Michael Mastanduno

Do Relative Gains Matter? America's Response to Japanese Industrial Policy

F o r the United States, which future world is preferable: one in which the U.S. economy grows at 25 percent over the next decade, while the Japanese economy grows at 75 percent, or one in which the U.S. grows at only 10 percent, while that of Japan grows 10.3 percent? Robert Reich of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School posed that choice in 1990 in a series of meetings with graduate students, U.S. corporate executives, investment bankers, citizens of Massachusetts, senior State Department officials, and professional economists. A majority of every group, with one exception, expressed a preference for the latter outcome. The economists unanimously chose the former, and, Reich reports, were surprised that other Americans would voluntarily forgo fifteen percentage points of economic growth in the interest of hampering the progress of one of America’s principal trade and financial partners. While Reich may have biased the results somewhat by projecting Japanese growth at three times the rate of that of the United States, the overall results of his informal survey are consistent with the findings of other recent samplings of American attitudes. A Wall Street ]ournal/NBC News poll taken in July 1990 found that an overwhelming majority (86 percent) of Americans would prefer a policy of slower growth in both Japan and the United States,

Toward a Realist Theory of State Action

The realities of interdependence dictate that the ability of governments to pursue domestic policies effectively is influenced and constrained by developments in the international system. It is equally evident that the realization of international objectives depends meaningfully on domestic politics and economics. Our purpose in this paper is to lay the foundation for a Realist theory of state action which bridges domestic and international politics. We proceed by positing assumptions about state objectives and deducing strategies relevant to their pursuit. First, we examine conceptions of the state found in classical and structural Realism. Second, we present two models or “faces” of state action which relate the goals of state officials in one arena to the strategies available in the pursuit of such goals in the other. Third, building upon these two models, we put forth several hypotheses which explore the types of challenges to the state that arise in one arena that may trigger responses in the second. Fourth, we introduce variations in domestic and international structures and predict the choice of strategy made by the states across venues. Finally, a concluding section examines the implications of this effort for future Realist inquiry and the study of domestic and international politics.

Fast segmentation and high-quality three-dimensional volume mesh creation from medical images for diffuse optical tomography

Abstract. Multimodal approaches that combine near-infrared (NIR) and conventional imaging modalities have been shown to improve optical parameter estimation dramatically and thus represent a prevailing trend in NIR imaging. These approaches typically involve applying anatomical templates from magnetic resonance imaging/computed tomography/ultrasound images to guide the recovery of optical parameters. However, merging these data sets using current technology requires multiple software packages, substantial expertise, significant time-commitment, and often results in unacceptably poor mesh quality for optical image reconstruction, a reality that represents a significant roadblock for translational research of multimodal NIR imaging. This work addresses these challenges directly by introducing automated digital imaging and communications in medicine image stack segmentation and a new one-click three-dimensional mesh generator optimized for multimodal NIR imaging, and combining these capabilities into a single software package (available for free download) with a streamlined workflow. Image processing time and mesh quality benchmarks were examined for four common multimodal NIR use-cases (breast, brain, pancreas, and small animal) and were compared to a commercial image processing package. Applying these tools resulted in a fivefold decrease in image processing time and 62% improvement in minimum mesh quality, in the absence of extra mesh postprocessing. These capabilities represent a significant step toward enabling translational multimodal NIR research for both expert and nonexpert users in an open-source platform.

Unipolar politics : realism and state strategies after the Cold War

1. Realism and International Relations After the Cold War, by Michael Mastanduno and Ethan B. Kapstein2. Realism and the Present Great Power System: Growth and Positional Conflict Over Scarce Resources, by Randall L. Schweller3. The Political Economy of Realism, by Jonathan Kirshner4. Realism Structural Liberalism, and the Western Order, by Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberr5. Preserving the Unipolar Moment: Realist Theories and U.S. Grand Strategy After the Cold War, by Michael Mastanduno6. Mercantile Realism and Japanese Foreign Policy, by Eric Heginbotham and Richard J. Samuels7. Realism and Russian Strategy after the Collapse of the USSR, by Neil MacFarlane8. Realism(s) and Chinese Security Policy in the Post-Cold War Period, by Alastair Iain Johnston9. Realism and Regionalism: American Power and German and Japanese Institutional Strategies During and After the Cold War, by Joseph M. Grieco10. Realism and Reconciliation: France, Germany, and the European Union, by Michael Loriaux11. Neorealism Nuclear Proliferation, and East-Central European Strategies, by Mark Kramer12. Does Unipolarity Have A Future?, by Ethan B. Kapstein

Economics and Security in Statecraft and Scholarship

This article traces and explains how U.S. policy officials and IR scholars have conceived of the relationship between economics and security over the past half-century. During the interwar years, economics and security were integrated in both scholarship and statecraft. During the Cold War, scholars treated the two issues as separate areas of inquiry. U.S. policymakers integrated economics and security during the early Cold War, but by the 1970s the two components of U.S. foreign policy had drifted apart. After the Cold War, a renewed emphasis has emerged in both U.S. statecraft and IR scholarship on the integration of economics and security. Three factors explain these patterns: (1) the international distribution of material capabilities, (2) perceptions of the strategic environment, and (3) perceptions of the position of the United States in international economic competition.

Introduction: approaches to explaining American foreign economic policy

Despite its relative economic decline, the United States remains the dominant power in the world economy. The foreign economic actions taken by American officials, whether they involve trade, technology transfer, or the value of the dollar, continue to have profound consequences for other states in the international system, as well as for American domestic politics and economics. Thus, it is not surprising that the study of American foreign economic policy attracts considerable scholarly attention, and presently constitutes a major portion of the subfield of international political economy.

Unipolarity, State Behavior, and Systemic Consequences

The United States emerged from the 1990s as an unrivaled global power to become a “unipolar” state. This extraordinary imbalance has triggered global debate. Governments and peoples around the world are struggling to understand to how an American-centered unipolar system operates—and to respond to it. What is the character of domination in a unipolar distribution? To what extent can a unipolar state translate its formidable capabilities into meaningful influence? Will a unipolar world be built around rules and institutions or be based more on the unilateral exercise of unipolar power? Scholars too are asking these basic questions about unipolarity and international relations theory. The individual contributions develop hypotheses and explore the impact of unipolarity on the behavior of the dominant state, on the reactions of other states, and on the properties of the international system. Collectively, they find that unipolarity does have a profound impact on international politics. international relations under conditions of unipolarity force a rethinking of conventional and received understandings about the operation of the balance of power, the meaning of alliance partnerships, the logic of international economic cooperation, the relationship between power and legitimacy, and the behavior of satisfied and revisionist states.

Introduction: Unipolarity, State Behavior, and Systemic Consequences

The United States emerged from the 1990s as an unrivaled global “unipolar” state. This extraordinary imbalance has triggered global debate. Governments and peoples around the world are struggling to understand to how an American-centered unipolar system operates—and to respond to it. What is the character of domination in a unipolar distribution? To what extent can a unipolar state translate its formidable capabilities into meaningful influence? Will a unipolar world be built around rules and institutions or be based more on the unilateral exercise of unipolar power? Scholars too are asking these basic questions about unipolarity and international relations theory. The individual contributions develop hypotheses and explore the impact of unipolarity on the behavior of the dominant state, on the reactions of other states, and on the properties of the international system. Collectively, they find that unipolarity does have a profound impact on international politics. International relations under conditions of unipolarity force a rethinking of conventional and received understandings about the operation of the balance of power, the meaning of alliance partnerships, the logic of international economic cooperation, the relationship between power and legitimacy, and the behavior of satisfied and revisionist states.

Implicit and explicit prior information in near-infrared spectral imaging: accuracy, quantification and diagnostic value

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) of tissue provides quantification of absorbers, scattering and luminescent agents in bulk tissue through the use of measurement data and assumptions. Prior knowledge can be critical about things such as (i) the tissue shape and/or structure, (ii) spectral constituents, (iii) limits on parameters, (iv) demographic or biomarker data, and (v) biophysical models of the temporal signal shapes. A general framework of NIRS imaging with prior information is presented, showing that prior information datasets could be incorporated at any step in the NIRS process, with the general workflow being: (i) data acquisition, (ii) pre-processing, (iii) forward model, (iv) inversion/reconstruction, (v) post-processing, and (vi) interpretation/diagnosis. Most of the development in NIRS has used ad hoc or empirical implementations of prior information such as pre-measured absorber or fluorophore spectra, or tissue shapes as estimated by additional imaging tools. A comprehensive analysis would examine what prior information maximizes the accuracy in recovery and value for medical diagnosis, when implemented at separate stages of the NIRS sequence. Individual applications of prior information can show increases in accuracy or improved ability to estimate biochemical features of tissue, while other approaches may not. Most beneficial inclusion of prior information has been in the inversion/reconstruction process, because it solves the mathematical intractability. However, it is not clear that this is always the most beneficial stage.

Hybrid photomultiplier tube and photodiode parallel detection array for wideband optical spectroscopy of the breast guided by magnetic resonance imaging

Abstract. A new optical parallel detection system of hybrid frequency and continuous-wave domains was developed to improve the data quality and accuracy in recovery of all breast optical properties. This new system was deployed in a previously existing system for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-guided spectroscopy, and allows incorporation of additional near-infrared wavelengths beyond 850 nm, with interlaced channels of photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) and silicon photodiodes (PDs). The acquisition time for obtaining frequency-domain data at six wavelengths (660, 735, 785, 808, 826, and 849 nm) and continuous-wave data at three wavelengths (903, 912, and 948 nm) is 12 min. The dynamic ranges of the detected signal are 105 and 106 for PMT and PD detectors, respectively. Compared to the previous detection system, the SNR ratio of frequency-domain detection was improved by nearly 103 through the addition of an RF amplifier and the utilization of programmable gain. The current system is being utilized in a clinical trial imaging suspected breast cancer tumors as detected by contrast MRI scans.