bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Self-Defense
Authors: O’Connell Mary Ellen
Published: March 2013

Humanity has always recognized that individuals should have the right to defend themselves from violence. In international law this basic normative intuition is codified for states in the Charter of the United Nations, Article 51 (see Randelzhofer 2002, cited under Conditions in Article 51). Article 51 is an exception to the Charter’s general prohibition on the use of force found in Article 2(4). The prohibition on the use of force is at the heart of the Charter, given that the most fundamental aim of the Charter and the UN organization created by the Charter is to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” (Preamble). It stands to reason that any right to use force as an exception to the general prohibition on resort to force would be narrow. Article 51 permits a state to act in unilateral or collective self-defense only “if an armed attack occurs.” This article concerns the international law exception to the prohibition on force for self-defense. The commentary on Article 51 is extensive and generally falls into one of two categories: first, scholarship, judicial decisions, and government policies that support Article 51’s plain terms; second, scholarship and government policies that advocate expanding the right to use force beyond Article 51’s provisions. The writers in these two categories have various labels but are most commonly referred to as the “strict” interpreters versus the “broad” interpreters. One author refers to the groups as the “restrictivists” versus the “antirestrictivists.” The divergence of views can be explained to some extent by the differing assessments writers make about the utility of resort to military force. The UN Charter was drafted at the end of World War II, when confidence in military force was certainly low and commitment to ending the use of force was high. Fifty years later, perhaps frustrated by the lack of success with other means, writers (especially in a few militarily powerful states) urged relaxing the rules against force to respond to terrorism, weapons programs, and computer network attacks. Some try to justify force under the principles of necessity and proportionality, rules beyond the UN Charter but equally important in the long history of normative thinking on killing in self-defense.
The Law of Treaties
Authors: Remiro Brotons Antonio
Published: March 2013

The Law of Treaties is a set of international and national rules that governs the life of treaties from their formation to termination, passing through all their effects and disturbances. The majority of international rules have been codified by conventions of universal vocation, the most important of which is the Convention on the Law of Treaties concluded between states (Vienna, 23 May 1969). The content of the convention is comprehensive but not exhaustive. It covers only interstate relations and excludes issues such as the international responsibility for noncompliance, the effects of the outbreak of hostilities, and state succession in respect of treaties. The conventional relations between states and international organizations and between different international organizations are regulated by the convention of 21 March 1986, which conforms to the 1969 convention. Besides, the succession of states in respect of treaties is the subject of the convention of 23 August 1978. Customary rules are applicable to all issues that fall outside the scope of application of these conventions. The dispositive character of a number of international norms and their references to domestic law explain the existence of numerous national provisions applicable to treaties. Treaties have existed since political communities have been willing to interact peacefully and are the best sources of rights and obligations. The coexistence and cooperation among international subjects rests substantially upon them. The progressive expansion of their material objects has been accompanied by a growing technical complexity.
Aggression in International Law
Authors: Antonopoulos Constantine
Published: March 2013

The crime of aggression, or crime against peace, was first introduced in the constituent instrument establishing the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal (IMT) (the London Charter, 1945) at the end of World War II. It was also included in the Charter of the Tokyo International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) and Control Council Law No. 10, 1945. The criminalization of aggression in these instruments constitutes the culmination of a process that started at the end of World War I, with the arraignment of the German emperor Wilhelm II, by virtue of Article 227 of the Peace Treaty of Versailles, “for a supreme offence against international morality and the sanctity of treaties.” The prosecution of the crime of aggression before the Nuremberg and Tokyo IMTs met with strong criticism concerning the breach of the principle of legality (nullum crimen sine lege). However, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, in G.A. Res. 95(I) (UN General Assembly 1946, cited under General Assembly Resolutions), and the International Law Commission (ILC), in the “Formulation of the Nürnberg Principles” (Yearbook of the International Law Commission 2 1950), endorsed the existence of the crime of aggression in customary law, with no opposition on the part of states. Hence, in the early 21st century it is universally accepted that the crime of aggression exists in customary law, although its precise definition, for the purposes of individual criminal responsibility, has been a matter of contention. No prosecutions for aggression followed the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, and this crime remained in a state of lethargy until the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998. Article 5, ICC Statute, includes aggression among the crimes within the Court’s jurisdiction. At the same time, Article 5(2) stipulates that the jurisdiction of the Court would not be exercised for aggression until a generally accepted definition of the crime was adopted. This definition was ultimately agreed upon at the first Review Conference of the ICC Statute, in Uganda (Kampala Conference), in June 2010 (new Article 8bis). The crime of aggression is closely connected with the resort to force by a state, unlike war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity, in which individual criminal responsibility is independent of the existence of state responsibility. Moreover, perpetrators of aggression, unlike the other three crimes, are exclusively state officials, particularly in the highest echelons of the state. The adoption of a definition of the crime of aggression in the ICC Statute is a major breakthrough that may clear the way for prosecutions of crimes against peace in the future, especially after the activation of the ICC jurisdiction over the crime of aggression in July 2018.
Attitudes
Authors: Wood Jay K. , Fabrigar Leandre R.
Published: March 2013

The attitude construct is one of the oldest and most-studied constructs in social psychology, and as such, it has had a tremendous impact on the social sciences over the past century. This long history notwithstanding, a historical review of the attitudes literature reveals a construct whose popularity has waxed and waned over the decades and that has generated a number of passionate debates. One area of contention over the years is probably the most fundamental: what exactly are attitudes? Although the definition of the term attitude has gone through many incarnations since its early definition as a “mental and neural state of readiness” (Allport 1935, cited under General Overviews, p. 810; see also the special issue of the journal Social Cognition 25.5 for a variety of perspectives on the definition of attitudes), most current researchers use the term to refer to a valenced evaluation of something, be it a person, object, concept, event, action, etc. (i.e., the attitude object). Most theorists consider attitudes to be relatively enduring (i.e., they are typically not transitory like phenomena such as mood states); however, the extent to which they are stable and enduring would be expected to fall on a continuum, and is determined by factors such as variations in cognitive structure. Furthermore, many contemporary researchers suggest that a distinction can be made between attitudes that are deliberative and within an individual’s control, and those that are nondeliberative and automatic (i.e., explicit versus implicit attitudes). Much of the research on attitudes has focused on issues such as the structure and function of attitudes, how they influence behavior and judgment, how they can be changed, and even whether we need them and if they exist at all. The citations that were chosen for inclusion in this article were selected for a number of reasons: Some are particularly comprehensive or well-written overviews of a topic, others are seminal works or significantly advance our understanding of the construct, and still others shed light on a particular point of contention in the literature. The article begins with General Overviews, Textbooks, and selective Journals that publish high-quality attitudes research and review articles. Next, attention is turned to measurement issues in attitudes research. The largest section of the article is devoted to Attitude Formation and Change (i.e., persuasion), as this is the subtopic that has historically received the most attention from attitudes researchers, as is indicated by the corresponding volume of literature. The article then looks at attitude structure and function before concluding with coverage of the potential impact of attitudes on behavior.
Competition in Plant Communities
Authors: Keddy Paul A. , Cahill James
Published: March 2013

Competition is generally understood to refer to the negative effects on plant growth or fitness caused by the presence of neighbors, usually by reducing the availability of resources. Competition can be an important factor controlling plant communities, along with resources, disturbance, herbivory, and mutualisms. Since all plants require a few basic elements, the resource involved is generally light, water, nitrogen, or phosphorus, depending upon the species and the location. The effects of competition are widespread and easily observed in mixtures of crops and managed forests, which is why weeding and thinning are practiced. Competition is also widespread in native habitats, from deserts to wetlands, and is known to have important—indeed crucial—effects upon recruitment, growth, and reproduction. In the late 1800s, Darwin wrote extensively about the importance of competition in nature, particularly its role in driving natural selection. Thereafter, interest in the phenomenon grew. Many experiments with both crops and wild species were conducted. Models of competitive interactions were also constructed, with the number and size of the models increasing rapidly with the advent of computers in the 1970s. Because the word competition has a common usage in English, what it represents in biological systems is frequently assumed, rather than explicitly stated, leading to misunderstanding. Care must be taken in using or interpreting the word without specifying what kind of competition is being investigated, as different forms of competition can have different types of consequences. For example, competition may be looked at from the perspective of an individual, a population, or a species, it may be symmetric or asymmetric, and it can occur among single or multiple species simultaneously. Experimental design carries its own assumptions, which are often not stated in published articles. One of the most difficult tasks in exploring published studies is the need to sift through large numbers of experiments in which investigators have haphazardly selected (a pair of) species and grown them in mixture, without adequately justifying their choice of species or the experimental design. Another difficult task is distinguishing between models that, at least in principle, have measurable inputs or make measurable predictions (or both) and those that do not and cannot be tested. Overall, the very ease of growing plants in mixture, as well as the ease of making new models, may have made some people careless, with the result that basic questions are remaining unaddressed. Ongoing issues of importance include mechanisms of competition, types of competition, effects of competition on plant coexistence, and the intensity of competition under different sets of conditions.
Peatlands
Authors: Vitt Dale H.
Published: March 2013

Peatland ecosystems are characterized by a substantial accumulation of organic matter in soil (peat), resulting from long-term excess of net primary production at the surface compared to decomposition throughout the peat column. Globally, peatlands cover 3–4 percent of the earth’s land surface, yet they store 25–30 percent of the world’s soil carbon (about 455 Pg of C) and 9–16 percent of the world’s soil nitrogen (8–15 Pg of N) in peat. These large stores of C and N are especially vulnerable to global climate change. Although peatlands occur from the tropics to the Arctic, it is in the boreal region where peatlands are most abundant. The presence of a well-developed ground layer of mosses along with either abundant shrubs or sedges makes the population and community ecology of these ecosystems interesting and challenging. The high water table, presence of anoxia, and isolation from all nutrient inputs—except the atmosphere in some peatlands (bogs)—present unique opportunities to study the hydrology and biogeochemistry.
Community Ecology
Authors: Verhoef Herman A.
Published: March 2013

At the beginning of the 20th century there was much debate about the “nature” of communities. The driving question was whether the community was a self-organized system of co-occurring species or simply a haphazard collection of populations with minimal functional integration. At that time, two extreme views dominated the discussion: one view considered a community as a superorganism, the member species of which were tightly bound together by interactions that contributed to repeatable patterns of species abundance in space and time. This concept led to the assumption that communities are fundamental entities, to be classified as the Linnaean taxonomy of species. Frederick E. Clements was one of the leading proponents of this approach, and his view became known as the organismic concept of communities. This assumes a common evolutionary history for the integrated species. The opposite view was the individualistic continuum concept, advocated by H. A. Gleason. His focus was on the traits of individual species that allow each to live within specific habitats or geographical ranges. In this view a community is an assemblage of populations of different species whose traits allow persisting in a prescribed area. The spatial boundaries are not sharp, and the species composition can change considerably. Consequently, it was discussed whether ecological communities were sufficiently coherent entities to be considered appropriate study objects. Later, consensus was reached: that properties of communities are of central interest in ecology, regardless of their integrity and coherence. From the 1950s and 1960s onward, the discussion was dominated by the deterministic outcome of local interactions between species and their environments and the building of this into models of communities. This approach, indicated as “traditional community ecology,” led to a morass of theoretical models, without being able to provide general principles about many-species communities. Early-21st-century approaches to bringing general patterns into community ecology concern (1) the metacommunity approach, (2) the functional trait approach, (3) evolutionary community ecology, and (4) the four fundamental processes. The metacommunity approach implicitly recognizes and studies the important role of spatiotemporal dynamics. In the functional trait approach, four themes are focused upon: traits, environmental gradients, the interaction milieu, and performance currencies. This functional, trait-focused approach should have a better prospect of understanding the effects of global changes. Evolutionary community ecology is an approach in which the combination of community ecology and evolutionary biology will lead to a better understanding of the complexity of communities and populations. The four fundamental processes are selection, drift, speciation, and dispersal. This approach concerns an organizational scheme for community ecology, based on these four processes to describe all existing specific models and frameworks, in order to make general statements about process–pattern connections.
Optimal Foraging
Authors: Stephens David W.
Published: March 2013

All organisms face problems of resource acquisition, and in the broadest sense foraging theory is an attempt to make generalizations about the processes associated with resource acquisition. In theory, resource acquisition is a very general problem, but in practice foraging theory is closely linked to the study of animals and their behavior, since feeding—acquiring the tissue of living things to consume—is, after all, a defining property of animals. Optimal foraging models take an adaptationist perspective in the sense that they ask which strategy among a given “feasible” set will lead to the highest evolutionary fitness, and in making these calculations, students of foraging often use the mathematical tools of optimization. The first optimal foraging models appeared in the late 1960s and 1970s. Most of those that we now see as the “classic foraging models” date to this time. The subfield of foraging has a split personality. The early pioneers in the field (Charnov, Orians, MacArthur, Pianka, Parker) clearly saw themselves as ecologists, and they were motivated by the idea that an understanding of predator behavior would lead to a broader understanding of ecological phenomena such as the distribution and abundance of both prey and predators. Yet, modern foraging theory is more closely allied to behavioral ecology, which seeks to predict behavior in ecological contexts. Foraging theory has influenced disciplines far afield from ecology or even biology, including anthropology, economics, computer science, robotics, neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, and marketing.
Censorship
Authors: Clegg Cyndia Susan
Published: March 2013

As Donald Thomas aptly suggests, the difficulty of writing about literary censorship “is to avoid writing the history of too many other things at the same time” (Thomas 1969, cited under General Overviews, p. xi). Censorship poses both a semantic and a diachronic problem. The word censorship may refer to the positive law that prescribes what may or may not be spoken or written under its definitions and to the punishment of the law’s transgressors. In English law this is complicated by the body of case law that mediates the positive law through interpretation and precedents and that can transform law over time. Censorship may also refer to prior restraint (usually licensing), that is, to efforts to vet texts prior to publication or performance. Licensing itself is not entirely a distinct category, however, because in the early years of British publishing, licensing was an early form of copyright that protected a publisher’s “ownership” of a book. Similarly, dramatic license might entail the permission of a dramatic censor—from early on through the office of the Lord Chamberlain—or it might involve a grant (usually royal) for an acting company or a theater to do business. In addition, although the word censorship is usually associated with government or church regulation and restraint, special interests—public, commercial, and personal—have influenced motives for and acts of control. With such pressures it is not surprising that censorship changes over time and reflects particular concerns and interests at any given cultural moment, resulting in a diachronic problem for defining censorship. This is further complicated with regard to the censorship of English and Irish literature. Ireland, though culturally different, for many years was subject to English rule, so for much of its history Irish literature was regulated by the same laws as English literature. With the creation of the Irish Free State in the early twentieth century, and later, the Republic of Ireland, Ireland enacted regulations that differed drastically from English regulation and that reflected very different cultural pressures. Literary censorship, then, is not a static category; instead, it encompasses cultural bias, politics, religion, law, publishing and trade relations, copyright, and the responses of individual writers to any or all these. To sort out this complexity, censorship and English literature must be considered separately from censorship and Irish literature, and dramatic censorship for each must be considered separately from censorship and publication (manuscript or print).
Postmodernism
Authors: Woods Tim
Published: March 2013

“Postmodernism” has been a notoriously difficult term to define, and it has had a complicated history across various disciplines. Nevertheless, the idea largely emerged in the late 1950s in the humanities to indicate a sense that modernism had been superseded by a new cultural, aesthetic, and critical agenda. Some theorists have treated “postmodernism” as an epochal or historical term, while others have regarded it as an aesthetic or formal characteristic that is not limited to a particular era. Initially, it found its principal purchase in cultural philosophy, literature, architecture, art, and cultural theory, but it has subsequently affected and influenced debates across a wide range of disciplines, including international politics, psychology, law, history, sociology, and even town planning and medicine. As its concepts and ideas found purchase within intellectual debates, many saw in postmodernism an emancipation from the institutional straitjacketing of culture, while others, in turn, regarded postmodernism as an abandonment of social and intellectual responsibility that was symptomatic of a cultural decline with the ascendancy of late capitalism. Despite this wrangle over its political and ideological implications, in broad philosophical terms postmodernism tends to focus on reconceptualizing notions of subjectivity and gender, concepts of temporality, history, space, and place, and the relationships of power between races, ethnicities, and different cultural spheres of influence across global communities. The advent of postmodern thought has been a story of uneven development across various disciplines. This has meant that in certain disciplines where postmodern theory arrived early, there has been little recent theoretical development of postmodern ideas, while some disciplines have seen major theoretical discussions emerging since around 1990. However, since postmodernism has been around in intellectual debates since the 1960s, we have reached a stage where a history of postmodernism can now be written. Furthermore, it would be fair to say that more recently, across disciplines like literature, art, and history, the debate has switched from discussing the opportunities opened up by postmodern ideas to considerations of whether it has had its day and what its trajectory and future legacy to theoretical and cultural concerns might be.
Popular Culture and the Study of Africa
Authors: Agwuele Augustine
Published: March 2013

“Indeed the very shape of Africa, a question mark, is sphinx-like in its challenge to all scholars to find the proper key to an understanding of its rich diversity and complexity.” This view expressed by Elliot P. Skinner in 1973 remains as valid today as when it was first proposed. The search for the proper key to understanding and making sense of such a huge and diverse continent as Africa has taken many twists and turns. From generalized monographs, often with Africa in their titles, the content of which, however, betrays a fleeting and shallow observation of a singular practitioner, to disciplinary-based studies, and now interdisciplinary approaches, it has become obvious that a continent that boasts no less than two thousand different languages, and hence at least two thousand peoples—in other words, nations of varying sizes, customs, environments, and experiences—cannot be explicated on the basis of one theoretical prism. According to an Igbo proverb, one cannot stand at a spot to watch roving masquerades dance. Just as the dance of the masquerades is dynamic, reflecting the varying tempo of the drums, the mood of the moment, and the demands of the occasion, the popular traverses studies on Africa and African cultures spanning a wide range of disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, subsuming history, politics, linguistics, religion, economics, science, health, transportation, literature, arts, ecology, sports, and films. These studies have national, regional, and continental foci. They include specialized journals and scholarly associations, and they have evolved into academic subjects such as Africana studies or disciplines qualified by the adjective African (e.g., African linguistics, African literature, Lusophone Africa, Afro-Latin studies, African and African American studies, African and African diaspora studies). The number of Africans whose research focuses on Africa, its peoples, and cultures has grown steadily since the 1970s. In the spirit of Binyavanga Wainaina’s essay “How to Write about Africa” (Granta 92 [2005]), this article foregrounds the extant works on Popular Culture and the study of Africa. In focusing on contemporary scholarship, specifically works that date from the 1970s on, it may be possible to avoid, even if slightly, the unsavory descriptions, images, and representations of Africa, its peoples, and practices that are sometimes found in the so-called seminal, classical, and foundational works on Africa.
Political Ecology
Authors: Brannstrom Christian
Published: March 2013

Political ecology emerged in the 1980s within the field of geography from cultural ecology and development studies traditions. Initially phrased by Piers Blaikie, an expert in rural development and resource governance, as the multiscale analysis of environmental degradation from a political economy perspective, political ecology rejected neo-Malthusian explanations of human impacts on the environment. Instead, the subfield understands environmental change as a result of power relations, which cause highly variable access to resources. Debate exists on whether political ecologists created a theory of human–environment interactions or whether they established a research framework. Moreover, scholars have debated whether political ecology is sufficiently “political” or “ecological.” In the late 1990s and early 2000s, political ecology fragmented into several subareas that have since developed into vigorous research areas. Political ecologists share affinity with several groups of scholars, including anthropologists who self-identify as political ecologists, economic geographers interested in resources and commodities, political geographers interested in environmental politics, and scholars specializing in cultural ecology and environmental justice.
Geographic Information Science
Authors: Schuurman Nadine , Cinnamon Jonathan
Published: March 2013

Geographic information systems (GIS) are the collection of software, hardware, outputs, personnel, and practices that together facilitate the analysis and mapping of geographic entities and phenomena. The field of geographic information science (GIScience) broadly explores the theory and concepts underpinning GIS and related geospatial technologies such as remote sensing and the Global Positioning System (GPS). The technological history of GIS began in the 1960s with the first rudimentary systems developed primarily for storing land information and for basic visualized outputs of geographic entities. As the technology progressed and permeated throughout the private sector, government, and academia—especially during the latter half of the 1980s and early 1990s—a growing cadre of scholars began to examine theoretical, conceptual, and intellectual questions related to the technology, in the process creating a new science of geographic information. Michael Goodchild, a geography professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, made the first description of this area of inquiry during the 1990 Spatial Data Handling conference. Goodchild subsequently published what became an agenda-setting paper in 1992 (Goodchild 1992, cited under General Overviews) outlining a justification for this focus, which was both influential and widely accepted. GIScience draws on numerous knowledge domains, including computer science, visualization, information technology, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science to create a theoretical basis for GIS. As a relatively new field of intellectual inquiry, GIScience has developed a body of knowledge with remarkable breadth and depth. GIScientists explore diverse issues including spatial data acquisition and quality, representation and visualization; the development of database and operational standards; scale, spatial analysis/statistics, and geocomputation; and the relationship between GIS technology and society. The topic areas chosen for this article largely reflect the consensus of the GIScience academy regarding the core themes of inquiry in this field, as discussed in the General Overviews section. Further, references to current trajectories and future directions for GIScience are scattered throughout this article.
Quantitative Methods in Human Geography
Authors: Davies Withers Suzanne
Published: March 2013

The term “quantitative research” refers to the systematic scientific investigation of quantitative properties and phenomena and their relationships, by using statistical methods. It includes the analysis of numerical spatial data, the development of spatial theory, and the constructing and testing of mathematical models of spatial processes. As geographers know, spatial analysis is very important. The aim of spatial analysis is to understand differences across space rather than regularities. Quantitative methods have been an integral part of human geography since the quantitative revolution of the 1950s. Quantitative methods in the early 21st century are vastly more sophisticated than their earlier counterparts. Since the early 1990s, in particular, the interest in georeferenced data and the need to understand it have led to an enormous field of spatial analysis. By the late 1990s, the field of spatial analysis had matured to the point where the methods of spatial analysis served as fundamental research techniques in a variety of disciplines, including geography, ecology, environmental studies, epidemiology, regional science, sociology, and urban planning. The quantitative methods of yesteryear have given way to a complex field of spatial analysis that serves as a unifying methodology for social science in general.
Generation of families of spectra in
PT
-symmetric quantum mechanics and scalar bosonic field theory
Authors: Schmidt Steffen , Klevansky S. P.
Published: March 2013

This paper explains the systematics of the generation of families of spectra for the

-symmetric quantum-mechanical Hamiltonians
H
=
p
2
+
x
2
(i
x
)

ϵ

,
H
=
p
2
+(
x
2
)

δ

and
H
=
p
2
−(
x
2
)

μ

. In addition, it contrasts the results obtained with those found for a bosonic scalar field theory, in particular in one dimension, highlighting the similarities to and differences from the quantum-mechanical case. It is shown that the number of families of spectra can be deduced from the number of non-contiguous pairs of Stokes wedges that display

symmetry. To do so, simple arguments that use the Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin approximation are used, and these imply that the eigenvalues are real. However, definitive results are in most cases presently only obtainable numerically, and not all eigenvalues in each family may be real. Within the approximations used, it is illustrated that the difference between the quantum-mechanical and the field-theoretical cases lies in the number of accessible regions in which the eigenfunctions decay exponentially. This paper reviews and implements well-known techniques in complex analysis and

-symmetric quantum theory.
Observation of a fast evolution in a parity-time-symmetric system
Authors: Zheng Chao , Hao Liang , Long Gui Lu
Published: March 2013

In parity-time-symmetric (

-symmetric) Hamiltonian theory, the optimal evolution time can be reduced drastically and can even be zero. In this article, we report our experimental simulation of the fast evolution of a

-symmetric Hamiltonian in a nuclear magnetic resonance quantum system. The experimental results demonstrate that the

-symmetric Hamiltonian system can indeed evolve much faster than the quantum system, and the evolution time can be arbitrarily close to zero.
PT
-symmetric quantum state discrimination
Authors: Bender Carl M. , Brody Dorje C. , Caldeira João , Günther Uwe , Meister Bernhard K. , Samsonov Boris F.
Published: March 2013

The objective of this paper is to explain and elucidate the formalism of

quantum mechanics by applying it to a well-known problem in conventional Hermitian quantum mechanics, namely the problem of state discrimination. Suppose that a system is known to be in one of two quantum states, |
ψ
1
〉 or |
ψ
2
〉. If these states are not orthogonal, then the requirement of unitarity forbids the possibility of discriminating between these two states with one measurement; that is, determining with one measurement what state the system is in. In conventional quantum mechanics, there is a strategy in which successful state discrimination can be achieved with a single measurement but only with a success probability
p
that is less than unity. In this paper, the state-discrimination problem is examined in the context of

quantum mechanics and the approach is based on the fact that a non-Hermitian

-symmetric Hamiltonian determines the inner product that is appropriate for the Hilbert space of physical states. It is shown that it is always possible to choose this inner product so that the two states |
ψ
1
〉 and |
ψ
2
〉 are orthogonal. Using

quantum mechanics, one cannot achieve a better state discrimination than in ordinary quantum mechanics, but one can instead perform a
simulated
quantum state discrimination, in which with a single measurement a perfect state discrimination is realized with probability 
p
.
From scattering theory to complex wave dynamics in non-Hermitian
PT
-symmetric resonators
Authors: Schomerus Henning
Published: March 2013

I review how methods from mesoscopic physics can be applied to describe the multiple wave scattering and complex wave dynamics in non-Hermitian

-symmetric resonators, where an absorbing region is coupled symmetrically to an amplifying region. Scattering theory serves as a convenient tool to classify the symmetries beyond the single-channel case and leads to effective descriptions that can be formulated in the energy domain (via Hamiltonians) and in the time domain (via time evolution operators). These models can then be used to identify the mesoscopic time and energy scales that govern the spectral transition from real to complex eigenvalues. The possible presence of magneto-optical effects (a finite vector potential) in multi-channel systems leads to a variant (termed

symmetry) that imposes the same spectral constraints as

symmetry. I also provide multi-channel versions of generalized flux-conservation laws.
ETV1 directs androgen metabolism and confers aggressive prostate cancer in targeted mice and patients
Authors: Baena Esther , Shao Zhen , Linn Douglas E. , Glass Kimberly , Hamblen Melanie J. , Fujiwara Yuko , Kim Jonghwan , Nguyen Minh , Zhang Xin , Godinho Frank J. , Bronson Roderick T. , Mucci Lorelei A. , Loda Massimo , Yuan Guo-Cheng , Orkin Stuart H. , Li Zhe
Published: March 2013

Distinguishing aggressive from indolent disease and developing effective therapy for advanced disease are the major challenges in prostate cancer research. Chromosomal rearrangements involving ETS transcription factors, such as ERG and ETV1, occur frequently in prostate cancer. How they contribute to tumorigenesis and whether they play similar or distinct in vivo roles remain elusive. Here we show that in mice with ERG or ETV1 targeted to the endogenousTmprss2locus, either factor cooperated with loss of a single copy ofPten, leading to localized cancer, but only ETV1 appeared to support development of invasive adenocarcinoma under the background of full Pten loss. Mechanistic studies demonstrated that ERG and ETV1 control a common transcriptional network but largely in an opposing fashion. In particular, while ERG negatively regulates the androgen receptor (AR) transcriptional program, ETV1 cooperates with AR signaling by favoring activation of the AR transcriptional program. Furthermore, we found that ETV1 expression, but not that of ERG, promotes autonomous testosterone production. Last, we confirmed the association of an ETV1 expression signature with aggressive disease and poorer outcome in patient data. The distinct biology of ETV1-associated prostate cancer suggests that this disease class may require new therapies directed to underlying programs controlled by ETV1.
PQBP1, a factor linked to intellectual disability, affects alternative splicing associated with neurite outgrowth
Authors: Wang Qingqing , Moore Michael J. , Adelmant Guillaume , Marto Jarrod A. , Silver Pamela A.
Published: March 2013

Polyglutamine-binding protein 1 (PQBP1) is a highly conserved protein associated with neurodegenerative disorders. Here, we identify PQBP1 as an alternative messenger RNA (mRNA) splicing (AS) effector capable of influencing splicing of multiple mRNA targets. PQBP1 is associated with many splicing factors, including the key U2 small nuclear ribonucleoprotein (snRNP) component SF3B1 (subunit 1 of the splicing factor 3B [SF3B] protein complex). Loss of functional PQBP1 reduced SF3B1 substrate mRNA association and led to significant changes in AS patterns. Depletion of PQBP1 in primary mouse neurons reduced dendritic outgrowth and altered AS of mRNAs enriched for functions in neuron projection development. Disease-linked PQBP1 mutants were deficient in splicing factor associations and could not complement neurite outgrowth defects. Our results indicate that PQBP1 can affect the AS of multiple mRNAs and indicate specific affected targets whose splice site determination may contribute to the disease phenotype in PQBP1-linked neurological disorders.
Migration phenology and seasonal fidelity of an Arctic marine predator in relation to sea ice dynamics
Authors: Cherry Seth G. , Derocher Andrew E. , Thiemann Gregory W. , Lunn Nicholas J.
Published: March 2013

Understanding how seasonal environmental conditions affect the timing and distribution of synchronized animal movement patterns is a central issue in animal ecology.

Migration, a behavioural adaptation to seasonal environmental fluctuations, is a fundamental part of the life history of numerous species. However, global climate change can alter the spatiotemporal distribution of resources and thus affect the seasonal movement patterns of migratory animals.

We examined sea ice dynamics relative to migration patterns and seasonal geographical fidelity of an Arctic marine predator, the polar bear (Ursus maritimus). Polar bear movement patterns were quantified using satellite‐linked telemetry data collected from collars deployed between 1991–1997 and 2004–2009.

We showed that specific sea ice characteristics can predict the timing of seasonal polar bear migration on and off terrestrial refugia. In addition, fidelity to specific onshore regions during the ice‐free period was predicted by the spatial pattern of sea ice break‐up but not by the timing of break‐up. The timing of migration showed a trend towards earlier arrival of polar bears on shore and later departure from land, which has been driven by climate‐induced declines in the availability of sea ice.

Changes to the timing of migration have resulted in polar bears spending progressively longer periods of time on land without access to sea ice and their marine mammal prey. The links between increased atmospheric temperatures, sea ice dynamics, and the migratory behaviour of an ice‐dependent species emphasizes the importance of quantifying and monitoring relationships between migratory wildlife and environmental cues that may be altered by climate change.
Relative influence of human harvest, carnivores, and weather on adult female elk survival across western North America
Authors: Brodie Jedediah , Johnson Heather , Mitchell Michael , Zager Peter , Proffitt Kelly , Hebblewhite Mark , Kauffman Matthew , Johnson Bruce , Bissonette John , Bishop Chad , Gude Justin , Herbert Jeff , Hersey Kent , Hurley Mark , Lukacs Paul M. , McCorquodale Scott , McIntire Eliot , Nowak Josh , Sawyer Hall , Smith Douglas , White P.J.
Published: March 2013

Well‐informed management of harvested species requires understanding how changing ecological conditions affect demography and population dynamics, information that is lacking for many species. We have limited understanding of the relative influence of carnivores, harvest, weather and forage availability on elk Cervus elaphus demography, despite the ecological and economic importance of this species. We assessed adult female survival, a key vital rate for population dynamics, from 2746 radio‐collared elk in 45 populations across western North America that experience wide variation in carnivore assemblage, harvest, weather and habitat conditions.

Proportional hazard analysis revealed that ‘baseline’ (i.e. not related to human factors) mortality was higher with very high winter precipitation, particularly in populations sympatric with wolves Canis lupus. Mortality may increase via nutritional stress and heightened vulnerability to predation in snowy winters. Baseline mortality was unrelated to puma Puma concolor presence, forest cover or summer forage productivity.

Cause‐specific mortality analyses showed that wolves and all carnivore species combined had additive effects on baseline elk mortality, but only reduced survival by <2%. When human factors were included, ‘total’ adult mortality was solely related to harvest; the influence of native carnivores was compensatory. Annual total mortality rates were lowest in populations sympatric with both pumas and wolves because managers reduced female harvest in areas with abundant or diverse carnivores.

Mortality from native carnivores peaked in late winter and early spring, while harvest‐induced mortality peaked in autumn. The strong peak in harvest‐induced mortality during the autumn hunting season decreased as the number of native carnivore species increased.

Synthesis and applications. Elevated baseline adult female elk mortality from wolves in years with high winter precipitation could affect elk abundance as winters across the western US become drier and wolves recolonize portions of the region. In the absence of human harvest, wolves had additive, although limited, effects on mortality. However, human harvest, and its apparent use by managers to offset predation, primarily controls overall variation in adult female mortality. Altering harvest quotas is thus a strong tool for offsetting impacts of carnivore recolonization and shifting weather patterns on elk across western North America.
Urban Water Management in Response to Prolonged Droughts and Urban Growth
Authors: Wittwer Glyn
Published: March 2013

Demand for water is inelastic. As a consequence of this, the prospective returns to supply augmentation of urban water may vary widely with seasonal conditions, population growth and water savings over time. Prolonged drought conditions in the first decade of the new millennium placed urban water supplies under stress. Substantial investments followed to augment the water supplies of each of Australia's mainland state capitals. Present judgements on whether the investments in individual cities were justified may be driven by current seasonal conditions rather than longer term analysis of supply and demand.
Congruification: support for time scaling large phylogenetic trees
Authors: Eastman Jonathan M. , Harmon Luke J. , Tank David C.
Published: March 2013

Approaches for efficient statistical estimation of large phylogenies are now available (Bioinformatics, 2006, 22, 2688), and yet we lack adequate tools for synthesizing information from previous analyses into large timetrees. Here, we present a cross‐platform r tool that integrates with tree of life efforts by mapping divergence times from an existing timetree (a ‘reference’) to another uncalibrated phylogeny (a ‘target’) that samples from the same lineage. Leveraging existing methods for rate‐smoothing phylograms, this tool enables the rapid generation of very large timetrees where direct estimation of the timing of lineage diversification is either impracticable or impossible.

The primary output of the tool is to return divergence times for nodes resolved as concordant between the reference and target. Given the computed set of secondary calibrations, post hoc tree transformation can be accomplished using existing resources that assume either a strict or relaxed evolutionary clock.

Our software is provided open source in the geiger package (http://cran.r-project.org/package=geiger) and is thoroughly demonstrated in the Supporting Information.
Motivational interviewing to enhance nicotine patch treatment for smoking cessation among homeless smokers: a randomized controlled trial
Authors: Okuyemi Kolawole S. , Goldade Kate , Whembolua Guy‐Lucien , Thomas Janet L. , Eischen Sara , Sewali Barrett , Guo Hongfei , Connett John E. , Grant Jon , Ahluwalia Jasjit S. , Resnicow Ken , Owen Greg , Gelberg Lillian , Des Jarlais Don
Published: March 2013

Aims

To assess the effects of adding motivational interviewing (MI) counseling to nicotine patch for smoking cessation among homeless smokers.

Design

Two‐group randomized controlled trial with 26‐week follow‐up.

Participants and setting

A total of 430 homeless smokers from emergency shelters and transitional housing units in Minneapolis/St Paul, Minnesota, USA.

Intervention and measurements

All participants received 8‐week treatment of 21‐mg nicotine patch. In addition, participants in the intervention group received six individual sessions of MI counseling which aimed to increase adherence to nicotine patches and to motivate cessation. Participants in the standard care control group received one session of brief advice to quit smoking. Primary outcome was 7‐day abstinence from cigarette smoking at 26 weeks, as validated by exhaled carbon monoxide and salivary cotinine.

Findings

Using intention‐to‐treat analysis, verified 7‐day abstinence rate at week 26 for the intervention group was non‐significantly higher than for the control group (9.3% versus 5.6%, P = 0.15). Among participants who did not quit smoking, reduction in number of cigarettes from baseline to week 26 was equally high in both study groups (−13.7 ± 11.9 for MI versus −13.5 ± 16.2 for standard care).

Conclusions

Adding motivational interviewing counseling to nicotine patch did not increase smoking rate significantly at 26‐week follow‐up for homeless smokers.