The Chagos Islands cases: the empire strikes back

Good governance requires the accommodation of multiple interests in the cause of decision making. However, undue regard for particular sectional interests can take their toll upon public faith in government administration. Historically, broad conceptions of the good of the commonwealth were employed to outweigh the interests of groups that resisted colonisation. In the decision making of the British Empire, the standard approach for justifying the marginalisation of the interests of colonised groups was that they were uncivilised and that particular hardships were the price to be paid for bringing to them the imperial dividend of industrial society. It is widely assumed that with the dismantling of the British Empire, such impulses and their accompanying jurisprudence became a thing of the past. Even as decolonisation proceeded apace after the Second World War, however, the United Kingdom maintained control of strategically important islands with a view towards sustaining its global role. In an infamous example from this twilight period of empire, in the 1960s imperial interests were used to justify the expulsion of the Chagos islanders from the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). Into the twenty-first century, this forced elision of the UK’s interests with the imperial “common good” continues to take centre stage in courtroom battles over the islanders’ rights, being cited before domestic and international tribunals in order to maintain the Chagossians’ exclusion from their homeland. This article considers the new jurisprudence of imperialism which has emerged in a string of decisions which have continued to marginalise the Chagossians’ interests

Spacetime Defects: von K\'arm\'an vortex street like configurations

A special arrangement of spinning strings with dislocations similar to a von K\'arm\'an vortex street is studied. We numerically solve the geodesic equations for the special case of a test particle moving along twoinfinite rows of pure dislocations and also discuss the case of pure spinning defects.Comment: 9 pages, 2figures, CQG in pres

When Statutory Regimes Collide:Will Wisconsin Right to Life and Citizens United Invalidate Federal Tax Regulation of Campaign Activity?

In Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life (2007) and Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission (2010), the United States Supreme Court dramatically reduced the ability of Congress to regulate campaign finance activities of corporations and others active in elections. Many of the same activities are still subject to restrictions by the Internal Revenue Code, which regulates the type and amount of political campaign activities that certain nonprofits exempt under federal tax law can engage in. In the wake of the campaign finance decisions, the constitutionality of the tax law’s restrictions on campaign activity is now being challenged in the lower courts. This Article analyzes the two recent campaign finance decisions and campaign finance precedents more broadly to determine how, if at all, the Roberts’ Court’s campaign finance jurisprudence is likely to alter existing tax law jurisprudence in the area of campaign activity. It finds that, for the most part, tax law constitutional doctrines have developed independently of other areas of First Amendment free speech law. Based upon an analysis of the distinctive tax law doctrines, the Article concludes that the tax law provision prohibiting section 501(c)(3) charities from engaging in campaigns is likely to withstand challenges arguing that the provision prevents these nonprofits from engaging in protected political speech. However, there is some likelihood that the tax law prohibition is vulnerable to constitutional attack under traditional doctrines of vagueness or overbreadth due to the lack of precision of the terms of the political prohibition, as these have been elaborated by the IRS and the courts to date

Position-dependent mass models and their nonlinear characterization

We consider the specific models of Zhu-Kroemer and BenDaniel-Duke in a sech$^{2}$-mass background and point out interesting correspondences with the stationary 1-soliton and 2-soliton solutions of the KdV equation in a supersymmetric framework.Comment: 8 Pages, Latex version, Two new references are added, To appear in J.Phys.A (Fast Track Communication

Transients in sheared granular matter

As dense granular materials are sheared, a shear band and an anisotropic force network form. The approach to steady state behavior depends on the history of the packing and the existing force and contact network. We present experiments on shearing of dense granular matter in a 2D Couette geometry in which we probe the history and evolution of shear bands by measuring particle trajectories and stresses during transients. We find that when shearing is stopped and restarted in the same direction, steady state behavior is immediately reached, in agreement with the typical assumption that the system is quasistatic. Although some relaxation of the force network is observed when shearing is stopped, quasistatic behavior is maintained because the contact network remains essentially unchanged. When the direction of shear is reversed, a transient occurs in which stresses initially decrease, changes in the force network reach further into the bulk, and particles far from the wheel become more mobile. This occurs because the force network is fragile to changes transverse to the force network established under previous shear; particles must rearrange before becoming jammed again, thereby providing resistance to shear in the reversed direction. The strong force network is reestablished after displacing the shearing surface $\approx 3d$, where $d$ is the mean grain diameter. Steady state velocity profiles are reached after a shear of $\leq 30d$. Particles immediately outside of the shear band move on average less than 1 diameter before becoming jammed again. We also examine particle rotation during this transient and find that mean particle spin decreases during the transient, which is related to the fact that grains are not interlocked as strongly.Comment: 7 pages, 11 figures, accepted to Eur. Phys. J. E, revised version based on referee suggestion

Literacy for Life: Evaluating the National Literacy Trust’s bespoke programme for schools

This paper presents an evaluation of ‘Literacy for Life’ (LfL) – a whole-school literacy programme, implemented in five secondary schools in England. The aims of LfL were to improve literacy attainment and to promote positive attitudes to reading and writing. However, when compared to other schools, there is little or no evidence that being in a LfL school, had any differential benefit for pupils’ attainment. In LfL schools, the gap for disadvantaged pupils and those with SEN grew in the early years of the intervention. There is also no evidence from repeated surveys that pupils’ attitudes to and enjoyment of reading showed any improvement. As such, LfL did not achieve its intended objectives. This matters because, despite limited evidence in its favour, schools continue to use it and programmes similar to it. We argue that programmes such as LfL, which are implemented on a whole-school level, need to be based upon evidence-informed approaches

Law Behind Second Law of Thermodynamics --Unification with Cosmology--

In an abstract setting of a general classical mechanical system as a model for the universe we set up a general formalism for a law behind the second law of thermodynamics, i.e. really for "initial conditions". We propose a unification with the other laws by requiring similar symmetry and locality properties.Comment: 17 page

Tests of Basic Quantum Mechanics in Oscillation Experiments

According to standard quantum theory, the time evolution operator of a quantum system is independent of the state of the system. One can, however, consider systems in which this is not the case: the evolution operator may depend on the density operator itself. The presence of such modifications of quantum theory can be tested in long baseline oscillation experiments.Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX; no macros neede

S-particles at their naturalness limits

We draw attention on a particular configuration of supersymmetric particle masses, motivated by naturalness and flavour considerations. All its relevant phenomenological properties for the LHC are described in terms of a few physical parameters, irrespective of the underlying theoretical model. This allows a simple characterization of its main features, useful to define a strategy for its discovery.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, added reference

Meanfield treatment of Bragg scattering from a Bose-Einstein condensate

A unified semiclassical treatment of Bragg scattering from Bose-Einstein condensates is presented. The formalism is based on the Gross-Pitaevskii equation driven by classical light fields far detuned from atomic resonance. An approximate analytic solution is obtained and provides quantitative understanding of the atomic momentum state oscillations, as well as a simple expression for the momentum linewidth of the scattering process. The validity regime of the analytic solution is derived, and tested by three dimensional cylindrically symmetric numerical simulations.Comment: 21 pages, 10 figures. Minor changes made to documen