David Mitrany and South-East Europe: The Balkan Key to World Peace

Today David Mitrany is best known for his work on international functionalism, which influenced the development of European integration and the organisation of United Nations specialised agencies. What is often ignored in the West is his work on South-East Europe. During the inter-war period Mitrany studied both the operation of war government and the subsequent peasant revolution in the Balkans. War government demonstrated that political organisation could bridge the gap between social action and private property, while the peasant social revolution showed that the abstract economics associated with both capitalist and Marxist economics was not applicable outside of urban industrial production. It was through his studies of South-East Europe that Mitrany drew many of the lessons and concepts that were to form the foundations of his international theory

David Mitrany and South-East Europe: The Balkan Key to World Peace

Today David Mitrany is best known for his work on international functionalism, which influenced the development of European integration and the organisation of United Nations specialised agencies. What is often ignored in the West is his work on South-East Europe. During the inter-war period Mitrany studied both the operation of war government and the subsequent peasant revolution in the Balkans. War government demonstrated that political organisation could bridge the gap between social action and private property, while the peasant social revolution showed that the abstract economics associated with both capitalist and Marxist economics was not applicable outside of urban industrial production. It was through his studies of South-East Europe that Mitrany drew many of the lessons and concepts that were to form the foundations of his international theory

Gauging NOTCH1 Activation in Cancer Using Immunohistochemistry

Fixed, paraffin-embedded (FPE) tissues are a potentially rich resource for studying the role of NOTCH1 in cancer and other pathologies, but tests that reliably detect activated NOTCH1 (NICD1) in FPE samples have been lacking. Here, we bridge this gap by developing an immunohistochemical (IHC) stain that detects a neoepitope created by the proteolytic cleavage event that activates NOTCH1. Following validation using xenografted cancers and normal tissues with known patterns of NOTCH1 activation, we applied this test to tumors linked to dysregulated Notch signaling by mutational studies. As expected, frequent NICD1 staining was observed in T lymphoblastic leukemia/lymphoma, a tumor in which activating NOTCH1 mutations are common. However, when IHC was used to gauge NOTCH1 activation in other human cancers, several unexpected findings emerged. Among B cell tumors, NICD1 staining was much more frequent in chronic lymphocytic leukemia than would be predicted based on the frequency of NOTCH1 mutations, while mantle cell lymphoma and diffuse large B cell lymphoma showed no evidence of NOTCH1 activation. NICD1 was also detected in 38% of peripheral T cell lymphomas. Of interest, NICD1 staining in chronic lymphocytic leukemia cells and in angioimmunoblastic lymphoma was consistently more pronounced in lymph nodes than in surrounding soft tissues, implicating factors in the nodal microenvironment in NOTCH1 activation in these diseases. Among carcinomas, diffuse strong NICD1 staining was observed in 3.8% of cases of triple negative breast cancer (3 of 78 tumors), but was absent from 151 non-small cell lung carcinomas and 147 ovarian carcinomas. Frequent staining of normal endothelium was also observed; in line with this observation, strong NICD1 staining was also seen in 77% of angiosarcomas. These findings complement insights from genomic sequencing studies and suggest that IHC staining is a valuable experimental tool that may be useful in selection of patients for clinical trials

Feminism, war and the prospects of international government - Helena Swanwick and the lost feminists of interwar international relations

From the early 1980s feminist theory has made steady inroads into IR theory. The standard view, both amongst IR feminists and other scholars in IR, is that prior to this there was little or no feminist theory in IR. Yet, there was a distinct feminist IR prior to the 1940s that had its own particular take on the problems of global order. This paper seeks to reassess the ideas and impact of IR’s first-wave feminism by concentrating on the works of one particular writer, H. M. Swanwick. Certainly, Swanwick was not the only feminist writing on international affairs in the period. She is interesting, however, both because of her earlier involvement in the feminist and suffragette movements, and because she constructed a clear analysis of the problems of security in IR. Her criticisms of collective security put her at odds with many of her left-wing colleagues, who supported military sanctions by the League. While she gave very sound reasons for rejecting so-called ‘League wars’ against aggressor states, her position in the late 1930s brought her closer to the appeasement policy of the Chamberlain government. Yet, despite this, her criticisms of both collective security and the old pre-1914 international anarchy are an interesting corrective to both the realist paradigm that emerged after the 1940s and the liberal-socialist paradigm that supported a tighter League system in the 1920s and early 1930s. It is also an indication of the extent to which a liberal feminist agenda had been part of mainstream IR prior to the realist ascendancy

Where are the idealists in inter-war international relations?

no abstract availabl

Forget Aristotle: Alexander the Great and the military origins of modern political organisation

no abstract availabl