Jumping Beyond the Broom: Why Black Gay and Transgender Americans Need More Than Marriage Equality

Calls for a policy agenda to address the economic, educational, and health disparities among gay and transgender African Americans, who face multiple structural biases based on race/ethnicity, class, sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation

A Roadmap for Change: Federal Policy Recommendations for Addressing the Criminilization of LGBT People and People Living with HIV

Each year in the United States, thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, Two Spirit, queer, questioning and gender non-conforming (LGBT) people and people living with HIV come in contact with the criminal justice system and fall victim to similar miscarriages of justice.According to a recent national study, a startling 73% of all LGBT people and PLWH surveyed have had face-to-face contact with police during the past five years.1 Five percent of these respondents also report having spent time in jail or prison, a rate that is markedly higher than the nearly 3% of the U.S. adult population whoare under some form of correctional supervision (jail, prison, probation, or parole) at any point in time.In fact, LGBT people and PLWH, especially Native and LGBT people and PLWH of color, aresignificantly overrepresented in all aspects of the penal system, from policing, to adjudication,to incarceration. Yet their experiences are often overlooked, and little headway has been madein dismantling the cycles of criminalization that perpetuate poor life outcomes and push already vulnerable populations to the margins of society.The disproportionate rate of LGBT people and PLWH in the criminal system can best be understoodin the larger context of widespread and continuing discrimination in employment, education, socialservices, health care, and responses to violence

Plain packaging: a time for action

It is almost thirty years since a senior vice president of marketing at British American Tobacco forewarned that tobacco products may eventually have to sell themselves through the pack.1 His prediction has now come true for countries with wide-ranging marketing controls. The tobacco industry has shown remarkable resilience and marketing ingenuity to continue promoting its wares, and the pack has become the focus of its efforts

School-based Indigenous cultural programs and their impact on Australian Indigenous students: a systematic review.

This critical systematic review of Australian research literature provides insights into the aspirations of Indigenous communities to collaborate with schools in establishing local Indigenous language and cultural programmes. This systematic review investigates the body of Australian research into the cultural, social and educational impacts on those Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students who have had opportunities to engage with these school-based Indigenous languages and/or cultural programmes. The review found that while many Indigenous families have advocated for their children’s to have access to quality language and cultural programmes, barriers of indifference, resourcing and leadership, have worked to limit students’ ability to access to these programmes. The studies highlight the effects on students sense of identity, the strengthening connectedness to community and County and the intergenerational sharing of cultural knowledge

Statistical mechanics on the square lattice

We investigate the statistical mechanical properties of spin models on the square lattice, using the technique of transfer matrices. With the aid of exact diagonalisation we obtain results which indicate that excitations of the transfer matrix can be thought of as physical objects which we term topological excitations, which are domain walls in the case of the Ising model at low temperature. Inspired by these results, we extend the usefulness of Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula by finding and proving a new representation. This mathematical result is the major contribution of this thesis to the wider literature. Applying perturbation theory to it allows us to perturbatively find the eigenvalues of a square lattice transfer matrix in a way reminiscent of a high-temperature expansion. We then do so for the Ising model, comparing our results to known formulae, and extend the calculation to Potts models

A systematic review of pedagogies that support, engage and improve the educational outcomes of Aboriginal students

This review analyses studies that identify pedagogies to support, engage and improve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student outcomes. Some studies focus on pedagogies to support and engage, while others describe pedagogies that are designed to improve engagement, attendance and academic skills. The role of context emerges as a key theme, particularly in remote areas. In larger studies, Aboriginal students are often a subset of a larger student group, included because of socio-economic status and achievement levels. Key findings indicate a disconnect between practice and outcomes where links to improved outcomes are by implication rather than evidence. Further, definitions and detail about pedagogies are mostly absent, relying on ‘common understandings’ of what pedagogy means. This review highlights that most of the research identifies effective pedagogies to engage and support Aboriginal students rather than to improve their educational outcomes

In situ GISAXS study of the growth of Pd on MgO(001)

The morphology of growing Pd nano-particles on MgO(001) surfaces have been investigated in situ, during growth, by grazing incidence small angle x-ray scattering, for different substrate temperatures. The 2D patterns obtained are quantitatively analyzed, and the average morphological parameters (shape, size) deduced. Above 650 K, the aggregates adopt their equilibrium shape of truncated octahedron, and the interfacial energy is deduced.Comment: 10 pages, 1 Table, 2 Figure