Divergent understandings regarding the “strategic autonomy of the European Union”: a result of the plurality of strategic cultures among the member states

In the recent years, the strategic autonomy of the European Union (EU) has become one of the buzzwords when it comes to the defence cooperation of the EU. However, even though that all EU Member States have agreed with the goal in a way that it can be found in the strategic documents, such as the Global Strategy of the EU, in practice the Member States seem to have somewhat different positions and understandings regarding it when it comes to implementation, yet it has received little scholarly attention. This study aims to tackle this issue and sets out to first, provide empirical insights to map the different understandings in an empirically grounded way and second, explain the occurrence of such differences through the various elements of national strategic cultures. In order to explore this link between the understandings of strategic autonomy and the specifics of national strategic cultures, this study relies on data collected through a series of semi-structured interviews with the security specialists and government officials from five EU Member States that reflect the whole spectrum of Europeanist/Atlanticist divide among the Member States when it comes to strategic orientation. The findings of this thesis show that first, the understandings of strategic autonomy are indeed different among the Member States to a certain extent and second, the differences in understandings and concerns can indeed be explained through the plurality of strategic cultures among the EU Member States. However, adding more nuance to the existing literature highlighting the differences in understandings, this study finds that while there are certain differences in understandings, there are more differences when it comes to fears and concerns regarding the possible outcomes of the goal. While all elements of strategic culture reflect in the understandings of EU (or European) strategic autonomy in a certain way, then the major driver for the division among the Member States is the strategic orientation (Europeanist/Atlanticist divide).https://www.ester.ee/record=b5242305*es

VOLCANS: an objective, structured and reproducible method for identifying sets of analogue volcanoes

The definition of a suite of analogue volcanoes, or volcanoes that are considered to share enough characteristics as to be considered exchangeable to a certain extent, is becoming a key component of volcanic hazard assessment. This is particularly the case for volcanoes where data are lacking or scarce. Moreover, volcano comparisons have often been based on similarities and differences inferred through expert judgement and not necessarily informed by volcano characteristics from global datasets. These similarities can be based on a range of features, from very simplified (e.g. statrovolcanoes) to very specific (e.g. detailed eruption chronologies), and may be strongly influenced by the personal experience of individuals or teams conducting the analogue analysis. In this work, we present VOLCANS (VOLCano ANalogues Search)—an objective, structured and reproducible method to identify sets of analogue volcanoes from global volcanological databases. Five overarching criteria (tectonic setting, rock geochemistry, volcano morphology, eruption size and eruption style), and a structured combination of them, are used to quantify overall multi-criteria volcano analogy. This innovative method is complementary to expert-derived sets of analogue volcanoes and provides the user with full flexibility to weigh the criteria and identify analogue volcanoes applicable to varied purposes. Some results are illustrated for three volcanoes with diverse features and significant recent and/or ongoing eruptions: Kı̄lauea (USA), Fuego (Guatemala) and Sinabung (Indonesia). The identified analogue volcanoes correspond well with a priori analogue volcanoes derived from expert knowledge. In some cases, single-criterion searches may not be able to isolate a reduced set of analogue volcanoes but any multi-criteria search can provide high degrees of granularity in the sets of analogue volcanoes obtained. Data quality and quantity can be important factors, especially for single-criterion searches and volcanoes with very scarce data (e.g. Sinabung). Nevertheless, the method gives stable results overall across multi-criteria searches of analogue volcanoes. Potential uses of VOLCANS range from quantitative volcanic hazard assessment to promoting fundamental understanding of volcanic processes

Changes in intergenerational eating patterns and the impact on childhood obesity

The objective of this study was to examine intergenerational eating patterns within two sets of families, those with an obese child and those with a normal weight child, and to assess the impact of intergenerational influences on children's eating. A qualitative study design was used, incorporating focus groups and semi-structured interviews. Sixteen focus groups took place and 27 semi-structured interviews were held with different generations. Focus groups were conducted in the community with grandparents, parents and children from different families. This was followed by semi-structured interviews, involving individuals from three generations within families with an obese child and within families with a normal weight child. An examination of intergenerational eating has shown that eating patterns have changed regardless of whether or not families have children who are obese. The grandparent's eating patterns were more structured, whereas the children's eating patterns were less so. There have been more changes, and eating is less structured, within those families with an obese child than those families with a normal weight child. It is recommended that approaches to tackling childhood obesity concentrate on the family setting and the ways in which professionals can support families to change eating practices. Future research should formally test the relationship between the concept 'structured eating' and the 'what' of eating, in order to determine whether there is a link between intergenerational eating patterns and childhood obesity. © The Author(s) 2010

Efficient Decomposed Learning for Structured Prediction

Structured prediction is the cornerstone of several machine learning applications. Unfortunately, in structured prediction settings with expressive inter-variable interactions, exact inference-based learning algorithms, e.g. Structural SVM, are often intractable. We present a new way, Decomposed Learning (DecL), which performs efficient learning by restricting the inference step to a limited part of the structured spaces. We provide characterizations based on the structure, target parameters, and gold labels, under which DecL is equivalent to exact learning. We then show that in real world settings, where our theoretical assumptions may not completely hold, DecL-based algorithms are significantly more efficient and as accurate as exact learning.Comment: ICML201

Structured Psychosocial Stress and Therapeutic Intervention: Toward a Realistic Biological Medicine

Using generalized 'language of thought' arguments appropriate to interacting cognitive modules, we explore how disease states can interact with medical treatment, including, but not limited to, drug therapy. The feedback between treatment and response creates a kind of idiotypic 'hall of mirrors' generating a pattern of 'efficacy', 'treatment failure', and 'adverse reactions' which will, from a Rate Distortion perspective, embody a distorted image of externally-imposed structured psychosocial stress. This analysis, unlike current pharmacogenetics, does not either reify 'race' or blame the victim by using genetic structure to place the locus-of-control within a group or individual. Rather, it suggests that a comparatively simple series of questions to identify longitudinal and cross-sectional stressors may provide more effective guidance for specification of individual therapy than complicated genotyping strategies of dubious meaning. These latter are likely to be both very expensive and utterly blind to the impact of structured psychosocial stress -- a euphemism for various forms of racism and ethnic cleansing -- which, we contend, is often a principal determinant of treatment outcome at both individual and community levels of organization. We propose, to effectively address 'health disparities' between populations, and in contrast to current biomedical ideology based on a simplistic genetic determinism, a richer program of biological medicine reflecting Lewontin's 'triple helix' of genes, environment, and development, a program more in concert with the realities of a basic human biology marked by hypersociality unusual in vertibrates. Aggressive social, economic, and other policies of affirmative action to redress the persisting burdens of history would be an integral component of any such project