In 2001, Amnesty International, the worlds largest international human rights non-governmental organization, made the decision to change its narrow mandate into a much broader mission statement that called for the protection and promotion of both civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights. Although the organization had added to its original mandate core concerning the release of prisoners of conscience before, the addition of economic, social, and cultural rights represented a major shift away from Amnesty Internationals classic focus on civil and political rights. Amnesty Internationals decision to promote all of the human rights listed in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and become a full spectrum human rights defender was a controversial one within the organization. The debate by the Amnesty membership over whether to accept an expanded form of mandate took place within the organization over a period of a decade before any changes were made. Concerns and fears over accepting economic, social and cultural rights into the mandate ranged from the practical to the theoretical.<p> This thesis will look at the decision made by Amnesty International to begin actively promoting and defending economic, social and cultural rights. It will examine why a leading human rights organization decided to modify its focus considerably and what the challenges were in doing this. In exploring the issues of contention brought up during the debates by the organizations membership, the larger questions surrounding international political acceptance of economic, social, and cultural rights will be examined.

In 2001, Amnesty International, the worlds largest international human rights non-governmental organization, made the decision to change its narrow mandate into a much broader mission statement that called for the protection and promotion of both civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights. Although the organization had added to its original mandate core concerning the release of prisoners of conscience before, the addition of economic, social, and cultural rights represented a major shift away from Amnesty Internationals classic focus on civil and political rights. Amnesty Internationals decision to promote all of the human rights listed in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and become a full spectrum human rights defender was a controversial one within the organization. The debate by the Amnesty membership over whether to accept an expanded form of mandate took place within the organization over a period of a decade before any changes were made. Concerns and fears over accepting economic, social and cultural rights into the mandate ranged from the practical to the theoretical.<p> This thesis will look at the decision made by Amnesty International to begin actively promoting and defending economic, social and cultural rights. It will examine why a leading human rights organization decided to modify its focus considerably and what the challenges were in doing this. In exploring the issues of contention brought up during the debates by the organizations membership, the larger questions surrounding international political acceptance of economic, social, and cultural rights will be examined.

The Russian way of conducting war has been a topic of discussion during a long time. Several theories have tried to conceptualize the Russians means and methods during conduct of war. Some claim one can describe it as hybrid warfare, some claim it is nothing new and others claim they have brought a theory which can describe it better than the hybrid concept. One of the new theories is the Full- Spectrum Conflict which tries to explain Russian actions during the conflict in 2014. Analysis using this theory could help to understand whether the actions by Russia against Georgia 2008 can be explained by this new theory. This would support the understanding of if the Russian way of conducting war is something new or if it is something they have been doing before the conflict in 2014. The aim of the study was to test the theory Full-Spectrum Conflict to investigate if Russia’s means and methods in Georgia can be understood by using this theory This was a conflict taking place earlier than 2014 but still in the modern era. The study design is a qualitative case-study examining the Russian actions during the conflict in Georgia. The result of this study shows that the theory Full-Spectrum Conflict can be applied to and explain the Russian actions in Georgia 2008. The result also shows that the Russian way of conducting war may not be anything new. Thus, the theory can be used to explain Russia’s action during conflicts. This may be of interest to the western nations in order to gain a better understanding of Russian actions in the future.

Ever since the Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula there has been an intense scientific debate about how the Russian way of war should be defined and explained. Some argue that the way Russia is acting is something new and maybe could be defined for example as hybrid warfare. Others are not so convinced and argue that it is something old that the Russians have been doing before. After the annexation, a new concept emerged called full-spectrum conflict whose purpose was to define the Russian way of war in Ukraine.  The purpose of the thesis is to investigate Russia’s actions during the Georgian conflict 2008, to see if it is possible to trace the use of full-spectrum conflict there. This is to create a clearer picture of whether the Russian way of war is of innovative nature or if the actions in Ukraine were already used during the previous conflict. The method used in this investigation is a qualitative text analysis to either reject or support the theory. The results of the survey show that the Russian way of conducting warfare is presumably evolution of prior ways to conduct warfare and is nothing new. However, more research must be conducted to enhance this statement since a single survey cannot capture everything and needs to be strengthened for the result to be more representative.

Using MATLAB and a National Instruments data acquisition card, a signal processing program meant to monitor the behavior of rotordynamic systems in real-time was developed and tested. By using traditional analysis methods in this field of engineering, commonly desired data representations such as bode, polar, orbit, full spectrum plots were able to be produced to a very high accuracy. Additional capabilities offered by this application are slow roll compensation, synchronous and sub-synchronous filtering, and true three dimensional plotting. The verification of this program was done by comparing the results to the ones acquired with Bently Nevada’s “Automated Diagnostics for Rotating Equipment” (ADRE) system. In addition to a data acquisition program, theoretical models of the two-disk rotor were created to estimate the unknown physical parameters of the system. By simulating the rotor with and without gyroscopic effects included, estimates for the stiffness, damping, eccentricity, initial phase, and initial skew values present in the system were determined.

Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is a complex autoimmune connective tissue disorder. SSc presents with severe pathological clinical manifestations, including vasculature abnormalities, dysregulation of the immune system, and excessive extracellular matrix deposition that results in tissue fibrosis. How immune system abnormalities impact SSc remains poorly understood. Here we sought to explore the role of co-inhibitory receptors (co-IRs), which are important regulators of autoimmune responses. Previous studies showed altered co-IR expression in various autoimmune diseases, including SSc. Here we show that T cells co-expressing the co-IRs programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) and T cell immunoreceptor with immunoglobulin and ITIM domain (TIGIT) are expanded in lung tissue obtained from SSc patients, as compared to healthy controls (HC). Furthermore, we found a significant association between the frequency of PD-1+TIGIT+ CD4+ T cells and lung disease in SSc patients. In addition, PD-1+TIGIT- and PD-1+TIGIT+ CD4+ cells in SSc patients showed an altered balance in cytokine production, characterized by reduced secretion of Interferon-γ, a cytokine with known anti-fibrotic properties, and increased levels of Interleukin-4, which is known for its pro-fibrotic activities. To test the impact of this changed cytokine balance on fibroblast biology, we co-cultured PD-1+TIGIT- and PD-1+TIGIT+ CD4+ T cells with normal dermal fibroblasts and found that PD-1+TIGIT- and PD-1+TIGIT+ T cells from SSc patients showed a reduced capacity to suppress collagen production, compared to the same subsets from HC subjects. Thus, co-IR-expressing T cells from SSc patients show features of dysfunction and may have lost anti-fibrotic activities. To further define the phenotype and functions of co-IR-expressing T cells subsets in SSc patients, we next designed a comprehensive immunophenotyping panel for full spectrum flow cytometry (FSFC) that included detection of lineage-defining transcription factors. Using this novel panel and an unbiased analysis approach, we compared T cell subset composition in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from HC subjects, and SSc and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients. Our analysis revealed broad shifts such as a decrease in the naïve CD4+ and CD8+ T cell compartment in SSc and in SLE patients. Importantly, changes in specific T cell subsets that were discovered in SLE patients, but not SSc patients, had a broad increase in T helper (Th)1 and T cytotoxic (Tc)1 subsets and a decrease in Th2/Tc2 subsets compared to HC subjects. Interestingly, we found a distinct Tc1 subset with exhaustion characteristics that was significantly reduced in both SSc and SLE patients compared to HC subjects. In the γδ T cell population, we found that while T-bet+ Vδ2 cells were decreased in SSc and SLE patients, the T-bet+ Vδ1 subset showed proliferative characteristics and was increased in SLE. Importantly, our analysis revealed differences in specific T cell subsets between SSc patients treated with immunosuppressants vs untreated patients, including an increase in Th17 cells in diffuse cutaneous SSc (dcSSc) patients that were not treated with immunosuppressants, and an increase in memory regulatory T cells in both dcSSc and limited cutaneous SSc (lcSSc) patients that were not treated with immunosuppressants. Our study demonstrates the value of a multiparameter FSFC panel in the identification of differentially represented and novel subsets of T cells in SSc and other autoimmune diseases. We demonstrated that T cell subset composition is altered in the peripheral blood of SSc patients and show that features of specific T cell subsets’ dysfunction are potentially contributing to SSc pathophysiology.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(理学) / 甲第21579号 / 理博第4486号 / 新制||理||1644(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院理学研究科地球惑星科学専攻 / (主査)教授 橋口 浩之, 教授 塩谷 雅人, 教授 秋友 和典 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Science / Kyoto University / DGAM

This study is aimed at investigating the feasibility of using the radiometric technique as an alternative to traditional methods for determining soil physico-chemical parameters which are important for terroir characterization. In-situ and ex-situ radiometric analyses of soil from three vineyard blocks of Simonsig Wine Estate in the Stellenbosch district (Western Cape, South Africa) were studied. A mobile MEDUSA gamma-ray detection system comprising a CsI(Na) crystal (length 15 cm, diameter 7 cm) and associated electronics mounted on a portable trolley were used for partial terroir characterisation. Thereafter activity concentrations of 40K, 232Th series and 238U series in soil (top ~30 cm) from the measured MEDUSA spectra (0 – 3 MeV) were extracted by means of the full-spectrum analysis (FSA) method. A lead-shielded HPGe detector was used for analyzing collected soil samples while soil physico-chemical parameters were analysed using standard methods at research and commercial laboratories.

This study is aimed at investigating the feasibility of using the radiometric technique as an alternative to traditional methods for determining soil physico-chemical parameters which are important for terroir characterization. In-situ and ex-situ radiometric analyses of soil from three vineyard blocks of Simonsig Wine Estate in the Stellenbosch district (Western Cape, South Africa) were studied. A mobile MEDUSA gamma-ray detection system comprising a CsI(Na) crystal (length 15 cm, diameter 7 cm) and associated electronics mounted on a portable trolley were used for partial terroir characterisation. Thereafter activity concentrations of 40K, 232Th series and 238U series in soil (top ~30 cm) from the measured MEDUSA spectra (0 – 3 MeV) were extracted by means of the full-spectrum analysis (FSA) method. A lead-shielded HPGe detector was used for analyzing collected soil samples while soil physico-chemical parameters were analysed using standard methods at research and commercial laboratories.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This study is aimed at investigating the feasibility of using the radiometric technique as an alternative to traditional methods for determining soil physico-chemical parameters which are important for terroir characterization. In-situ and ex-situ radiometric analyses of soil from three vineyard blocks of Simonsig Wine Estate in the Stellenbosch district (Western Cape, South Africa) were studied. A mobile MEDUSA gamma-ray detection system comprising a CsI(Na) crystal (length 15 cm, diameter 7 cm) and associated electronics mounted on a portable trolley were used for partial terroir characterisation. Thereafter activity concentrations of 40K, 232Th series and 238U series in soil (top ~30 cm) from the measured MEDUSA spectra (0 - 3 MeV) were extracted by means of the full-spectrum analysis (FSA) method. A lead-shielded HPGe detector was used for analyzing collected soil samples while soil physico-chemical parameters were analysed using standard methods at research and commercial laboratories. / South Africa