Bilateral Cooperation and Bounded Sovereignty in Counter-Terrorism Efforts

The ‘Global War on Terror,’ led by the United States, emphasizes the role of international alliances in tackling terrorist threats. By their very nature, international counterterrorism efforts challenge state sovereignty by requiring changes to both foreign and domestic policies. This, in turn, creates complex sovereignty issues and raises some interesting questions for closer examination. How has cooperation in counterterrorism altered the perceptions and behavior of allies of the United States? Has the post-9/11 security environment constrained the sovereignty of other nations? This paper will analyze Canada’s cooperation with the US in order to explore these questions. The study argues that Canada’s sovereignty has been bounded, but not determined, by US demands. Examining the relationship between the US and Canada can help us understand both the limitations and the continuing relevance of the traditional concepts of power, sovereignty and interdependence in international relations

Managing Discontent: Institutions, Intervention and Ethnic Conflict

Over the last fifteen years, the number of civil conflicts worldwide has declined and negotiated settlements have increased. The spread of democracy and greater international concern about domestic conflicts have encouraged states to adopt a negotiations-based approach to addressing minority grievances. In many conflicts, international intervention has played a significant role in facilitating dialogue and peace settlements. The complexities of cases of ethno political conflict suggest that a twin track approach, which looks at the domestic and the international levels of analysis, is critical. Yet, the existing literature on conflict management tends to study either international intervention or domestic institutions. Intersections between the two are ignored. Combining a cross-national analysis using the Minorities at Risk (MAR) dataset with a case study of Sri Lanka, this research project examines the relative and combined impact of domestic institutions and international intervention on the management and de-escalation of conflict. Uncertainty and mistrust between the state and minority groups drives political violence. Mitigating this uncertainty and building trust become essential for building peace. The extant literature fails, however, to recognize that the pathways to building trust and reducing uncertainty vary according to domestic political capacity. When the conflict-affected state is facing domestic institutional anarchy, coercive forms of international intervention, such as offering security guarantees through peacekeeping troops, become necessary. In contrast, where conflict co-exists with relative political stability and some measure of democracy, non-coercive intervention, such as mediation, becomes critical. In contrast to collapsed states, the challenge in such countries is to reform, rather than replace or create, institutions. Where the state is not facing a collapse of authority, facilitative intervention, such as mediation, can be a more cost-effective conflict management tool than high-cost, high-impact actions. This class of cases, which includes Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia and the Philippines, has not been adequately investigated in the existing scholarly literature. The arguments and findings presented here make an important contribution by focusing on the interactive role of domestic and international variables, particularly in relatively stable states

The large D black hole dynamics in AdS/dS backgrounds

We have constructed a class of perturbative dynamical black hole solutions in presence of cosmological constant. We have done our calculation in large number of dimensions. The inverse power of dimension has been used as the perturbation parameter and our calculation is valid upto the first subleading order. The solutions are in one to one correspondence with a dynamical membrane and a velocity field embedded in the asymptotic geometry. Our method is manifestly covariant with respect to the asymptotic geometry. One single calculation and the same universal result works for both dS and AdS geometry or in case of AdS for both global AdS and Poincare patch. We have checked our final answer with various known exact solutions and the known spectrum of Quasi Normal modes in AdS/dS.Comment: 74 pages. v2: Minor changes, typos correcte

Canada-US Information Sharing and the Case of Maher Arar

This article discusses the controversy related to the detention and rendition by US authorities of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen. The Arar case is particularly significant because of the intense publicity, debate, and mobilization that it has engendered in Canada. This case illustrates problems posed by the expectations and practices of information sharing in Canada – US security cooperation

Early tension regulation coupled to surface myomerger is necessary for the primary fusion of C2C12 myoblasts

Here, we study the time-dependent regulation of fluctuation–tension during myogenesis and the role of the fusogen, myomerger. We measure nanometric height fluctuations of the basal membrane of C2C12 cells after triggering differentiation. Fusion of cells increases fluctuation–tension but prefers a transient lowering of tension (at ∼2–24 h). Cells fail to fuse if early tension is continuously enhanced by methyl-β-cyclodextrin (MβCD). Perturbing tension regulation also reduces fusion. During this pre-fusion window, cells that finally differentiate usually display lower tension than other non-fusing cells, validating early tension states to be linked to fate decision. Early tension reduction is accompanied by low but gradually increasing level of the surface myomerger. Locally too, regions with higher myomerger intensity display lower tension. However, this negative correlation is lost in the early phase by MβCD-based cholesterol depletion or later as differentiation progresses. We find that with tension and surface-myomerger’s enrichment under these conditions, myomerger clusters become pronouncedly diffused. We, therefore, propose that low tension aided by clustered surface-myomerger at the early phase is crucial for fusion and can be disrupted by cholesterol-reducing molecules, implying the potential to affect muscle health

Project Title: Challenging What We Think We Know: Moving Beyond the Obstacles of Prior Knowledge

Research Question: In what ways does prior knowledge affect students’ writing? Method & Data Studied: During the final weeks of the fall 2008 quarter a survey was made available to the students in the American Foreign Policy course on Blackboard Academic Suite. The survey contained seven open-ended questions that prompted students to reflect on the assignments and evaluate, in particular, the way in which they chose to engage biases in assigned materials and their own preconceived ideas about foreign policy topics when completing writing assignments

Effect of heterogeneous substrate adhesivity of follower cells on speed and tension profile of leader cells in primary keratocyte collective cell migration

In single keratocyte motility, membrane tension is reported to be high at cell-fronts and believed to establish front coherence. To understand role of membrane mechanics in collective cell migration, we study membrane height fluctuations in cell sheets from fish scales using interference reflection microscopy (IRM). We report the monolayer to have cells lacking substrate adhesion and show that such ‘non-sticky’ cells can form bridges between leader cells and far-away follower cells. Do such interactions alter motility and membrane mechanics in such leaders? We find non-significant, but reduced speed for leaders with ‘non-sticky’ followers in comparison to other leaders. Cells show high phenotypic variability in their membrane fluctuation tension profiles. On average, this tension is found to be lower at cell fronts than the mid-section. However, leaders with non-sticky followers are more prone to display higher tension at their front and have a negative correlation between cell speed and front-mid tension difference. Thus, we conclude that intracellular tension gradients are heterogeneous in cell sheets and substrate adhesivity of followers can control the coupling of the gradient to cell speed

Microbial Plastic Degradation: Nature's Solution for Sustainable Waste Management

Plastic pollution has emerged as a global environmental crisis, demanding innovative and sustainable waste management strategies. This review explores the potential of harnessing nature's capabilities, specifically through microbial plastic degradation, as a promising avenue for sustainable waste management. The focus is on the collaborative action of microorganisms, utilizing their enzymatic activities to enhance plastic degradation. This review delves into the intricate mechanisms of microbial interaction with various types of plastics, emphasizing recent advancements in microbial plastic degradation research. Furthermore, it discusses the challenges associated with scaling up microbial degradation processes and envisions the incorporation of these approaches into practical waste management solutions. This exploration of microbial plastic degradation represents a critical step in mitigating the environmental impact of plastic pollution and promoting a more sustainable and eco-friendly waste management paradigm

Analysis of False Data Injection in Vehicle Platooning

Automated vehicles promise to be one of the most constructive inventions of late as they promote road safety, fuel efficiency, and reduced time road travel, by decreasing traffic congestion and workload on the driver. In a platoon (which is a method of grouping vehicles, which helps increase the capacity of roads by managing the distance between vehicles by using electrical and mechanical coupling) of such automated vehicles, as in automated highway systems (AHS), tracking of inter-vehicular spacing is one of the significant factors to be considered. Because of the close spacing, computer-controlled platoons with inter-vehicular communication, which is the concept of adaptive cruise control (ACC), become open to cyber security attacks. Cyber physical and cyber attacks on smart grid systems in the electricity market have been a focus of researchers, and much work has been done on that front. However, cyber physical (CP) attacks on autonomous vehicle platoons have not been examined. Thus this research entails the survey of a number of vehicle models used in different works pertaining to longitudinal vehicle motion and analysis of a special class of cyber physical attacks called false data injection (FDI) attacks on vehicle platoons moving with longitudinal motion. In this kind of attack, an attacker can exploit the configuration of any cyber physical system to launch such attacks to successfully introduce arbitrary errors into certain state variables so as to gain control over the system. So here, an n-vehicle platoon is considered and a linearized vehicle model is used as a testbed to study vehicle dynamics and control, after false information is fed into the system