215 research outputs found
Monthly precipitation and temperatures at the Avnei-Eitan research farm during the 2020–2021 and 2021–2022 winter growing seasons (Israeli Meteorological Services).
No full textMonthly precipitation and temperatures at the Avnei-Eitan research farm during the 2020–2021 and 2021–2022 winter growing seasons (Israeli Meteorological Services).</p
Lysine residues at the first and second KTKEGV repeats mediate α-Synuclein binding to membrane phospholipids
No full textWhile α-Synuclein (α-Syn) is mainly detected as a cytosolic protein, a portion of it is recovered bound to membranes. It is suggested that binding to membrane phospholipids controls α-Syn structure, physiology and pathogenesis. We aimed at investigating the role, of the positive charged lysine residues at the KTKEGV repeat motif, in mediating α-Syn associations with membrane phospholipids and in α-Syn oligomerization and aggregation. Specifically, two positive lysine (K) residues were replaced with two negative glutamic acid (E) residues at either the first or second KTKEGV repeat motifs. The effect of these mutations on membrane binding was determined by a quantitative phospholipid ELISA assay and compared to wild-type α-Syn and to the Parkinson's disease-causing mutations, A30P, E46K and A53T. We found that the K to E substitutions affected α-Syn binding to phospholipids. In addition, K to E substitutions resulted in a dramatically lower level of soluble α-Syn oligomers and larger intracellular inclusions. Together, our results suggest a critical role for lysine residues at the N-terminal repeat domain in the pathophysiology of α-Syn
System interdiction and defense
Get PDFWe study the problem of interdicting components of an adversary's system, e.g., a war-time economy, a transportation network, etc. Basic techniques are developed and illustrated with a simple network interdiction problem, "maximizing the shortest path" (MXSP). In MXSP, an interdictor wishes to employ limited interdiction resources as effectively as possible to slow an adversary in moving between two network nodes. "Interdiction" destroys a network arc entirely or increases its effective length through an attack. This bi-level, max-mm problem is formulated as a mixed-integer program (MIP), but unique decomposition algorithms are developed to solve the problem more efficiently than standard branch and bound. One algorithm is essentially Benders decomposition with special integrality cuts for the master problem. A second algorithm uses a new set-covering master problem, and a third is a hybrid of the first two. We extend our techniques (i) to solve general system-interdiction problems, some of which cannot be formulated as is, (ii) to solve system-defense problems where critical system components must be identified and hardened against interdiction, and (iii) to solve interdiction problems with uncertain interdiction success. We report computational experience for MXSP, a shortest- path network-defense problem and MXSP with uncertain interdiction successApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited.Major, Israeli Air-Forcehttp://archive.org/details/systeminterdicti10945905
The wasted decade: Israel’s policies towards the Occupied Territories 1967-1977
No full textThis thesis aims to provide a detailed historical narrative of Israel’s relationship with the Occupied Territories between the years 1967 and 1977, using the most up-to-date archival material. The central argument of the thesis is that successive Israeli governments lacked a coherent and comprehensive long-term policy towards the Occupied Territories; it is the contention of this thesis that there is no documentary evidence to support the common belief that successive Israeli governments had a comprehensive long-term territorial policy. It is true that successive Israeli governments made decisions based on several long-term plans and approaches, such as the Allon Plan and the Functional Solution, but, when put into context and viewed as a whole, these decisions were neither coherent nor comprehensive and in any case were never formally adopted by the government.
In trying to explain why successive governments failed to put forward a coherent and comprehensive long-term policy, four major contributing factors have been identified: the faction-based politics of the Labour Party, the US position vis-à-vis Israel, New Zionism and the intention of successive Prime Ministers to avoid formulating a clear long-term policy. The need to maintain unity, and avoid a split amongst the factions, ensured that the Labour Party was unable and unwilling to take a clear and unequivocal stand on the issue of the Occupied Territories; the US diplomatic stance vis-à-vis Israel exacerbated existing divisions, while strengthening the positions of those who argued in favour of avoiding taking clear decisions on the Occupied Territories; the rise of New Zionism changed the dynamics and landscape of the Israeli political system in a way that weakened Mapai’s, and later the Labour Party’s, ability to dictate territorial policy; lastly, successive Prime Ministers (Eshkol, Meir and Rabin) made clear choices against the formulation of a coherent and comprehensive long-term policy
The second Lebanon war and the operation protective Edge / Tzuk Eitan as examples of asymmetric conflicts in the middle east
No full textIn the article there are analysed characteristics of an asymmetry of a contemporary battlefield on the grounds of the Second Lebanon War in 2006 and the Operation Protective Edge / Tzuk Eitan in the Gaza Strip in 2014. In the beginning the author presents Polish and Israeli definitions of an asymmetric conflict and its manifestations. Further, there are described causes of both conflicts and capabilities the parties had at their disposal before the direct military confrontation. Then, there are specified forms as well as measures undertaken by the Israel Defence Forces in the fight against Hezbollah in South Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. The result is the characteristics of an asymmetry in the Middle East and the description of the evolution process of activity and structures of terrorist organisations and the Israel Defence Forces. This made it possible to show the process of learning and adjusting actions to the way the enemy operates, its potential and conditions surrounding both state and non-state actors
The Quest for Citations: Drivers of Article Impact
Get PDFWhy do some articles become building blocks for future scholars, while many others remain unnoticed? We aim to answer this question by contrasting, synthesizing and simultaneously testing three scientometric perspectives – universalism, social constructivism and presentation – on the influence of article and author characteristics on article citations. To do so, we study all articles published in a sample of five major journals in marketing from 1990 to 2002 that are central to the discipline. We count the number of citations each of these articles has received and regress this count on an extensive set of characteristics of the article (i.e. article quality, article domain, title length, the use of attention grabbers and expositional clarity), and the author (i.e. author visibility and author personal promotion). We find that the number of citations an article in the marketing discipline receives, depends upon “what one says†(quality and domain), on “who says it†(author visibility and personal promotion) and not so much on “how one says it†(title length, the use of attention grabbers, and expositional clarity). Our insights contribute to the marketing literature and are relevant to scientific stakeholders, such as the management of scientific journals and individual academic scholars, as they strive to maximize citations. They are also relevant to marketing practitioners. They inform practitioners on characteristics of the academic journals in marketing and their relevance to decisions they face. On the other hand, they also raise challenges towards making our journals accessible and relevant to marketing practitioners: (1) authors visible to academics are not necessarily visible to practitioners; (2) the readability of an article may hurt academic credibility and impact, while it may be instrumental in influencing practitioners; (3) it remains questionable whether articles that academics assess to be of high quality are also managerially relevant.Impact;Citation Analysis;Referencing;Scientometrics;Cite
Embodying Conflict: Representations of Hospitals and Seas in Israeli Film after the Second Intifada
No full textIn the years following the Second Intifada, Israeli cinema has centered on two prominent themes: “the mundane,” focusing on the civilian experience, mainly through the feminine body, and “the penitent soldier,” focusing on the masculine body in combat. This article offers an aesthetic and political analysis of three mundane Israeli films produced shortly after the Second Intifada, which locate recent and past traumatic events at hospitals, beaches, and the sea: Nuzhat al-Fuad (Judd Ne’eman, 2006), Jellyfish (Shira Gefen and Etgar Keret, 2007), and It All Begins at Sea (Eitan Green, 2008). The films present the sea as a space in which the body is dismantled, while the conventional hospital is the space that diagnoses and disciplines the body but is unsuccessful at healing it. The return to the sea, as the first traumatic site, expresses the radical longing for intensive treatment to get at the roots of the current symptom that appears in the hospital
The struggle for legitimacy: a study of military lawyers in Israel
Get PDFThis thesis examines the involvement of lawyers in Israel Defence Forces operational decisionmaking. By linking the legal requirements of international legitimacy to the institutional relations within Israel, the thesis reveals a dynamic of Israeli civil-military relations that connects the demands of Israel's external environment to its internal political relations and exposes the role of the IDF
lawyers as an important locus of Israeli civil-military relations.
The traditional approach to civil-military relations in Israel employs a framework of analysis that relies heavily upon domestic legitimacy, rooted in the requirements of representative government. In so far as such an analysis considers the role of law and lawyers at all, the domestic perspective focuses on the importance of the Israeli Supreme Court as a mechanism of civil control of the
military. However, this level of analysis alone fails to explain the growing importance of military lawyers in operational matters. This study argues that Israeli civil-military relations cannot be properly understood without an examination of the requirements of international legitimacy and the largely unexplored field of legal-military relations.
It is the conclusion of this thesis that there has been a rapid growth in the involvement of lawyers in IDF operational decision-making since the start of the Second Intifada in 2000 that can be only partially explained in terms of an institutional response to a growing involvement of the Israeli Supreme Court in matters of security at a time of heightened military activity. The increased power of
the military lawyers is further explained by a domestic political response to the growing external demand for military compliance with international humanitarian law by the Israeli military as a prerequisite of legitimate military action and the legitimacy of the Israeli state itself. The result has been a strengthening of the position of the military lawyers that has secured for them a veto over operational decision-making. Analysis of international reaction to Israel's military operations during the Second Intifada, which began in 2002, the 2006 Second Lebanon War, Cast Lead 2008-2009 and the 2010 Turkish Flotilla reveals a growing appreciation among Israeli elites of the importance of defending Israel's legitimacy that is likely to lead to greater empowerment of the military lawyers and increase their importance to the study of Israeli civil-military relations.
A legal analysis reveals not just a strengthening of international humanitarian law, but also the extent to which the balancing of humanitarian and military requirements in conflicts involving non-state actors politicises the processes of construction of judgments of the legality of IDF military operations. The analysis exposes the opportunity for military behaviour to be constrained or enabled by the exercise of choice in the selection of legal advice. The case studies and previously unpublished accounts of the legal actors show that, to date, the International Law Department of the IDF has acted
to empower the military. However, the increasing pressures of international and domestic civil institutional constraints, which are driven by a growing recognition of the need to use international humanitarian law to defend the legitimacy of Israeli military operations against non-state actors, suggests that the unbridled support of the military lawyers for their military employers may soon
become a thing of the past with the choice of law to be applied a matter of political contestation rather
than military preference.
In short, the role of lawyers in the military is a new area of research. The methodology brings together legal and IR scholarship with original variations. The thesis examines previously neglected aspects of the Israeli legal environment, analysing previously unexplored and highly topical developments including the Universal Jurisdiction arrest warrants for Israeli political and military elites travelling abroad, the legal controversies surrounding the Goldstone Report and the Israeli responses to the Gaza
flotillas. While the research focuses on Israel, the analysis and many of the conclusions are of wider
application for those interested in the uses of law in promoting and condemning military strategies employed in military conflict against non-state actors, and more generally law and the employment of lawyers as a mechanism for the civil control of the military
Identification of Novel Reassortant Shuni Virus Strain in Clinical Cases of Israeli Ruminants, 2020–2021
No full textThe Shuni virus (SHUV) causes an endemic viral infection in Israel and South Africa. It belongs to the Simbu serogroup within the order Bunyavirales, family Peribunyaviridae, genus Orthobunyavirus. Recently, it has been identified in aborted cases of domestic ruminants, young cattle and horses manifesting neural signs and acute death, symptomatic cows, and in carcasses of wild animals. Moreover, SHUV was isolated and identified in humans. In this study, we describe clinical cases of SHUV infection in Israeli domestic ruminants in 2020–2021, which represented clinical manifestations of simbuviral infection including abortions, a neural lethal case in a fattening calf, and an acute symptomatic case in a beef cow. In all cases, SHUV was confirmed by complete or partial viral genome sequencing. There is a significant difference of M and L segments of the novel strains compared with those of all known SHUV strains, while the S segments have more than 99% nucleotide (nt) identity with Israeli and African “Israeli-like” strains previously circulated in 2014–2019. This indicates a reassortment origin of the strain. At the same time, M and S segment nt sequences showed about 98–99% nt identity with some South African strains collected in 2016–2018. Nevertheless, the viral origin and the geographical place of the reassortment stayed unknown
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