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The autochthonous development and evolving approach to unjust enrichment by the High Court in Australia
Get PDFAlthough the High Court had once been lauded by English unjust enrichment scholars for its percipience in its early willingness to recognise the concept of unjust enrichment in 1987, its development and treatment of unjust enrichment has since been the subject of academic and legal controversy. This paper attempts to navigate and interrogate those controversies. It traces, examines and evaluates the evolving approach to unjust enrichment by the High Court from 1987 until today. In so doing, it proffers two observations. First, the High Court has developed and emphasised a conscience-based approach towards restitution, which has not been without contention. Second, despite the common refrain that the Australian and English courts have departed in almost incompatible ways with respect to their jurisprudential understanding and judicial methodology towards unjust enrichment, there is ostensibly greater substantive consistency between the two jurisdictions today than has been hitherto claimed
Contesting the universality of human rights for women: An examination of violence against women in the Global South and the Global North
Get PDFDespite the purported universality of human rights, the human rights of women are not universal. The human rights of women are systematically violated across both the Global North and Global South in the form of pervasive violence against women. Using postcolonial feminism and intersectionality and two case studies of honour killings in India and domestic violence against women in the United States, this paper makes two arguments. First, this paper argues that irrespective of whether you are ‘wealthy, white and from the west’ in the Global North or the converse in the Global South, the human rights of women are systematically violated. Second, this paper argues that human rights violations against women in the Global North are ignored by a focus on violence against ‘other’ women in the Global South and minority communities in the Global North. This paper advocates the adoption of an intersectional approach to recognise that human rights are not universal for all women who are vulnerable to violence because of their gender.
 
Changes in pigment accumulation as indicators of physical stress in Eucalyptus pauciflora
Get PDFInvestigating whether pigments can be used to reduce the effects of environmental stress and leaf damage is a crucial part of re-evaluating current treatments for herbivory and infection in plants, while also predicting future scenarios with warmer climates. This study investigated whether two pigments (chlorophylls and anthocyanins) could be used as indicators of compromised leaf health in the iconic Australian species Eucalyptus pauciflora Sieber ex Spreng, found in Kosciuszko National Park, NSW, Australia. Additionally, leaf age was also assessed as a contributing factor of leaf damage. Leaf age (represented by leaf area) was associated with increased occurrences of leaf damage in E. pauciflora, with a significant increase in the degree of wounding and pathogen infection observed in older leaves. Chlorophyll content (relative intensity/area) decreased with wounding and infection, supported by suspected damage to photosystems upon physical leaf stress. Anthocyanin content (relative intensity/area) did not change significantly between healthy and damaged leaves, potentially indicating the presence of anthocyanins with different biological functions in E. pauciflora that were not determined by our methods of extraction, but which could be the topic of future studies
Foreword
Get PDFIt is with great enthusiasm that I present the sixth edition of the Burgmann Journal. This year’s edition presents an interesting range of works, some drawing from intense research and curiosity, others from sheer imagination. The Burgmann community’s capacity for harnessing language to inform, inspire, and challenge others, continually impresses me. I am proud to say that this edition of the Journal exhibits precisely these talents. This edition is a testament to the brilliant minds that contributed to it, as they progress from Burgmann College to enlivening the broader public
Why do alpine plants grow where they do?
Get PDFIn an alpine landscape, sharp gradients in climate factors such as wind, snow accumulation and temperature, and physical factors such as topography, aspect and soil, all interact to create environmental gradients, along which various groups of plants will find suitable for habitat. These environmental factors act as filters to exclude species with unviable physiological limitations from entering and persisting in different communities. It is these environmental filters and sharp gradients in habitat suitability that produce the distinct patterns in plant communities that we see in the alpine landscape. However, species per se do not respond to environmental factors; rather, it is how they function within their community and interact with other species that determines where they grow and how successful they are. And thus, an understanding of plant functional traits becomes important for understanding how species and communities will respond to differences and changes in these environmental factors/filters.
Plant functional traits, or morphological traits such as height, size, growth form, specific leaf area and leaf chlorophyll content, are the physical characteristics of species that reveal how plants capture and conserve resources, and how they interact with their environment and each other. As such, plant functional traits underpin the functioning of ecosystems (McGill et al. 2006). For example, plant height can indicate a species’ overall competitive ability (tall plants can overtop neighbouring plants as they compete for light and space) as well as being an indirect measurement for biomass, lateral spread, rooting depth and leaf size. Specific leaf area (SLA), the ratio of the area of a fresh leaf to its dry mass, can indicate how plants allocate resources; low SLA values correspond to relatively long-lived leaves with high investments in defences or other structural adaptations to cope with harsh conditions (Leishman and Westoby 1992). Ecologists can use trait-based approaches to predict where certain types of species might be found across landscapes or environmental gradients, or even how various plant communities might respond to climate change via changes to the local driving environmental factors (Venn et al. 2011).
In this project, we hiked to and surveyed several contrasting plant communities near Charlotte Pass. We compared them floristically and functionally by measuring various plant functional traits. In this way, we were able to determine which ecological processes (as inferred from their traits) might be driving each of the communities we sampled, and gave us an idea of how these communities might respond to future changes in environmental drivers
Pathogen stress and living organisation: A cross-cultural analysis
Get PDFSimulations and animal studies provide a model where paratisim risk is associated with less modular social group sizes. Therefore, this study will examine whether the adoption of modular living in humans has been an adaptive strategy to minimise pathogen stress. Subsequently, codes for pathogens stress are analysed for their correlation with variables for household form, as described for 186 socieites in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. The resulting analysis found that pathogen stress is significantly higher for societies which adopt more communal living styles, but there is no differenece in mobile or contagious pathogens which would be expected for the mechanism of such a difference. More studies are still needed to rule out possible confoudning factors
Why are we intelligent? A comparison of the ecological and social theories on the evolution of large brains in primates, birds, and cetaceans
Get PDFPrimates, parrots, corvids, and cetaceans are amongst the most intelligent animals. However, intelligence is an energetically costly trait and researchers are yet to agree on what selection pressures have driven its convergent evolution across these phylogenetically distant taxa. Two overarching theories have traditionally been proposed for the evolution of intelligence in primates: ecological and social. Ecological theories suggest how cognitive mapping and extractive foraging techniques used by primates to find high-quality foods demanded increased cognitive capacity. Social theories, in contrast, suggest how forced cooperation between conspecifics and resulting social hierarchies encouraged an arms race of Machiavellian strategies to compete for mates and food. This paper attempts to find a theory consistent with the characteristics and behaviours of primates, parrots, corvids, and cetaceans. Cognitive mapping is only exhibited by some primate and corvid species, so is an unsuitable candidate. Extractive foraging is exhibited by species within all present taxa. Social behaviours like cooperation, alliances, and complex mating patterns were found in primates and cetaceans but much less so amongst bird species. Social learning, however, was found amongst all taxa. A mixture of extractive foraging and social learning, sometimes described as the socioecological model, is, therefore, proposed as the most likely explanation for the convergent evolution of intelligence across these taxa
Selected Poems
Get PDFDuring the daythe body, composed like music,says to itself:“How are you?”To which the immediate response is:“In love,”sighing like a song about it,before splashing cold waterout of porcelain basin on purple veined skin
Words and Numbers; Truth and Lies
Get PDFLife may be possible without words, but the human experience is not. Words allow us to express love and loss. They allow us to discuss and to debate. They allow us to tell stories and share experiences. Words are our method of conveying meaning, and are therefore essential to our pursuit of truth. Yet meaning can be manipulated. Words may be essential to the pursuit of truth, but they are equally capable of producing lies
The influence of body mass, diet, and phylogeny on lemur gestation length, age-at-first-birth, and interbirth interval length
Get PDFLife history theory is an important topic in primatology: studying a species’ life history enables us to understand their social system and can have major implications for conservation. As Malagasy lemurs are the most threatened group of mammals on earth, and understanding their life history traits and the biological factors that impact them may inform conservation efforts, this is an area of research with great consequence. This study examined the impact of body mass, diet, and phylogeny on the life history traits of gestation length, age-at-first-birth, and interbirth interval in 25 lemur species. I collected data on species from the families Indriidae, Cheirogaleidae, Lemuridae, and Lepilemuridae from previously published papers. The next step was to run linear regressions to determine how their body mass, diet, and phylogeny (measured using family) impact the aforementioned life history traits. An increased body mass was associated with a slow life history strategy, with a relatively late age-at-first-birth as well as a long gestation length and interbirth intervals. Diet did not have a significant impact on any of these life history traits, while phylogeny had a significant impact on gestation length, but not age-at-first-birth or interbirth interval. These results highlight how lemur life histories are distinctive from those of other nonhuman primates: due to the highly stochastic environment of Madagascar and the numerous unique traits lemurs possess, we cannot assume that trends seen in the life history traits of other primates will also be seen in lemur