International Law as a Basis for Conducting American Foreign Policy: 1979-1982

In a lecture delivered in May, 1978, Hans Morgenthau, one of the founders of a modem theory of power in international relations, declared that power politics must be replaced as the intellectual basis for the conduct of American foreign policy. With nuclear weapons that make possible the destruction of mankind, power politics has become fatally dangerous as a basis for foreign policymaking. Ultimately it will lead to a suicidal Third World War. According to Morgenthau, the only alternative to this scenario is the formation of a world government. For the immediate future, however, and as part of the process leading to the foundation of a world government, states must actively participate in the creation of functionally oriented international organizations able to cope with primary concerns in international relations. Through a process of gradual integration, the development of a larger number of specialized international organizations could eventually lead to the formation of a world government. International law must play an important role during this transition. Here Morgenthau joined the camp of the functional-integrationist school of international political science

The hypocrisy and racism behind the formulation of U.S. human rights foreign policy

Arms Control & Domestic and International Security (ACDIS

The law of power politics

Arms Control & Domestic and International Security (ACDIS

The relevance of international law to the so-called "paradox" of nuclear deterrence

Arms Control & Domestic and International Security (ACDIS

The Entebbe Hostage Crisis

Arms Control & Domestic and International Security (ACDIS

A dominant mutation in a neuronal acetylcholine receptor subunit leads to motor neuron degeneration in Caenorhabditis elegans

Inappropriate or excessive activation of ionotropic receptors can have dramatic consequences for neuronal function and, in many instances, leads to cell death. In Caenorhabditis elegans, nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) subunits are highly expressed in a neural circuit that controls movement. Here, we show that heteromeric nAChRs containing the acr-2 subunit are diffusely localized in the processes of excitatory motor neurons and act to modulate motor neuron activity. Excessive signaling through these receptors leads to cell-autonomous degeneration of cholinergic motor neurons and paralysis. C. elegans double mutants lacking calreticulin and calnexin-two genes previously implicated in the cellular events leading to necrotic-like cell death (Xu et al. 2001)-are resistant to nAChR-mediated toxicity and possess normal numbers of motor neuron cell bodies. Nonetheless, excess nAChR activation leads to progressive destabilization of the motor neuron processes and, ultimately, paralysis in these animals. Our results provide new evidence that chronic activation of ionotropic receptors can have devastating degenerative effects in neurons and reveal that ion channel-mediated toxicity may have distinct consequences in neuronal cell bodies and processes

Using a complete spectroscopic survey to find red quasars and test the KX method

We present an investigation of quasar colour-redshift parameter space in order to search for radio-quiet red quasars and to test the ability of a variant of the KX quasar selection method to detect quasars over a full range of colour without bias. This is achieved by combining IRIS2 imaging with the complete Fornax Cluster Spectroscopic Survey to probe parameter space unavailable to other surveys. We construct a new sample of 69 quasars with measured bJ - K colours. We show that the colour distribution of these quasars is significantly different from that of the Large Bright Quasar Survey's quasars at a 99.9% confidence level. We find 11 of our sample of 69 quasars have signifcantly red colours (bJ - K >= 3.5) and from this, we estimate the red quasar fraction of the K <= 18.4 quasar population to be 31%, and robustly constrain it to be at least 22%. We show that the KX method variant used here is more effective than the UVX selection method, and has less colour bias than optical colour-colour selection methods.Comment: 11 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

The evolution of faint AGN between z~1 and z~5 from the COMBO-17 survey

We present a determination of the optical/UV AGN luminosity function and its evolution, based on a large sample of faint (R<24) QSOs identified in the COMBO-17 survey. Using multi-band photometry in 17 filters within 350nm < lambda_obs < 930nm, we could simultaneously determine photometric redshifts with an accuracy of sigma_z<0.03 and obtain spectral energy distributions. The redshift range covered by the sample is 1.2<z<4.8, which implies that even at z~3, the sample reaches below luminosities corresponding to M_B = -23, conventionally employed to distinguish between Seyfert galaxies and quasars. We clearly detect a broad plateau-like maximum of quasar activity around z~2 and map out the smooth turnover between z~1 and z~4. The shape of the LF is characterised by some mild curvature, but no sharp `break' is present within the range of luminosities covered. Using only the COMBO-17 data, the evolving LF can be adequately described by either a pure density evolution (PDE) or a pure luminosity evolution (PLE) model. However, the absence of a strong L*-like feature in the shape of the LF inhibits a robust distinction between these modes. We present a robust estimate for the integrated UV luminosity generation by AGN as a function of redshift. We find that the LF continues to rise even at the lowest luminosities probed by our survey, but that the slope is sufficiently shallow that the contribution of low-luminosity AGN to the UV luminosity density is negligible. Although our sample reaches much fainter flux levels than previous data sets, our results on space densities and LF slopes are completely consistent with extrapolations from recent major surveys such as SDSS and 2QZ.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figures, Astronomy & Astrophysics, in print, revised versio