The Response to Nuclear Proliferation

This paper uses the methods of social network analysis to discover the structural patterns of cooperation that arose in response to a global traditional security problem. It does this by mapping compulsory and institutional power relations (Barnett and Duvall 2005) among actors responding to the proliferation of nuclear weapons since the end of the Cold War. For the institutional power measure, I use treaty and international agreement membership; and for the compulsory power measure, I use contractual obligations for nuclear expertise, materials, and technology. By mapping the relationships at the system level of world politics, including individual states as well as intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), transnational nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and transnational corporations (TNCs), this paper finds a third relation among these actors, namely, structural power. It also demonstrates how a network approach to the constitution of system level world politics can produce knowledge not available to traditional methods

Human Security Networks in the Indian Ocean Tsunami

This paper uses the methods of social network analysis to discover the structural patterns of cooperation that arose in response to a global human security problem. It does this by mapping compulsory and institutional power relations among actors of the construction of a human security transnational cooperative response network—the response to the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004. By mapping the relationships at the system level of world politics, including individual states as well as intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), transnational nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and/or think tanks, and transnational corporations (TNCs), this paper finds a third relation among these actors, namely, structural power. It also demonstrates how a new way of thinking about the constitution of system level world politics can produce knowledge not available to traditional methods by finding two striking results: first, the role played by an organization cannot always be predicted by reference to its attributes, and second, depending on the context, organizations of different types will play similar (structurally equivalent) roles. Finally, this paper compares the network formed in response to this disaster with the network that formed after a disaster of similar magnitude in the past

National Security and Global Financial Governance

One threat in the post-9/11 world that was previously subsumed under the Cold War rubric is the threat of instability in financial markets that can undermine the legitimacy of the governments of states. Understanding the structure of international finance is thus crucial to issues of global governance, the more so because the contemporary structure of finance can threaten any individual state beyond its capacity to cope. All the actors in finance (whether commercial or investment banks, central banks, or other types) are connected by each financial transaction they make, as well as every regulatory or enforcement transaction; all transactions are relationships. All of these relationships together make a network. By examining these relationships using network analysis, we should see how all financial actors are wired together—not just the position of the biggest or most prominent. We should also be able to see second- and third-degree relationships. Network analysis thus allows us to explore a “map” of the financial terrain on which various strategies for security may be employed. These strategies can include checks to stop cascades and regulations to break up actors with high measures of centrality

The Effect of Network Structure on the Provision of Security

The term “security” has many more dimensions in the post-9/11 world than it had during the Cold War. Threats may come from different sources, at different speeds, and have different targets. All the actors involved in the provision of security from a specific type of threat create a network—not just states or states in intergovernmental organizations, but all the actors in the “ecosystem. If we look at the relationships among these actors using network analysis, we should be able to map the structure of the entire network. Contrary to the assumptions in most International Relations literature, networks can be centralized (as in hierarchical states) or not, as in markets. The networks transnational actors have created to meet different threats exhibit different structures, from dense and highly centralized to diffuse and dispersed. The network’s structure may thus have a positive or negative effect on the provision of security, depending on the type of threat that is to be met

RETRACTED: Monolayers of pigment-protein complexes on a bare gold electrode:Orientation controlled deposition and comparison of electron transfer rate for two configurations

Photosynthetic protein complexes are very efficient in solar energy absorption, excitation transfer, and subsequent electron transfer. These complexes have the potential to be exploited as circuit elements for various bio-hybrid devices, ranging from biosensors to solar cells. In this report, we characterized a bioelectronic composite fabricated by interfacing reaction center-light harvesting 1 (RC-LH1) complex with an un-functionalized gold surface in defined orientation. The orientation of RC-LH1 complex was controlled by using Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) deposition technique: RC-LH1 complexes were attached to the electrode facing either with their primary donor or the acceptor sides by'"forward" or'"reverse" dipping, respectively. Photochronoamperometry was utilized to confirm the integrity of the protein complexes and their orientation. Electrical transport of protein complexes coupled to gold electrode was studied by using conductive atomic force microscopy (C-AFM). Two distinct current-voltage (I-. V) curves were observed for two different deposition schemes, indicating opposite orientations of RC-LH1 complexes on the electrode. I-. V spectroscopy was also carried out under light illumination, the magnitude of current was considerably increased by the light illumination and the asymmetry of the curves was more pronounced. We show that, RC-LH1 complexes attached to the electrode with primary donor side facing the electrode exhibit much faster electron transfer compared to opposite orientatio

Prevalence of Vitamin B12 deficiency in patients of type 2 diabetes mellitus on metformin: A case control study from Pakistan

Introduction: Diabetes Mellitus is the most common endocrine disorder and metformin is the most commonly prescribed oral hypoglycemicagent. Metformin is well known to cause viamin B12 deficiency due to effect on calcium-dependent membrane action in the terminal ileum leading to malabsorption of vitamin B12. The purpose of this study is to determine prevalence and associations of Vitamin B12 deficiency in patients of type 2 diabetes mellitus treated with metformin. Methods: This case control study was carried out in department of medicine, Combined Military Hospital, Kharian from 1st Jan 2012 to 30 december 2012.We enrolled 114 outdoor patients of type 2 diabetes mellitus currently on metformin for atleast 12 months, by consecutive sampling, and 105 age and sex matched patients taken as control. Patients with vitamin B12 levels of less than 150 pg/ml were said to be B12 deficient. The results were analyzed on SPSS version 16.Results: Serum B12 levels were low in 35 patients (31%) on metformin as compared to only 9 patients (8.6%) among controls,(p value 0.002). Mean B12 levels were significantly low in metformin group 311 pg/ml (±194.4), p value 0.03. Dose of metformin had inverse correlation with B12 levels and the difference was statistically significant with pvalue < 0.001.Conclusion: Our study demonstrated significantly high prevalence of  vitamin B12 deficiency in patients treated with metformin with significant effect of dose and duration of metformin use on B12 levels. Physicians must recognize this important fact and screen diabetics on metformin therapy for underlying B12 deficiency

Chiral symmetry breaking in QED3{\rm QED}_{3} in presence of irrelevant interactions: a renormalization group study

Motivated by recent theoretical approaches to high temperature superconductivity, we study dynamical mass generation in three dimensional quantum electrodynamics ${\rm QED}_{3}$) in presence of irrelevant four-fermion quartic terms. The problem is reformulated in terms of the renormalization group flows of certain four-fermion couplings and charge, and then studied in the limit of large number of fermion flavors $N$. We find that the critical number of fermions $N_c$ below which the mass becomes dynamically generated depends continuously on a weak chiral-symmetry-breaking interaction. One-loop calculation in our gauge-invariant approach yields $N_{c0} = 6$ in pure ${\rm QED}_3$. We also find that chiral-symmetry-preserving mass cannot become dynamically generated in pure ${\rm QED}_{3}$.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure

On the classification of conditionally integrable evolution systems in (1+1) dimensions

We generalize earlier results of Fokas and Liu and find all locally analytic (1+1)-dimensional evolution equations of order $n$ that admit an $N$-shock type solution with $N\leq n+1$. To this end we develop a refinement of the technique from our earlier work (A. Sergyeyev, J. Phys. A: Math. Gen, 35 (2002), 7653--7660), where we completely characterized all (1+1)-dimensional evolution systems \bi{u}_t=\bi{F}(x,t,\bi{u},\p\bi{u}/\p x,...,\p^n\bi{u}/\p x^n) that are conditionally invariant under a given generalized (Lie--B\"acklund) vector field \bi{Q}(x,t,\bi{u},\p\bi{u}/\p x,...,\p^k\bi{u}/\p x^k)\p/\p\bi{u} under the assumption that the system of ODEs \bi{Q}=0 is totally nondegenerate. Every such conditionally invariant evolution system admits a reduction to a system of ODEs in $t$, thus being a nonlinear counterpart to quasi-exactly solvable models in quantum mechanics. Keywords: Exact solutions, nonlinear evolution equations, conditional integrability, generalized symmetries, reduction, generalized conditional symmetries MSC 2000: 35A30, 35G25, 81U15, 35N10, 37K35, 58J70, 58J72, 34A34Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX 2e, now uses hyperre

Instant dynamic response measurements for crack monitoring in metallic beams

This paper investigates the interdependencies of the modal behaviour of a cantilever beam, its dynamic response and crack growth. A methodology is proposed that can predict crack growth in a metallic beam using only its dynamic response. Analytical and numerical relationships are formulated between the fundamental mode and crack growth using the existing literature and finite element analysis (FEA) software, respectively. A relationship between the dynamic response and the modal behaviour is formulated empirically. All three relationships are used to predict crack growth and propagation. The load conditions are considered the same in all of the experiments for both model development and model validation. The predicted crack growth is compared with the visual observations. The overall error is within acceptable limits in all comparisons. The results obtained demonstrate the possibility of diagnosing crack growth in metallic beams at any instant within the operational conditions and environment