Careful who you chat with: it could turn you into a criminal

Next time you strike up a conversation at your local coffee shop, have a chat in the pub after work, or have a natter with fellow dog lovers as you follow your pooch around the park, you may want to get in early with a few key questions. Like, “Do you have a criminal record?” If yes, I suggest you ask a delicate follow-up: “How serious was your crime?

Scaling Film Cooling Adiabatic Effectiveness with Mass Transfer and Thermal Experimental Techniques

With increasing engine temperatures, it is becoming more important to design effective film cooling schemes. Low temperature, large scale tests are often implemented in the design process to reduce cost and complexity. A nondimensional adiabatic effectiveness can be used as an indication of the performance of a film cooling scheme. However, the coolant flow rate must be properly scaled between the low temperature tests and engine temperatures to accurately predict film cooling effectiveness. This process is complicated by gas property variation with temperature. Tests are commonly conducted using thermal measurement techniques with infrared thermography (IR), but the use of pressure sensitive paints (PSPs) can be used implementing the heat-mass transfer analogy. Thus, the question arises whether mass transfer methods can be used as a surrogate to thermal methods. In this study, a thermal technique with IR was compared to a heat-mass transfer method with PSP. A new method for collecting large datasets with PSP was implementing in this study to account for paint degradation. Results indicate that adiabatic effectiveness is best scaled by accounting for specific heat with the advective capacity ratio (ACR) using thermal techniques. Results also indicated that the mass flux ratio (M) is an appropriate parameter to scale adiabatic effectiveness results between gases using the mass transfer technique. This has significant implication for engine designers that rely on experimental data to predict engine behavior

Structure Property Relationships in Organic Conjugated Systems

A series of π conjugated oligomers were studied by absorption and photoluminescence spectroscopy. A linear relationship between the positioning of the absorption and photoluminescence maxima plotted against inverse conjugation length is observed. The relationships are in good agreement with the simple particle in a box method, one of the earliest descriptions of the properties of one-dimensional organic molecules. In addition to the electronic transition energies, it was observed that the Stokes shift also exhibited a well-defined relationship with increasing conjugation length, implying a correlation between the electron-vibrational coupling and chain length. This correlation is further examined using Raman spectroscopy, whereby the integrated Raman scattering is seen to behave superlinearly with chain length. There is a clear indication that the vibrational activity and thus nonradiative decay processes are controllable through molecular structure. The correlations between the Stokes energies and the vibrational structure are also observed in a selection of PPV based polymers and a clear trend of increasing luminescence efficiency with decreasing vibrational activity and Stokes shift is observable. The implications of such structure property relationships in terms of materials design are discussed

Definition ofthe Design Trajectory and Entry Flight Corridor for the NASA Orion Exploration Mission 1 Entry Trajectory Using an Integrated Approach and Optimization

One of the key design objectives of NASA's Orion Exploration Mission 1 (EM- 1) is to execute a guided entry trajectory demonstrating GN&C capability. The focus of this paper is defining the flyable entry corridor for EM-1 taking into account multiple subsystem constraints such as complex aerothermal heating constraints, aerothermal heating objectives, landing accuracy constraints, structural load limits, Human-System-Integration-Requirements, Service Module debris disposal limits and other flight test objectives. During the EM-1 Design Analysis Cycle 1 design challenges came up that made defining the flyable entry corridor for the EM-1 mission critical to mission success. This document details the optimization techniques that were explored to use with the 6-DOF ANTARES simulation to assist in defining the design entry interface state and entry corridor with respect to key flight test constraints and objectives

Public interest litigation: making the case in Australia

Litigation is widely and appropriately recognised as an important component of the public interest advocacy \u27toolkit\u27. Yet, little attention has been paid in Australian research and scholarship to an important question: under what circumstances is public interest litigation (PIL) an effective way to bring about progressive social change? Informed by a review of the international literature on PIL, the authors of this article argue for the importance of drawing on Australia\u27s rich history with PIL to develop a solid empirical evidence base which can inform future decision about the strategic employment of PIL in campaigns to address the concerns and needs of disadvantaged and marginalised sections of Australian society

Homelessness and Contact with the Criminal Justice System: Insights from Specialist Lawyers and Allied Professionals in Australia

Lawyers and allied professionals who have experience supporting, advising and representing people experiencing homelessness are uniquely placed to identify problems with the operation of the criminal justice system—from policing to courts to punishment—and to conceive reform options. This article reports the findings of qualitative interviews with lawyers and allied professionals in all Australian states and territories. Participants identified multiple points where decisions about criminal law enforcement fail to take adequate account of the complex factors that underlie ‘offending’ by people experiencing homelessness, producing outcomes that exacerbate disadvantage. They advanced a range of proposals for reform directed at breaking the nexus between homelessness and criminalisation, including re-conception of the role of police, adoption of therapeutic jurisprudence (or ‘solution-focused’) models in criminal courts, and major changes to the use of fines as a criminal punishment

Criminal law and the effects of alcohol and other drugs: a national study of the significance of intoxication in Australian legislation

Recent years have seen intense media scrutiny, concerted policy discussion and significant law reform on the relationship between the consumption of alcohol (and other drugs) and the commission of criminal offences. Much of the debate has been dominated by the view that, particularly for crimes of violence, the state of \u27intoxication\u27 produced by the consumption of alcohol and other drugs (\u27AOD\u27) should be regarded as an aggravating factor that adds to the seriousness of the harm done and warrants additional punishment. Some recent legislative reform measures have unambiguously embraced this position. As important as it is, treating intoxication as an aggravating factor is, in fact, only one of the ways in which Australian criminal law attaches significance to AOD consumption. We are currently undertaking a large-scale study of the \u27knowledges\u27 and assumptions about the relationship between intoxication and violence (and other offending and anti-social behaviours) that are reflected in Australian criminal laws. Our project compares legislative and judicial knowledges on \u27intoxication\u27 with scientific and social scientific expert knowledges on the effects of AOD, and the relationship between AOD consumption and violence and other criminal offending. It maps and assesses the multiple ways in which Australian criminal laws attach significance to the attribute of intoxication, and investigates the effects these approaches may have in practice. We aim to facilitate enhanced clarity, consistency and integrity in laws that attach penal significance to the fact of a person\u27s intoxication, and improve the criminal law\u27s capacity to meet the needs of the community with respect to the attribution of criminal responsibility for AOD-related anti-social behaviour, harms and risks

‘Zero Tolerance’ Drug Driving Laws in Australia: A Gap Between Rationale and Form?

Legislation in all Australian states and territories creates offences and provides for police roadside testing in relation to ‘drug driving’. Ostensibly motivated by the same road safety objectives and impairment paradigm as drink driving laws, drug driving laws adopt a significantly different approach. Whereas random breath testing tests for all forms of alcohol and is designed to determine whether there is a sufficient concentration of alcohol in the driver’s body that s/he should be deemed to be impaired, random drug testing typically tests for the presence of any quantity of only the three most widely used illicit drugs—cannabis, methamphetamine and ecstasy—in the driver’s oral fluids, without reference to what is known about the different pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic qualities of different drugs. This article examines this idiosyncratic approach to the criminalisation of drug driving, highlighting its weak correlation with the important road safety objective of deterring substance-impaired driving, and the risks of both over- and under-criminalisation that it creates. It argues that public policy on the prohibition of certain drugs and the criminalisation of their use should be disentangled from public policy on impaired driving. It recommends that drug driving laws in all Australian jurisdictions should be brought back into line with drink driving laws, via legislation and testing practices that turn on substance-specific prescribed concentrations for all drugs (illicit and licit) that have the potential to impair drivers

Vibrational Coupling in Conjugated π Systems with a view to Optimization of Fluorescence Yield through Phonon Confinement

A series of π conjugated systems were studied by absorption, photoluminescence and vibrational spectroscopy. As is common for these systems, a linear relationship between the positioning of the absorption and photoluminescence maxima plotted against inverse conjugation length is observed. The relationships are in good agreement with the simple particle in a box method, one of the earliest descriptions of the properties of one-dimensional organic molecules. In addition to the electronic transition energies, it was observed that the Stokes shift also exhibited a well-defined relationship with increasing conjugation length, implying a correlation between the electron-vibrational coupling and chain length. This correlation is further examined using Raman spectroscopy, whereby the integrated Raman scattering is seen to behave superlinearly with chain length. There is a clear indication that the vibrational activity and thus nonradiative decay processes are controllable through molecular structure. The correlations between the Stokes energies and the vibrational structure are also observed in a selection of PPV based polymers and a clear trend of increasing luminescence efficiency with decreasing vibrational activity and Stokes shift is observable. The implications of such structure property relationships in terms of materials design are discussed