  Magneto-transport of hard core bosons (HCB) is studied using an XXZ quantum
spin model representation, appropriately gauged on the torus to allow for an
external magnetic field. We find strong lattice effects near half filling. An
effective quantum mechanical description of the vortex degrees of freedom is
derived. Using semiclassical and numerical analysis we compute the vortex
hopping energy, which at half filling is close to magnitude of the boson
hopping energy. The critical quantum melting density of the vortex lattice is
estimated at 6.5x10-5 vortices per unit cell. The Hall conductance is computed
from the Chern numbers of the low energy eigenstates. At zero temperature, it
reverses sign abruptly at half filling. At precisely half filling, all
eigenstates are doubly degenerate for any odd number of flux quanta. We prove
the exact degeneracies on the torus by constructing an SU(2) algebra of
point-group symmetries, associated with the center of vorticity. This result is
interpreted as if each vortex carries an internal spin-half degree of freedom
('vspin'), which can manifest itself as a charge density modulation in its
core. Our findings suggest interesting experimental implications for vortex
motion of cold atoms in optical lattices, and magnet-transport of short
coherence length superconductors.
