativa tanto para la sintomatología cognitiva (Mpre=4,05 vs Mpost=3,60), como para la afectiva (Mpre= 4,35 vs. Mpost= 4,00) y la negativa (Mpre=4,65 vs Mpost=.4, 25). También, en las medidas del rendimiento se ha podido observar un incremento en el rendimiento (Mpre=12 vs. Mposts=13.95), en la medida de atención selectiva y memoria auditiva. Por último, se encontró una mejora en la satisfacción con la vida (Mpre=55,60 vs. Mpost= 53,67). Los participantes del grupo control, por el contrario, no experimentaron cambios significativos en ninguna de las variables medidas. Se evidencia la eficacia de la implementación de un programa de tratamiento psicológico integrado en la rehabilitación cognitiva de los pacientes psicóticos. Así mismo, se discuten las limitaciones y las implicaciones para futuras aplicaciones de la IPT en esta població

Rehabilitación cognitiva en trastornos psiquiátricos graves: aplicación de los subprogramas cognitivos de la terapia psicológica integrada (IPT).

El objetivo del estudio fue conocer los efectos de los subprogramas cognitivos de la Terapia Psicológica Integrada (IPT) en pacientes con trastornos psicóticos. La investigación, de tipo experimental, midió los cambios en los procesos cognitivos básicos y, a su vez, en la sintomatología, las habilidades sociales y de resolución de problemas. Los participantes fueron 32 pacientes en tratamiento ambulatorio diagnosticados de esquizofrenia y trastorno esquizoafectivo (F20 y F21), divididos en dos condiciones: experimental y control. Los participantes del grupo experimental asistieron a un programa de IPT durante seis meses, a razón de dos sesiones semanales. El grupo control no recibió ningún programa terapéutico de rehabilitación. En el análisis de las medidas pre-post tratamiento para el grupo experimental, encontrándose una mejoría estadísticamente significativa tanto para la sintomatología cognitiva (Mpre=4,05 vs Mpost=3,60), como para la afectiva (Mpre= 4,35 vs. Mpost= 4,00) y la negativa (Mpre=4,65 vs Mpost=.4, 25). También, en las medidas del rendimiento se ha podido observar un incremento en el rendimiento (Mpre=12 vs. Mposts=13.95), en la medida de atención selectiva y memoria auditiva. Por último, se encontró una mejora en la satisfacción con la vida (Mpre=55,60 vs. Mpost= 53,67). Los participantes del grupo control, por el contrario, no experimentaron cambios significativos en ninguna de las variables medidas. Se evidencia la eficacia de la implementación de un programa de tratamiento psicológico integrado en la rehabilitación cognitiva de los pacientes psicóticos. Así mismo, se discuten las limitaciones y las implicaciones para futuras aplicaciones de la IPT en esta població

Gene therapy for carcinoma of the breast: Genetic ablation strategies

The gene therapy strategy of mutation compensation is designed to rectify the molecular lesions that are etiologic for neoplastic transformation. For dominant oncogenes, such approaches involve the functional knockout of the dysregulated cellular control pathways provoked by the overexpressed oncoprotein. On this basis, molecular interventions may be targeted to the transcriptional level of expression, via antisense or ribozymes, or post-transcriptionally, via intracellular single chain antibodies (intrabodies). For carcinoma of the breast, these approaches have been applied in the context of the disease linked oncogenes erbB-2 and cyclin D(1), as well as the estrogen receptor. Neoplastic revision accomplished in modal systems has rationalized human trials on this basis