Transnational Accountability And The Politics Of Shame

Since my work on world affairs is sensitive to the legal dimensions of the course of events, it is an especial pleasure to participate for the first time in a meeting of the International Law Association

Le touriste et le terroriste ou les deux extrêmes du continuum transnational

This paper proceeds from the premise that profound changes have transformed the structure of world politics and that, consequently, a new, transnational paradigm of the global system needs to be developed. All the existing paradigms are found to be incapable of handling the proliferation of actors, the declining capacities of governments, the mushrooming of subgroup loyalties, the growing demands of the Third World, and the expansion of the range of issues on the global agenda - to mention only the most salient of the transformations that have rendered world politics both more decentralized and more complex. What is needed, it is argued, is a model organized around micro units of analysis that are common to both the new and old actors, issues, and structures and that thus form the foundation of the many new macro aggregations which have come to share the world stage with governments and international organizations.After developing a conception of four types of aggregational processes through which micro parts are converted into macro wholes, the analysis focuses on two types of transnational roles as worthy of consideration as the basic micro units of the new paradigm. The two types are designated as primitive and derivative roles. The former refers to roles in macro units that would not exist if their activities did not span national boundaries (the multinational corporation is an example), while the latter refers to roles in macro aggregations that do not depend on transnational interactions for their existence even though performances in them to have transnational consequences (examples are farmers, parents, and car drivers, who are both active and inadvertent participants in, respectively, today's global food, population, and energy issues).Whatever the issue involved, and irrespective of whether they are primitive or derivative, all transnational roles can be located on a legitimacy-authority continuum and seen as varying between two extremes, one which gives exclusive priority to the citizen role in a nation-state and the other which accords exclusive loyalty to the transnational role. The tourist and the terrorist are offered as examples of roles at the two extremes of this important continuum

Public Opinion and Soviet Foreign Policy: Competing Belief Systems in the Policy-Making Process

Swings of American public opinion with respect to the Soviet Union and its actions are often attributed to the individual interested American\u27s lack of enduring convictions

Fractional quantization of ballistic conductance in 1D hole systems

We analyze the fractional quantization of the ballistic conductance associated with the light and heavy holes bands in Si, Ge and GaAs systems. It is shown that the formation of the localized hole state in the region of the quantum point contact connecting two quasi-1D hole leads modifies drastically the conductance pattern. Exchange interaction between localized and propagating holes results in the fractional quantization of the ballistic conductance different from those in electronic systems. The value of the conductance at the additional plateaux depends on the offset between the bands of the light and heavy holes, \Delta, and the sign of the exchange interaction constant. For \Delta=0 and ferromagnetic exchange interaction, we observe additional plateaux around the values 7e^{2}/4h, 3e^{2}/h and 15e^{2}/4h, while antiferromagnetic interaction plateaux are formed around e^{2}/4h, e^{2}/h and 9e^{2}/4h. For large \Delta, the single plateau is formed at e^2/h.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Blow-up and global existence for a general class of nonlocal nonlinear coupled wave equations

We study the initial-value problem for a general class of nonlinear nonlocal coupled wave equations. The problem involves convolution operators with kernel functions whose Fourier transforms are nonnegative. Some well-known examples of nonlinear wave equations, such as coupled Boussinesq-type equations arising in elasticity and in quasi-continuum approximation of dense lattices, follow from the present model for suitable choices of the kernel functions. We establish local existence and sufficient conditions for finite time blow-up and as well as global existence of solutions of the problem.Comment: 11 pages. Minor changes and added reference

Logarithmically Slow Expansion of Hot Bubbles in Gases

We report logarithmically slow expansion of hot bubbles in gases in the process of cooling. A model problem first solved, when the temperature has compact support. Then temperature profile decaying exponentially at large distances is considered. The periphery of the bubble is shown to remain essentially static ("glassy") in the process of cooling until it is taken over by a logarithmically slowly expanding "core". An analytical solution to the problem is obtained by matched asymptotic expansion. This problem gives an example of how logarithmic corrections enter dynamic scaling.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Amodal processing in human prefrontal cortex

Information enters the cortex via modality-specific sensory regions, whereas actions are produced by modality-specific motor regions. Intervening central stages of information processing map sensation to behavior. Humans perform this central processing in a flexible, abstract manner such that sensory information in any modality can lead to response via any motor system. Cognitive theories account for such flexible behavior by positing amodal central information processing (e. g., "central executive," Baddeley and Hitch, 1974; "supervisory attentional system," Norman and Shallice, 1986; "response selection bottleneck," Pashler, 1994). However, the extent to which brain regions embodying central mechanisms of information processing are amodal remains unclear. Here we apply multivariate pattern analysis to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data to compare response selection, a cognitive process widely believed to recruit an amodal central resource across sensory and motor modalities. We show that most frontal and parietal cortical areas known to activate across a wide variety of tasks code modality, casting doubt on the notion that these regions embody a central processor devoid of modality representation. Importantly, regions of anterior insula and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex consistently failed to code modality across four experiments. However, these areas code at least one other task dimension, process (instantiated as response selection vs response execution), ensuring that failure to find coding of modality is not driven by insensitivity of multivariate pattern analysis in these regions. We conclude that abstract encoding of information modality is primarily a property of subregions of the prefrontal cortex

A Continuum Description of Rarefied Gas Dynamics (I)--- Derivation From Kinetic Theory

We describe an asymptotic procedure for deriving continuum equations from the kinetic theory of a simple gas. As in the works of Hilbert, of Chapman and of Enskog, we expand in the mean flight time of the constituent particles of the gas, but we do not adopt the Chapman-Enskog device of simplifying the formulae at each order by using results from previous orders. In this way, we are able to derive a new set of fluid dynamical equations from kinetic theory, as we illustrate here for the relaxation model for monatomic gases. We obtain a stress tensor that contains a dynamical pressure term (or bulk viscosity) that is process-dependent and our heat current depends on the gradients of both temperature and density. On account of these features, the equations apply to a greater range of Knudsen number (the ratio of mean free path to macroscopic scale) than do the Navier-Stokes equations, as we see in the accompanying paper. In the limit of vanishing Knudsen number, our equations reduce to the usual Navier-Stokes equations with no bulk viscosity.Comment: 16 page

Syrian Refugees and the Digital Passage to Europe: Smartphone Infrastructures and Affordances

This research examines the role of smartphones in refugees’ journeys. It traces the risks and possibilities afforded by smartphones for facilitating information, communication, and migration flows in the digital passage to Europe. For the Syrian and Iraqi refugee respondents in this France-based qualitative study, smartphones are lifelines, as important as water and food. They afford the planning, navigation, and documentation of journeys, enabling regular contact with family, friends, smugglers, and those who help them. However, refugees are simultaneously exposed to new forms of exploitation and surveillance with smartphones as migrations are financialised by smugglers and criminalized by European policies, and the digital passage is dependent on a contingent range of sociotechnical and material assemblages. Through an infrastructural lens, we capture the dialectical dynamics of opportunity and vulnerability, and the forms of resilience and solidarity, that arise as forced migration and digital connectivity coincide