This article examines shifts towards onshoring pharmaceutical manufacturing, a response to the vulnerabilities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic in global supply chains. It delves into how globalization, public policy, and geopolitical tensions have shaped pharmaceutical markets, compelling nations to seek solutions that ensure reliable medicine access and reduce dependency on foreign supplies. The study highlights disparities in regulatory oversight and geographic concentration of production, which contribute to frequent shortages, particularly of generic medicines. The pandemic intensified these issues, prompting increased state interventions and heightening concerns over geopolitical risks. As a result, onshoring efforts, often encapsulated in local content measures, have expanded, and are now driven by both economic motives and imperatives of national security and public health.

A principle that prohibits States from weakening their domestic levels of environmental protection continues to emerge at varying speeds within international trade, investment and environmental law. This article explores the principle's diverse history, rationale and legal expression in each of these domains and finds that its various articulations in different international treaties suffer the same shortfalls and deficiencies. Non-regression clauses may leave the complexities and nuances of implementing environmental protections unaddressed, including identifying and measuring when a regression has occurred and balancing these environmental protections with other legitimate policy and environmental measures. As these clauses are increasingly subject to investor–State and State–State dispute procedures, States expose themselves to heightened liability for changes to their environmental laws, even where those changes might be legitimate and reasonable. The particular emergence of this principle in environmental law offers treaty-makers an opportunity to clarify the rights of States to derogate from otherwise narrowly drafted clauses that require them to maintain their level of environmental protection strictly.

Optical tracking systems typically trade off between astrometric precision and field of view. In this work, we showcase a networked approach to optical tracking using very wide field-of-view imagers that have relatively low astrometric precision on the scheduled OSIRIS-REx slingshot manoeuvre around Earth on 22 Sep 2017. As part of a trajectory designed to get OSIRIS-REx to NEO 101955 Bennu, this flyby event was viewed from 13 remote sensors spread across Australia and New Zealand to promote triangulatable observations. Each observatory in this portable network was constructed to be as lightweight and portable as possible, with hardware based off the successful design of the Desert Fireball Network. Over a 4-h collection window, we gathered 15 439 images of the night sky in the predicted direction of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Using a specially developed streak detection and orbit determination data pipeline, we detected 2 090 line-of-sight observations. Our fitted orbit was determined to be within about 10 km of orbital telemetry along the observed 109 262 km length of OSIRIS-REx trajectory, and thus demonstrating the impressive capability of a networked approach to Space Surveillance and Tracking.

When states withdraw from bilateral investment treaties or denounce multilateral treaties related to foreign investment, a range of intersecting questions arise in domestic and international law. Recent developments have demonstrated potential incongruities between domestic and international approaches to investment protection, including as regards the effectiveness of withdrawal and the implications for existing investments. This essay reflects on international and domestic disputes involving the withdrawal of the Russian Federation from participation in the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) to highlight these interactions. These issues have become particularly pertinent today because more than 1,500 international investment agreements (IIAs) are nearing expiry of their initial term, providing an opportunity for termination. Moreover, some states have begun to terminate or denounce investment treaties, while many more are engaging in a process of renegotiation and reform. The Russian case study also highlights the potentially far-reaching effects of a state simply signing a treaty, even many years after the state has expressed its decision to withdraw from it, and notwithstanding tensions with the domestic legal framework.

In this paper we undertake a quantitative analysis of the dynamic process by which ice underneath a dry porous debris layer melts. We show that the incorporation of debris-layer airflow into a theoretical model of glacial melting can capture the empirically observed features of the so-called Østrem curve (a plot of the melt rate as a function of debris depth). Specifically, we show that the turning point in the Østrem curve can be caused by two distinct mechanisms: the increase in the proportion of ice that is debris-covered and/or a reduction in the evaporative heat flux as the debris layer thickens. This second effect causes an increased melt rate because the reduction in (latent) energy used for evaporation increases the amount of energy available for melting. Our model provides an explicit prediction for the melt rate and the temperature distribution within the debris layer, and provides insight into the relative importance of the two effects responsible for the maximum in the Østrem curve. We use the data of Nicholson and Benn (2006) to show that our model is consistent with existing empirical measurements.

Just as it had in several recent similar disputes, the Panel in China–Autos found several of the challenged issues WTO-inconsistent. We believe virtually all of the deficiencies noted by the Panel could be easily addressed with minor changes to MOFCOM practices. The real significance of this dispute lies in what it tell us about the larger trade policy dance between the US and China. On the one hand, with the series of related WTO disputes the US has demonstrated that China must comply with WTO rules. The more vexing challenge, however, is the apparent tit-for-tat motivation for this and other recent Chinese trade policies, and on this point this dispute does little to change the calculus. The prospective nature of WTO relief makes it almost impossible for the WTO to discourage the type of opportunistic protectionist actions exemplified by this case.

Chapters relating to regulatory coherence or cooperation are likely to be significant features of new preferential trade agreements, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). While the potential for harmonization of standards or institutional cooperation to impact on the regulatory autonomy of treaty parties has been well considered, this article focuses on those elements of regulatory coherence that relate to domestic processes for the development of regulations. It examines whether the adoption of ‘good regulatory practices’ in accordance with the TPP will help to ensure that measures states enact to protect non-economic interests (such as the environment or public health) are consistent with other key obligations of international trade and investment law. Although many elements of good regulatory practice mirror the criteria used to distinguish legitimate regulatory measures from disguised protectionism, there is no guarantee that a tribunal will come to the same conclusions as those reached during a domestic impact assessment.

We present the results of an approximately 6 100 deg2 104–196 MHz radio sky survey performed with the Murchison Widefield Array during instrument commissioning between 2012 September and 2012 December: the MWACS. The data were taken as meridian drift scans with two different 32-antenna sub-arrays that were available during the commissioning period. The survey covers approximately 20.5 h < RA < 8.5 h, − 58° < Dec < −14°over three frequency bands centred on 119, 150 and 180 MHz, with image resolutions of 6–3 arcmin. The catalogue has 3 arcmin angular resolution and a typical noise level of 40 mJy beam− 1, with reduced sensitivity near the field boundaries and bright sources. We describe the data reduction strategy, based upon mosaicked snapshots, flux density calibration, and source-finding method. We present a catalogue of flux density and spectral index measurements for 14 110 sources, extracted from the mosaic, 1 247 of which are sub-components of complexes of sources.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) has an ambitious agenda and could radically reshape trade in the Asia-Pacific. At the same time, TPP obligations have the potential to significantly restrict the ability of governments to regulate in the interests of public health. This paper examines the impact the TPP could have on two areas of public health regulation—tobacco control and access to medicines. It concludes that a number of legitimate concerns arise from the known content of the TPP, that the inclusion of a general health exception would be the preferable means of safeguarding the regulatory space of governments in relation to public health, and that the United States’ proposals for stronger intellectual property protections be resisted. With negotiations shrouded in secrecy, TPP parties’ desires to promote international trade and investment must not overshadow the need of governments to be able to implement sensible and effective public health policy.