Urban planning law in Liberia: the case for a transformational approach

This article discusses the need for a fundamental rethinking of urban planning in Liberia with special reference to Monrovia, the capital. Liberia is a post-conflict country and is facing a multitude of problems. One is the very rapid urbanisation of the country. Well over 50% of the population live in urban areas, and over one million people—one third of the population—live in Monrovia, for the most part in informal ‘illegal’ settlements with few facilities. Despite land issues being acknowledged as in need of being tackled as a matter of urgency, little has been done by the Johnson-Sirleaf government since it came to power in 2006. What is needed and what this article argues for is a plan for the development of Monrovia based on the Right to the City with residents given clear rights to land and to participate in the governance of their city. The approach is denominated as a transformational one, taking its inspiration from van der Walt’s approach set out in his Property in the Margins. The need for and the outline of an Urban Transformation Act are set out in the article which concludes with a warning that it cannot be supposed that the residents of Monrovia will continue indefinitely to put up with their very poor living conditions

In the Beginning was the Law… an Intellectual Odyssey

Is there such a distinctive phenomenon in practice as law and development? Isn’t all law directed towards some kind of development in the sense that new law – judicial decisions, legislation, administrative directives – change the existing law and so is a development from that existing law and in changing the existing law, change, in howsoever slight a degree, the economy and society of which the law is a part. Law and Development did not start in the 1960s when American legal scholars discovered the developing world nor did it end in the 1970s when, starved of funds to pursue their endeavours, many of those same scholars declared that law and development was dead . If we are to write about the future of law and development we must first be clear about its scope, its past and its present. We must first answer the questions: What is it? What are we? Where are we? How did we get here? Only then can we answer the question: Where should we go? Support for legal education is the one L&D input that brings together the external and the internal perspectives of L&D and the one such input that is highly unlikely to fail: in every society there are some lawyers who are concerned with justice, with freedoms and with advancing the rule of law. If it does nothing else as a community, the L&D community should make it its business to argue the case for support for legal education in the South and especially in ‘failed states’ so as to develop as rapidly as possible that critical mass of national legal skills and knowledge that is the only sure way to build up a national legal culture and so in turn create the undergirding for a legitimate, effective and just national legal system

In the Beginning was the Law… an Intellectual Odyssey

Is there such a distinctive phenomenon in practice as law and development? Isn’t all law directed towards some kind of development in the sense that new law – judicial decisions, legislation, administrative directives – change the existing law and so is a development from that existing law and in changing the existing law, change, in howsoever slight a degree, the economy and society of which the law is a part. Law and Development did not start in the 1960s when American legal scholars discovered the developing world nor did it end in the 1970s when, starved of funds to pursue their endeavours, many of those same scholars declared that law and development was dead . If we are to write about the future of law and development we must first be clear about its scope, its past and its present. We must first answer the questions: What is it? What are we? Where are we? How did we get here? Only then can we answer the question: Where should we go? Support for legal education is the one L&D input that brings together the external and the internal perspectives of L&D and the one such input that is highly unlikely to fail: in every society there are some lawyers who are concerned with justice, with freedoms and with advancing the rule of law. If it does nothing else as a community, the L&D community should make it its business to argue the case for support for legal education in the South and especially in ‘failed states’ so as to develop as rapidly as possible that critical mass of national legal skills and knowledge that is the only sure way to build up a national legal culture and so in turn create the undergirding for a legitimate, effective and just national legal system

Physiological Responses to a Battling Rope High Intensity Interval Training Protocol

To investigate the aerobic/muscular endurance responses to a 4 week battling rope (BR) high intensity interval training (HIIT) protocol. 15 men/15 women (22±2yr) trained 3x/week, for 4 weeks. A 30 second maximal work interval (performing the exercise), alternating between the double-whip and alternating-whip exercises, separated by 60 seconds recovery for 10 work/rest rounds was used. Women used 40 foot, 1.5 inch, 20lb ropes and men used 50 foot, 1.5 inch, 25lb ropes. Following HIIT females increased VO2max (7.8%), average peak VO2 during HIIT(8.4%), pushups (36.4%), and situps (10.1%) and with no change in cadence or RPE. Males saw no change in VO2max and situps but increased pushups (11.1%), rope cadence (14%), and reduced RPE\u27s (13.5%). Females and males were exercising at 80% of HRmax, had greater VO2\u27s for double versus the alternating-whip exercises, and with peak blood lactate levels of 9.36 and 11.06mmol/L respectively. BR HIIT shows potential to improve aerobic/anaerobic parameters over 4 weeks and should include a progressive overload component

Coherent spectroscopy of rare-earth-ion doped whispering-gallery mode resonators

We perform an investigation into the properties of Pr3+:Y2SiO5 whispering gallery mode resonators as a first step towards achieving the strong coupling regime of cavity QED with rare-earth-ion doped crystals. Direct measurement of cavity QED parameters are made using photon echoes, giving good agreement with theoretical predictions. By comparing the ions at the surface of the resonator to those in the center it is determined that the physical process of making the resonator does not negatively affect the properties of the ions. Coupling between the ions and resonator is analyzed through the observation of optical bistability and normal-mode splitting.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figure

Connections between Rape Myth Acceptance and Favorite Musical Artist among College Students

The focus of this study is to examine the relationship between the characteristics of a person’s favorite musical artist and their level of rape myth acceptance (RMA). I asked 115 undergraduates from the subject pool to rate the most frequently mentioned musical artists from the study done by Miller, McAuslan, and Leonard (under review). The participants rated the artists on factors related to sexuality, aggressiveness, narcissism and whether they see these artists as a “role model.” This data is then incorporated with the data from approximately 337 emerging adults from Miller, McAuslan, and Lenoard’s (under review) study who have taken an RMA scale. The results indicated that gender plays a role in RMA and who we identify is our favorite musical artist. However, sexuality, aggression, arrogance and bad/good role model behaviors did not predict RMA scores. Results provides further evidence for gender’s role in RMA and the identification and parasocial interaction theory and provides direction for further research to extinguish rape myths and the acceptance of such myths

Laser cooling and control of excitations in superfluid helium

Superfluidity is an emergent quantum phenomenon which arises due to strong interactions between elementary excitations in liquid helium. These excitations have been probed with great success using techniques such as neutron and light scattering. However measurements to-date have been limited, quite generally, to average properties of bulk superfluid or the driven response far out of thermal equilibrium. Here, we use cavity optomechanics to probe the thermodynamics of superfluid excitations in real-time. Furthermore, strong light-matter interactions allow both laser cooling and amplification of the thermal motion. This provides a new tool to understand and control the microscopic behaviour of superfluids, including phonon-phonon interactions, quantised vortices and two-dimensional quantum phenomena such as the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition. The third sound modes studied here also offer a pathway towards quantum optomechanics with thin superfluid films, including femtogram effective masses, high mechanical quality factors, strong phonon-phonon and phonon-vortex interactions, and self-assembly into complex geometries with sub-nanometre feature size.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. Supplementary information attache