The Concept of International Delegation

This article defines and clarifies the concept of international delegation from both a legal and a social-science perspective. In this respect, its approach is similar to that of The Concept of Legalization, by Kenneth Abbott, Robert Keohane, Andrew Moravcsik, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and Duncan Snidal.2 Although these authors properly treat international delegation as one component of legalization in international relations, delegation is worth considering separately because it raises unique issues. The factors that affect how one might classify international delegations may also differ from legalization more generally. Indeed, some factors may even weigh in opposite directions -- for example, precision indicates a high level of legalization, but it may indicate a low level of delegation. The article begins by presenting a definition of international delegation as a grant of authority by two or more states to an international body to make decisions or take actions. Next, it describes the types of international bodies to which states may grant authority. Much of the work on international delegation to date has focused on grants of authority to bureaucracies and courts. While we of course include these grants of authority in our analysis, our focus is broader, in that it also includes grants of authority to collective bodies and subgroups of states. The article then identifies eight types of authority that states may grant: legislative, adjudicative, regulatory, monitoring and enforcement, agenda-setting, research and advice, policy implementation, and redelegation. International bodies will often exercise more than one type of authority, and there will sometimes be uncertainties about whether a particular type of authority falls into a particular category. Distinguishing between the different types of authority is important, however, because many of the existing arguments and theories about delegation may not apply equally across the different types of authority delegated. Failure to appreciate the variety in the types of authority delegated may therefore lead to misleading generalizations. Next, the article discusses how the extent of an international delegation can vary depending on its legal effect and the degree of independence of the international body. These factors have not yet been systematically explored, although they modify the nature of delegation in significant ways. After developing the typology, the article considers some of the benefits and costs of international delegation in light of this typology. The article concludes with a discussion of some of the questions raised by the typology and its implications for further research

Book Review: Something New in the Air: The Story of First Peoples Television Broadcasting in Canada

According to the reviewer, Lorna Roth, in her book, Something New in the Air: The Story of First Peoples Television Broadcasting in Canada, examines the success the First Peoples of Canada have had in using the mass medium of television as a tool to counter the negative Indian stereotypes promulgated by Hollywood films, American television, and EuroCanadian television programming and as a voice to extend their own messages and images to all of Canada

Book Review: Cultural Politics and the Mass Media: Alaska Native Voices

According to the reviewer, Patrick J. Daley and Beverly A. James present a series of five case studies where Alaska Natives have used newspapers, radio, and television media of mass communication as a means to tell their stories. While the authors focus chronologically on selected experiences of the Alaska Natives from the 1880s through 1990s, these examples illustrate the more universal difficulties Indigenous peoples face in preserving culture, place, identity, and way of life in a dominant white culture

Diversity in College Newsroom Staff Key to Diversity in Coverage

Journalism is about telling stories — stories that matter and make a difference. As faculty adviser to the college newspaper for more than a decade, I mentored a staff that included female, male, LGBTQ, international, Native American, African-American, Asian American, Hispanic, and students with disabilities who brought to the newsroom recognition that diverse voices matter. They uncovered stories touching on diversity, accessibility, and social issues that may not have been apparent to a less diverse staff

Book Review: Shades of Hiawatha: Staging Indians, Making Americans, 1880-1930

Alan Trachtenberg's work, Shades of Hiawatha: Staging Indians, Making Americans, 1880-1930, examines a pivotal question: What is an American? That question has implications for other immigrant groups mired in the twenty-first century's public policy discussion. Trachtenberg focuses on the dominant culture's construction of what it meant to be American at the turn of the twentieth century with the arrival of twenty-three million immigrants between 1890 and 1920 and how Indian peoples were forced to fit those constructions in a way different from immigrants and African Americans

Radiation exposure in X-ray-based imaging techniques used in osteoporosis

Recent advances in medical X-ray imaging have enabled the development of new techniques capable of assessing not only bone quantity but also structure. This article provides (a) a brief review of the current X-ray methods used for quantitative assessment of the skeleton, (b) data on the levels of radiation exposure associated with these methods and (c) information about radiation safety issues. Radiation doses associated with dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry are very low. However, as with any X-ray imaging technique, each particular examination must always be clinically justified. When an examination is justified, the emphasis must be on dose optimisation of imaging protocols. Dose optimisation is more important for paediatric examinations because children are more vulnerable to radiation than adults. Methods based on multi-detector CT (MDCT) are associated with higher radiation doses. New 3D volumetric hip and spine quantitative computed tomography (QCT) techniques and high-resolution MDCT for evaluation of bone structure deliver doses to patients from 1 to 3 mSv. Low-dose protocols are needed to reduce radiation exposure from these methods and minimise associated health risks

Atlas of prostate cancer heritability in European and African-American men pinpoints tissue-specific regulation.

Although genome-wide association studies have identified over 100 risk loci that explain ∼33% of familial risk for prostate cancer (PrCa), their functional effects on risk remain largely unknown. Here we use genotype data from 59,089 men of European and African American ancestries combined with cell-type-specific epigenetic data to build a genomic atlas of single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) heritability in PrCa. We find significant differences in heritability between variants in prostate-relevant epigenetic marks defined in normal versus tumour tissue as well as between tissue and cell lines. The majority of SNP heritability lies in regions marked by H3k27 acetylation in prostate adenoc7arcinoma cell line (LNCaP) or by DNaseI hypersensitive sites in cancer cell lines. We find a high degree of similarity between European and African American ancestries suggesting a similar genetic architecture from common variation underlying PrCa risk. Our findings showcase the power of integrating functional annotation with genetic data to understand the genetic basis of PrCa.This work was supported by NIH fellowship F32 GM106584 (AG), NIH grants R01 MH101244(A.G.), R01 CA188392 (B.P.), U01 CA194393(B.P.), R01 GM107427 (M.L.F.), R01 CA193910 (M.L.F./M.P.) and Prostate Cancer Foundation Challenge Award (M.L.F./M.P.). This study makes use of data generated by the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. A full list of the investigators who contributed to the generation of the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium data is available on www.wtccc.org.uk. Funding for the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium project was provided by the Wellcome Trust under award 076113. This study makes use of data generated by the UK10K Consortium. A full list of the investigators who contributed to the generation of the data is available online (http://www.UK10K.org). The PRACTICAL consortium was supported by the following grants: European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme grant agreement n° 223175 (HEALTH-F2-2009-223175), Cancer Research UK Grants C5047/A7357, C1287/A10118, C5047/A3354, C5047/A10692, C16913/A6135 and The National Institute of Health (NIH) Cancer Post-Cancer GWAS initiative Grant: no. 1 U19 CA 148537-01 (the GAME-ON initiative); Cancer Research UK (C1287/A10118, C1287/A 10710, C12292/A11174, C1281/A12014, C5047/A8384, C5047/A15007 and C5047/A10692), the National Institutes of Health (CA128978) and Post-Cancer GWAS initiative (1U19 CA148537, 1U19 CA148065 and 1U19 CA148112—the GAME-ON initiative), the Department of Defense (W81XWH-10-1-0341), A Linneus Centre (Contract ID 70867902), Swedish Research Council (grant no K2010-70X-20430-04-3), the Swedish Cancer Foundation (grant no 09-0677), grants RO1CA056678, RO1CA082664 and RO1CA092579 from the US National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health; US National Cancer Institute (R01CA72818); support from The National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia (126402, 209057, 251533, 396414, 450104, 504700, 504702, 504715, 623204, 940394 and 614296); NIH grants CA63464, CA54281 and CA098758; US National Cancer Institute (R01CA128813, PI: J.Y. Park); Bulgarian National Science Fund, Ministry of Education and Science (contract DOO-119/2009; DUNK01/2–2009; DFNI-B01/28/2012); Cancer Research UK grants [C8197/A10123] and [C8197/A10865]; grant code G0500966/75466; NIHR Health Technology Assessment Programme (projects 96/20/06 and 96/20/99); Cancer Research UK grant number C522/A8649, Medical Research Council of England grant number G0500966, ID 75466 and The NCRI, UK; The US Dept of Defense award W81XWH-04-1-0280; Australia Project Grant [390130, 1009458] and Enabling Grant [614296 to APCB]; the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia (Project Grant [PG7] and Research infrastructure grant [to APCB]); NIH grant R01 CA092447; Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (P30 CA68485); Cancer Research UK [C490/A10124] and supported by the UK National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centre at the University of Cambridge; Competitive Research Funding of the Tampere University Hospital (9N069 and X51003); Award Number P30CA042014 from the National Cancer Institute.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Nature Publishing Group via http://dx.doi.org/0.1038/ncomms1097