Inter-National Justice for Them or Global Justice for Us?: The U.S. as a Supranational Justice Donor

U.S. policy concerning international justice, particularly at the ICC, involves case-by-case support when such support is in U.S. national interests. This policy signals that the U.S. considers itself a supranational justice donor rather than a member of a global justice community committed to enforcing shared values. This approach to international criminal justice both inhibits global justice efforts and undermines the U.S. claim to global moral leadership. The next U.S. administration should assert full membership in the global justice community by joining the ICC and providing unequivocal support for all efforts to address serious international crimes

Choosing to Prosecute: Expressive Selection at the International Criminal Court

The International Criminal Court (ICC), an institution in its infancy, has had occasion to make only a relatively small number of decisions about which defendants and which crimes to prosecute. But virtually every choice it has made has been attacked: the first defendant, Thomas Lubanga, was not senior enough and the crimes with which he was charged-war crimes involving the use of child soldiers-were not serious enough; the Court should have investigated British soldiers for war crimes committed in Iraq; the ICC should not be prosecuting only rebel perpetrators in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo; the Court\u27s focus on situations in Africa is inappropriate; the Court has focused insufficient attention on gender crimes; and so on. Much of the debate about such selection decisions centers on whether the ICC, and particularly its prosecutor, are improperly motivated by political considerations. Critics charge that selection decisions are inappropriately political, while the Court\u27s current prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, counters that his decisions are apolitical-that he is simply implementing the law enunciated in the ICC\u27s statute. Most recently, some authors have suggested that the prosecutor\u27s role is inevitably political and should be acknowledged as such. The participants in this debate rarely define what they mean by political, nor will this Article attempt such definition. Instead, this Article seeks to reframe the debate about the ICC\u27s selection decisions by shifting from the current focus on the boundaries between legal and political criteria to a constructive dialogue about the most appropriate goals and priorities for the Court. The ICC\u27s core selectivity problem is that the Court lacks sufficiently clear goals and priorities to justify its decisions. States created the ICC to adjudicate the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole, but they gave it a budget that enables only a handful of prosecutions per year. Persons charged with implementing the Court\u27s broad mandate-its prosecutor and judges-must thus select a few cases from among thousands. Yet the international community has provided the Court virtually no guidance about what goals it should seek to achieve through the cases it selects, beyond the vague mandate to strive to end impunity for the most serious crimes

The International Criminal Court’s Gravity Jurisprudence at Ten

This Essay analyzes the Court’s early jurisprudence interpreting the gravity threshold for admissibility. It argues that the threshold, while useful in garnering support for ratification of the Rome Statute, now seems destined to play a minor role in determining the ICC’s reach. While there are multiple possible explanations for this development, an important doctrinal cause identified in the jurisprudence is that the gravity threshold for admissibility is in tension with the Rome Statute’s provisions regarding jurisdiction. At least with regard to the admissibility of cases, the judges have concluded that interpreting the gravity threshold to exclude certain types of defendants or crimes from the Court’s reach would amount to an impermissible revision of the Court’s jurisdiction. To avoid this outcome, the judges have developed a flexible multi-factor approach to the gravity threshold that enables them to justify admitting virtually any case within the Court’s jurisdiction. The Essay concludes by arguing that, in light of the tension between admissibility and jurisdiction, the judges are right to relegate the gravity threshold to a minor role in determining the cases the Court adjudicates. To the extent the judges seek to limit the ICC’s reach, they should do so by interpreting the Court’s jurisdictional provisions directly rather than through the back door of admissibility

Inter-National Justice for Them or Global Justice for Us?: The U.S. as a Supranational Justice Donor

U.S. policy concerning international justice, particularly at the ICC, involves case-by-case support when such support is in U.S. national interests. This policy signals that the U.S. considers itself a supranational justice donor rather than a member of a global justice community committed to enforcing shared values. This approach to international criminal justice both inhibits global justice efforts and undermines the U.S. claim to global moral leadership. The next U.S. administration should assert full membership in the global justice community by joining the ICC and providing unequivocal support for all efforts to address serious international crimes

A Time Purified Separated Antiproton Beam At The AGS

Physic

P2Y12 regulates platelet adhesion/activation, thrombus growth, and thrombus stability in injured arteries

The critical role for ADP in arterial thrombogenesis was established by the clinical success of P2Y12 antagonists, currently used at doses that block 40–50% of the P2Y12 on platelets. This study was designed to determine the role of P2Y12 in platelet thrombosis and how its complete absence affects the thrombotic process. P2Y12-null mice were generated by a gene-targeting strategy. Using an in vivo mesenteric artery injury model and real-time continuous analysis of the thrombotic process, we observed that the time for appearance of first thrombus was delayed and that only small, unstable thrombi formed in P2Y12–/– mice without reaching occlusive size, in the absence of aspirin. Platelet adhesion to vWF was impaired in P2Y12–/– platelets. While adhesion to fibrinogen and collagen appeared normal, the platelets in thrombi from P2Y12–/– mice on collagen were less dense and less activated than their WT counterparts. P2Y12–/– platelet activation was also reduced in response to ADP or a PAR-4–activating peptide. Thus, P2Y12 is involved in several key steps of thrombosis: platelet adhesion/activation, thrombus growth, and stability. The data suggest that more aggressive strategies of P2Y12 antagonism will be antithrombotic without the requirement of aspirin cotherapy and may provide benefits even to the aspirin-nonresponder population

Duration learning for analysis of nanopore ionic current blockades

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Ionic current blockade signal processing, for use in nanopore detection, offers a promising new way to analyze single molecule properties, with potential implications for DNA sequencing. The alpha-Hemolysin transmembrane channel interacts with a translocating molecule in a nontrivial way, frequently evidenced by a complex ionic flow blockade pattern. Typically, recorded current blockade signals have several levels of blockade, with various durations, all obeying a fixed statistical profile for a given molecule. Hidden Markov Model (HMM) based duration learning experiments on artificial two-level Gaussian blockade signals helped us to identify proper modeling framework. We then apply our framework to the real multi-level DNA hairpin blockade signal.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The identified upper level blockade state is observed with durations that are geometrically distributed (consistent with an a physical decay process for remaining in any given state). We show that mixture of convolution chains of geometrically distributed states is better for presenting multimodal long-tailed duration phenomena. Based on learned HMM profiles we are able to classify 9 base-pair DNA hairpins with accuracy up to 99.5% on signals from same-day experiments.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We have demonstrated several implementations for <it>de novo </it>estimation of duration distribution probability density function with HMM framework and applied our model topology to the real data. The proposed design could be handy in molecular analysis based on nanopore current blockade signal.</p

Vapor-Phase Oxidation of Benzyl Alcohol Using Manganese Oxide Octahedral Molecular Sieves (OMS-2)

Vapor-phase selective oxidation of benzyl alcohol has been accomplished using cryptomelane-type manganese oxide octahedral molecular sieve (OMS-2) catalysts. A conversion of 92% and a selectivity to benzaldehyde of 99% were achieved using OMS-2. The role played by the oxidant in this system was probed by studying the reaction in the absence of oxidant. The natures of framework transformations occurring during the oxidation reaction were fully studied using temperature-programmed techniques, as well as in situ X-ray diffraction under different atmospheres