An opt-in approach to regulating the employment decisions of religious schools

This article evaluates the merits of an opt-in approach to regulating the employment decisions of religious schools in Australia under anti-discrimination legislation. The essence of the model involves religious schools registering with the government for the specific protection they need to make employment decisions that they consider necessary due to the school’s religious identity. The legislature, executive and judiciary are provided with significant supervisory roles under the proposed model to address the potential for religious schools to abuse the protections provided. The article argues that the opt-in model has the potential to more appropriately regulate the employment decisions of religious schools compared to the other approaches currently relied upon in Australia

The right to equality and the employment decisions of religious schools

Under the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 (NSW) religious schools are provided with an exception from the operation of the Act in relation to their employment decisions. This article evaluates the merits of the legal protections provided to religious schools by specifically focusing on the extent to which the provisions are consistent with the right to equality. Although there are a range of other considerations relevant in determining the merits of the provisions a specific focus on the right to equality is appropriate considering the significance of the right in anti-discrimination legislation. The article explores the extent to which the provisions may violate the right to equality in relation to the number of persons adversely affected and also the gravity of harm that these individuals are likely to suffer, and then addresses whether there are any grounds for considering that the protections can be justified on the grounds of equality

Educational Institutions and the prohibition on disability discrimination

A claim of discrimination by a medical student with disabilities was considered by the Administrative and Equal Opportunity Division of the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal in BKY v The University of Newcastle [2014] NSWCATAD 39. The Tribunal held that the university\u27s decision to reject the student\u27s application for an extension on the maximum enrolment period permitted under university regulations so she could complete her medical degree constituted discrimination under the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 (NSW). The case emphasises the importance of educational institutions taking into account the intellectual, emotional and social challenges persons with disabilities may have with their academic work, and would be of particular interest to anti-discrimination and employment law solicitors and solicitors advising clients in the educational sector

Constitutionality of communication prohibitions around abortion clinics

Laws prohibiting a range of conduct in the vicinity of a hospital, clinic or other premise that performs abortions have been enacted in Tasmania, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory. One of the prohibitions involves preventing certain types of communication around premises that perform abortion. It is unclear whether this prohibition is consistent with the implied freedom of political communication. A central consideration in determining whether the prohibition is compatible with the implied freedom is the extent of the burden imposed on political communication. The prohibition may be unconstitutional as it places a substantial burden on political communication

Making Gynogenetic Diploid Zebrafish by Early Pressure

Heterozygosity in diploid eukaryotes often makes genetic studies cumbersome. Methods that produce viable homozygous diploid offspring directly from heterozygous females allow F1 mutagenized females to be screened directly for deleterious mutations in an accelerated forward genetic screen. Streisinger et al.1,2 described methods for making gynogenetic (homozygous) diploid zebrafish by activating zebrafish eggs with ultraviolet light-inactivated sperm and preventing either the second meiotic or the first zygotic cell division using physical treatments (heat or pressure) that deploymerize microtubules. The "early pressure" (EP) method blocks the meiosis II, which occurs shortly after fertilization. The EP method produces a high percentage of viable embryos that can develop to fertile adults of either sex. The method generates embryos that are homozygous at all loci except those that were separated from their centromere by recombination during meiosis I. Homozygous mutations are detected in EP clutches at between 50% for centromeric loci and less than 1% for telomeric loci. This method is reproduced verbatim from the Zebrafish Book3

Nonholonomic control systems: from steering to stabilization with sinusoids

The authors present a control law for globally asymptotically stabilizing a class of controllable nonlinear systems without drift. The control law combines earlier work in steering nonholonomic systems using sinusoids at integrally related frequencies, with the ideas in recent results on globally stabilizing linear and nonlinear systems through the use of saturation functions. Simulation results for stabilizing a simple kinematic model of an automobile are included

GRIDS-Net: Inverse shape design and identification of scatterers via geometric regularization and physics-embedded deep learning

This study presents a deep learning based methodology for both remote sensing and design of acoustic scatterers. The ability to determine the shape of a scatterer, either in the context of material design or sensing, plays a critical role in many practical engineering problems. This class of inverse problems is extremely challenging due to their high-dimensional, nonlinear, and ill-posed nature. To overcome these technical hurdles, we introduce a geometric regularization approach for deep neural networks (DNN) based on non-uniform rational B-splines (NURBS) and capable of predicting complex 2D scatterer geometries in a parsimonious dimensional representation. Then, this geometric regularization is combined with physics-embedded learning and integrated within a robust convolutional autoencoder (CAE) architecture to accurately predict the shape of 2D scatterers in the context of identification and inverse design problems. An extensive numerical study is presented in order to showcase the remarkable ability of this approach to handle complex scatterer geometries while generating physically-consistent acoustic fields. The study also assesses and contrasts the role played by the (weakly) embedded physics in the convergence of the DNN predictions to a physically consistent inverse design.Comment: 23 pages of main text, 10 figure

Caring in prison: the intersubjective web of professional relationships

In this paper, we present a synthesis of two doctoral theses where links are made between the intersubjective, relational dynamics seen in clinical supervision, and applied in practice to a framework for emotional labor in prison nurses. We explore the nature of intersubjectivity, from nursing and psychotherapeutic perspectives, and discuss the way in which it impacts on and influences relationships between nurses, prisoner patients, prison officers, and organizations within prison healthcare settings. The impact of this intersubjectivity is illustrated through the exploration of an intersubjective web that is created and informs interaction between the key actors within the prison nurse's practice, i.e., prison officers, prisoner patients, and the organization. We suggest that by being cognizant of the intersubjective web that influences these interactions, a more meaningful understanding of practice and relationships can be achieved. This deeper understanding can then be utilized to develop practitioners both professionally and personally. We conclude by promoting regular, formal clinical supervision as an ideal space within which to explore the way in which this intersubjective web influences relationships, impacts on emotional labor, and subsequently patient care and staff well being

VALIDATION OF A PORTABLE FORCE PLATE TO ASSESSING JUMPING AND LANDING PERFORMANCE

Jumping and landing tasks are commonly used! to examine various parameters regarding performance (Arampatziz et al. 2001) and injury (Hewitt et al. 2005). Traditionally jumping tasks have been used to measure a variety of neuromuscular factors regarding performance. Landings have been studied extensively with r~$pect to factors related to injury. It is commonly accepted that the standard force platform is the most commonly used and considered the 'gold standard' for measuring ground reaction force during jumping and landing tasks. One potential aspect which limits the use of a force platform is that they are typically mounted to the ground to prevent any unrelated vibrations from affecting the force measurement. The portability of these devices is difficult and measurements are normally restricted to a laboratory setting. Another possible factor that could affect the data collected by a portable force plate is the difference in surface height between the ground and the force plate. Therefore, the dimensions of a portable force platform should be large enough to accommodate the given maneuver without changes in performance. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to validate the force measurements of a new portable force platform during two jumping/landing tasks by comparing the measurements to a traditional laboratory mounted force platform. A secondary purpose was to establish the reliability of the portable force platform. If the validity and reliability of the portable force platform are confirmed, this will provide a device that can assess a variety of measurements in field (non laboratory) situations. We hypothesize that the force and temporal measurements between the two instruments would not be different