Fighting for reputation: China's deterrence policy and concerns about credibility

States under threat may choose to initiate war not only because their interests are hurt, but also because they want to establish or defend their credibility, so that they do not have to fight later wars. This dissertation looks at deterrence situations where the defender of the status quo responds to challenges with force and links its concern with credibility to the decision. When states are expressly worried about the repercussions of backing down, they are more likely to fight. By shining a spotlight on the defender rather than the challenger, this study enriches the discussion on why and how deterrence fails. By linking the decision to fight to a concern about reputation, this study also provides a new framework for analyzing deterrence and foreign policy. In addition, the dissertation joins the debate on Chinese use of force. All three case studies cast China as the defender that ultimately decided to fight the challenger decisively. In each case, aside from the real and perceived security interests at stake, China's concern with its reputation for resolve contributed to the decision. The reputation for resolve became a security interest in and of itself, serving to dispel future infringements and well worth fighting for. China was particularly worried about its reputation when it feared a collusion of foreign and domestic enemies and sought to internalize the lesson that fighting now means enjoying peace later. This study uses in-depth, qualitative case studies with a heavy reliance on textural analysis of first and secondary sources. The three case studies are China's intervention in the Korean War in 1950, China's border war with India in 1962, and Sino-Soviet clashes in 1969. While only three case studies are selected, they are structured along the same questions on deterrence and credibility to focus the reader's attention on the hypothesis. The case studies are selected because they were robust tests; they were all drawn-out deterrence situations in which Chinese leaders pondered explicitly on the role of credibility

Coexistence of superconductivity with exotic ferromagnetic state in pressurized non-superconducting UTe2_2

The discovery of superconductivity in heavy Fermion UTe$_2$, a candidate topological and triplet-paired superconductor, has aroused widespread interest. However, to date, superconductivity has only been reported in nonstoichiometric crystals of UTe$_2$ with a Te deficit. Here, we demonstrate that the application of uniaxial pressure induces superconductivity in stoichiometric UTe$_2$ crystals. Measurements of resistivity, magnetoresistance and susceptibility reveal that uniaxial pressure results in a suppression of the Kondo coherent state seen at ambient pressure, leading to the emergence of superconductivity initially at 1.5 GP, followed by the development of bulk superconductivity at 4.8 GPa. The superconducting state coexists with an exotic ferromagnetically ordered (FM) state that develops just below the onset temperature of the superconducting transition. High-pressure synchrotron x-ray diffraction measurements performed at 20 K indicate that no structural phase transition occurs over the measured pressure range. Our results not only demonstrate the coexistence of superconductivity with an exotic ferromagnetic state in pressurized stoichiometric UTe$_2$, but also highlight a vital role of Te deficiency in developing superconductivity at ambient pressures.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figure

Stress-Induced Epinephrine Enhances Lactate Dehydrogenase A and Promotes Breast Cancer Stem-Like Cells

Chronic stress triggers activation of the sympathetic nervous system and drives malignancy. Using an immunodeficient murine system, we showed that chronic stress–induced epinephrine promoted breast cancer stem-like properties via lactate dehydrogenase A–dependent (LDHA-dependent) metabolic rewiring. Chronic stress–induced epinephrine activated LDHA to generate lactate, and the adjusted pH directed USP28-mediated deubiquitination and stabilization of MYC. The SLUG promoter was then activated by MYC, which promoted development of breast cancer stem-like traits. Using a drug screen that targeted LDHA, we found that a chronic stress–induced cancer stem-like phenotype could be reversed by vitamin C. These findings demonstrated the critical importance of psychological factors in promoting stem-like properties in breast cancer cells. Thus, the LDHA-lowering agent vitamin C can be a potential approach for combating stress-associated breast cancer

Stem-cell-abundant proteins Nanog, Nucleostemin and Musashi1 are highly expressed in malignant cervical epithelial cells

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Nanog, nucleostemin (NS) and musashi1 (Msi1) are proteins that are highly expressed in undifferentiated embryonic stem (ES) cells and have been shown to be essential in maintaining the pluripotency and regulating the proliferation and asymmetric division of ES cells and several nervous system tumor cells. The roles of Nanog, NS and Msi1 in development and progression of cervical carcinoma have, until now, not been well documented.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In this study, expression of Nanog, NS and Msi1 was detected by immunohistochemistry analysis in 235 patients with various degrees of cervical epithelial lesions, including 49 with normal cervical epithelia, 31 with mild dysplasia (CIN I), 77 with moderate-severe dysplasia (CIN II-III) and 78 with squamous cervical carcinomas (SCCs). Associations with various clinical pathological prognostic variables were analyzed in 50 early-stage SCC patients.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Nanog, NS and Msi1 expression levels were significantly higher in SCC patients compared with CIN patients, and were higher in CIN patients compared with those with normal cervical epithelia. Nanog expression levels showed significantly differences according to different tumor sizes (P < 0.05), whereas there were no differences in NS and Msi1 expression levels according to different clinical pathological parameters.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our findings indicate that Nanog, NS and Msi1 may be involved in carcinogenesis of the cervix and progression of cervical carcinoma.</p

Relevance feedback-based optimization of search queries for Patents

In this project, we design a search query optimization system based on the user’s relevance feedback by generating customized query strings for existing patent alerts. Firstly, the Rocchio algorithm is used to generate a search string by analyzing the characteristics of related patents and unrelated patents. Then the collaborative filtering recommendation algorithm is used to rank the query results, which considering the previous relevance feedback and patent features, instead of only considering the similarity between query and patents as the traditional method. In order to further explore the performance of the optimization system, we design and conduct a series of evaluation experiments regarding TF-IDF as a baseline method. Experiments show that, with the use of generated search strings, the proportion of unrelated patents in search results is significantly reduced over time. In 4 months, the precision of the retrieved results is optimized from 53.5% to 72%. What’s more, the rank performance of the method we proposed is better than the baseline method. In terms of precision, top10 of recommendation algorithm is about 5 percentage points higher than the baseline method, and top20 is about 7.5% higher. It can be concluded that the approach we proposed can effectively optimize patent search results by learning relevance feedback