Westphalian Sovereignty: Rights, Intervention, Meaning and Context

Over the last two centuries or so sovereignty has proved to be an enigmatic institution, at once constant and changing. Presently, it faces sustained and diffuse siege. Relatively few studies have approached this enigmatic institution from a semantic angle. This paper assesses the meaning of sovereignty within a framework of competing logics as it faces up to a key normative challenge - human rights - bringing together the apparently conflicting norms of non-intervention and intervention against a background of discourse analysis. From "Westphalia" to the current logics of action and normative theory, the discussion places the institution of sovereignty against current, intra-disciplinary factors as an addition to the literature that serves to underscore how a fundamentally re-imagined concept is required, in theory and practice, to account for and promote humanitarian needs

Energy and trans-European networks-energy (TEN-E)

[No abstract available

New Configuration or Reconfiguration? Conflict in North-South Energy Trade Relations

[No abstract available

Characterisation and molecular association of Nigerian and Sudanese Acacia gum exudates

The chemical and physicochemical characteristics of gum exudate samples harvested from mature trees of Acacia senegal at two new specific ecolocations in Nigeria, have been investigated together with gum samples harvested from A. senegal and A. seyal originating from Sudan. The monosaccharide sugar compositions for the A. senegal gum samples were found to be similar, but the protein contents for the Nigerian samples were significantly higher than recorded for the Sudanese sample. Gel Permeation Chromatography coupled to light scattering, refractive index and U.V. detectors, has shown the presence of arabinogalactan, arabinogalactan–protein and glycoprotein fractions within the A. senegal gums and has also shown the presence of an additional small proportion of very low molar mass proteinaceous material all the samples which has previously been ignored. The plot of radius of gyration, Rg, as a function of elution volume showed a discontinuity for one of the Nigerian samples and for the A. seyal gum sample at elution volumes corresponding to the AGP component suggesting a different molecular structure. Plots of Mw–v–Rg confirmed that the molecules had a compact structure. The hydrodynamic size of the molecules was followed using dynamic light scattering as a function of time and it was found that molecular association occurred in solution. The extent of association increased as the protein content in the sample increased and was inhibited in the presence of electrolyte, it was concluded that association was due to electrostatic interaction between the protein moieties and glucuronic acid groups on individual macromolecules

A hybrid neuro--wavelet predictor for QoS control and stability

For distributed systems to properly react to peaks of requests, their adaptation activities would benefit from the estimation of the amount of requests. This paper proposes a solution to produce a short-term forecast based on data characterising user behaviour of online services. We use \emph{wavelet analysis}, providing compression and denoising on the observed time series of the amount of past user requests; and a \emph{recurrent neural network} trained with observed data and designed so as to provide well-timed estimations of future requests. The said ensemble has the ability to predict the amount of future user requests with a root mean squared error below 0.06\%. Thanks to prediction, advance resource provision can be performed for the duration of a request peak and for just the right amount of resources, hence avoiding over-provisioning and associated costs. Moreover, reliable provision lets users enjoy a level of availability of services unaffected by load variations

The Iraq war, Turkey, and renewed caspian energy prospects

Many have linked the US-led invasion of Iraq to its oil resources, leading some observers to question Caspian energy prospects. This article analyzes how the Iraqi occupation and Caspian oil prospects have been inter-linked, via the evolution of American and Turkish assessments of Iraq and the Caspian region. It shows that, contrary to initial expectations, the occupation of Iraq bolstered the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan project as well as a number of other increasingly significant natural gas export pipelines

Ultra precise characterization of LCLS hard X ray focusing mirrors by high resolution slope measuring deflectometry

We present recent results on the inspection of a first diffractionlimited hard X ray Kirkpatrick Baez KB mirror pair for the Coherent Xray Imaging CXI instrument at the Linac Coherent Light Source LCLS . The full KB system mirrors and holders was under inspection by use of high resolution slope measuring deflectometry. The tests confirmed that KB mirrors of 350mm aperture length characterized by an outstanding residual figure error of lt;1 nm rms has been realized. This corresponds to the residual figure slope error of about 0.05 amp; 956;rad rms, unprecedented on such long elliptical mirrors. Additional measurements show the clamping of the mirrors to be a critical step for the final shape preserving installation of such outstanding optic

Multiscale modeling and simulation of nanotube-based torsional oscillators

In this paper, we propose the first numerical study of nanotube-based torsional oscillators via developing a new multiscale model. The edge-to-edge technique was employed in this multiscale method to couple the molecular model, i.e., nanotubes, and the continuum model, i.e., the metal paddle. Without losing accuracy, the metal paddle was treated as the rigid body in the continuum model. Torsional oscillators containing (10,0) nanotubes were mainly studied. We considered various initial angles of twist to depict linear/nonlinear characteristics of torsional oscillators. Furthermore, effects of vacancy defects and temperature on mechanisms of nanotube-based torsional oscillators were discussed

Two Wolf-Rayet stars at the heart of colliding-wind binary Apep

Infrared imaging of the colliding-wind binary Apep has revealed a spectacular dust plume with complicated internal dynamics that challenges standard colliding-wind binary physics. Such challenges can be potentially resolved if a rapidly-rotating Wolf-Rayet star is located at the heart of the system, implicating Apep as a Galactic progenitor system to long-duration gamma-ray bursts. One of the difficulties in interpreting the dynamics of Apep is that the spectral composition of the stars in the system was unclear. Here we present visual to near-infrared spectra that demonstrate that the central component of Apep is composed of two classical Wolf-Rayet stars of carbon- (WC8) and nitrogen-sequence (WN4-6b) subtypes. We argue that such an assignment represents the strongest case of a classical WR+WR binary system in the Milky Way. The terminal line-of-sight wind velocities of the WC8 and WN4-6b stars are measured to be 2100 ± 200 and 3500 ± 100 km s−1, respectively. If the mass-loss rate of the two stars are typical for their spectral class, the momentum ratio of the colliding winds is expected to be ≈ 0.4. Since the expansion velocity of the dust plume is significantly smaller than either of the measured terminal velocities, we explore the suggestion that one of the Wolf-Rayet winds is anisotropic. We can recover a shock-compressed wind velocity consistent with the observed dust expansion velocity if the WC8 star produces a significantly slow equatorial wind with a velocity of ≈530 km s−1. Such slow wind speeds can be driven by near-critical rotation of a Wolf-Rayet star