The Senkaku Islands and the Pivot in Japanese defence policy

This policy brief examines the three new national security documents that Japan issued at the end of 2022. It argues that the origins of the changes announced by these documents, including Japan’s plan to increase defense spending by 60% and its decision to acquire a modest counter-strike capability with long-range missiles is not rooted in recent geopolitical develops concerning Ukraine or Taiwan, but is in fact the culmination of a decade long effort to strengthen Japan’s territorial defense, especially of the Senkaku islands. In short, the changes announced in late 2022 represent a doubling down on territorial defense, not the emergence of a direct military role in regional security

The vertebrate taxonomy ontology: a framework for reasoning across model organism and species phenotypes

Background: A hierarchical taxonomy of organisms is a prerequisite for semantic integration of biodiversity data. Ideally, there would be a single, expansive, authoritative taxonomy that includes extinct and extant taxa, information on synonyms and common names, and monophyletic supraspecific taxa that reflect our current understanding of phylogenetic relationships. Description: As a step towards development of such a resource, and to enable large-scale integration of phenotypic data across vertebrates, we created the Vertebrate Taxonomy Ontology (VTO), a semantically defined taxonomic resource derived from the integration of existing taxonomic compilations, and freely distributed under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) public domain waiver. The VTO includes both extant and extinct vertebrates and currently contains 106,947 taxonomic terms, 22 taxonomic ranks, 104,736 synonyms, and 162,400 cross-references to other taxonomic resources. Key challenges in constructing the VTO included (1) extracting and merging names, synonyms, and identifiers from heterogeneous sources; (2) structuring hierarchies of terms based on evolutionary relationships and the principle of monophyly; and (3) automating this process as much as possible to accommodate updates in source taxonomies. Conclusions: The VTO is the primary source of taxonomic information used by the Phenoscape Knowledgebase (http://phenoscape.org/ webcite), which integrates genetic and evolutionary phenotype data across both model and non-model vertebrates. The VTO is useful for inferring phenotypic changes on the vertebrate tree of life, which enables queries for candidate genes for various episodes in vertebrate evolution. Keywords: Data integration; Evolutionary biology; Paleontology; Taxonomic ran

What are school leavers' priorities for festival preparation?

Published: 20 November 2013This paper reports on the findings from a qualitative research study that explored how young people prepared to minimise and/or avoid alcohol-related harm while attending a Schoolies Festival (SF). SFs are mass gatherings at which young people (schoolies) celebrate their graduation from high school. The attendance of schoolies, in various Australian communities, ranges between 10 000 and 30 000 individuals during the event. The literature suggests that schoolies are at higher than normal risk of harm at SF from misuse of alcohol, unsafe sex, aggressive behaviour, and other risk-taking factors. As a result of these concerns, SF organisers developed an infrastructure that treats alcohol-related harm, and provides on-site care (first aid stations) by St John Ambulance staff. This study used focus groups to identify strategies used by schoolies to avoid alcohol-related harm during SFs. Data revealed that schoolies did not actively seek health information before attending the event and did not display an interest in doing so. It is important to note that schoolies planned to use alcohol to celebrate and have a good time. Therefore a harm minimisation approach with a focus on providing the necessary infrastructure at SFs to minimise the dangers associated with excess alcohol use is important. Schoolies indicated that they had no desire for information about the hazards of alcohol ingestion. If any health messages were to be used by health authorities, it would be far more appropriate to promote the message of ‘take care of your mate’, to contribute to building a supportive environment at the event. This may be of more benefit to minimise harm at SFs than funding other health messages.Alison Hutton, Lynette Cusack, Lana Zannettino, Sarah J. M. Shaefer, Naomi Verdonk and Paul Arbo

Insights into the Ecology and Evolutionary Success of Crocodilians Revealed through Bite-Force and Tooth-Pressure Experimentation

BackgroundCrocodilians have dominated predatory niches at the water-land interface for over 85 million years. Like their ancestors, living species show substantial variation in their jaw proportions, dental form and body size. These differences are often assumed to reflect anatomical specialization related to feeding and niche occupation, but quantified data are scant. How these factors relate to biomechanical performance during feeding and their relevance to crocodilian evolutionary success are not known.Methodology/Principal FindingsWe measured adult bite forces and tooth pressures in all 23 extant crocodilian species and analyzed the results in ecological and phylogenetic contexts. We demonstrate that these reptiles generate the highest bite forces and tooth pressures known for any living animals. Bite forces strongly correlate with body size, and size changes are a major mechanism of feeding evolution in this group. Jaw shape demonstrates surprisingly little correlation to bite force and pressures. Bite forces can now be predicted in fossil crocodilians using the regression equations generated in this research.Conclusions/SignificanceCritical to crocodilian long-term success was the evolution of a high bite-force generating musculo-skeletal architecture. Once achieved, the relative force capacities of this system went essentially unmodified throughout subsequent diversification. Rampant changes in body size and concurrent changes in bite force served as a mechanism to allow access to differing prey types and sizes. Further access to the diversity of near-shore prey was gained primarily through changes in tooth pressure via the evolution of dental form and distributions of the teeth within the jaws. Rostral proportions changed substantially throughout crocodilian evolution, but not in correspondence with bite forces. The biomechanical and ecological ramifications of such changes need further examination

EU-Japan cooperation on renewable energy

The European Union and Japan are the largest economies consistently committed to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which cause global warming, and to promoting renewable energy. China has also been an important partner, although it has adopted less ambitious targets, and the US has oscillated between committing to reducing GHG emissions during the Obama administration, abandoning this policy during the Trump administration and now re-embracing this goal with more fervour than ever during the Biden administration. Among the top four global economies, the EU and Japan have been the most consistent and important supporters of GHG emission reductions and renewable energy promotion. In 2020 and 2021 both the EU and Japan significantly upped their targets for GHG emission reductions. In April 2021 during a global climate summit called by US President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Suga Yasuhide significantly raised Japan´s GHG target, pledging an ambitious 46% reduction by 2030. This was a big jump from the previous 26% target for the same yea

Decentering from the US in regional security multilateralism: Japan's 1991 pivot

This article poses the question of why, after having consistently pursued an isolationist strategy of avoiding security ties with partners other than the US, and having followed the US in opposing regional security multilateralism, did Japan suddenly reverse course and get out in front of the US with its first post-war regional security initiative. This article addresses this question by tracing the internal debates, policy process and motivations that drove Japan to reverse its position, a process that transformed Japan into the leading champion of regional security multilateralism in East Asia

Japan as a 'normal country'? : A Nation in Search of Its Place in the World : [book review]

Non UBCUnreviewedOthe

Japanese public opinion and the war on terrorism : implications for Japan's security strategy

For more about the East-West Center, see http://www.eastwestcenter.org/Japan has actively contributed to the Bush administration's war on terrorism, going far beyond the financial support it provided during the first Gulf War in 1991 and testing the limits of postwar constitutional prohibitions on the deployment of military forces overseas. This has led some observers to suggest that Japan might be positioning itself to become a more active supporter of U.S. global strategy, a "Britain of Asia." This study challenges this view and finds that less has changed in Japan's overseas deployments than is often claimed. This study identified public opinion, an under-studied factor, as the reason for the modest expansion of Japan's overseas deployments since 9/11 and brings to bear a wealth of data to back up this conclusion. Applying modified conceptions of defensive and offensive realism to public attitudes regarding the use of force for the first time, this study finds that the Japanese "mass public" has increasingly recognized the need to prepare to meet military threats, but views military power as useful only for homeland defense. The public has been consistently skeptical about the utility of offensive military power for promoting democracy or suppressing weapons of mass destruction proliferation or terrorist networks. The invasion of Iraq, for reasons viewed with great skepticism, has caused the Japanese public, like publics in many other countries, to become increasingly distrustful of U.S. foreign policy. This, combined with a growing willingness to provide for its own defense, suggests that Japan may be less willing to support far-flung U.S. military operations in the future and concentrate more on increasing its defense autonomy

New directions in Japan's security: non-US centric evolution, introduction to a special issue

During the cold war the United States was overwhelmingly central in Japan's security policy. Japan hosted US bases and the Self-Defense Forces held joint exercises with the US military, even while shunning contacts with other militaries. Japan essentially refused even to discuss security with its neighbors. Special exceptions were made for the United States in otherwise sweeping policies, such as the exception for the United States in Tokyo's ban on weapons exports and co-development. Since the end of the cold war, Japan's security policy has undergone a little noticed transformation: it has steadily moved away from being centered on the United States as its sole security partner. Tokyo has initiated bilateral security dialogues with its Asian neighbors and assumed a leadership role in promoting regional multilateral security cooperation as a supplement to the US alliance. Japan has begun building bilateral security partnerships with a range of countries and actors, from Australia and India to the European Union. Paradoxically these changes have occurred even as the US–Japan alliance has strengthened. The articles in this special issue examine these new security ties with states and multilateral organizations, and other changes in policy that have made the United States less ‘special,’ such as by allowing arms exports to other actors