Historical ‘signposts’ and other temporal indicators in the Czech lexicon

This article posits that the Czechs employ a great many historical markers, previously applied to other events of national importance, which help to shape collective memory and right the ‘wrongs’ of the past. It is argued that these temporal indicators share a number of clearly defined characteristics, and that their use is too systematic and calculated to be merely a function of the constraints of the lexicon. The first part of the study considers in detail questions of semantics (especially the distinction between denotation and connotation), the lexicographical sources available to the researcher, and the lexical ‘signpost’ in context, while the second part focuses on practical examples of lexical re-appropriation since 1918, with particular reference to dictionaries and the Czech National Corpus.University of Wolverhampto

A role for the prefrontal cortex in stress- and cocaine-induced reinstatement of cocaine seeking in rats

It is well established that stress induces reinstatement of drug seeking in an animal model of relapse. Here we studied the role of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in foot-shock stress-induced reinstatement of cocaine seeking.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/46355/1/213_2002_Article_1283.pd

Between history and values: A study on the nature of interpretation in international law

My thesis discusses the place of evaluative judgements in the interpretation of general international law. It concentrates on two questions. First, whether it is possible to interpret international legal practices without making an evaluative judgement about the point or value that provides the best justification of these practices. Second, whether the use of evaluative judgements in international legal interpretation threatens to undermine the objectivity of international law, the neutrality of international lawyers or the consensual and voluntary basis of the international legal system. I answer both questions in the negative. As regards the first, I argue that international legal practice has an interpretive structure, which combines appeals to the history of international practice with appeals to the principles and values that these practices are best understood as promoting. This interpretive structure is apparent not only in the claims of international lawyers about particular rules of international law (here I use the rule of estoppel as an example) but also in the most basic intuitions of international theorists about the theory and sources of general international law. I then argue that some popular concerns to the effect that the exercise of evaluation in the interpretation of international law will undermine the coherence or the usefulness of the discipline are generally unwarranted. The fact that international legal practice has an interpretive structure does not entail that propositions of international law are only subjectively true, that the interpreter enjoys license to manipulate their meaning for self-serving purposes, or that international law will collapse under the weight of irresolvable disagreements, divisions and conflicts about its proper interpretation