1,721,006 research outputs found
Australia and New Zealand in the Indo-Pacific: How and Why the Pacific Islands Look to Authoritarian China?
Full text linkAs a consequence of the Radford-Collins Agreement of 1951, Australia and New Zealand have assumed a special responsibility for the security and stability of the South Pacific. Amid the geopolitical competition between China and the US in the region, however, Australia and New Zealand have in the past few years lost their overwhelming influence on the South Pacific to China. In face of this challenge, the US has stepped up its engagement with the South Pacific states in order to fill the political vacuum left by these two Australasian leading states. This chapter discusses why Pacific island countries (PICs) have recently developed cosy relations with China, which includes the 2022 Solomon Islands-China security pact, although Canberra and Wellington have recalibrated their Pacific strategy in the hope of drawing them back into the fold of the regional ‘liberal’ order. It argues that Australia’s and New Zealand’s ‘superior’ Western identity and their non-commitment to the Blue Pacific – driven by their domestic economic interests and conservative ideologies – have pushed PICs to look to China’s assistance. The regional island states perceive the great-power competition as an opportunity to have their voice and concerns over climate change heard and China as a third policy option other than relying asymmetrically on the condescending ‘big brothers’ of Australia and New Zealand
A ‘Weak(ened)’ Quad in the Indo-Pacific: What Do Its Strategic Narratives Tell Us?
No full textBy looking at the Quad’s strategic narratives, this chapter examines whether the Quad is a ‘weakened’ grouping as a result of the war in Ukraine which started in February 2022 and of the assumption of power by centre-left the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in the following May or it has been a ‘weak’ grouping since its rebirth in 2017. We argue that the Quad is not efficacious because although it gives itself an identity as ‘a force of good’ for regional peace and security by both opposing any unilateral move to change the regional status quo and by vowing to bring ‘concrete results’ to regional states, it is reticent about what policy measures the four states are going to take collectively to preserve the status quo. Instead, to highlight their goal to deliver tangible and concrete results, they primarily focus on addressing non-traditional security issues in the region. The strategic narratives tell us that the Quad is not weakened by the policy of the Australian left-leaning federal government nor India’s pro-Russia stance with regard to the war in Ukraine, but, rather, by their lack of consensus or a ‘united front’ on counterbalancing China militarily throughout the Indo-Pacific. India is averse to all forms of hierarchical order. The ‘liberal’ order, for Indians, is only the lesser of two evils, namely Pax Sinica and Pax Americana. India is willing to cooperate with other three states only when its immediate interests in the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean region are under threats from China. The strategic narrative projected by the US that would bind India to the Quad project is inherently limited in ambitions and achievements
Introduction: The competitive dynamics of Order-Building in the Indo-Pacific
No full textHow could we understand China-United States ‘great-power rivalry’? There are various perspectives on this key question that has vexed the mind of many political leaders and analysts. This introduction presents two major perspectives, namely a battle between liberal democracy and autocracy, mostly held by political leaders; and this book’s perspective which primarily focuses on contestation between two international orders – or ‘order contestation’ – in the context of the Indo-Pacific
Lithium and lithium isotope profiles through the upper oceanic crust: a study of seawater-basalt exchange at ODP Sites 504B and 896A
No full textOcean Drilling Program (ODP) Hole 504B near the Costa Rica Rift is the deepest hole drilled in the ocean crust, penetrating a volcanic section, a transition zone and a sheeted dike complex. The distribution of Li and its isotopes through this 1.8-km section of oceanic crust reflects the varying conditions of seawater alteration with depth. The upper volcanic rocks, altered at low temperatures, are enriched in Li (5.6–27.3 ppm) and have heavier isotopic compositions (7Li=6.6–20.8‰) relative to fresh mid-ocean ridge basalt (MORB) due to uptake of seawater Li into alteration clays. The Li content and isotopic compositions of the deeper volcanic rocks are similar to MORB, reflecting restricted seawater circulation in this section. The transition zone is a region of mixing of seawater with upwelling hydrothermal fluids and sulfide mineralization. Li enrichment in this zone is accompanied by relatively light isotopic compositions (?0.8–2.1‰) which signify influence of basalt-derived Li during mineralization and alteration. Li decreases with depth to 0.6 ppm in the sheeted dike complex as a result of increasing hydrothermal extraction in the high-temperature reaction zone. Rocks in the dike complex have variable isotopic values that range from ?1.7 to 7.9‰, depending on the extent of hydrothermal recrystallization and off-axis low-temperature alteration. Hydrothermally altered rocks are isotopically light because 6Li is preferentially retained in greenschist and amphibolite facies minerals. The 7Li values of the highly altered rocks of the dike complex are complementary to those of high-temperature mid-ocean ridge vent fluids and compatible to equilibrium control by the alteration mineral assemblage. The inventory of Li in basement rocks permits a reevaluation of the role of oceanic crust in the budget of Li in the ocean. On balance, the upper 1.8 km of oceanic crusts remains a sink for oceanic Li. The observations at 504B and an estimated flux from the underlying 0.5 km of gabbro suggest that the global hydrothermal flux is at most 8×109 mol/yr, compatible with geophysical thermal models. This work defines the distribution of Li and its isotopes in the upper ocean crust and provides a basis to interpret the contribution of subducted lithosphere to arc magmas and cycling of crustal material in the deep mantle
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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