Disproportionate Disenfranchisement of Aboriginal Prisoners: A Conflict of Law That Australia Should Address

In 2006, Australia’s Parliament banned all prisoners from voting. A year later, Vickie Lee Roach, a female prisoner of Aboriginal descent, challenged the blanket ban promulgated in the 2006 amendment to the Commonwealth Electoral Act of 1918 (“Electoral Act”). Vickie won, but in a limited way. The High Court found an implied right to vote in the Australian Constitution, but held that Parliament could limit such voting, as it did in the Electoral and Referendum Amendment of 2004 (“E & R Amendment”), disenfranchising any prisoner serving three or more years in jail. This Comment argues that the E & R Amendment conflicts with Australia’s obligations under the United Nations’ International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, codified by Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act of 1975 (“RDA”). The RDA mandates that Indigenous citizens be treated equally to non-Indigenous citizens, including with respect to voting rights and opportunities to participate in political life. The E & R Amendment disenfranchises a significant portion of the prison population—a large percentage of which is Aboriginal. Disproportionate disenfranchisement of this sort constitutes indirect discrimination and perpetuates racism against Aboriginal people, preventing meaningful participation in their own communities. To rectify the problem, Parliament should repeal the three-year disenfranchisement provision of the E & R Amendmen

Bound-states and polarized charged zero modes in three-dimensional topological insulators induced by a magnetic vortex

By coating a three-dimensional topological insulator (TI) with a ferromagnetic film supporting an in-plane magnetic vortex, one breaks the time-reversal symmetry (TRS) without generating a mass gap. It rather yields electronic states bound to the vortex center which have different probabilities associated with each spin mode. In addition, its associate current (around the vortex center) is partially polarized with an energy gap separating the most excited bound state from the scattered ones. Charged zero-modes also appear as fully polarized modes localized near the vortex center. From the magnetic point of view, the observation of such a special current in a TI-magnet sandwich comes about as an alternative technique for detecting magnetic vortices in magnetic thin films.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, new version with more discussions and results accepted for publication in The European Physical Journal

Remarks on Charged Vortices in the Maxwell-Chern-Simons Model

We study vortex-like configuration in Maxwell-Chern-Simons Electrodynamics. Attention is paid to the similarity it shares with the Nielsen-Olesen solutions at large distances. A magnetic symmetry between a point-like and an azimuthal-like current in this framework is also pointed out. Furthermore, we address the issue of a neutral and spinless particle interacting with a charged vortex, and obtain that the Aharonov-Casher-type phase depends upon mass and distance parameters.Comment: New refs. added. Version accepted for publication in Phys. Lett.

Planning for Institutional Development and Developing Budgets and Financial Management Systems

This section lays out issues related to strategic planning by the Foundation for Community Development (FDC) and illustrates the development of budgets and financial management systems by the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP). Also explored here is the financial reporting system set up by the Esquel Ecuador Foundation (FEE) for their grantees

Ipv6 Migration Framework For Government Agencies In Malaysia

Malaysia adalah sebahagian daripada negara-negara dunia yang berusaha untuk berhijrah ke protokol Internet Versi 6 (lPv6) Malaysia is involved in the worldwide effort to migrate to IPv6 due to the giobal IPv4 address depletion and other IPv4 limitations as well as to derive IPv6 benefits

Stoichiometric regulation in micro- and mesozooplankton

Aquatic ecosystems experience large natural variation in elemental composition of carbon (C), nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P), which is further enhanced by human activities. Primary producers typically reflect the nutrient ratios of their resource, whose stoichiometric composition can vary widely in conformity to environmental conditions. In contrast, C to nutrient ratios in consumers are largely constrained within a narrow range, termed homeostasis. In comparison to crustacean zooplankton, less is known about the ability of protozoan grazers and rotifer species to maintain stoichiometric balance. In this study, we used laboratory experiments with a primary producer (Nannochloropsis sp.), three different species of protozoan grazers and one mesozooplankton species: two heterotrophic dinoflagellates (Gyrodinium dominans and Oxyrrhis marina), a ciliate (Euplotes sp.) and a rotifer (Brachionus plicatilis) to test the stoichiometric response to five nutrient treatments. We showed that the dependency of zooplankton C:N:P ratios on C: nutrient ratios of their food source varies among species. Similar to the photoautotroph, the two heterotrophic dinoflagellates weakly regulated their internal stoichiometry. In contrast, the strength of stoichiometric regulation increased to strict homeostasis in both the ciliate and the rotifer, similar to crustacean zooplankton. Our study further shows that ciliate and rotifer growth can be constrained by imbalanced resource supply. It also indicates that these key primary consumers have the potential to trophically upgrade poor stoichiometric autotrophic food quality for higher trophic levels

γ-Secretase Dependent Nuclear Targeting of Dystroglycan

Dystroglycan is frequently lost in adenocarcinoma. α‐dystroglycan is known to become hypoglycosylated due to transcriptional silencing of LARGE, whereas β‐dystroglycan is proteolytically cleaved and degraded. The mechanism and proteases involved in the cleavage events affecting β‐dystroglycan are poorly understood. Using LNCaP prostate cancer cells as a model system, we have investigated proteases and tyrosine phosphorylation affecting β‐dystroglycan proteolysis and nuclear targeting. Cell density or phorbol ester treatment increases dystroglycan proteolysis, whereas furin or γ‐secretase inhibitors decreased dystroglycan proteolysis. Using resveratrol treatment of LNCaP cells cultured at low cell density in order to up‐regulate notch and activate proteolysis, we identified significant increases in the levels of a 26 kDa β‐dystroglycan fragment. These data, therefore, support a cell density‐dependent γ‐secretase and furin mediated proteolysis of β‐dystroglycan, which could be notch stimulated, leading to nuclear targeting and subsequent degradatio