In the past few decades, substantial work has been directed towards the design of aircraft structures that maximise fuel efficiency, improve performance and curtail emissions. Aeroelastic optimisation offers an effective way to devise lightweight and fuel efficient structures, with structural stability constraints often driving the design. To date, the aeroelastic optimisation community has relied mostly on linear buckling predictions for the evaluation of structural stability constraints, mainly because of their conservativeness, computational efficiency and simplicity of implementation. This approach typically leads to overly conservative buckling margins, and this over-conservativeness places a glass ceiling over the load carrying capacity of wing structures, consequently restricting the exploration of regions within the design space where considerable weight savings could be achieved.

By contrast to previous works that predominantly rely on linear buckling constraints, the present paper introduces a method to incorporate nonlinear structural stability analysis into aeroelastic optimisations of wingbox-like structures. The method relies on the evaluation of the positive-definiteness of the tangent stiffness matrix, which is an indicator of structural stability. The sign of the stiffness eigenvalues is monitored while tracing the load-displacement equilibrium paths by means of the arc-length method, thus pinpointing the onset of instability. The proposed constraint is tested in a proof of concept structural optimisation of an idealised version of the CRM wingbox. This optimisation shows a $10.9{\rm{\% }} $ reduction in mass with respect to a baseline design that is optimal with a linear buckling approach, promising great potential for application to more realistic aeroelastic optimisations.

The enactment of uniform companies legislation in 1961-2 was a significant achievement for a country in which, a century earlier, multiple incorporations of the one body was the norm and a court of one colony questioned the existence of corporate personality created by the law of another. After Federation, business interests increasingly sought uniform State laws. They opposed centralised regulation which, in any event, was beset by constitutional difficulties. Commonwealth legislation eventually became the preferred model as shortcomings of uniform and co-operative mechanisms were progressively exposed. Yet fully harmonised corporations legislation still does not exist. In this paper presented to the 2011 Hartnell Colloquium at the Centre for Commercial Law, Australian National University to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Uniform Companies Acts, the author sketches the development of Australian companies legislation over the last 150 years.

A key objective of Australia's recent national water reforms is to keep water licence and entitlement holders accountable for the amounts of water they extract, trade and use. Water metering and the recording and reporting of water extraction and trading data are processes designed to ensure this accountability, and are central to Australia's water accounting regimes. Yet much of the data necessary to ensure compliance with water licences and access entitlements is not publicly available in Australia. This absence of publicly accessible information is due to a lack of rigour and transparency in statutory water accounting regimes. There are also restrictions imposed by water legislation and the laws of privacy and confidentiality that prevent public access to water accounting data, except in aggregated form. Consequently, commercial and industrial water consumers in Australia are not kept accountable for their consumptive water use and water market objectives are unfulfilled, contrary to the express provisions of the Intergovernmental Agreement on a National Water Initiative (‘NWI’). This article argues that statutory and policy frameworks for water accounting in most Australian jurisdictions fail to meet the NWI objectives for national water accounting. In response, it advocates legislative reforms that would facilitate the achievement of these objectives.

Dr Galligan examines the origin of judicial review under the Australian Constitution through an catalysis of the Conventions and Conferences preceding its drafting. A political scientist, he disputes the claim that there is no basis for judicial review in the Australian federal system and argues that the intention of the founders, influenced by Inglis Clark, was to create a powerful American-style court primarily to interpret the Constitution in the resolution of federal disputes. As a case study of the founders' intentions he considers the debates and “solution” of the question of control of Australia's inland river system.

The Commonwealth of Australia is 75 years old. Professor Zines, in this Article, looks at the record of judicial review of the Constitution over the past quarter century. He examines those areas (a) that have, during that time, illustrated, or provided the basis for, the development of general principles; (b) that seem to have particular political or social significance; or (c) that help in understanding the role and technique of the High Court.

In an examination of the Commonwealth Government's power to enact social welfare legislation, Professor Sackville explores the tendency toward federal control of this field since 1901 and the judicial reaction to it. His conclusion is that although certain of the restrictions imposed upon Commonwealth freedom of action by the High Court have been removed by constitutional amendment, the trend towards a wider concept of Commonwealth involvement in community welfare schemes may well exceed the present limits upon Commonwealth legislative competence; and he looks to the Constitutional Convention now in progress as the possible prelude to an era in which extension of these limits might more readily take place.

The object of this article is not to discuss in detail any of the questions of law which have arisen under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1959 (Cth), but merely to review in a fairly general way the manner in which the Act has operated since it came into force in February, 1961. My remarks will necessarily be confined, in the main, to experience in New South Wales since that is the State in which I have seen the Act operating but presumably the experience of Judges and practitioners in this State will not be greatly dissimilar from that of their opposite numbers in the other States of the Commonwealth. In one respect, however, the position of legal practitioners in this State is unique for New South Wales alone of the States still clings obstinately to the pre-Judicature Acts method of pleading.

Endozoochory, the dispersal of seeds through the animal gut passage, plays a significant role in vegetation dynamics. The success of endozoochorous seed dispersal depends on each stage of the process: ingestion by animals, gut passage, and post-dispersal events after defecation. After the deposition of seeds through feces, the effects of feces on the initial stages of seedling establishment, including seed germination and seedling growth, can significantly impact overall survival. The pattern of fecal effects on plant species depends on the animal species. In this study, we investigated the effects of feces presence on seed germination and early seedling growth using feces of the Korean water deer (Hydropotes inermis argyropus). We conducted a germination experiment on 12 plant species belonging to 10 plant families, which are known to germinate in the feces of Korean water deer. The study compared the seed germination rate and seedling length after germination between seeds sown with and without feces of the Korean water deer. In general, we found that the presence of deer feces per se had no significant effects on seed germination and early growth stages. However, additional research on post-dispersal events such as long-term growth, fecal type, and germination conditions is needed to fully understand the costs and benefits of endozoochory.

Researchers regularly use large survey studies to examine public political opinion. Surveys running over days and months will necessarily incorporate religious occasions that can introduce variation in public opinion. Using recent survey data from Israel, this study demonstrates that giving surveys on religious occasions (e.g., the Sabbath, Hannukah, Sukkot) can elicit different opinion responses. These effects are found among both religious and non-religious respondents. While incorporating these fluctuations is realistic in longer-term surveys, surveys fielded in a short window inadvertently drawing heavily on a holiday or holy day sample may bias their findings. This study thus urges researchers to be cognizant of ambient religious context when conducting survey studies.

Thomas Reed Powell once commented that it is just as well that‘ the law is full of collateral doctrines and devices that keep it from behaving as badly as it sometimes talks ’. Few areas of the law provide a better example of his point than does that frequently neglected area of constitutional law which is concerned with the legal character of acts performed under an unconstitutional statute. The traditional doctrine is that such a statute is an utter nullity. Perhaps the most famous statement of this doctrine is to be found in Norton v. Shelby County where Field J. stated that an unconstitutional statute ‘confers no rights; it imposes no duties; it affords no protection; it creates no office; it is in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed’. Or as a Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia once put it: ‘A pretended law made in excess of power is not and never has been a law at all . . . it is invalid ab initio’.

The recent High Court decision of XYZ v Commonwealth (‘XYZ’) has strengthened the aura of uncertainty surrounding the concept of ‘international concern’ and its role in widening the application of s 51(xxix) of the Commonwealth Constitution. This article considers the XYZ decision in light of past judicial exegesis and addresses what may lie ahead for this aspect of the external affairs power.

‘International concern’ has, for some years, hovered as a possible basis for the subject matter of legislation to attract the Commonwealth external affairs power, alongside other grounds such as the implementation of an international convention or recommendation, geographical externality, relations with other countries or customary international law. The head of power relies upon such grounds to colour a piece of Commonwealth legislation with the hue of ‘external affairs'. This ‘colouring’ therefore enables a subject matter to be within the Commonwealth Parliament's legislative competence.

I have had an interest in inquisitorial procedures and a lack of conviction to the often claimed superiority of adversarial procedures as long as I have have any interest in the law. Until recently however I found it difficult to engage other Australian lawyers in discussions which questioned whether the adversarias system is necessarily the best. It seems that my experience reflected the strength of the “Anglo-American legal culture”.

The decision of the Court of Appeal of New South Wales in Government Insurance Office of New South Wales v Glasscock demonstrates both th traditional view that a trial should be adversarial and a more open approach to the question. One submission of counsel for the appellant was that the trial hal miscarried because of the extent of judicial intervention, which was summed u by saying that the adversarial basis of the trial had been lost as a result of the judge's intervention.