The ambivalent shadow of the pre-Wilsonian rise of international law

The generation of American international lawyers who founded the American Society of International Law in 1906 and nurtured the soil for what has been retrospectively called a “moralistic legalistic approach to international relations” remains little studied. A survey of the rise of international legal literature in the U.S. from the mid-19th century to the eve of the Great War serves as a backdrop to the examination of the boosting effect on international law of the Spanish American War in 1898. An examination of the Insular Cases before the US Supreme Court is then accompanied by the analysis of a number of influential factors behind the pre-war rise of international law in the U.S. The work concludes with an examination of the rise of natural law doctrines in international law during the interwar period and the critiques addressed.by the realist founders of the field of “international relations” to the “moralistic legalistic approach to international relation

Rolling of asymmetric disks on an inclined plane

In a recent papers, Turner and Turner (2010 {\em Am. J. Phys.} {\bf 78} 905-7) and Jensen (2011 {\em Eur. J. Phys.} {\bf 32} 389-397) analysed the motion of asymmetric rolling rigid bodies on a horizontal plane. These papers addressed the common misconception that the instantaneous point of contact of the rolling body with the plane can be used to evaluate the angular momentum $\mathbf L$ and the torque $\boldsymbol\tau$ in the equation of motion $d\mathbf L/dt = \boldsymbol\tau$. To obtain the correct equation of motion, the "phantom torque" or various rules that depend on the motion of the point about which $\mathbf L$ and $\boldsymbol\tau$ are evaluated were discussed. In this paper, I consider asymmetric disks rolling down an inclined plane and describe the most basic way of obtaining the correct equation of motion; that is, to choose the point about which $\mathbf L$ and $\boldsymbol\tau$ are evaluated that is stationary in an inertial frame

The Chagos Islands cases: the empire strikes back

Good governance requires the accommodation of multiple interests in the cause of decision making. However, undue regard for particular sectional interests can take their toll upon public faith in government administration. Historically, broad conceptions of the good of the commonwealth were employed to outweigh the interests of groups that resisted colonisation. In the decision making of the British Empire, the standard approach for justifying the marginalisation of the interests of colonised groups was that they were uncivilised and that particular hardships were the price to be paid for bringing to them the imperial dividend of industrial society. It is widely assumed that with the dismantling of the British Empire, such impulses and their accompanying jurisprudence became a thing of the past. Even as decolonisation proceeded apace after the Second World War, however, the United Kingdom maintained control of strategically important islands with a view towards sustaining its global role. In an infamous example from this twilight period of empire, in the 1960s imperial interests were used to justify the expulsion of the Chagos islanders from the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). Into the twenty-first century, this forced elision of the UK’s interests with the imperial “common good” continues to take centre stage in courtroom battles over the islanders’ rights, being cited before domestic and international tribunals in order to maintain the Chagossians’ exclusion from their homeland. This article considers the new jurisprudence of imperialism which has emerged in a string of decisions which have continued to marginalise the Chagossians’ interests

Tests of Basic Quantum Mechanics in Oscillation Experiments

According to standard quantum theory, the time evolution operator of a quantum system is independent of the state of the system. One can, however, consider systems in which this is not the case: the evolution operator may depend on the density operator itself. The presence of such modifications of quantum theory can be tested in long baseline oscillation experiments.Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX; no macros neede

Higgs mediated Double Flavor Violating top decays in Effective Theories

The possibility of detecting double flavor violating top quark transitions at future colliders is explored in a model-independent manner using the effective Lagrangian approach through the $t \to u_i\tau \mu$ ($u_i=u,c$) decays. A Yukawa sector that contemplates $SU_L(2)\times U_Y(1)$ invariants of up to dimension six is proposed and used to derive the most general flavor violating and CP violating $q_iq_jH$ and $l_il_jH$ vertices of renormalizable type. Low-energy data, on high precision measurements, and experimental limits are used to constraint the $tu_iH$ and $H\tau \mu$ vertices and then used to predict the branching ratios for the $t \to u_i\tau \mu$ decays. It is found that this branching ratios may be of the order of $10^{-4}-10^{-5}$, for a relative light Higgs boson with mass lower than $2m_W$, which could be more important than those typical values found in theories beyond the standard model for the rare top quark decays $t\to u_iV_iV_j$ ($V_i=W,Z,\gamma, g$) or $t\to u_il^+l^-$. %% LHC experiments, by using a total integrated luminosity of $\rm 3000 fb^{-1}$ of data, will be able to rule out, at 95% C.L., DFV top quark decays up to a Higgs mass of 155 GeV/$c^2$ or discover such a process up to a Higgs mass of 147 GeV/$c^2$.Comment: 24 pages, 11 figure

Meteoroid and debris special investigation group data acquisition procedures

The entire LDEF spacecraft was examined by M&D SIG for impact (i.e., craters greater than or = 0.5 mm and penetrations greater than or = 0.3 mm in diameter) and related features (e.g., debris, secondaries). During the various detailed surveys conducted at NASA Kennedy, approx. 5,000 impact related features were photodocumented, and their locations measured and recorded; an additional approx. 30,000 smaller features were counted. The equipment and techniques used by the M&D SIG permitted the determination and recording of the locations and diameters of the 5,000 imaged features. A variety of experimental and LDEF structural hardware was acquired by the M&D SIG and is presently being examined and curated at NASA Johnson

h analogue of Newton's binomial formula

In this letter, the $h$--analogue of Newton's binomial formula is obtained in the $h$--deformed quantum plane which does not have any $q$--analogue. For $h=0$, this is just the usual one as it should be. Furthermore, the binomial coefficients reduce to $\frac{n!}{(n-k)!}$ for $h=1$. \\ Some properties of the $h$--binomial coefficients are also given. \\ Finally, I hope that such results will contribute to an introduction of the $h$--analogue of the well--known functions, $h$--special functions and $h$--deformed analysis.Comment: 6 pages, latex Jounal-ref: J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 31 (1998) L75