"Australia's Decision": Uranium Mining and Aboriginal Communities Then and Now

International audienceSince the 1970s, a progressive acknowledgement of Indigenous peoples' rights has developed in Australia, focusing on land rights as a key to empowerment. This has come to redefine the uneasy relations between Indigenous communities, governments and energy resource developers, the latter having more often than not encroached on Aboriginal land and ignored Aboriginal concerns for the sake of direct economic rewards. A case in point is that of uranium mining which, well after the Second World War, was still used for military purposes within Australia, leaving many Aboriginal communities to struggle with devastating environmental and health consequences. Looking at Australia's 1977 decision to proceed with uranium mining for peaceful purposes at Ranger (Northern Territory), and comparing it with the more recent government approval of the Olympic Dam (South Australia) expansion project, this article will attempt to assess how Indigenous issues have been taken into account in uranium mining development projects then and now. It will focus more particularly on the agreements arrived at between the governments, the mining companies and the Aboriginal communities themselves, the outcomes of these agreements, as well as the different factors that may have had an impact on how Indigenous issues have been taken into account within uranium mining development projects throughout the years

"Australia's Decision": Uranium Mining and Aboriginal Communities Then and Now

International audienceSince the 1970s, a progressive acknowledgement of Indigenous peoples' rights has developed in Australia, focusing on land rights as a key to empowerment. This has come to redefine the uneasy relations between Indigenous communities, governments and energy resource developers, the latter having more often than not encroached on Aboriginal land and ignored Aboriginal concerns for the sake of direct economic rewards. A case in point is that of uranium mining which, well after the Second World War, was still used for military purposes within Australia, leaving many Aboriginal communities to struggle with devastating environmental and health consequences. Looking at Australia's 1977 decision to proceed with uranium mining for peaceful purposes at Ranger (Northern Territory), and comparing it with the more recent government approval of the Olympic Dam (South Australia) expansion project, this article will attempt to assess how Indigenous issues have been taken into account in uranium mining development projects then and now. It will focus more particularly on the agreements arrived at between the governments, the mining companies and the Aboriginal communities themselves, the outcomes of these agreements, as well as the different factors that may have had an impact on how Indigenous issues have been taken into account within uranium mining development projects throughout the years

The Contribution to the Procedure of Capacity Determination at Unsignalized Priority-controlled Intersections

The problem of minor vehicles crossing or merging into themajor stream at unsignalized priority-controlled intersections iswell-known. Numerous solutions involve various assumptionsconcerning the major headway distributions, number of majorlanes, critical gap distributions, etc. Such cases can be dividedinto two main groups: intersections with two streams (one majorand one minor stream) and intersections with more thantwo streams (more than one major stream and one minorstream). At roundabouts, also at single-lane roundabouts,there are similar problems like the ones at other unsignalizedpriority-controlled intersections. A vehicle at the roundaboutapproach can only cross the pedestrian crossing when a sufficienttime-gap between two pedestrians (or cyclists) is provided.A vehicle at the roundabout entries can only merge into the majorstream when a sufficient gap between the two vehicles in themajor stream is provided. Because of that, single-lane roundaboutscan also be treated as unsignalized intersections withtwo major lanes: the first one in its circulatory roadway and thesecond one on the pedestrian crossing

Continuous Generation of Quantum Light from a Single Ground-State Atom in an Optical Cavity

We show an optical wave-mixing scheme that generates quantum light by means of a single three-level atom. The atom couples to an optical cavity and two laser fields that together drive a cycling current within the atom. Weak driving in combination with strong atom-cavity coupling induces transitions between the dark states of the system, accompanied by single-photon emission and suppression of atomic excitation by quantum interference. For strong driving, the system can generate coherent or Schr\"odinger cat-like fields with frequencies distinct from those of the applied lasers.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Two-Photon Blockade in an Atom-Driven Cavity QED System

Photon blockade is a dynamical quantum-nonlinear effect that occurs in driven systems with an anharmonic excitation ladder. For a single atom strongly coupled to an optical cavity, we show that driving the atom gives a decisively larger optical nonlinearity than driving the cavity. This enhances single-photon blockade and allows for the implementation of two-photon blockade where the absorption of two photons suppresses the absorption of further photons. As a signature, we report on three-photon antibunching with simultaneous two-photon bunching observed in the light emitted from the cavity. Our experiment constitutes a significant step towards multi-photon quantum-nonlinear optics.Comment: paper (6 pages, 5 figures) + supplement (6 pages, 5 figures

Molecular interpretation of pharmaceuticals' adsorption on carbon nanomaterials: Theory meets experiments

The ability of carbon-based nanomaterials (CNM) to interact with a variety of pharmaceutical drugs can be exploited in many applications. In particular, they have been studied both as carriers for in vivo drug delivery and as sorbents for the treatment of water polluted by pharmaceuticals. In recent years, the large number of experimental studies was also assisted by computational work as a tool to provide understanding at molecular level of structural and thermodynamic aspects of adsorption processes. Quantum mechanical methods, especially based on density functional theory (DFT) and classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations were mainly applied to study adsorption/release of various drugs. This review aims to compare results obtained by theory and experiments, focusing on the adsorption of three classes of compounds: (i) simple organic model molecules; (ii) antimicrobials; (iii) cytostatics. Generally, a good agreement between experimental data (e.g. energies of adsorption, spectroscopic properties, adsorption isotherms, type of interactions, emerged from this review) and theoretical results can be reached, provided that a selection of the correct level of theory is performed. Computational studies are shown to be a valuable tool for investigating such systems and ultimately provide useful insights to guide CNMs materials development and design