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The end of the Cold War opened a window for a new era in world security. Instead of rising to this extraordinary occasion, the United States has adopted a regressive Great Power approach to military security. Rather than promote 'win-win' solutions for peace, security, disarmament, and democracy, it treats international security as a 'zero-sum' game. This article discusses examples in the areas of military spending, military research and development, and arms production and export. It also looks at US policy regarding the use of force, including the role of the United Nations, military intervention in other nations, military alliances, and multilateral military action. In conclusion, the article comments on whether we can expect more constructive action under a new administration and congress.
The fatal "eye disease" that afflicts Realists and Neorealists, and even infects some self-styled Institutionalists and Constructivists, has several causes. In his polemical essay, the author defines these as historicism, the legalistic bias, the underestimation of non-state actors and the overestimation of the state as such. Discussing the linkage between loyality, ethnicy, and politics, he strongly argues for recognition of the fact that the world is groping for new political arrangements for which we simply do not have the appropriate ideas or words to describe. In the future, the range of political identities and loyalities in the global culture of "fragmegration" will extend beyond traditional multiculturalism.
Team diversity
(2007)
Team diversity refers to the differences between team members on any attribute that may lead each single member of the group to perceive any other member of the group as being different from the self of this particular member. These attributes and perceptions refer to all dimensions people can differ on, such as age, gender, ethnicity, religious and functional background, personality, skills, abilities, beliefs, and attitudes.
Underlying the importance of revenue the author discusses the future of the international order from the perspective of political economy. The international system will not be a capitalist one. Political conflicts will not be removed by nonviolent market regulations. Weakness of labour force and a dominant role of revenue will further more result in political interventions by nation states. The struggle for revenue to maintain comparative advantages in high-tech-development strengthens state intervention in order to protect domestic market. The failure of the "development state" in the third world and the rising of fundamentalistic tendencies supported by a market-oriented middle class will increase conflicts in those regions.
Earlier investigations at South Creek in northeastern Queensland established the importance of overland flow as a hydrologic pathway in this tropical rainforest environment. Since this pathway is ‘fast’, transmitting presumably ‘new’ water, its importance should be reflected in the stormflow chemistry of South Creek: the greater the volumentric contribution to the stormflow hydrograph, the more similarity between the chemical composition of streamwater and of overland flow is to be expected. Water samples were taken during two storm events in an ephemeral gully (gully A), an intermittent gully (gully B) and at the South Creek catchment outlet; additional spot checks were made in several poorly defined rills. The chemical composition of ‘old’ water was determined from 45 baseflow samples collected throughout February. The two events differed considerably in their magnitudes, intensities and antecedent moisture conditions. In both events, the stormflow chemistry in South Creek was characterized by a sharp decrease in Ca, Mg, Na, Si, Cl, EC, ANC, alkalinity and total inorganic carbon. pH remained nearly constant with discharge, whereas K increased sharply, as did sulfate in an ill-defined manner. In event 1, this South Creek stormflow pattern was closely matched by the pattern in gully A, implying a dominant contribution of ‘new’ water. This match was confirmed by the spot samples from rills. Gully B behaved like South Creek itself, but with a dampened ‘new’ water signal, indicating less overland flow generation in its subcatchment. In event 2, which occurred five days later, the initial ‘new’ water signal in gully A was rapidly overwhelmed by a different signal which is attributed to rapid drainage from a perched water table. This study shows that stormflow in this rainforest catchment consists predominantly of ‘new’ water which reaches the stream channel via ‘fast’ pathways. Where the ephemeral gullies delivering overland flow are incised deeply enough to intersect a perched water table, a delayed, ‘old’ water-like signal may be transmitted.
Previous hydrometric studies demonstrated the prevalence of overland flow as a hydrological pathway in the tropical rain forest catchment of South Creek, northeast Queensland. The purpose of this study was to consider this information in a mixing analysis with the aim of identifying sources of, and of estimating their contribution to, storm flow during two events in February 1993. K and acid-neutralizing capacity (ANC) were used as tracers because they provided the best separation of the potential sources, saturation overland flow, soil water from depths of 0.3, 0.6, and 1.2 m, and hillslope groundwater in a two-dimensional mixing plot. It was necessary to distinguish between saturation overland flow, generated at the soil surface and following unchanneled pathways, and overland flow in incised pathways. This latter type of overland flow was a mixture of saturation overland flow (event water) with high concentrations of K and a low ANC, soil water (preevent water) with low concentrations of K and a low ANC, and groundwater (preevent water) with low concentrations of K and a high ANC. The same sources explained the streamwater chemistry during the two events with strongly differing rainfall and antecedent moisture conditions. The contribution of saturation overland flow dominated the storm flow during the first, high-intensity, 178-mm event, while the contribution of soil water reached 50% during peak flow of the second, low-intensity, 44-mm event 5 days later. This latter result is remarkably similar to soil water contributions to storm flow in mountainous forested catchments of the southeastern United States. In terms of event and preevent water the storm flow hydrograph of the high-intensity event is dominated by event water and that of the low-intensity event by preevent water. This study highlights the problems of applying mixing analyses to overland flow-dominated catchments and soil environments with a poorly developed vertical chemical zonation and emphasizes the need for independent hydrometric information for a complete characterization of watershed hydrology and chemistry.
Chemical fingerprints of hydrological compartments and flow paths at La Cuenca, western Amazonia
(1995)
A forested first-order catchment in western Amazonia was monitored for 2 years to determine the chemical fingerprints of precipitation, throughfall, overland flow, pipe flow, soil water, groundwater, and streamflow. We used five tracers (hydrogen, calcium, magnesium, potassium, and silica) to distinguish “fast” flow paths mainly influenced by the biological subsystem from “slow” flow paths in the geochemical subsystem. The former comprise throughfall, overland flow, and pipe flow and are characterized by a high potassium/silica ratio; the latter are represented by soil water and groundwater, which have a low potassium/silica ratio. Soil water and groundwater differ with respect to calcium and magnesium. The groundwater-controlled streamflow chemistry is strongly modified by contributions from fast flow paths during precipitation events. The high potassium/silica ratio of these flow paths suggests that the storm flow response at La Cuenca is dominated by event water.
Rainfall erosivities as defined by the R factor from the universal soil loss equation were determined for all events during a two-year period at the station La Cuenca in western Amazonia. Three methods based on a power relationship between rainfall amount and erosivity were then applied to estimate event and daily rainfall erosivities from the respective rainfall amounts. A test of the resulting regression equations against an independent data set proved all three methods equally adequate in predicting rainfall erosivity from daily rainfall amount. We recommend the Richardson model for testing in the Amazon Basin, and its use with the coefficient from La Cuenca in western Amazonia.
The topography of first-order catchments in a region of western Amazonia was found to exhibit distinctive, recurrent features: a steep, straight lower side slope, a flat or nearly flat terrace at an intermediate elevation between valley floor and interfluve, and an upper side slope connecting interfluve and intermediate terrace. A detailed survey of soil-saturated hydraulic conductivity (K sat)-depth relationships, involving 740 undisturbed soil cores, was conducted in a 0.75-ha first-order catchment. The sampling approach was stratified with respect to the above slope units. Exploratory data analysis suggested fourth-root transformation of batches from the 0–0.1 m depth interval, log transformation of batches from the subsequent 0.1 m depth increments, and the use of robust estimators of location and scale. The K sat of the steep lower side slope decreased from 46 to 0.1 mm/h over the overall sampling depth of 0.4 m. The corresponding decrease was from 46 to 0.1 mm/h on the intermediate terrace, from 335 to 0.01 mm/h on the upper side slope, and from 550 to 0.015 mm/h on the interfluve. A depthwise comparison of these slope units led to the formulation of several hypotheses concerning the link between K sat and topography.
First studies of electron transfer in [N]phenylenes were performed in bimolecular quenching reactions of angular [3]- and triangular [4]phenylene with various electron acceptors. The relation between the quenching rate constants kq and the free energy change of the electron transfer (ΔG0CS ) could be described by the Rehm-Weller equation. From the experimental results, a reorganization energy λ of 0.7 eV was derived. Intramolecular electron transfer reactions were studied in an [N]phenylene bichomophore and a corresponding reference compound. Fluorescence lifetime and quantum yield of the bichromophor display a characteristic dependence on the solvent polarity, whereas the corresponding values of the reference compound remain constant. From the results, a nearly isoenergonic ΔG0CS can be determined. As the triplet quantum yield is nearly independent of the polarity, charge recombination leads to the population of the triplet state.
Werden im 21. Jahrhundert die Kriege um Wasser geführt? Von dieser Frage ausgehend diskutiert der Artikel das Konflikt- und Kooperationspotenzial an grenzüberschreitenden Flüssen. Welche Anreize gibt es für Kooperation und was führt zu Konflikten? Den theoretischen Überlegungen werden Erfahrungen an der Elbe sowie am Jordan gegenübergestellt.
Microsaccades are very small, involuntary flicks in eye position that occur on average once or twice per second during attempted visual fixation. Microsaccades give rise to EMG eye muscle spikes that can distort the spectrum of the scalp EEG and mimic increases in gamma band power. Here we demonstrate that microsaccades are also accompanied by genuine and sizeable cortical activity, manifested in the EEG. In three experiments, high-resolution eye movements were corecorded with the EEG: during sustained fixation of checkerboard and face stimuli and in a standard visual oddball task that required the counting of target stimuli. Results show that microsaccades as small as 0.15° generate a field potential over occipital cortex and midcentral scalp sites 100 –140 ms after movement onset, which resembles the visual lambda response evoked by larger voluntary saccades. This challenges the standard assumption of human brain imaging studies that saccade-related brain activity is precluded by fixation, even when fully complied with. Instead, additional cortical potentials from microsaccades were present in 86% of the oddball task trials and of similar amplitude as the visual response to stimulus onset. Furthermore, microsaccade probability varied systematically according to the proportion of target stimuli in the oddball task, causing modulations of late stimulus-locked event-related potential (ERP) components. Microsaccades present an unrecognized source of visual brain signal that is of interest for vision research and may have influenced the data of many ERP and neuroimaging studies.
Although without providing a systematical comparison, it has become clear that the sects or party-factions of Japan’s New Left movement are by no means merely copies of their counterparts in the West. On the other hand their conduct may not be judged as to be a unique Japanese phenomenon. What they embody is, on the whole, a complex symbiosis of universal and particularly Japanese features, which can be observed in the fields of social behavior, organizational structure, and group dynamics. The particularity of the New Left factions is mostly revealed through the higher intensity of specific features rather than through pecularities found only in Japan.
Die G8 und Chinas Interessen
(2007)
Die G8 besitzt aus chinesischer Sicht große Entwicklungsmöglichkeiten. Verglichen mit anderen zwischenstaatlichen Organisationen hat die G8 einzigartige Vorteile angesichts ihrer Macht und Flexibilität. Um ihren Einfluss und ihre Kontrolle über die Weltangelegenheiten zu verstärken, sollte die Gruppe reformiert und erweitert werden. China ist gegenwärtig nicht an einem Beitritt zur G8 interessiert, wohl aber an einer engen Zusammenarbeit. Langfristig ist es allerdings nur eine Frage der Zeit, bis China der G8 beitreten wird.
The attitude of the East Germans to the Polish is burdened with the heritage of the past. After 1945 the composition of the population on both sides of the new border along the Oder and Neisse rivers changed drastically. On the eastern side the Germans were expelled and Polish people were settled. On the western side many expelled Germans found a new home. Despite the fact that the GDR signed the Oder-Neisse border treaty, the ruling communist party (SED) did not encourage contacts between the people living on both sides of Oder and Neisse in the following years. The policy of the SED towards the Polish communists during the whole period between 1946-1989 was characterised by arrogance and suspicion, at times falling back on old anti-Polish stereotypes. Especially in the 1980s, the GDR tried to prevent the influence of Solidarnosc and dissident ideas from entering the country. Despite this policy, substantial personal contacts developed, particularly in the 1970s when the border was fully opened. The authors argue that current German-Polish relations should make use of these experiences.
There has never been a theory of transition from really existing Socialism to a democratic and market-oriented system. Different theoretical approaches are taken into consideration by the author. Experiences of other transitional processes are practicable on Eastern Europe in a limited way. The missing of socio-structural differentiation, the socio-cultural consequences of the really existing Socialism and the international conditions did not promote the transition. It seems that the transition in Eastern Europe is obviously not a change from one political system to another one, but for the time being an open process.
Kaukasische Verwicklungen
(2008)