Analysis of environmental efficiency variation : a materials balance approach

Recent literature has argued that environmental efficiency (EE), which is built on the materials balance (MB) principle, is more suitable than other EE measures in situations where the law of mass conversation regulates production processes. In addition, the MB-based EE method is particularly useful in analysing possible trade-offs between cost and environmental performance. Identifying determinants of MB-based EE can provide useful information to decision makers but there are very few empirical investigations into this issue. This article proposes the use of data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier analysis techniques to analyse variation in MB-based EE. Specifically, the article develops a stochastic nutrient frontier and nutrient inefficiency model to analyse determinants of MB-based EE. The empirical study applies both techniques to investigate MB-based EE of 96 rice farms in South Korea. The size of land, fertiliser consumption intensity, cost allocative efficiency, and the share of owned land out of total land are found to be correlated with MB-based EE. The results confirm the presence of a trade-off between MB-based EE and cost allocative efficiency and this finding, favouring policy interventions to help farms simultaneously achieve cost efficiency and MP-based EE.

Analysis of productive performance of crop production systems: an integrated analytical framework

Recent literature has argued that environmental efficiency (EE), which is built on the materials balance (MB) principle, is more suitable than other EE measures in situations where the law of mass conversation regulates production processes. In addition, the MB-based EE method is particularly useful in analysing possible trade-offs between cost and environmental performance. Identifying determinants of MB-based EE can provide useful information to decision makers but there are very few empirical investigations into this issue. This article proposes the use of data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier analysis techniques to analyse variation in MB-based EE. Specifically, the article develops a stochastic nutrient frontier and nutrient inefficiency model to analyse determinants of MB-based EE. The empirical study applies both techniques to investigate MB-based EE of 96 rice farms in South Korea. The size of land, fertiliser consumption intensity, cost allocative efficiency, and the share of owned land out of total land are found to be correlated with MB-based EE. The results confirm the presence of a trade-off between MB-based EE and cost allocative efficiency and this finding, favouring policy interventions to help farms simultaneously achieve cost efficiency and MP-based EE.

The doctrine of command responsibility in the midst of war : legal fallacy or reflection of reality

The history of war is blighted with astonishing reminders of man’s ability to cast his sense of humanity aside and inflict unspeakable harm upon one another. The ruthless bombing of Dresden, the callousness of the Nazi concentration camps and the massacre of the Tutsis are but a few of the atrocities that have haunted our past. In response to these atrocities, society has imposed an ever-increasing number of laws and rules to regulate warfare. Amongst these is the doctrine of command responsibility. The doctrine of command responsibility states that a commander is criminally liable for the crimes of his subordinates if he knew or should have known of their crimes. This paper will examine whether the doctrine is an appropriate and realistic legal standard to hold commanders accountable to or whether the doctrine is more a reflection of social sentiment and legal rhetoric. If the doctrine, and indeed the law of war in general, is unrealistic then the law cannot fulfil its purpose - that is, the prevention of atrocities. Instead of being solely a reflection of moral authority and social sentiments the law must also be a tool that guides and shapes the decisions and actions of the military through the chaotic and brutal nature of war...

Conflicts over protection of marine living resources : the ‘Volga Case’ revisited

Non-traditional maritime security concerns have become more importantthan ever in the post-Cold War era. Naval forces of most developedcountries are more concerned about these threats than conventional war.One of the main maritime security issues for many countries in the world isillegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the marine area. Withthese burgeoning issues comes the potential for a large number of disputesinvolving international law. In early 2002, a long-line fishing vessel under aRussian flag –the Volga, was detained by Australian authorities a few hundred meters outside the Exclusive Economic Zone of Australia’s Heard and McDonald Islands in the Southern Ocean. The vessel was reportedly engaged in illegal fishing. This incident gave birth to litigation in international and Australian courts. Apart from these cases, Russia also announced separate litigation against Australia for violation of Articles 111and 87 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (NCLOS).Considering the outcome of these cases, this article critically examines thecharacteristics of litigation as a strategy for pacific settlement of disputesover marine living resources. Using the Volga Case as an example, thisarticle explores some issues related to the judicial settlement of disputes over marine living resources. This article demonstrates that the legal certainty of winning a case may not be the only factor influencing the strategy for settlement of an international dispute.

UNCLOS and regional action for protection of the marine environment : perspectives of the South Asian Seas region

In very clear language the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) calls upon the parties to initiate regional action for protection of marine environment. Although the UNCLOS gives special recognition in various ways to developing countries, the South Asian developing countries continue to encounter some bottlenecks in complying with the provisions of the Convention relating to marine environment. Against this backdrop, this paper tends to examine the need for a regional approach towards conservation of marine environment. Moreover, the paper aims to explore possible ways to establish a regional legal framework for conservation of marine environment in South Asian region. In doing so, the paper critically examines existing mechanisms already in place including the South Asian Seas Programme and South Asian Seas Action Plan

Generalized-positioning for mixed-frequency of mixed-GNSS and its preliminary applications

Modernized GPS and GLONASS, together with new GNSS systems, BeiDou and Galileo, offer code and phase ranging signals in three or more carriers. Traditionally, dual-frequency code and/or phase GPS measurements are linearly combined to eliminate effects of ionosphere delays in various positioning and analysis. This typical treatment method has imitations in processing signals at three or more frequencies from more than one system and can be hardly adapted itself to cope with the booming of various receivers with a broad variety of singles. In this contribution, a generalized-positioning model that the navigation system independent and the carrier number unrelated is promoted, which is suitable for both single- and multi-sites data processing. For the synchronization of different signals, uncalibrated signal delays (USD) are more generally defined to compensate the signal specific offsets in code and phase signals respectively. In addition, the ionospheric delays are included in the parameterization with an elaborate consideration. Based on the analysis of the algebraic structures, this generalized-positioning model is further refined with a set of proper constrains to regularize the datum deficiency of the observation equation system. With this new model, uncalibrated signal delays (USD) and ionospheric delays are derived for both GPS and BeiDou with a large dada set. Numerical results demonstrate that, with a limited number of stations, the uncalibrated code delays (UCD) are determinate to a precision of about 0.1 ns for GPS and 0.4 ns for BeiDou signals, while the uncalibrated phase delays (UPD) for L1 and L2 are generated with 37 stations evenly distributed in China for GPS with a consistency of about 0.3 cycle. Extra experiments concerning the performance of this novel model in point positioning with mixed-frequencies of mixed-constellations is analyzed, in which the USD parameters are fixed with our generated values. The results are evaluated in terms of both positioning accuracy and convergence time.

A human rights analysis of a claim for educational negligence in Australian schools

This thesis argues that an action in educational negligence should be available in Australia to provide a remedy for failure by schools and teachers to provide an adequate education as required by Australia’s human rights obligations. The thesis substantiates a duty of care to provide an adequate education under general principles of the law of negligence in appropriate cases. Although some protection exists for disabled students in Australia’s anti-discrimination and other legislation, non-disabled students are not afforded redress under existing causes of action. The educational negligence action provides a suitable remedy in an era of professional educational accountability.

An exploratory study of the potential of resurfacing articular cartilage with synthetic phospholipids

This thesis is aimed at further understanding the uppermost lipid-filled membranous layer (i.e. surface amorphous layer (SAL)) of articular cartilage and to develop a scientific framework for re-introducing lipids onto the surface of lipid-depleted articular cartilage (i.e. "resurfacing"). The outcome will potentially contribute to knowledge that will facilitate the repair of the articular surface of cartilage where degradation is limited to the loss of the lipids of the SAL only. The surface amorphous layer is of utmost importance to the effective load-spreading, lubrication, and semipermeability (which controls its fluid management, nutrient transport and waste removal) of articular cartilage in the mammalian joints. However, because this uppermost layer of cartilage is often in contact during physiological function, it is prone to wear and tear, and thus, is the site for damage initiation that can lead to the early stages of joint condition like osteoarthritis, and related conditions that cause pain and discomfort leading to low quality of life in patients. It is therefore imperative to conduct a study which offers insight into remedying this problem. It is hypothesized that restoration (resurfacing) of the surface amorphous layer can be achieved by re-introducing synthetic surface-active phospholipids (SAPL) into the joint space. This hypothesis was tested in this thesis by exposing cartilage samples whose surface lipids had been depleted to individual and mixtures of synthetic saturated and unsaturated phospholipids. The surfaces of normal, delipidized, and relipidized samples of cartilage were characterized for their structural integrity and functionality using atomic force microscope (AFM), confocal microscope (COFM), Raman spectroscopy, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with image processing in the MATLAB® environment and mechanical loading experiments. The results from AFM imaging, confocal microscopy, and Raman spectroscopy revealed a successful deposition of new surface layer on delipidized cartilage when incubated in synthetic phospholipids. The relipidization resulted in a significant improvement in the surface nanostructure of the artificially degraded cartilage, with the complete SAPL mixture providing better outcomes in comparison to those created with the single SAPL components (palmitoyl-oleoyl-phosphatidylcholine, POPC and dipalmitoyl-phosphatidylcholine, DPPC). MRI analysis revealed that the surface created with the complete mixture of synthetic lipids was capable of providing semipermeability to the surface layer of the treated cartilage samples relative to the normal intact surface. Furthermore, deformation energy analysis revealed that the treated samples were capable of delivering the elastic properties required for load bearing and recovery of the tissue relative to the normal intact samples, with this capability closer between the normal and the samples incubated in the complete lipid mixture. In conclusion, this thesis has established that it is possible to deposit/create a potentially viable layer on the surface of cartilage following degradation/lipid loss through incubation in synthetic lipid solutions. However, further studies will be required to advance the ideas developed in this thesis, for the development of synthetic lipid-based injections/drugs for treatment of osteoarthritis and other related joint conditions.

Subsidies of the Australian clean energy package

The Australian Clean Energy Package has been introduced to respond to the global challenge of climate change and reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. It includes legislation to establish an emissions trading scheme. In support of the entities that are liable under this Package, there are a number of assistance measures offered to alleviate the financial burden that the Package imposes. This paper considers whether these assistance measures are subsidies within the context of the law of the World Trade Organization. In order to do this, the rules of the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures are examined. This examination enables an understanding of when a subsidy exists and in what circumstances those subsidies occasion the use of remedies under the law.

The laws of the virtual worlds

What if you could check out of your world, and enter a place where the social environment was different, where real world laws didn't apply, and where the political system could be anything you wanted it to be? What if you could socialize there with family and friends, build your own palace, go skiing, and even hold down a job there? And what if there wasn't one alternate world, there were hundreds, and what if millions of people checked out of Earth and went there every day? Virtual worlds - online worlds where millions of people come to interact, play, and socialize - are a new type of social order. In this Article, we examine the implications of virtual worlds for our understanding of law, and demonstrate how law affects the interests of those within the world. After providing an extensive primer on virtual worlds, including their history and function, we examine two fundamental issues in detail. First, we focus on property, and ask whether it is possible to say that virtual world users have real world property interests in virtual objects. Adopting economic accounts that demonstrate the real world value of these objects and the exchange mechanisms for trading these objects, we show that, descriptively, these types of objects are indistinguishable from real world property interests. Further, the normative justifications for property interests in the real world apply - sometimes more strongly - in the virtual worlds. Second, we discuss whether avatars have enforceable legal and moral rights. Avatars, the user-controlled entities that interact with virtual worlds, are a persistent extension of their human users, and users identify with them so closely that the human-avatar being can be thought of as a cyborg. We examine the issue of cyborg rights within virtual worlds and whether they may have real world significance. The issues of virtual property and avatar rights constitute legal challenges for our online future. Though virtual worlds may be games now, they are rapidly becoming as significant as real-world places where people interact, shop, sell, and work. As society and law begin to develop within virtual worlds, we need to have a better understanding of the interaction of the laws of the virtual worlds with the law of this world.

Energy-based nonlinear control of ship roll gyro-stabiliser with precession angle constraints

In this paper, we consider a passivity-based approach for the design of a control law of multiple ship-roll gyro-stabiliser units. We extend previous work on control of ship roll gyro-stabilisation by considering the problem within a nonlinear framework. In particular, we derive an energy-based model using the port-Hamiltonian theory and then design an active precession controller using passivity-based control interconnection and damping assignment. The design considers the possibility of having multiple gyro-stabiliser units, and the desired potential energy of the system (in closed loop) is chosen to behave like a barrier function, which allows us to enforce constraints on the precession angle of the gyros.

Effect of plasma environment on synthesis of vertically aligned carbon nanofibers in plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition

We present a theoretical model describing a plasma-assisted growth of carbon nanofibers (CNFs), which involves two competing channels of carbon incorporation into stacked graphene sheets: via surface diffusion and through the bulk of the catalyst particle (on the top of the nanofiber), accounting for a range of ion- and radical-assisted processes on the catalyst surface. Using this model, it is found that at low surface temperatures, Ts, the CNF growth is indeed controlled by surface diffusion, thus quantifying the semiempirical conclusions of earlier experiments. On the other hand, both the surface and bulk diffusion channels provide a comparable supply of carbon atoms to the stacked graphene sheets at elevated synthesis temperatures. It is also shown that at low Ts, insufficient for effective catalytic precursor decomposition, the plasma ions play a key role in the production of carbon atoms on the catalyst surface. The model is used to compute the growth rates for the two extreme cases of thermal and plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition of CNFs. More importantly, these results quantify and explain a number of observations and semiempirical conclusions of earlier experiments.

Succession law keeping pace with changes in technology and community expectations – informal wills

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into recent developments in the way the law of succession allows people to use new technologies to document their testamentary intentions in an informal way. Design/methodology/approach – This article considers one area in which the law has arguably kept good pace with advances in society’s expectations and technological change – the law of succession. This article examines the legislative reforms in Queensland and other jurisdictions permitting the recognition of informal wills and the decided cases in the area. In particular, the article examines the decision in a Queensland Supreme Court case in which the court recognised the validity of a will made on an iPhone. Research limitations/implications – This is a doctrinal analysis, not an empirical study, and accordingly is limited to providing details specific to the legislation and the court cases selected.

Medical negligence, causation and liability for non-disclosure of risk : a post-wallace framework and critique

Through an examination of Wallace v Kam, this article considers and evaluates the law of causation in the specific context of a medical practitioner’s duty to provide information to patients concerning material risks of treatment. To supply a contextual background for the analysis which follows, Part II summarises the basic principles of causation law, while Part III provides an overview of the case and the reasoning adopted in the decisions at first instance and on appeal. With particular emphasis upon the reasoning in the courts of appeal, Part IV then examines the implications of the case in the context of other jurisprudence in this field and, in so doing, provides a framework for a structured consideration of causation issues in future non-disclosure cases under the Australian civil liability legislation. As will become clear, Wallace was fundamentally decided on the basis of policy reasoning centred upon the purpose behind the legal duty violated. Although the plurality in Rogers v Whitaker rejected the utility of expressions such as ‘the patient’s right of self-determination’ in this context, some Australian jurisprudence may be thought to frame the practitioner’s duty to warn in terms of promoting a patient’s autonomy, or right to decide whether to submit to treatment proposed. Accordingly, the impact of Wallace upon the protection of this right, and the interrelation between it and the duty to warn’s purpose, is investigated. The analysis in Part IV also evaluates the courts’ reasoning in Wallace by questioning the extent to which Wallace’s approach to liability and causal connection in non-disclosure of risk cases: depends upon the nature and classification of the risk(s) in question; and can be reconciled with the way in which patients make decisions. Finally, Part V adopts a comparative approach by considering whether the same decision might be reached if Wallace was determined according to English law.

‘Lemon Laws’: an inquiry into consumer protections and remedies for buyers of new motor vehicles

1. Under the Terms of Reference for the Committee’s Inquiry, ‘lemons’ are defined as ‘new motor vehicles with numerous, severe defects that re-occur despite multiple repair attempts or where defects have caused a new motor vehicle to be out of service for a prolonged period of time’. Consumers are currently protected in relation to lemon purchases by the Australian Consumer Law (ACL) located in Schedule 2 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth) (CCA). The ACL applies as a law of Queensland pursuant to the Fair Trading Act 1989 (Qld). The voluntary recall and consumer guarantees law took effect on 1 January 2011. 2. In 2006, the Government of Victoria made a commitment to introduce a lemon law into the provisions of the then Fair Trading Act 1999 (Vic). The public consultation process on the proposal to introduce a lemon law for motor vehicle purchases in Victoria was conducted by Ms Janice Munt MP, with the assistance of Consumer Affairs Victoria (CAV). CAV released an Issues Paper to canvas with industry and the community options for the development and introduction of a motor vehicle lemon law.(Consumer Affairs Victoria, Introducing Victorian motor vehicle lemon laws, Issues Paper, (September, 2007). 3. A CAV report prepared by Janice Munt MP was released in July, 2008 (Consumer Affairs Victoria, Motor Cars: A report on the motor vehicle lemon law consultations (July 2008) (Victorian Lemon Law Report). However, the Victorian proposal was overtaken by events leading to the adoption of a uniform consumer protection law in all Australian jurisdictions, the ACL. 4. The structure of this submission is to consider first the three different bases upon which consumers can obtain relief for economic loss arising from defects in motor vehicles. The second part of the submission considers the difficulties encountered by consumers in litigating motor vehicle disputes in the courts and tribunals. The third part of the submission examines the approach taken in other jurisdictions to resolving motor vehicle disputes. The final part of the submission considers a number of possible reforms that could be made to the existing law and its enforcement to reduce consumer detriment arising from the purchase of ‘lemon’ motor vehicles. 5. There are three principal bases upon which a consumer can obtain redress for defects in new motor vehicles under the ACL. The first is where the manufacturer admits liability and initiates the voluntary recall procedure provided for in s 128 of the ACL. Under this basis the manufacturer generally repairs or replaces the part subject to the recall free of charge. The second basis is where the manufacturer or dealer denies liability and the consumer is initiates proceedings in the court or tribunal seeking a statutory remedy under the ACL, the nature of which will depend on whether the failure to comply with the consumer guarantee was major or not. The third basis upon which a consumer can obtain redress is pursuant to public enforcement by the ACCC. Each basis will be considered in this part. What all three bases have in common is the need to conduct an investigation to identify the nature of the defect and how it arose.