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

Structure of the neutron-rich N=7 isotones 10Li and 9He

The near threshold structure of the unbound N=7 isotones 10Li and 9He has been investigated using proton removal and breakup from intermediate energy (35 MeV/nucleon) secondary beams of 11Be and 14,15B. The coincident detection of the beam velocity 9Li and 8He fragments and neutrons permitted the relative energy of the in-flight decay of 10Li and 9He to be reconstructed. Both systems were found to exhibited virtual s-wave strength near threshold together with a higher-lying resonance.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, Contribution to INPC2010 - "International Nuclear Physics Conference", Vancouver, Canada, 4-9 July 2010, Proceedings to be published in Journal of Physics: Conference Serie

Continued investigation of LDEF's structural frame and thermal blankets by the Meteoroid and Debris Special Investigation Group

This report focuses on the data acquired by detailed examination of LDEF intercostals, 68 of which are now in possession of the Meteoroid and Debris Special Investigation Group (M&D SIG) at JSC. In addition, limited data will be presented for several small sections from the A0178 thermal control blankets that were examined/counted prior to being shipped to Principal Investigators (PI's) for scientific study. The data presented here are limited to measurements of crater and penetration-hole diameters and their frequency of occurrence which permits, yet also constrains, more model-dependent, interpretative efforts. Such efforts will focus on the conversion of crater and penetration-hole sizes to projectile diameters (and masses), on absolute particle fluxes, and on the distribution of particle-encounter velocities. These are all complex issues that presently cannot be pursued without making various assumptions which relate, in part, to crater-scaling relationships, and to assumed trajectories of natural and man-made particle populations in LEO that control the initial impact conditions

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

Vortices Clustering: The Origin of the Second Peak in the Magnetisation Loops of High Temperature Superconductors

We study vortex clustering in type II Superconductors. We demonstrate that the ``second peak'' observed in magnetisation loops may be a dynamical effect associated with a density driven instability of the vortex system. At the microscopic level the instability shows up as the clustering of individual vortices at (rare) preferential regions of the pinning potential. In the limit of quasi-static ramping the instability is related to a phase transition in the equilibrium vortex system.Comment: 11 pages + 3 figure

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

DON as a source of bioavailable nitrogen for phytoplankton

Relative to inorganic nitrogen, concentrations of dissolved organic nitrogen ( DON) are often high, even in regions believed to be nitrogen-limited. The persistence of these high concentrations led to the view that the DON pool was largely refractory and therefore unimportant to plankton nutrition. Any DON that was utilized was believed to fuel bacterial production. More recent work, however, indicates that fluxes into and out of the DON pool can be large, and that the constancy in concentration is a function of tightly coupled production and consumption processes. Evidence is also accumulating which indicates that phytoplankton, including a number of harmful species, may obtain a substantial part of their nitrogen nutrition from organic compounds. Ongoing research includes ways to discriminate between autotrophic and heterotrophic utilization, as well as a number of mechanisms, such as cell surface enzymes and photochemical decomposition, that could facilitate phytoplankton use of DON components

Cognition-Enhancing Drugs: Can We Say No?

Normative analysis of cognition-enhancing drugs frequently weighs the liberty interests of drug users against egalitarian commitments to a level playing field. Yet those who would refuse to engage in neuroenhancement may well find their liberty to do so limited in a society where such drugs are widespread. To the extent that unvarnished emotional responses are world-disclosive, neurocosmetic practices also threaten to provide a form of faulty data to their users. This essay examines underappreciated liberty-based and epistemic rationales for regulating cognition-enhancing drugs