Judicial Adherence to a Minimum Core Approach to Socio-Economic Rights – A Comparative Perspective

Today’s world is witness to extraordinary inequality and the most desperate poverty. Millions of people across the world have no access to adequate food or water, basic health care or minimum levels of education. There are many avenues through which to approach the issue of improving socio-economic conditions. Courts, especially recently, have in certain countries, been seeking to ameliorate these conditions, to some extent, through the means of socio-economic rights adjudication. For courts to effectively empower people to realize their socio-economic rights, attention to implementation of judgments is essential. A strong normative base for such judgments is just as crucial, for it serves as the foundation on which implementation is based. The standards and tests courts rely on and courts delineate in the course of socio-economic rights litigation, may affect and influence the degree to which courts can translate abstract rights into tangible reality. Minimum core is one such standard. The concept of “minimum core in the realm of socio-economic rights seeks to confer minimum legal content for such rights. Judicial adherence to a minimum core approach is when courts take it upon themselves to give specificity to socio-economic rights which are usually framed in general terms. While the concept of minimum core is seemingly simple and evidently important, it is plagued by complexities and inherent paradoxes, as shall be demonstrated in the course of this paper. Such complexities surface in the legislative and administrative spheres, but are exacerbated when the concept is in context of judicial application. This paper examines the “is and ought” aspect of judicial adherence to the concept of minimum core. After an analysis of how the concept has been judicially applied and post-consideration of legitimate concerns voiced by scholars, this paper attempts to recommend a way forward where the emphasis is more on meeting the aspirations driving minimum core, than fulfilling any rigid requirements mandated by the concept. The framework recommended eschews the stranglehold of semantics and does not require for explicit use of the term, “minimum core.” There still appears to be a sense of unease with the concept of minimum core in national contexts resulting in there not being that many relevant cases; so in a way this paper frames its recommendations more on what the author anticipates than necessarily knows

The Synthesis and Characterization of Gold Nanoparticles Prepared with Novel Thioether-Ionic Liquids

Gold nanoparticles have found a broad range of applications in the biomedical field including in drug delivery and biosensor development.The latter applications take advantage of a unique optical property called surface plasmon resonance. Easily accessible “bottom-up” synthesis methods are commonly used for the preparation of metal nanoparticles, in which a metal precursor is reduced in the presence of a stabilizing agent to prevent aggregation. Ionic liquids have been used in “bottom up” metal nanoparticle syntheses as stabilizing agents and as a means to functionalize metal nanoparticles’ surface. Due to the strength of gold-sulfur interactions, thiol-stabilized gold nanostructures are of great interest. This project focused on the development of gold nanoparticle syntheses with a series of novel thioether-functionalized ionic liquids. The effect of ionic liquid structure and composition, ionic liquid concentration, and ionic liquid solubility on the synthetic reproducibility, elemental composition, and size of the gold nanoparticles were evaluated. The gold nanostructures were characterized by UV-visible spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy with electron dispersive x-ray spectroscopy. Possible interactions between the ionic liquid and HAuCl4 in aqueous solution were studied using fast scan cyclic voltammetry and UV-visible spectroscopy

Judicial Adherence to a Minimum Core Approach to Socio-Economic Rights – A Comparative Perspective

Today’s world is witness to extraordinary inequality and the most desperate poverty. Millions of people across the world have no access to adequate food or water, basic health care or minimum levels of education. There are many avenues through which to approach the issue of improving socio-economic conditions. Courts, especially recently, have in certain countries, been seeking to ameliorate these conditions, to some extent, through the means of socio-economic rights adjudication. For courts to effectively empower people to realize their socio-economic rights, attention to implementation of judgments is essential. A strong normative base for such judgments is just as crucial, for it serves as the foundation on which implementation is based. The standards and tests courts rely on and courts delineate in the course of socio-economic rights litigation, may affect and influence the degree to which courts can translate abstract rights into tangible reality. Minimum core is one such standard. The concept of “minimum core in the realm of socio-economic rights seeks to confer minimum legal content for such rights. Judicial adherence to a minimum core approach is when courts take it upon themselves to give specificity to socio-economic rights which are usually framed in general terms. While the concept of minimum core is seemingly simple and evidently important, it is plagued by complexities and inherent paradoxes, as shall be demonstrated in the course of this paper. Such complexities surface in the legislative and administrative spheres, but are exacerbated when the concept is in context of judicial application. This paper examines the “is and ought” aspect of judicial adherence to the concept of minimum core. After an analysis of how the concept has been judicially applied and post-consideration of legitimate concerns voiced by scholars, this paper attempts to recommend a way forward where the emphasis is more on meeting the aspirations driving minimum core, than fulfilling any rigid requirements mandated by the concept. The framework recommended eschews the stranglehold of semantics and does not require for explicit use of the term, “minimum core.” There still appears to be a sense of unease with the concept of minimum core in national contexts resulting in there not being that many relevant cases; so in a way this paper frames its recommendations more on what the author anticipates than necessarily knows

Mud Sign

Footprint line obvious imprint individually lost from the crowd that stampled; path happy, street sleeper followers of previous steps Embedded Standing itself deep and away child bastard of some rebellious soul...

Winter Storm

Long waves now frozen high and hard on sand, Divorced from an angry broken mass of sea Still seek a freedom of movement foreign to land-..

STUDY OF DRAG REDUCING POLYMERS AND MECHANISMS OF THEIR INTRAVASCULAR EFFECT

Blood-soluble drag reducing polymers (DRPs) have been shown to produce considerable beneficial effects on blood circulation, including an increase in tissue perfusion and tissue oxygenation and a decrease in vascular resistance, when injected in blood at minute concentrations in animal models of normal and especially pathological circulation. DRPs have potential applications in treating tissue hypoperfusion caused by cardiovascular disease, stroke, peripheral vascular disease, diabetes, and other illnesses. To help to translate this novel therapy from the lab bench to the clinic, standard tests need to be developed for characterization and efficacy testing of candidate polymers. Furthermore, elucidation of the mechanisms of the observed DRP effects on blood circulation is extremely important for their future medical applications. Finally, effective, biocompatible and stable polymers which can be easily produced in large quantities must be identified. In this work a sequence of tests was developed to characterize and assess efficacy of DRPs for possible use in treating circulatory disorders. This research study also provided a better understanding of mechanical degradation of DRPs, especially in the presence of blood cells or particles. It was discovered that an increase in particle concentration led to an increase in degradation rate, and that rigid particles caused an even higher degradation rate than deformable red blood cells (RBCs). Microfluidic studies in models of microvessels showed that DRPs prevented RBC movement from the walls of microchannels toward the center and lessened plasma skimming at bifurcations, delivering more RBCs to smaller branches and thus to capillaries. In vivo, this may lead to a reduction of the near-wall plasma layer, which would facilitate gas transport, increase local wall shear stress and promote vasodilation decreasing vascular resistance in microvessels. Three polymers, including an aloe vera derived polysaccharide (AVP), poly(N-vinyl formamide), and hyaluronic acid (HA), were evaluated and characterized as new drag reducers for potential clinical use and found to be very effective. HA and AVP were found to be the most resistant to mechanical degradation of the tested polymers. Finally, relaxation time and gyration radius were found to be the polymer's physical properties which best predicted their drag reducing effectiveness