How many ways can you find love?

How many times can you hear no?

How many times can we ask you how many times. Well, Michael Nicholson gives us the answer to all of these questions and more in his comedic action thriller of searching for love.

Fully updated and revised, the second edition of International Relations: A Concise Introduction offers a clear and succinct overview of the forces that govern our world. Outlining key theories, traditional approaches, and controversies old and new, Michael Nicholson also importantly addresses the relationship and incongruities between abstract theories of International Relations and contemporary realities of the international system in an increasingly globalized post-Cold War world.

As international players-from vast and immensely diverse conglomerate corporations to the UN, and a host of other non-state actors-increasingly influence the world agenda, the question begs itself whether states and their interactions should still comprise the exclusive, or even primary, focus of any study of international relations. Accordingly, Nicholson provides an overview of such pressing concerns as global warming, the growing disparities between rich and poor, the resurgence of ethnic and nationalist conflict, and the health of the environment, and how these affect international relations. He further examines the moral problems inherent in any discussion of international relations, including questions of international law, terrorism and freedom fighters, and human rights. Crucial to any introduction to the field, the book serves up a brief history of the last century, focusing on the legacies of imperialism and the accelerating pace of globalization.

Fully updated and revised, the second edition of International Relations: A Concise Introduction offers a clear and succinct overview of the forces that govern our world. Outlining key theories, traditional approaches, and controversies old and new, Michael Nicholson also importantly addresses the relationship and incongruities between abstract theories of International Relations and contemporary realities of the international system in an increasingly globalized post-Cold War world.

As international players-from vast and immensely diverse conglomerate corporations to the UN, and a host of other non-state actors-increasingly influence the world agenda, the question begs itself whether states and their interactions should still comprise the exclusive, or even primary, focus of any study of international relations. Accordingly, Nicholson provides an overview of such pressing concerns as global warming, the growing disparities between rich and poor, the resurgence of ethnic and nationalist conflict, and the health of the environment, and how these affect international relations. He further examines the moral problems inherent in any discussion of international relations, including questions of international law, terrorism and freedom fighters, and human rights. Crucial to any introduction to the field, the book serves up a brief history of the last century, focusing on the legacies of imperialism and the accelerating pace of globalization.

In this book, Michael Nicholson outlines social scientific approaches to international relations and then describes the problems of rational decision-making in conflict situations. He shows how rationality is in many strategic situations hard to define and often leads to paradoxes such as the prisoners dilemma, and explores rational beliefs about the international system. He examines theories of arms races, alliances, and the international problems of ecology. Here he is critical of the classical school of international relations for a lack of rigor in dealing with the problems of evidence and belief. Finally, Michael Nicholson discusses the philosophy of science, policy, and ethics. This book is both an exposition and a defense of a social scientific approach to international relations. With its emphasis on social scientific approaches, theory building and testing--and above all its clarity and accessibility--it provides students with a key to understanding the complex field of conflict analysis.

This book, first published in 1989, gives a critical account of formal international relations theory. That formal and mathematical methods can be applied to the study of international relations is often regarded with surprise, but the author demonstrates not only how these methods give insights into problems such as deterrence or arms races but also that the increase in the power of explanatory tools depends on the more rigourous development of theory along these lines. Mathematical methods have been applied to the study of international behaviour since the pioneering work of Lewis Fry Richardson in the 1920s and 1930s. However, it was in the post Second World War period that they became widespread. Dr Nicholson discusses the application of such methods as the theory of games to problems of relationships between states, catastrophe theory to the study of initiation of violence, and probability theory to the question of the probability of nuclear war.

This book describes the current status of vascular access for patients with end-stage renal failure who require dialysis. The book highlights controversial areas and problems and describes differences in practice in USA and Europe. Vascular Access is the Achilles heel of dialysis. In the United States and Europe in 1999 there were in access of 400,000 patients maintained on dialysis. The success of this life sustaining procedure is dependant on being able to successfully access the circulation and obtain blood flows of between two and five hundred mls per minute three times a week. In 1964 Cimino and Brescia described what remains today the premier form of vascular access. Not long after the development of the Cimino Brescia fistula it became apparent that there were patients in whom it was either impossible or extremely difficult to create an adequate fistula for dialysis. As dialysis technology has been applied to older and sicker patients this trend has continued, such that in the United States the majority of patients starting dialysis do not have a primary fistula. The maintenance of long-term vascular access in patients who do not have a primary fistula requires considerably increased effort. In recent years a number of innovations have considerably increased the success of long- term vascular access in these patients. This book brings together these developments, including strategies to prospectively detect impending vascular access failure, and strategies to pre-emptively prevent graft failure. Simultaneously with these developments there have been dramatic improvements in our understanding of the pathophysiology of graft failure, this improved understanding of the biology of access failure are beginning to bring to the clinical arena newer strategies to delay graft failure.

Over the past ten years, addressing what Strategic Communications is has been a challenge for the military community. It is at times referred to as a process, referred to in the context of the strategic level of war, and referred to in the context of anyone communicating at any level. The joint community has provided a definition of Strategic Communications and there has been a large amount of non-doctrinal discussions, but very little substance other than the recognition of the need to synchronize actions. Terms like inform, influence and persuade are referred to but have never been doctrinally defined leaving their interpretation up to each individual. This paper proposes a communication framework under which the military practitioner can visualize and verbalize intended cognitive effects desired upon a specified audience. It utilizes a modified version of John Boyd's OODA-Loop, combined with a classic communication model, in order to visually depict the cognitive process that occurs starting with the introduction of new information from one individual to the desired effect that is intended upon another. It also constructs a written format borrowing from the Field Artillery Task-Purpose-Method-Effect construct and applies the framework to three case studies. The cognitive model proposed meets the intent of the 2011 U.S. National Security Strategy, which calls for the better understanding of attitudes, opinions, grievances and concerns of others in order to develop better plans.