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Using the InCites tool of Thomson Reuters, this study compares normalized citation impact values calculated for China, Japan, France, Germany, United States, and the UK throughout the time period from 1981 to 2010. InCites offers a unique opportunity to study the normalized citation impacts of countries using (i) a long publication window (1981 to 2010), (ii) a differentiation in (broad or more narrow) subject areas, and (iii) allowing for the use of statistical procedures in order to obtain an insightful investigation of national citation trends across the years. Using four broad categories, our results show significantly increasing trends in citation impact values for France, the UK, and especially Germany across the last thirty years in all areas. The citation impact of papers from China is still at a relatively low level (mostly below the world average), but the country follows an increasing trend line. The USA exhibits a stable pattern of high citation impact values across the years. With small impact differences between the publication years, the US trend is increasing in engineering and technology but decreasing in medical and health sciences as well as in agricultural sciences. Similar to the USA, Japan follows increasing as well as decreasing trends in different subject areas, but the variability across the years is small. In most of the years, papers from Japan perform below or approximately at the world average in each subject area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The thesis of this paper is that governments of some otherwise enlightened states are increasingly fearful of acknowledging the restraints imposed on them by existing international law. They are also reluctant to enter into new commitments by way of international conventions that would expand the reach of international law. The paper asks whether these fears are based on a true understanding of international law or on some distorted view of it. It will draw comparisons and some contrasts between Australia and the United States in their reactions to a number of recent events as well as to some enduring situations of contemporary relevance. Had time (and the limits of my research) permitted, one might also have examined public attitudes toward international law in China, Japan, and Russia in this context, where similar fears appear to be entertained. France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, also enlightened states, appear by contrast to belong to a group more dedicated to international law. As Robert Kagan has recently remarked, the experience of two world wars at close quarters, and the formation of the European Union, have made the European countries more dedicated to process, where the United States is more interested in results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organisations attempt to contribute their share towards fighting the climate crisis by trying to reduce their emission of greenhouse gases effectively towards net zero. An instrument to guide their reduction efforts is internal carbon pricing. Next to choosing the right pricing tool, defining the exact value of an internal carbon price, especially against the background of potential regulatory external carbon prices, and assessing its impact on business units' energy systems poses a challenge for organisations. The academic literature has so far not examined the impact differences of an internal carbon price across different countries, which this paper addresses by using an optimisation model. First, it analyses the energy system cost increase of a real-world facility based on an internal carbon price compared to a potential regulatory carbon price within a country. Second, we evaluate the energy system cost increase based on an internal carbon price across different countries. The results show that with regard to internal carbon prices the additional total system cost compared to potential external carbon prices stays within 9%, 15%, and 59% for Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom, respectively. The increase in the energy system cost in each country varies between 3% and 93%. For all countries, the cost differences can be reduced by allowing the installation of renewables. The integration of renewables via energy storage and power-to-heat technologies depends on the renewable potentials and the availability of carbon capture and storage. If organisations do not account for these differences, it might raise the disapproval of internal carbon prices within the organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]