The ambivalent shadow of the pre-Wilsonian rise of international law

The generation of American international lawyers who founded the American Society of International Law in 1906 and nurtured the soil for what has been retrospectively called a “moralistic legalistic approach to international relations” remains little studied. A survey of the rise of international legal literature in the U.S. from the mid-19th century to the eve of the Great War serves as a backdrop to the examination of the boosting effect on international law of the Spanish American War in 1898. An examination of the Insular Cases before the US Supreme Court is then accompanied by the analysis of a number of influential factors behind the pre-war rise of international law in the U.S. The work concludes with an examination of the rise of natural law doctrines in international law during the interwar period and the critiques addressed.by the realist founders of the field of “international relations” to the “moralistic legalistic approach to international relation

ESPRESSO: The next European exoplanet hunter

The acronym ESPRESSO stems for Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectroscopic Observations; this instrument will be the next VLT high resolution spectrograph. The spectrograph will be installed at the Combined-Coud\'e Laboratory of the VLT and linked to the four 8.2 m Unit Telescopes (UT) through four optical Coud\'e trains. ESPRESSO will combine efficiency and extreme spectroscopic precision. ESPRESSO is foreseen to achieve a gain of two magnitudes with respect to its predecessor HARPS, and to improve the instrumental radial-velocity precision to reach the 10 cm/s level. It can be operated either with a single UT or with up to four UTs, enabling an additional gain in the latter mode. The incoherent combination of four telescopes and the extreme precision requirements called for many innovative design solutions while ensuring the technical heritage of the successful HARPS experience. ESPRESSO will allow to explore new frontiers in most domains of astrophysics that require precision and sensitivity. The main scientific drivers are the search and characterization of rocky exoplanets in the habitable zone of quiet, nearby G to M-dwarfs and the analysis of the variability of fundamental physical constants. The project passed the final design review in May 2013 and entered the manufacturing phase. ESPRESSO will be installed at the Paranal Observatory in 2016 and its operation is planned to start by the end of the same year.Comment: 12 pages, figures included, accepted for publication in Astron. Nach

Characterization of the K2-38 planetary system: Unraveling one of the densest planets known to date

.-- Toledo-Padrón, B. et al.Context. An accurate characterization of the known exoplanet population is key to understanding the origin and evolution of planetary systems. Determining true planetary masses through the radial velocity (RV) method is expected to experience a great improvement thanks to the availability of ultra-stable echelle spectrographs. Aims. We took advantage of the extreme precision of the new-generation echelle spectrograph ESPRESSO to characterize the transiting planetary system orbiting the G2V star K2-38 located at 194 pc from the Sun with V 11.4. This system is particularly interesting because it could contain the densest planet detected to date. Methods. We carried out a photometric analysis of the available K2 photometric light curve of this star to measure the radius of its two known planets, K2-38b and K2-38c, with Pb = 4.01593 ± 0.00050 d and Pc = 10.56103 ± 0.00090 d, respectively. Using 43 ESPRESSO high-precision RV measurements taken over the course of 8 months along with the 14 previously published HIRES RV measurements, we modeled the orbits of the two planets through a Markov chain Monte Carlo analysis, significantly improving their mass measurements. Results. Using ESPRESSO spectra, we derived the stellar parameters, Teff = 5731 ± 66, log g = 4.38 ± 0.11 dex, and [Fe/H] = 0.26 ± 0.05 dex, and thus the mass and radius of K2-38, Ma = 1.03-0.02+0.04 MaS and Ra = 1.06-0.06+0.09 RaS. We determine new values for the planetary properties of both planets. We characterize K2-38b as a super-Earth with RP = 1.54 ± 0.14 RaS and Mp = 7.3-1.0+1.1 MaS, and K2-38c as a sub-Neptune with RP = 2.29 ± 0.26 RaS and Mp = 8.3-1.3+1.3 MaS. Combining the radius and mass measurements, we derived a mean density of ρp = 11.0-2.8+4.1 g cm-3 for K2-38b and ρp = 3.8-1.1+1.8 g cm-3 for K2-38c, confirming K2-38b as one of the densest planets known to date. Conclusions. The best description for the composition of K2-38b comes from an iron-rich Mercury-like model, while K2-38c is better described by a rocky-model with H2 envelope. The maximum collision stripping boundary shows how giant impacts could be the cause for the high density of K2-38b. The irradiation received by each planet places them on opposite sides of the radius valley. We find evidence of a long-period signal in the RV time-series whose origin could be linked to a 0.25-3 MJ planet or stellar activity.With funding from the Spanish government through the "María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence" accreditation (MDM-2017-0737

On the chronological structure of the solutrean in Southern Iberia

The Solutrean techno-complex has gained particular significance over time for representing a clear demographic and techno-typological deviation from the developments occurred during the course of the Upper Paleolithic in Western Europe. Some of Solutrean's most relevant features are the diversity and techno-typological characteristics of the lithic armatures. These have been recurrently used as pivotal elements in numerous Solutrean-related debates, including the chronological organization of the techno-complex across Iberia and Southwestern France. In Southern Iberia, patterns of presence and/or absence of specific point types in stratified sequences tend to validate the classical ordering of the techno-complex into Lower, Middle and Upper phases, although some evidence, namely radiocarbon determinations, have not always been corroborative. Here we present the first comprehensive analysis of the currently available radiocarbon data for the Solutrean in Southern Iberia. We use a Bayesian statistical approach from 13 stratified sequences to compare the duration, and the start and end moments of each classic Solutrean phase across sites. We conclude that, based on the current data, the traditional organization of the Solutrean cannot be unquestionably confirmed for Southern Iberia, calling into doubt the status of the classically defined type-fossils as precise temporal markers.Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia [PTDC/HAH/64184/2006, PTDC/HIS-ARQ/117540/2010, SFRH/BD/65527/2009, SFRH/BPD/96277/2013]; National Geographic Society [8045-06]; Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research [8290

El grupu neandertal de la Cueva d' El Sidrón (Borines, Piloña)

El artículo está en la lengua asturianaPeer reviewe

Analysis of Human Accelerated DNA Regions Using Archaic Hominin Genomes

Several previous comparisons of the human genome with other primate and vertebrate genomes identified genomic regions that are highly conserved in vertebrate evolution but fast-evolving on the human lineage. These human accelerated regions (HARs) may be regions of past adaptive evolution in humans. Alternatively, they may be the result of non-adaptive processes, such as biased gene conversion. We captured and sequenced DNA from a collection of previously published HARs using DNA from an Iberian Neandertal. Combining these new data with shotgun sequence from the Neandertal and Denisova draft genomes, we determine at least one archaic hominin allele for 84% of all positions within HARs. We find that 8% of HAR substitutions are not observed in the archaic hominins and are thus recent in the sense that the derived allele had not come to fixation in the common ancestor of modern humans and archaic hominins. Further, we find that recent substitutions in HARs tend to have come to fixation faster than substitutions elsewhere in the genome and that substitutions in HARs tend to cluster in time, consistent with an episodic rather than a clock-like process underlying HAR evolution. Our catalog of sequence changes in HARs will help prioritize them for functional studies of genomic elements potentially responsible for modern human adaptations

Revisiting Proxima with ESPRESSO

We aim to confirm the presence of Proxima b using independent measurements obtained with the new ESPRESSO spectrograph, and refine the planetary parameters taking advantage of its improved precision. We analysed 63 spectroscopic ESPRESSO observations of Proxima taken during 2019. We obtained radial velocity measurements with a typical radial velocity photon noise of 26 cm/s. We ran a joint MCMC analysis on the time series of the radial velocity and full-width half maximum of the cross-correlation function to model the planetary and stellar signals present in the data, applying Gaussian process regression to deal with stellar activity. We confirm the presence of Proxima b independently in the ESPRESSO data. The ESPRESSO data on its own shows Proxima b at a period of 11.218 $\pm$ 0.029 days, with a minimum mass of 1.29 $\pm$ 0.13 Me. In the combined dataset we measure a period of 11.18427 $\pm$ 0.00070 days with a minimum mass of 1.173 $\pm$ 0.086 Me. We find no evidence of stellar activity as a potential cause for the 11.2 days signal. We find some evidence for the presence of a second short-period signal, at 5.15 days with a semi-amplitude of merely 40 cm/s. If caused by a planetary companion, it would correspond to a minimum mass of 0.29 $\pm$ 0.08 Me. We find that the FWHM of the CCF can be used as a proxy for the brightness changes and that its gradient with time can be used to successfully detrend the radial velocity data from part of the influence of stellar activity. The activity-induced radial velocity signal in the ESPRESSO data shows a trend in amplitude towards redder wavelengths. Velocities measured using the red end of the spectrograph are less affected by activity, suggesting that the stellar activity is spot-dominated. The data collected excludes the presence of extra companions with masses above 0.6 Me at periods shorter than 50 days.Comment: 25 pages, 26 figure

La Cueva de El Sidrón (Piloña Asturias)

Estado de las excavaciones y estudios en la Cueva de El Sidrón (PIloña, Asturias)