85 research outputs found
Identities in civil conflict : how ethnicity, religion and ideology jointly affect rebellion
No full textEva Bernauer predicts civil conflicts based upon the political exclusion of identity groups and their transnational links to external governments. The innovation lies in a simultaneous consideration of three identities – ethnicity, religion, and class-based ideology – thus extending previous studies with merely an ethnic focus. Most importantly, such a perspective implies a shift towards a society’s unique three-dimensional identity setup, upon which the excluded population and their transnational links can be determined. The author presents original data on the three-dimensional identity setup for 57 countries and introduces a formal model where rebel leaders strategically use identities to garner the support of the population. Key quantities of interest, such as the largest excluded subgroup or the number of identity links to external governments, are tested in several quantitative analyses as predictors for the onset of civil conflicts. The author shows that there is an added value of extending the mere ethnic perspective to also encompass religion and class-based ideology
At Home in the City: Bernauer Strasse
No full textDe tijd die in de woning wordt gespendeerd neemt af. Door tal van activiteiten die de stad ons biedt wordt meer tijd met collega’s en vrienden besteed in de stad dan in en rondom de woning. Wij zijn hierdoor minder geneigd tot sociale gebondenheid met onze omwonenden en daardoor neemt de herkenning met de eigen woonomgeving af. Het stimuleren van de dialoog tussen bewoners door middel van het toevoegen van collectieve voorzieningen vormde het uitgangspunt voor mijn afstudeerproject ‘At Home in the City’. De gekozen bouwlocatie is gelegen aan de Bernauer Strasse, waar de voormalige Berlijnse muur Oost- en West-Berlijn van elkaar scheidden. Het voormalige patrouillepad dat er nog steeds ligt is de basis voor het herstel van de Bernauer Strasse. Het publiek toegankelijke pad vormt een unieke locatie en verbindt tevens de verschillende plekken in de stad met elkaar. De oude bouwblokken aan Oost-Berlijnse zijde worden hersteld tot semigesloten blokken waar het pad doorheen snijdt. Om het pad publiek aantrekkelijker te maken zijn pleinen aan het pad toegevoegd die gebruikt kunnen worden door zowel de buurtbewoners als passanten. Het ontworpen woonblok is een mix van collectieve en publieke voorzieningen op de begane grond en woningen op de hierboven gelegen verdiepingen. Bewoners hebben op de begane grond de mogelijkheid tot privaat gebruik van de voorzieningen en ontmoetingen met medebewoners. De relatie tussen de begane grond van het woonblok en het publieke pad worden versterkt door de twee pleinen: een publiek plein als centraal verkeerspunt en een recreatief plein voor bewoners. De woningen zijn twee aan twee geschakeld. Tussen elke twee appartementen is een vide en een collectief dek die de woningen ontsluit. De vide zorgt voor extra daglicht in de woningen maar ook voor een visuele verbinding tussen de woningen waardoor het bewustzijn dat mensen samen wonen in de stad wordt versterkt. Voor het reguleren van de privacy tussen de twee appartementen hebben de bewoners twee mogelijkheden. Het gebruik van de open en dicht te draaien lamellen aan de vide en het invullen van de doorgang, of buffer, naar het private terras. Deze buffer kunnen bewoners invullen met planten en andere persoonlijke eigendommen. Het invullen van deze buffer geeft bovendien een persoonlijke uitstraling naar de omgeving: een individuele invulling binnen een collectief domein. Alle appartementen hebben een terras op het zuiden dat grenst aan de woonkamer en is voorzien van een dikke borstwering voor vegetatie. Het begroeide terras versterkt het informele karakter van de publieke tuin en het publieke karakter van de tuin versterkt het sociale gevoel op het terras. Het ontwerp is een antwoord op het wonen op verschillende schaalniveaus van de stad in en rondom de woning. Waar bewoners de mogelijkheid hebben tot privaat gebruik maar ook gemakkelijk in contact kunnen komen met medebewoners als daar behoefte aan is.At home in the cityArchitecture & DwellingArchitectur
Developing an automated bibliometric analysis system for finding rare disease experts
No full textIdentifying experts on rare diseases is a key element in improving the situation of patients and health care providers alike. Information on rare disease experts is being provided by a number of online portals such as Orphanet, se-atlas and also Expertscape. These are, however, mostly manually maintained and updated which causes issues with the specificity, completeness and currency of their data. In the case of Expertscape, data is being collected via bibliometric analysis from scientific literature, i.e. authors of publications on diseases are presented as potential experts for those diseases. This approach mitigates some of the aforementioned issues, it however introduces a new issue of name ambiguity, whereby publications from multiple authors sharing the same name are not being discerned. In addition, the orientation towards common diseases lets Expertscape miss many rare diseases.
It therefore was the goal of this work to develop an expert finder system on the basis of bibliometric analysis which is specifically oriented towards rare diseases and employs in-depth analysis techniques as well as author name disambiguation. The system should overcome the issues of traditional expert registries and complement the availability of data on rare disease experts.
A thesaurus of rare disease terms was set up using the Orphanet classification of rare diseases. With these terms, PubMed, a biomedical literature database with more than 26 million citations, was searched for publications on rare diseases and the respective metadata extracted. An application which manages the literature extraction in an iterative way as well as a staging database for storing the extracted data were set up. The application is also used in the maintenance of the rare diseases thesaurus.
The extracted data was processed in terms of an in-depth analysis pertaining to segmenting affiliation entries in order to get additional structured information about institutions, cities and countries among others. Further analyses to make full use of e.g. keywords were examined but not fully realised. Author name disambiguation was extensively examined. Grouping name instances to reduce computational complexity prior to performing the disambiguation was based on name similarities instead of exact matches. Multiple similarity metrics were compared against each other and the best suitable matching scheme was employed. A disambiguation approach using pairwise similarity calculation, hierarchical agglomerative clustering and a dynamic cluster-detection method was implemented. The approach was evaluated against a sophisticated disambiguation approach as well as against a baseline naive grouping based on exact name matches. The disambiguation performance was unconvincing and for the first prototype, the naive grouping scheme was retained including the resulting ambiguity issues.
The overall system was evaluated in different ways, such as having experts annotate author lists manually as well as comparing the system to other expert finding approaches on the basis of verified expert lists. The comparison showed that the system is able to identify more rare disease experts than the other approaches, however, there are numerous false positive entries to be found and data on experts also suffer from a partial lack of correctness and currency.
Still, the bibliometric analysis system is, in conclusion, a successful proof of principle and can already be used in complementing rare disease expert registries by identifying previously unknown experts. Persisting data flaws would need to be sorted out in the future along with further adaptation to changing external conditions such as access possibilities to source databases. More analysis features could be examined and realised in order to enhance the system and provide for its sustainability
Electric and magnetic form factors of the proton
No full textThe paper describes a precise measurement of electron scattering off the proton at momentum transfers of \ GeV. The average point-to-point error of the cross sections in this experiment is 0.37%. These data are used for a coherent new analysis together with all world data of unpolarized and polarized electron scattering from the very smallest to the highest momentum transfers so far measured. The extracted electric and magnetic form factors provide new insight into their exact shape, deviating from the classical dipole form, and of structure on top of this gross shape. The data reaching very low values are used for a new determination of the electric and magnetic radii. An empirical determination of the Two-Photon-Exchange (TPE) correction is presented. The implications of this correction on the radii and the question of a directly visible signal of the pion cloud are addressed.This paper describes a precise measurement of electron scattering off the proton at momentum transfers of 0.003≲Q2≲1 GeV2. The average point-to-point error of the cross sections in this experiment is ∼0.37%. These data are used for a coherent new analysis together with all world data of unpolarized and polarized electron scattering from the very smallest to the highest momentum transfers so far measured. The extracted electric and magnetic form factors provide new insight into their exact shape, deviating from the classical dipole form, and of structure on top of this gross shape. The data reaching very low Q2 values are used for a new determination of the electric and magnetic radii. An empirical determination of the two-photon-exchange correction is presented. The implications of this correction on the radii and the question of a directly visible signal of the pion cloud are addressed.The paper describes a precise measurement of electron scattering off the proton at momentum transfers of \ GeV. The average point-to-point error of the cross sections in this experiment is 0.37%. These data are used for a coherent new analysis together with all world data of unpolarized and polarized electron scattering from the very smallest to the highest momentum transfers so far measured. The extracted electric and magnetic form factors provide new insight into their exact shape, deviating from the classical dipole form, and of structure on top of this gross shape. The data reaching very low values are used for a new determination of the electric and magnetic radii. An empirical determination of the Two-Photon-Exchange (TPE) correction is presented. The implications of this correction on the radii and the question of a directly visible signal of the pion cloud are addressed
Heroic Collective Action: A People's Blessing?
No full textIs the tendency to think of heroism as the activity of an individual rather than of a collective merely a matter of prejudice? Perhaps the European revolutions of 1989 and the Arab Spring of 2011 will foster more careful scrutiny of that assumption. Are the heroic figures so often featured in journalistic as well as historical accounts only individuals who are witnesses to a communal transformation and empowerment? Will a greater appreciation for heroic collective action promote a more nuanced perspective on the development of Jewish-Christian relations? The author proposes a shift of focus to communal heroism through an examination of four examples: the Yad Vashem project of recognizing the "Righteous among the Nations"; the Hungarian Revolution; the historical development of religious toleration; and, finally, the place that the Holocaust has taken on in contemporary reflection
A novel technique for determining luminosity in electron-scattering/positron-scattering experiments from multi-interaction events
No full textHow active involvement in learning mathematics can preclude meaningful engagement: contributions from Foucault
No full textThe intention in this article is to make problematic the notion of active involvement in learning from a poststructuralist perspective. Specifically, the author argues that students are always actively involved and always learning and that such learning can have positive or negative effects. she uses the poststructuralist concept of power/knowledge within discourses such as mathematics education to argue that if we want students to be empowered or enfranchised within the discourse, it is the degree of individual engagement that matters. Engagement is measured by the degree to which students are variously able to take themselves up as authoritative speakers of the recognised 'truths' of the discipline or discourse, and refers directly to the power/knowledge nexus (Foucault, in Bernauer & Rasmussen, 1987) operating in the classroom
Sustainable development in energy policy : a governance assessment of environmental stakeholder inclusion in waste-to-energy
No full textThe author would like to think the British Academy for a generous grant on WtE in France.The inclusion of environmental interest groups in policy-making is said to provide greater legitimacy (Bernauer and Gampfer, 2013), accountability (Feldman and Blokov, 2009), new policy preferences (Bunea, 2013) and, ultimately, pro-environmental outcomes (Bohmelt and Betzold, 2013). This paper focuses on the development of inclusive governance structures and processes (with regard to environmental interests) in waste-to-energy policy designed to facilitate pro-environmental outcomes in the generation of 'clean' renewable energy within the national context of France. Empirically, the paper argues that change in long-term exclusionary patterns in energy policy remains enduringly weak. Normatively, environmental 'inclusivity' (i.e. the construction of meaningful pluralistic structures and processes) as a mechanism for achieving the prioritization of environmental concerns should become a central objective for energy policy, and more generally in the environmental policy integration literature.Peer reviewe
The powers of emptiness
No full textFoucault is often considered to be the commensurate theorist of power. His late work provides an impressive array of concepts that enables a multi-dimensional analysis of the historical, material, and discursive facets of power. What is missing from this approach, however, is the factor of passionate attachments, or what we might term the sublime motivations that underlie any regime of control. Lacan’s ethical thought prioritizes precisely the issue of the sublime, and, more to the point, the process of sublimation which establishes an effective “short-circuit” between socially valorized objects and direct drive satisfactions of individuals. Key here is the notion of das Ding, the place of the absent object of primordial satisfaction that generates libidinal enjoyment and draws the subject toward the pinnacle of social valorization. Lacan thus shows us what Foucault cannot theorize. That is to say, if sublimation consists of a relation to the real of das Ding, then it cannot be limited in the terms of its activation to the powers of discursive domain alone; it remains a self-initiating and self-regulating form of power
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