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401. Biology’s Misuse Potential

Author:
Filippa Lentzos
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Connections
Institution:
Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes
Abstract:
The international community has laid down clear red lines about the use of biology to enhance national armaments. Advances in bioscience and biomedicine are, however, significantly eroding technological barriers to acquiring and using biological weapons. This article describes recent scientific trends and analyses their security implications. Three emerging fields of research that have particularly high potential for misuse are considered in more detail: potentially pandemic pathogens, synthetic biology and neurobiology. It is argued that continued efforts are required in multilateral, national and scientific spheres to strengthen the red lines and to foster responsible science.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Biological Weapons, Pandemic, Biology, and Medicine
Political Geography:
Global Focus

402. The Secrets of Containment: Making the Invisible Visible

Author:
Meg Murphy
Publication Date:
02-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Peter Galison, the Joseph Pellegrino University Professor at Harvard University, is fascinated by the “concrete visuals behind what might appear to be pure abstraction.” His new film Containment is about nuclear waste and its safekeeping for now and the next 10,000 years. The film is co-directed with Robb Moss, Harvard College Professor and chair of the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies, a friend with whom Galison also produced the documentary Secrecy, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008. A historian of science and a physicist, Galison, the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant,” is known for his keen investigations into the outer edge of physics and scientific experimentation. He spoke with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, where he is a Faculty Associate, about the recurring concepts that drive his curiosity and the thought process that led to Containment.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Nuclear Waste, and Physics
Political Geography:
Global Focus

403. Melting Ice, Rising Seas, Shifting Shorelines…The New Reality

Author:
John Englander
Publication Date:
02-2016
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues
Abstract:
Sea level rise is now unstoppable. John Englander explains the latest science, put sea level rise into historic perspective, and explain what we can expect and how we should plan for the future.
Topic:
Climate Change, Environment, Science and Technology, and Oceans and Seas
Political Geography:
North America, Arctic, Global Focus, and United States of America

404. Digital Affordances and Human Rights Advocacy

Author:
Steven Livingston
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 700
Abstract:
Keck and Sikkink’s boomerang model (1998) and Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink’s spiral model (1999) anchor much of the scholarly debate about human rights norms propagation. At the heart of both models is “information exchange” among members of broad coalitions advocating for better compliance with human rights norms. An updated spiral model (2013) offers a more liminal, ambiguous, and conditional set of actors and processes than appeared in the first boomerang and spiral models. In this context, we consider the effects of a wide array of digital technologies on human rights NGOs advocacy work and how they affect 21st century information exchange. Traditionally, evidence in human rights investigations is collected in face-to-face meetings among activists and on fact-finding missions. We argue that clusters of digital technologies create “digital affordances” that provide nonstate actors with tools that strengthen their ability to gather scientifically grounded information that pressures noncompliant actors toward commitments with broadly shared human rights norms. As to whether this also leads to greater compliance is less clear.
Topic:
Human Rights, Science and Technology, United Nations, and NGOs
Political Geography:
Global Focus

405. The Privatization of Human Rights: Illusions of Consent, Automation and Neutrality

Author:
Emily Taylor
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)
Abstract:
The Internet enables the free flow of information on an unprecedented scale but to an increasing extent the management of individuals’ fundamental rights, such as privacy and the mediation of free expression, is being left in the hands of private actors. The popularity of a few web platforms across the globe confers on the providers both great power and heavy responsibilities. Free-to-use web platforms are founded on the sale of user data, and the standard terms give providers rights to intrude on every aspect of a user’s online life, while giving users the Hobson’s choice of either agreeing to those terms or not using the platform (the illusion of consent). Meanwhile, the same companies are steadily assuming responsibility for monitoring and censoring harmful content, either as a self-regulatory response to prevent conflicts with national regulatory environments, or to address inaction by states, which bear primary duty for upholding human rights. There is an underlying tension for those companies between self-regulation, on the one hand, and being held accountable for rights violations by states, on the other hand. The incongruity of this position might explain the secrecy surrounding the human systems that companies have developed to monitor content (the illusion of automation). Psychological experiments and opaque algorithms for defining what search results or friends’ updates users see highlight the power of today’s providers over their publics (the illusion of neutrality). Solutions could include provision of paid alternatives, more sophisticated definition and handling of different types of data — public, private, ephemeral, lasting — and the cooperation of all stakeholders in arriving at realistic and robust processes for content moderation that comply with the rule of law.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Human Rights, Human Welfare, Science and Technology, and Governance
Political Geography:
Global Focus

406. A Pragmatic Approach to the Right to Be Forgotten

Author:
Nigel Shadbolt, Wendy Hall, and Keiron O'Hara
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)
Abstract:
In May 2014, the world of privacy regulation, data handling and the World Wide Web changed dramatically as a result of judgment C-131/12 in the CJEU. The so-called Google Spain decision confirmed that EU data protection legislation gives data subjects the right to request search engines to de-index webpages that appear in the search results on their names. The search engine is not obliged to agree to such requests — certain conditions have to be met and tests applied — but it is not free simply to ignore them. The decision drew on the 1995 DPD2 and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, and is consistent with a general direction toward more aggressive protection of privacy rights in Europe, as evidenced by the annulment of the Data Retention Directive, also in 2014 (CJEU 2014). Nevertheless, despite these antecedents, it has been seen as a major step in establishing a right to be forgotten.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Communications, Mass Media, Global Markets, Information Age, Digital Economy, and Privacy
Political Geography:
United States and Global Focus

407. Chambering the Next Round: Emergent Small-Calibre Cartridge Technologies

Author:
N.R. Jenzen-Jones
Publication Date:
02-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Small Arms Survey
Abstract:
Emergent ammunition technologies are likely to prove key in future firearms designs, while many also apply to legacy weapons. Emergent cartridge case technologies, the rise of the ‘general-purpose’ calibre, and other nascent technologies will affect the way in which firearms are designed, produced, managed in service, tactically employed, maintained, and sustained. Many of these technologies are focused on reducing the logistics burden on armed forces and security agencies, and on reducing the carrying load of the individual combatant. While these technologies also apply to medium- and large-calibre ammunition, this Working Paper restricts its focus to small-calibre ammunition—cartridges of up to 14.5 × 114 mm in calibre—which are commonly fired from firearms referred to as small arms and light weapons.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Science and Technology, Military Strategy, Military Affairs, and Weapons
Political Geography:
Global Focus

408. Patents and Internet Standards

Author:
Jorge L Contreras
Publication Date:
04-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)
Abstract:
In recent years, high-pro le lawsuits involving standards- essential patents (SEPs) have made headlines in the United States, Europe and Asia, leading to a heated public debate regarding the role and impact of patents covering key interoperability standards. Enforcement agencies around the world have investigated and prosecuted alleged violations of competition law and private licensing commitments in connection with SEPs. Yet, while the debate has focused broadly on standardization and patents in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector, commentators have paid little attention to differences among technology layers within ICT. A review of case statistics shows that patent ling and assertion activity is substantially lower for Internet- related standards than for standards relating to telecommunications and other computing technologies. This paper analyzes historical and social factors that may have contributed to this divergence, focusing on the two principal Internet standards bodies: the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). It offers a counternarrative to the dominant account portraying standards and SEPs as necessarily fraught with litigation and thereby in need of radical systemic change. Instead, it shows how standards policies that de-emphasize patent monetization have led to lower levels of disputes and litigation. It concludes by placing recent discussions of patenting and standards within the broader context of openness in network technologies and urges both industry participants and policy makers to look to the success of Internet standardization in a patent-light environment when considering the adoption of future rules and policies.
Topic:
Science and Technology, International Security, and Information Age
Political Geography:
Global Focus

409. Ethnicity and ethnicities Part I

Author:
Shokhrat Kadyrov, Olga Brusina, and Isaac Scarborough
Publication Date:
12-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Nowa Polityka Wschodnia
Institution:
Faculty of Political Science and International Studies, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń
Abstract:
Scientific paradigm changes are frequently accompanied by the reconsideration of central terms and ideas. This article demonstrates how this process is currently underway in Russian anthropological studies [narodovedenie] as part of a broader move away from ethnography to theoretical ethnology. The article also shows lines of succession and divergence between various paradigms currently dominant in Russian anthropology, including primordialism and constructivism, and presents the author’s vision of a definition of “ethnicity”, instruments needed to study ethnicities, the nature of “ethnicity,” the underlying axioms on which ethnicities are conceptualized. An initial attempt has been made in the article to outline the central positions that would provide for a principally new ethnological paradigm by way of a new definition of the phenomenon of ethnicity
Topic:
Science and Technology, Ethnicity, Anthropology, and Constructivism
Political Geography:
Russia, Eastern Europe, and Global Focus

410. The Impact of Green Innovation on Energy Intensity: An Empirical Analysis for 14 Industrial Sectors in OECD Countries

Author:
Jules-Daniel Wurlod and Joëlle Noailly
Publication Date:
03-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
This paper analyses the impact of green innovation on energy intensity in a set of 14 industrial sectors in 17 OECD countries over the 1975-2005 period. We create a stock of green patents for each industrial sector and estimates a translog cost function to measure the impact of green innovation on energy intensity, next to other factors such as input substitution and autonomous technical change. We find that green innovation has contributed to the decline in energy intensity in the majority of sectors: the median elasticity of energy intensity with respect to green patenting is estimated at -0.03 in our sample. Hence, a 1% increase in green patenting activities in a given sector is associated with a 0.03% decline in energy intensity. The magnitude of the effect is larger in energy-intensive sectors and in more recent years. We also find that the impact of an additional green patent on energy intensity is larger than an average non-green patent. Our results are robust to alternative definitions of patents.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Green Technology, Innovation, Industry, Patents, OECD, and Energy
Political Geography:
Global Focus