Mandatory Minimum Sentences and Women with Disabilities

This article examines the issue of mandatory minimum sentencing from the unique perspective of women with disabilities. Concerns about the discriminatory application of mandatory minimum sentences are outlined and analyzed from a gendered disability perspective, as are concerns about the devaluation of the lives of persons with disabilities through the support of reduced sentences for those convicted of murdering persons with disabilities. This examination makes it clear that the different concerns of women with disabilities are difficult to reconcile, as they mandate contradictory positions with respect to the possible abolition of the sentencing practice. The challenges inherent in the development of a position that addresses all of the concerns of women with disabilities relating to the practice of mandatory minimum sentencing, and its possible abolition, are analyzed. The author concludes that if the practice of mandatory minimum sentencing is abolished, it must be replaced with a sentencing mechanism designed to ensure that sentencing discretion is exercised in accordance with Charter values, in order to protect the equality rights of all persons, including women with disabilities

Mandatory Minimum Sentences and Women with Disabilities

This article examines the issue of mandatory minimum sentencing from the unique perspective of women with disabilities. Concerns about the discriminatory application of mandatory minimum sentences are outlined and analyzed from a gendered disability perspective, as are concerns about the devaluation of the lives of persons with disabilities through the support of reduced sentences for those convicted of murdering persons with disabilities. This examination makes it clear that the different concerns of women with disabilities are difficult to reconcile, as they mandate contradictory positions with respect to the possible abolition of the sentencing practice. The challenges inherent in the development of a position that addresses all of the concerns of women with disabilities relating to the practice of mandatory minimum sentencing, and its possible abolition, are analyzed. The author concludes that if the practice of mandatory minimum sentencing is abolished, it must be replaced with a sentencing mechanism designed to ensure that sentencing discretion is exercised in accordance with Charter values, in order to protect the equality rights of all persons, including women with disabilities

La tierra baldía: significado y multiplicidad

La “basura pétrea ... / un montón de imágenes rotas” de T.S. Eliot se caracteriza a menudo tanto por ser el tema de La tierra baldía como por la técnica que “conecta” aspectos de la modernidad. Al leer el poema desde la tradición lírica inglesa del siglo xxi admiramos el modo en que dicha teselación crea un conjunto literario. ¿Qué lecciones se pueden extraer para la poética contemporánea, en una época caracterizada posiblemente menos por la ruptura de significados que por la multiplicación de los mismos: en las múltiples fuentes de autoridad que ofrecen las políticas de identidad o el periodismo ciudadano; en los discursos públicos que compiten entre sí; en las identidades ramificadas que un individuo puede adquirir al ocupar una serie de roles sociales o emocionales? Si el impulso de la poesía lírica es unir todos estos aspectos buscando cierta coherencia, una voz unificadora crea con demasiada frecuencia una perspectiva unificadora. ¿Es posible que La tierra baldía ofrezca un contraejemplo?T.S. Eliot’s “stony rubbish ... / A heap of broken images” is often characterised as both The Waste Land’s theme, and the technique it employs to “connect” aspects of modernity. To read the poem from within the British twenty first century lyric tradition is to admire the way that such tessellation creates a literary whole. What lessons can be learnt for contemporary poetics, in an era characterised arguably less by a breakdown in meaning than by a multiplication of meanings: in the multiplying sources of authority offered by identity politics, or citizen journalism; in competing public discourses; in the ramifying identities one individual may acquire as they occupy a number of social or emotional roles? If the impulse of lyric poetry is to “sing” these into a kind of coherence, a unifying voice too often creates unifying perspective, is it possible that The Waste Land offers a counterexample

Engineering simulations for cancer systems biology

Computer simulation can be used to inform in vivo and in vitro experimentation, enabling rapid, low-cost hypothesis generation and directing experimental design in order to test those hypotheses. In this way, in silico models become a scientific instrument for investigation, and so should be developed to high standards, be carefully calibrated and their findings presented in such that they may be reproduced. Here, we outline a framework that supports developing simulations as scientific instruments, and we select cancer systems biology as an exemplar domain, with a particular focus on cellular signalling models. We consider the challenges of lack of data, incomplete knowledge and modelling in the context of a rapidly changing knowledge base. Our framework comprises a process to clearly separate scientific and engineering concerns in model and simulation development, and an argumentation approach to documenting models for rigorous way of recording assumptions and knowledge gaps. We propose interactive, dynamic visualisation tools to enable the biological community to interact with cellular signalling models directly for experimental design. There is a mismatch in scale between these cellular models and tissue structures that are affected by tumours, and bridging this gap requires substantial computational resource. We present concurrent programming as a technology to link scales without losing important details through model simplification. We discuss the value of combining this technology, interactive visualisation, argumentation and model separation to support development of multi-scale models that represent biologically plausible cells arranged in biologically plausible structures that model cell behaviour, interactions and response to therapeutic interventions