Missing the logic of the text: Lord Butler’s report on intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction

This article focuses on the final report of Lord Butler’s review of British intelligence on weapons of mass destruction (WMD), specifically on its treatment of the accuracy of the use of intelligence on Iraqi WMD in a government dossier published in September 2002 ahead of the 2003 Iraq war. In the report, the demonstration of the accuracy of the “September Dossier” hinges on the insertion of tables that compare side-by-side quotations from this document and from intelligence assessments. The analysis of the textual and visual methods by which the report is written reveals how the logic of the comparative tables is missed in the Butler report: the logic of these tables requires that the comparison between quotations from the two documents should be performed at the level of their details but the Butler report performs its comparison only at a broad and general level.

Military competition and the emergence of nationalism: putting the logic of political survival into historical context

This essay aims to make a contribution to the conversation between IR and nationalism literatures by considering a particular question: What is the relationship between interstate military competition and the emergence of nationalism as a potent force in world politics? The conventional wisdom among international security scholars, especially neorealists, holds that nationalism can be more or less treated like a “technology” that allowed states to extract significant resources as well as manpower from their respective populations. This paper underlines some of the problems involved with this perspective and pushes forward an interpretation that is based on the logic of political survival. I argue that nationalism’s emergence as a powerful force in world politics followed from the “mutation” and absorption of the universalistic/cosmopolitan republican ideas that gained temporary primacy in Europe during the eighteenth century into particularistic nationalist ideologies. This transformation, in turn, can be best explained by the French Revolution’s dramatic impacts on rulers’ political survival calculi vis-à-vis both interstate and domestic political challenges. The analysis offered in this essay contributes to our understanding of the relationship between IR and nationalism while also highlighting the potential value of the political survival framework for exploring macrohistorical puzzles.

Coassembly in binary mixtures of peptide amphiphiles containing oppositely charged residues

The self-assembly in water of designed peptide amphiphile (PA) C16-ETTES containing two anionic residues and its mixtures with C16-KTTKS containing two cationic residues has been investigated. Multiple spectroscopy, microscopy, and scattering techniques are used to examine ordering extending from the β-sheet structures up to the fibrillar aggregate structure. The peptide amphiphiles both comprise a hexadecyl alkyl chain and a charged pentapeptide headgroup containing two charged residues. For C16-ETTES, the critical aggregation concentration was determined by fluorescence experiments. FTIR and CD spectroscopy were used to examine β-sheet formation. TEM revealed highly extended tape nanostructures with some striped regions corresponding to bilayer structures viewed edge-on. Small-angle X-ray scattering showed a main 5.3 nm bilayer spacing along with a 3 nm spacing. These spacings are assigned respectively to predominant hydrated bilayers and a fraction of dehydrated bilayers. Signs of cooperative self-assembly are observed in the mixtures, including reduced bundling of peptide amphiphile aggregates (extended tape structures) and enhanced β-sheet formation.

Solution-free sets for sums of binary forms

In this paper, we obtain quantitative estimates for the asymptotic density of subsets of the integer lattice Z2 that contain only trivial solutions to an additive equation involving binary forms. In the process we develop an analogue of Vinogradov’s mean value theorem applicable to binary forms.

Analytical and numerical solutions describing the inward solidification of a binary melt

We present a mathematical model describing the inward solidification of a slab, a circular cylinder and a sphere of binary melt kept below its equilibrium freezing temperature. The thermal and physical properties of the melt and solid are assumed to be identical. An asymptotic method, valid in the limit of large Stefan number is used to decompose the moving boundary problem for a pure substance into a hierarchy of fixed-domain diffusion problems. Approximate, analytical solutions are derived for the inward solidification of a slab and a sphere of a binary melt which are compared with numerical solutions of the unapproximated system. The solutions are found to agree within the appropriate asymptotic regime of large Stefan number and small time. Numerical solutions are used to demonstrate the dependence of the solidification process upon the level of impurity and other parameters. We conclude with a discussion of the solutions obtained, their stability and possible extensions and refinements of our study.

Problems with binary pattern measures for flood model evaluation

As the calibration and evaluation of flood inundation models are a prerequisite for their successful application, there is a clear need to ensure that the performance measures that quantify how well models match the available observations are fit for purpose. This paper evaluates the binary pattern performance measures that are frequently used to compare flood inundation models with observations of flood extent. This evaluation considers whether these measures are able to calibrate and evaluate model predictions in a credible and consistent way, i.e. identifying the underlying model behaviour for a number of different purposes such as comparing models of floods of different magnitudes or on different catchments. Through theoretical examples, it is shown that the binary pattern measures are not consistent for floods of different sizes, such that for the same vertical error in water level, a model of a flood of large magnitude appears to perform better than a model of a smaller magnitude flood. Further, the commonly used Critical Success Index (usually referred to as F<2 >) is biased in favour of overprediction of the flood extent, and is also biased towards correctly predicting areas of the domain with smaller topographic gradients. Consequently, it is recommended that future studies consider carefully the implications of reporting conclusions using these performance measures. Additionally, future research should consider whether a more robust and consistent analysis could be achieved by using elevation comparison methods instead.

Incorporating semiotics into fuzzy logic to enhance Clinical Decision Support Systems

In order to enhance the quality of care, healthcare organisations are increasingly resorting to clinical decision support systems (CDSSs), which provide physicians with appropriate health care decisions or recommendations. However, how to explicitly represent the diverse vague medical knowledge and effectively reason in the decision-making process are still problems we are confronted. In this paper, we incorporate semiotics into fuzzy logic to enhance CDSSs with the aim of providing both the abilities of describing medical domain concepts contextually and reasoning with vague knowledge. A semiotically inspired fuzzy CDSSs framework is presented, based on which the vague knowledge representation and reasoning process are demonstrated.

The logic of ideas in Christopher Hill's English revolution

This article examines the role played by ideas and their thinkers in Christopher Hill's histories of the English Revolution. Hill protested against a reductionist economic determinism with no place for the intrinsic power of ideas, but his account of ideas gave them a progressive logic parallel to, if not always easy to link with, that of economic development, and threatened to divorce them from their muddled and imperfect thinkers. This account of the logic of ideas had a striking impact on the way in which the more mainstream radicals of the English Revolution appeared in Hill's work, with both the Levellers and James Harrington being half assimilated to, and half pushed aside in favor of, the more thoroughgoing economic radicals who expressed, in however ragged a way, the intrinsic potential of their ideas. However, Hill's writings also betray a surprising attraction to religious over secular forms of radicalism.

Sample size considerations in active-control non-inferiority trials with binary data based on the odds ratio

This paper presents an approximate closed form sample size formula for determining non-inferiority in active-control trials with binary data. We use the odds-ratio as the measure of the relative treatment effect, derive the sample size formula based on the score test and compare it with a second, well-known formula based on the Wald test. Both closed form formulae are compared with simulations based on the likelihood ratio test. Within the range of parameter values investigated, the score test closed form formula is reasonably accurate when non-inferiority margins are based on odds-ratios of about 0.5 or above and when the magnitude of the odds ratio under the alternative hypothesis lies between about 1 and 2.5. The accuracy generally decreases as the odds ratio under the alternative hypothesis moves upwards from 1. As the non-inferiority margin odds ratio decreases from 0.5, the score test closed form formula increasingly overestimates the sample size irrespective of the magnitude of the odds ratio under the alternative hypothesis. The Wald test closed form formula is also reasonably accurate in the cases where the score test closed form formula works well. Outside these scenarios, the Wald test closed form formula can either underestimate or overestimate the sample size, depending on the magnitude of the non-inferiority margin odds ratio and the odds ratio under the alternative hypothesis. Although neither approximation is accurate for all cases, both approaches lead to satisfactory sample size calculation for non-inferiority trials with binary data where the odds ratio is the parameter of interest.