Persistent topology for natural data analysis - A survey

Natural data offer a hard challenge to data analysis. One set of tools is being developed by several teams to face this difficult task: Persistent topology. After a brief introduction to this theory, some applications to the analysis and classification of cells, lesions, music pieces, gait, oil and gas reservoirs, cyclones, galaxies, bones, brain connections, languages, handwritten and gestured letters are shown

From music to mathematics and backwards: introducing algebra, topology and category theory into computational musicology

International audienceDespite a long historical relationship between mathematics and music, the interest of mathematicians is a recent phenomenon. In contrast to statistical methods and signal-based approaches currently employed in MIR (Music Information Research), the research project described in this paper stresses the necessity of introducing a structural multidisciplinary approach into computational musicology making use of advanced mathematics. It is based on the interplay between three main mathematical disciplines: algebra, topology and category theory. It therefore opens promising perspectives on important prevailing challenges, such as the automatic classification of musical styles or the solution of open mathematical conjectures, asking for new collaborations between mathematicians, computer scientists, musicologists, and composers. Music can in fact occupy a strategic place in the development of mathematics since music-theoretical constructions can be used to solve open mathematical problems. The SMIR project also differs from traditional applications of mathematics to music in aiming to build bridges between different musical genres, ranging from contemporary art music to popular music, including rock, pop, jazz and chanson. Beyond its academic ambition, the project carries an important societal dimension stressing the cultural component of 'mathemusical' research, that naturally resonates with the underlying philosophy of the “Imagine Maths”conference series. The article describes for a general public some of the most promising interdisciplinary research lines of this project

Re-imagining the Borders of US Security after 9/11: Securitisation, Risk, and the Creation of the Department of Homeland Security

The articulation of international and transnational terrorism as a key issue in US security policy, as a result of the 9/11 attacks, has not only led to a policy rethink, it has also included a bureaucratic shift within the US, showing a re-thinking of the role of borders within US security policy. Drawing substantively on the 'securitisation' approach to security studies, the article analyses the discourse of US security in order to examine the founding of the Department of Homeland Security, noting that its mission provides a new way of conceptualising 'borders' for US national security. The securitisation of terrorism is, therefore, not only represented by marking terrorism as a security issue, it is also solidified in the organisation of security policy-making within the US state. As such, the impact of a 'war on terror' provides an important moment for analysing the re-articulation of what security is in the US, and, in theoretical terms, for reaffirming the importance of a relationship between the production of threat and the institutionalisation of threat response. © 2007 Taylor & Francis

The Internal-External Security Nexus and EU Police/Rule of Law Missions in the Western Balkans

Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) police/rule of law missions in the Western Balkans are increasingly guided by externally imposed normative agendas that respond primarily to EU internal security needs rather than functional imperatives or local realities. In line with these needs, EU police reform efforts tend to prioritise effectiveness and crime fighting over longer- term democratic policing and good governance reforms. In practice this means that police reform initiatives are technocratically oriented, yet value ridden fitting EU security concerns and needs. As a result, the police reform process can be—and often is—disconnected from the political and socio-economic reforms necessary for long-term stability and sustainable peace. Police assistance in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been shaped by a determined albeit questionable focus on organised crime and corruption. The focus of EU police reform in Macedonia on primarily crime-fighting aspects of policing has compromised the functioning of the Macedonian police. Similarly, the politics of (non-)recognition of Kosovo's self-proclaimed independence and the intrusiveness of EULEX Kosovo's executive mandate contravene meeting local challenges