Ability’s two dimensions of robustness

The actions of able agents are often reliably successful. I argue that their success may be modally robust along two dimensions. The first dimension helps distinguish the exercise of abilities, which requires local control, from lucky success. The second concerns the global availability of acts: agents with the ability to φ can φ across a variety of circumstances. I introduce a framework that captures the two dimensions and their interaction, and show how it bears on a disagreement about the modal force the robustness of ability requires: while local control involves a kind of local necessity, global availability does not

1946: The Year Canada Chose its Path in the Arctic

Climate change is transforming the Arctic. Questions abound about what this will mean for the Canadian Forces, for Canada’s sover­eignty position, for northern peoples, and for stability and security in the circumpolar world. Fortunately, Canadians have encountered and debated similar issues in the past. This volume, featuring chapters by established and emerging scholars, offers essential historical analysis on Canadian Arctic security and sovereignty policies and practices since the Second World War. The “lessons learned” lay a solid foundation for future research and historiographical debate in this dynamic field, and should inform Canadian thinking on what is necessary to protect national interests in the twenty-first-century Arctic

Grasping for the Ends of the Earth: Framing and Contesting Polar Sovereignty, 1900-1955

During the first half of the twentieth century, state officials, international lawyers and polar experts struggled to apply an underdeveloped and unclear international legal discourse on territorial acquisition and the establishment of state sovereignty to the harsh environment and unique conditions of the Arctic and Antarctic. Drawing upon fresh archival research undertaken in several countries, as well as a thorough interrogation and synthesis of existing historical and legal scholarship, this dissertation explores the knowledge production that occurred on terrestrial polar claims, thus reconstructing the transnational web of ideas, adaptations, strategies and best practices developed to address the confusion and uncertainty that infused the anomalous legal space of the polar regions. By applying a global and bi-polar framework, this study offers a novel conceptual history of polar sovereignty and its constituent parts, including the sector principle, the doctrines of contiguity, constructive occupation and effective occupation, and other arguments used to justify territorial claims. Identifying the specific countries and individual lawyers, advisers and experts that shaped the legal and political context of the Arctic and Antarctic, this dissertation scrutinizes the complex interplay between the law, power, polar diplomacy and state practice. An exploration of state sovereignty strategies, legal policies, and the historical sociology of international law underlines the central contention of this dissertation: national experiences with polar sovereignty have to be situated in a broader global and bi-polar context. It is only through such a bi-polar framework, which reconstructs the nexus of connections, intersections and networks that enmeshed the polar regions, that this international legal history can be understood without losing the larger currents of practice and thought in the detail of national histories. By reconstructing the bi-polar legal landscape, this study demonstrates that sustained legal uncertainty represents the most important and prevalent force shaping the international legal history of the polar regions. Within this legal uncertainty, international law and legal argumentation had a significant impact on state behaviour. The official appraisals of state legal advisers and the opinions of private international lawyers often guided state decision-making, decided internal debates, and created polar policy

Calculating radiation from power lines for power line communications

[Extract] The cost of electricity charged to consumers in Australia is predominantly set by state governments and does not vary depending on the actual cost that the electricity retailer has to pay the generators. This does not encourage users to reduce power at times of peak demand and the ratio between the peak demand and the average demand is growing. In the long term, user pays principle must apply and the cost of electricity charged will need to vary depending on the actual cost of production. This requires a communication system to be produced firstly to determine the date and time electricity is used, so that the usage and actual cost can be matched, and secondly to inform the consumer of the actual cost of electricity, so that appropriate actions can be taken, like turning off air conditioners when the cost per kW becomes high