The United States, Russia, China, and India are the only states that have tested anti-satellite weapons (ASATs) by deliberately destroying orbiting satellites. In this paper, a mix of practical and ...aspirational factors are investigated in the context of heightened propensity for a state's testing of ASATs. The strategic competition and rivalry between these global and regional space powers generates an environment of conflict and insecurity. In the absence of an international treaty to constrain behavior, these states are driven to amass counterspace capabilities to secure their assets and establish space dominance.
This paper highlights the role of government in boosting the private space sector and proposes that public-private linkages and state support are critical for the success of private space endeavours, ...such as the fledgling asteroid mining one. The economics of high costs in tandem with outsized risks, and the long time-horizon for the investment to reap a return, have been big obstacles for companies that want a stake in asteroid resource extraction. Such factors necessitate the state stepping in to share the burden. Government funding, technological help, and the state's underwriting of high-level risks, along with ensuring private property rights, are critical for the viability of the asteroid mining infant industry. This paper shows that without enough government backing, the possibility of success for such an enterprise is compromised, as seen in the dismal outcomes of the asteroid mining companies that emerged in recent times.
Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease that is known to cause changes in the extracellular matrix, including changes in hyaluronan (HA) deposition. However, little is known about the factors that ...modulate its deposition or the potential consequences. Asthmatics with high levels of exhaled nitric oxide (NO) are characterized by greater airway reactivity and greater evidence of airway inflammation. Based on these data and our previous work we hypothesized that excessive NO promotes the pathologic production of HA by airway smooth muscle cells (SMCs). Exposure of cultured SMCs to various NO donors results in the accumulation of HA in the form of unique, cable-like structures. HA accumulates rapidly after exposure to NO and can be seen as early as one hour after NO treatment. The cable-like HA in NO-treated SMC cultures supports the binding of leukocytes. In addition, NO produced by murine macrophages (RAW cells) and airway epithelial cells also induces SMCs to produce HA cables when grown in co-culture. The modulation of HA by NO appears to be independent of soluble guanylate cyclase. Taken together, NO-induced production of leukocyte-binding HA by SMCs provides a new potential mechanism for the non-resolving airway inflammation in asthma and suggests a key role of non-immune cells in driving the chronic inflammation of the submucosa. Modulation of NO, HA and the consequent immune cell interactions may serve as potential therapeutic targets in asthma.
Conventions signed in 1997 brought the old practices of the use of landmines in wars and conflicts and of bribery in international business transactions to an end. What caused states to suddenly come ...together and sign these landmark accords? This work is a comparative case study of the international landmine ban and the international extraterritorial bribery ban. It undertakes an empirical investigation from a social constructivist perspective to examine the processes through which the two prohibition regimes came to be constructed. It tries to determine the impact of normative and ideational factors in influencing the understandings of state interests. Did the norms against landmines and business bribery help change states' perceptions and lead them to construct regimes to proscribe these practices? In order to answer this, the study proposes and tests seven hypotheses that try to establish some general principles involved in the formation of ban regimes. The study also explores the role of Transnational Advocacy Networks and Epistemic Communities in diffusing a norm to state decision makers. In the landmines case, United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) documents for the years 1993-1997 provide the material for original primary research. The documents and publications of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are used for primary research in the bribery case. The research finds that while norms do affect states' interests significantly in both cases, their impact is quite uneven across states and is intermingled with other factors that cannot easily be branded as ideational or normative. These material or "real" factors played an important role in how some states conceived their policies with respect to both practices. Thus, compared to the alternative perspectives, neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism, social constructivism provides the most cogent understanding of both cases, but by itself cannot explain either case completely.
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