Uneven Power and the Pursuit of Peace: How Regional Power Transitions Motivate Integration. CES Working Paper, no. 150, 2007

This paper addresses two related puzzles confronting students of regional and international integration: Why do states willingly pool and delegate sovereignty within international institutions? What accounts for the timing and content of regional integration agreements? Most theories of integration suggest that states integrate in order to solve problems of incomplete information and reduce transaction costs and other barriers to economic growth. In contrast I argue that integration can serve to establish a credible commitment that rules out the risk of future conflict among states of unequal power. Specifically, I suggest that integration presents an alternative to preventive war as a means to preclude a rising revisionist power from establishing a regional hegemony. The implication is that it is not countries enjoying stable and peaceful relations that are most likely to pursue integration, but rather countries that find themselves caught in a regional security dilemma, which they hope to break out of by means of institutionalized cooperation. I evaluate this proposition against evidence from two historical cases of regional integration: the German Zollverein and the European Communities

Dissection of mechanical force in living cells by super-resolved traction force microscopy

Cells continuously exert or respond to mechanical force. Measurement of these nanoscale forces is a major challenge in cell biology; yet such measurement is essential to the understanding of cell regulation and function. Current methods for examining mechanical force generation either necessitate dedicated equipment or limit themselves to coarse-grained force measurements on the micron scale. In this protocol, we describe stimulated emission depletion traction force microscopy-STED-TFM (STFM), which allows higher sampling of the forces generated by the cell than conventional TFM, leading to a twofold increase in spatial resolution (of up to 500 nm). The procedure involves the preparation of functionalized polyacrylamide gels loaded with fluorescent beads, as well as the acquisition of STED images and their analysis. We illustrate the approach using the example of HeLa cells expressing paxillin-EGFP to visualize focal adhesions. Our protocol uses widely available laser-scanning confocal microscopes equipped with a conventional STED laser, open-source software and common molecular biology techniques. The entire STFM experiment preparation, data acquisition and analysis require 2-3 d and could be completed by someone with minimal experience in molecular biology or biophysics