The effect of international law and international institutions on the place of war in society in the 20th century

Competing claims for primacy by national and international interests traditionally accommodated a sovereign national right to use force in international disputes. At the same time binding international law was being developed to limit wars and mitigate their excesses. The two World Wars emphasized a need to curtail unfettered national sovereignty and increase co-operation between States. The creation of an international regulatory institution open to all States, designed to foster a climate in which peaceful resolution of international disputes was the norm would, it was hoped, eliminate a place for war in Society, Accordingly, the unsuccessful League of Nations (1919), superseded by the' United Nations Organisation (1945), were created. Since 1945 the number of independent States in membership of the United Nations has multiplied but the organization has been dominated by two blocs formed on two nuclear powers with opposed ideologies. The effect of developing technology, and lack of consensus in both General Assembly and Security Council has been that wars have continued, weapons have become more powerful and more readily available, and States continue to put their national interests before the interests of the global society the organization was designed to protect. Technology continues to ensure a danger of nuclear war, and States continue to feel it essential to arm for defence and deterrence. With these contemporary influences in mind this thesis considers: (a) the International Laws of War and their application to International Law and Order, (b) arguments which sought to justify or abolish wars, and (c) means extant and proposed to define and confine the legal limits of war, and conduct in war, through humanitarian law, arms control and disarmament, with a view to concluding whether international law and international institutions have affected the place of war in society in the XXth Century

Sperm abnormalities in the dog : a light and electron microscopic study

This thesis is a systematic description of normal and abnormal dog spermatozoa by means of bright field light and transmission electron microscopy, and an investigation into the effect that abnormal sperm have on canine fertility. A total of 101 ejaculates were collected from 88 dogs, of 34 different breeds. Sperm samples were examined macroscopically for volume, colour, consistency, and pH. Microscopic evaluation of sperm motility was conducted on all samples. Morphological evaluation using light microscopy was conducted on 71 of the samples. Samples from 10 of the dogs were examined ultrastructurally. A novel classification for abnormal dog sperm is presented. Abnormal sperm were classified into one of the following groups: Acrosomal defects, head defects, midpiece defects, tail defects and other abnormalities. Abnormalities were further sub-divided into major and minor defects. The most common abnormalities encountered were major sperm head defects. The abnormalities are compared with those described for other species, in particular the bull and man. The association between the percentage abnormal sperm in the ejaculate and the fertility of the dog was statistically evaluated. On this basis, the dogs were divided into normal and sub-normal groups. The percentage normal morphology below which fertility was adversely affected was found to be sixty percent. The fertility of dogs with greater than or equal to 60 percent normal morphology was 61 percent, while the fertility of dogs with · less than 60 percent normal morphology was 13 percent. There was no statistical difference between the ages of the dogs in the two groups; from this it was concluded that sub-fertility may affect a dog at any age. A means of evaluating dogs for reproductive potential is discussed

Early experiences of computer‐aided assessment and administration when teaching computer programming

This paper describes early experiences with the Ceilidh system currently being piloted at over 30 institutions of higher education. Ceilidh is a course‐management system for teaching computer programming whose core is an auto‐assessment facility. This facility automatically marks students programs from a range of perspectives, and may be used in an iterative manner, enabling students to work towards a target level of attainment. Ceilidh also includes extensive course‐administration and progress‐monitoring facilities, as well as support for other forms of assessment including short‐answer marking and the collation of essays for later hand‐marking. The paper discusses the motivation for developing Ceilidh, outlines its major facilities, then summarizes experiences of developing and actually using it at the coal‐face over three years of teaching

Method and apparatus for white-light dispersed-fringe interferometric measurement of corneal topography

An novel interferometric apparatus and method for measuring the topography of aspheric surfaces, without requiring any form of scanning or phase shifting. The apparatus and method of the present invention utilize a white-light interferometer, such as a white-light Twyman-Green interferometer, combined with a means for dispersing a polychromatic interference pattern, using a fiber-optic bundle and a disperser such as a prism for determining the monochromatic spectral intensities of the polychromatic interference pattern which intensities uniquely define the optical path differences or OPD between the surface under test and a reference surface such as a reference sphere. Consequently, the present invention comprises a snapshot approach to measuring aspheric surface topographies such as the human cornea, thereby obviating vibration sensitive scanning which would otherwise reduce the accuracy of the measurement. The invention utilizes a polychromatic interference pattern in the pupil image plane, which is dispersed on a point-wise basis, by using a special area-to-line fiber-optic manifold, onto a CCD or other type detector comprising a plurality of columns of pixels. Each such column is dedicated to a single point of the fringe pattern for enabling determination of the spectral content of the pattern. The auto-correlation of the dispersed spectrum of the fringe pattern is uniquely characteristic of a particular optical path difference between the surface under test and a reference surface

The Pattern of Electoral Management Practices Towards Kenya’s 2007 Post-Election Violence in Uasin Gishu and Trans-Nzoia Counties

The study sought to investigate the pattern of electoral management practices towards Kenya’s 2007 Post-Election Violence (PEV) in Uasin Gishu and Trans-Nzoia counties. The many post election violence in Kenya over the years have had unique patterns. This have often found themselves in influencing electoral management practices. The pattern of electoral management practices towards Kenya’s 2007 post election violence however, seemed to have had a departure from the previous many other elections as to their visibility in different stages of election, intensity within the electoral management, and their nature being cyclical. This study used a survey and descriptive research design with mixed method approach. The researchers opted for both methods because each paradigm is appropriate for finding different outcomes. This study examined Pattern of Electoral Management Practices to 2007 Post-Election Violence and Trends of electoral management practices on election violence in Kenya. It is evident that ethnic animosities characterised post-election violence of 2007 and hence a component of the cause to patterns. This research recommends that for peaceful elections to be conducted, effective measures should be put in place to address ethnic animosities. Keywords: Pattern of Electoral Management/ Electoral Management/ Electoral Violence/ Electoral Management Practices/ Post Election Violence/ Kenya’s PEV DOI: 10.7176/JRDM/55-05 Publication date:May 31st 201

Frontal sinus osteoma removal with the ultrasonic bone aspirator.

Osteomas, the most common skull tumors, are typically excised through either an open or endoscopic ostectomy using a high-speed drill, a technically challenging procedure that can result in injury to adjacent soft tissue structures. Osteoma removal through ultrasonic bone emulsification and aspiration (UBA) offers the advantages of decreased blood loss, preservation of adjacent soft tissue structures, and precise bone removal. UBA was used to successfully remove a forehead osteoma without injury to adjacent nerves and with a satisfactory cosmetic outcome. We describe skull osteoma removal with an ultrasonic bone aspirator, which offers potential advantages over conventional bone removal techniques

Precision Spectroscopy of Polarized Molecules in an Ion Trap

Polar molecules are desirable systems for quantum simulations and cold chemistry. Molecular ions are easily trapped, but a bias electric field applied to polarize them tends to accelerate them out of the trap. We present a general solution to this issue by rotating the bias field slowly enough for the molecular polarization axis to follow but rapidly enough for the ions to stay trapped. We demonstrate Ramsey spectroscopy between Stark-Zeeman sublevels in 180Hf19F+ with a coherence time of 100 ms. Frequency shifts arising from well-controlled topological (Berry) phases are used to determine magnetic g-factors. The rotating-bias-field technique may enable using trapped polar molecules for precision measurement and quantum information science, including the search for an electron electric dipole moment.Comment: Accepted to Scienc

OH hyperfine ground state: from precision measurement to molecular qubits

We perform precision microwave spectroscopy--aided by Stark deceleration--to reveal the low magnetic field behavior of OH in its ^2\Pi_{3/2} ro-vibronic ground state, identifying two field-insensitive hyperfine transitions suitable as qubits and determining a differential Lande g-factor of 1.267(5)\times10^{-3} between opposite parity components of the \Lambda-doublet. The data are successfully modeled with an effective hyperfine Zeeman Hamiltonian, which we use to make a tenfold improvement of the magnetically sensitive, astrophysically important \Delta F=\pm1 satellite-line frequencies, yielding 1720529887(10) Hz and 1612230825(15) Hz.Comment: 4+ pages, 3 figure

Berry-Like Phases in Structured Atoms and Molecules

Quantum mechanical phases arising from a periodically varying Hamiltonian are considered. These phases are derived from the eigenvalues of a stationary, “dressed” Hamiltonian that is able to treat internal atomic or molecular structure in addition to the time variation. In the limit of an adiabatic time variation, the usual Berry phase is recovered. For more rapid variation, nonadiabatic corrections to the Berry phase are recovered in perturbation theory, and their explicit dependence on internal structure emerges. Simple demonstrations of this formalism are given, to particles containing interacting spins, and to molecules in electric fields