"Origins of the GATT - British Resistance to American Multilateralism"

Fiftieth-anniversary explanations for the efficacy of the GATT imply that the institution's longevity is testimony to the free trade principles upon which it is based. In this light, the predominantly American architects of the system figure as free trade visionaries who benevolently imposed postwar institutions of international cooperation on their war-torn allies. This paper takes issue with such a characterization. Instead, the success of the GATT has been crucially dependent upon its ability to generate pragmatic and detailed policy via a uniquely inclusive forum. An effective institutional procedure, not free trade dogma, has proved key to its endurance--and this feature has been in place since the institution's inception.

Origins of the GATT: British Resistance to American Multilateralism

Fiftieth-anniversary explanations for the efficacy of the GATT imply that the institution's longevity is testimony to the free trade principles upon which it is based. In this light, the predominantly American architects of the system figure as free trade visionaries who benevolently imposed postwar institutions of international cooperation on their war-torn allies. This paper takes issue with such a characterization. Instead, the success of the GATT has been crucially dependent upon its ability to generate pragmatic and detailed policy via a uniquely inclusive forum. An effective institutional procedure, not free trade dogma, has proved key to its endurance—and this feature has been in place since the institution's inception.

"Europe in Transformation: How to Reconstitute Democracy?"

Europeanization and globalization are frequently held to undermine national democracy; hence raising the democracy in the multi-level constellation that makes up the European Union? We present three models for how democracy can be reconstituted: (a) it can be reconstituted at the national level, as delegated democracy with a concomitant reframing of the EU as a functional regulatory regime; (b) through establishing the EU as a multi-national state based on a common identity(ies) and solidaristic allegiance strong enough to undertake collective action; or (c) through the development of a post-national Union with an explicit cosmopolitan imprint. These are the only viable models of European democracy, as they are the only ones that can ensure equal membership in a self-governing polity. They differ however with regard to both applicability and robustness

Henry Ford vs. assembly line balancing

Ford’s Assembly Line at Highland Park is one of the most influential conceptualizations of a production system. New data reveal Ford’s operations were adaptable to strongly increasing and highly variable demand. These analyses show Ford’s assembly line was used differently than modern ones and their production systems were more flexible than previously recognized. Assembly line balancing theory largely ignores earlier practice. It will be shown that Ford used multiple lines flexibly to cope with large monthly variations in sales. Although a line may be optimized to yield lowest cost production, systems composed of several parallel lines may yield low cost production along with output and product flexibility. Recent research on multiple parallel lines has focussed on cost effectiveness without appreciating the flexibility such systems may allow. Given the current strategic importance of flexibility it should be included in such analyses as an explicit objective

From cosmic ray physics to cosmic ray astronomy: Bruno Rossi and the opening of new windows on the universe

Bruno Rossi is considered one of the fathers of modern physics, being also a pioneer in virtually every aspect of what is today called high-energy astrophysics. At the beginning of 1930s he was the pioneer of cosmic ray research in Italy, and, as one of the leading actors in the study of the nature and behavior of the cosmic radiation, he witnessed the birth of particle physics and was one of the main investigators in this fields for many years. While cosmic ray physics moved more and more towards astrophysics, Rossi continued to be one of the inspirers of this line of research. When outer space became a reality, he did not hesitate to leap into this new scientific dimension. Rossi's intuition on the importance of exploiting new technological windows to look at the universe with new eyes, is a fundamental key to understand the profound unity which guided his scientific research path up to its culminating moments at the beginning of 1960s, when his group at MIT performed the first in situ measurements of the density, speed and direction of the solar wind at the boundary of Earth's magnetosphere, and when he promoted the search for extra-solar sources of X rays. A visionary idea which eventually led to the breakthrough experiment which discovered Scorpius X-1 in 1962, and inaugurated X-ray astronomy.Comment: This work was presented at the conference "100 Years Cosmic Ray Physics - Anniversary of the V.F. Hess Discovery", 6-8 August, Bad Saarow/Pieskow, Germany, where Hess landed on August 7, 1912, after discovery of the "H\"ohenstrahlung". To be published in the Astroparticle Journa

Fifty years of UK research in information science

An attempt is made to discern the main research themes in British information science over the past half-century. Within these themes, emphasis is placed on research in the UK that has had some impact on the international information science community. The major factors affecting information research in the UK are also briefly considered

Scientific publishing and the reading of science in nineteenth-century Britain: a historiographical survey and guide to sources

[FIRST PARAGRAPH] It is now generally accepted that both the conception and practices of natural enquiry in the Western tradition underwent a series of profound developments in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century—developments which have been variously characterized as a ‘second scientific revolution’ and, much more tellingly, as the ‘invention of science’. As several authors have argued, moreover, a crucial aspect of this change consisted in the distinctive audience relations of the new sciences. While eighteenth-century natural philosophy was distinguished by an audience relation in which, as William Whewell put it, ‘a large and popular circle of spectators and amateurs [felt] themselves nearly upon a level, in the value of their trials and speculations, with more profound thinkers’, the science which was invented in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century was, as Simon Schaffer has argued, marked by the ‘emergence of disciplined, trained cadres of research scientists’ clearly distinguished from a wider, exoteric public. Similarly, Jan Golinski argues that the ‘emergence of new instrumentation and a more consolidated social structure for the specialist community’ for early nineteenth-century chemistry was intimately connected with the transformation in the role of its public audience to a condition of relative passivity. These moves were underpinned by crucial epistemological and rhetorical shifts—from a logic of discovery, theoretically open to all, to a more restrictive notion of discovery as the preserve of scientific ‘genius’, and from an open-ended philosophy of ‘experience’ to a far more restrictive notion of disciplined ‘expertise’. Both of these moves were intended to do boundary work, restricting the community active in creating and validating scientific knowledge, and producing a passive public

Special Libraries, December 1939

Volume 30, Issue 10https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1939/1009/thumbnail.jp

Planned Spontaneity:The Construction of a Modular System of Relief Printmaking Matrices for the Platen Press

The Modular System draws on traditional wood engraving, woodcut and letterpress practices. It comprises two printing surfaces and printing furniture specifically devised to facilitate offset and transfer relief printing. Rigid acetal resin tint blocks, hand or laser engraved, generate tone or colour that may be applied to more than one image. Multiple overprinting produces variant colour mixtures. Their function is similar to late nineteenth-century tints devised for colour letterpress printing. Compound printing surfaces of linoleum or vinyl are segmented and joined to make removable and replaceable parts. They print variable configurations in a process that resembles historical solutions to simultaneous colour printing: from the Mentz Psalter (1475), to the compound plates of William Congreve (1820) and the segmented wood engravings of John Holt Ibbetson (1819). These compound surfaces also act as receptors for impressions from the tint blocks. Repositioning and offsetting them is expedited by press furniture especially devised for the project. Registration devices are based on the simple Japanese kentō system and laser-cut circular chases derived from traditional letterpress furniture. Printing the tint blocks directly onto the flexible compound surfaces produce two viable prints that are offsets of each other. They are reversed, but one offset is also tonally inversed. It is this unpredictable tonality that has driven this experimental project. Both the construction and processes developed using the Modular System directed historical research into functional colour relief printing which consequently unearthed examples that would influence the further development of the project. This has generated both devices and processes capable of wider applications. Printing surfaces employed in the Modular System may be laser engraved or cut and adapted to use in both lithography and intaglio printmaking.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo