A Distributed Algorithm for Gathering Many Fat Mobile Robots in the Plane

In this work we consider the problem of gathering autonomous robots in the plane. In particular, we consider non-transparent unit-disc robots (i.e., fat) in an asynchronous setting. Vision is the only mean of coordination. Using a state-machine representation we formulate the gathering problem and develop a distributed algorithm that solves the problem for any number of robots. The main idea behind our algorithm is for the robots to reach a configuration in which all the following hold: (a) The robots' centers form a convex hull in which all robots are on the convex, (b) Each robot can see all other robots, and (c) The configuration is connected, that is, every robot touches another robot and all robots together form a connected formation. We show that starting from any initial configuration, the robots, making only local decisions and coordinate by vision, eventually reach such a configuration and terminate, yielding a solution to the gathering problem.Comment: 39 pages, 5 figure

Seductions of Imperialism: Incapacitating Life, Fetishizing Death and Catastrophizing Ecologies

“China’s Olympic Delusion” is a great piece which gestures to the ironies and/or contradictions of political systems in bed with imperialist-capitalism as we know it at this time: the tensions between a dominant idea that liberal democracy is the best political system to pay attention to and address human rights, and capitalism with no limits, can go hand-in-hand. This is merely the delusion, and also the fantasy, that keeps “us” (i.e., citizens, intellectuals etc) put, and from thinking critically

The White But Not Quite Man\u27s Burden : Disrupting the Apogee of Imperial Hegemony?

The victory of late capitalism and its supreme reign through intensified war have been triumphantly trumpeted in popular media, especially since 1989 after the fall of the former Soviet Union. These aspects do indeed need to be understood and explained and Khanna attempts, in the tradition of realism/pragmatism, to do so

Forget Me Not: Bodies as Last Colonies of Capitalism?

Slavery is one technology of imperialism that serves to generate more profits worldwide. Skinner brings this issue to our attention, arguing that many people think that slavery ended in the 19th century, but the current turning of peoples into slaves proves otherwise. Skinner points out that since 1817, there have been more than a dozen international conventions signed banning the slave trade and yet, the number of people sold as slaves is in the millions. He calls modern day slavery a “monstrous crime” and proceeds to provide us with insights from his research. He begins making his point through what is supposed to be a “fictional” story about the negotiation to sell a child in Haiti into slavery for fifty dollars. He later reveals that the story is not fictional but was recorded during his four-year research into slavery on five continents

Violence against Asians: When Is Racial Hate a Crime?

In this article we focus on the mass shootings of Asian women at Atlanta spas. After the perpetrator killed six Asian women, he told the police that he wanted to eliminate “all Asians” and spoke of the “temptation” of the massage parlors and spas. We ask at what point will these forms of anti-Asian violence first be acknowledged, and then seen as a clear and present danger? To answer these questions we trace the historical roots in US history, and domestic and foreign policies of such violence. We reflect on a history of imperial politics, the means and methods of writing global power, including armed conflicts with and in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, and the more recent US-China rivalry and antagonism. Second, we argue that divisions and hierarchizations as articulated through these policies are political technologies of control of subjects and territories which are bounded for capture and for experimentation toward the reproduction of a global order of the West and the Rest. In sum, we suggest that the asymmetrical and unequal sexualized landscapes and Othering that produce such violences ought to be critiqued, disrupted, and publicly challenged

Outbreaks of cholera, capitalism and humanitarianism: Power grabs and the unmaking of corporeality in Haiti and the Dominican Republic

Το ξέσπασμα της επιδημίας χολέρας στη Δομινικανή Δημοκρατία και στην Αϊτή, μετά από το σεισμό του 2010 στην τελευταία, οδήγησε στην εφαρμογή καθεστώτων εθνικής ασφάλειας και στην τοποθέτηση του αϊτινού μαύρου σώματος και των αϊτινών γαιών κάτω από τον εντατικό έλεγχο των γεωπολιτικών αντιδικιών σχετικά με την ανθρωπιστική επέμβαση και την ανασυγκρότηση. Οι λόγοι (discourses) της ανασυγκρότησης και της βιο-ασφάλειας, που έθεταν ζητήματα υγειονομικήςδιακινδύνευσης και περιορισμού της μολυσματικότητας, επισκίασαν τις διάφορες μορφές εξόντωσης, θανάτωσης και οικονομικής εκμετάλλευσης εκ μέρους ξένων κρατών και οργανισμών που επιχείρησαν να εξασφαλίσουν μια αυτοκρατορική θέση στον κόσμο μέσω μιας πολιτικής υποδούλωσης και εκκαθάρισης των αϊτινών γαιών. Οι αγώνες των Αϊτινών αναδεικνύουν πώς το φαντασιακό και οι πρακτικές της νεοφιλελεύθερης διακυβέρνησης εξαρτώνται από τον τρόμο και τη μετατροπή ολόκληρων πληθυσμών σε νεκροζώντανους.The outbreak of cholera in Dominican Republic and Haiti following the 2010 Haitian earthquake led to shoring up national security regimes and placing the Haitianblack body and Haitian lands under intense scrutiny of geopolitical debates about humanitarianism and reconstruction. Reconstruction and biosecurity discourses,engaging with disease risks and minimizing contagion, deemphasized the various forms of slaughtering, death and profit making endeavors by foreign sovereignstates and organizations desiring to secure an imperial position in the world through a politics of slavery and wiping clean Haitian landscapes. The struggles of Haitians highlight how the imaginary and practices of neoliberal governancedepend on terror and rendering vast populations as living dead

Asymmetric Information in Insurance Market: Evidence from the Automobile Insurance Market of Cyprus

This research aims to highlight whether asymmetric information problem exists in Cyprus using as a sample the motor department's database of one of the biggest insurance companies of the island. By utilizing the existed literature that is work on adverse selection and moral hazard, my purpose is to test empirically whether the operational system used from Cypriot insurance companies is efficient in eliminating all residual asymmetric information. Knowing that the existence of the latter problems cause inefficiency in the insurance industry, I believe that it is very interesting to identify whether the insurance system in Cyprus works properly by managing to overcome these problems. Due to the fact that Cyprus is a very small country that recently joined European Union, there is no other research in the existed literature that tried to make the above tests. Therefore, is a necessity to give a lot of attention to the description of the country's insurance system in order to identify its discreteness. For the empirical part of this study, I used various econometric models that have been used from other researchers and I also made some unique tests that it was possible to be generated according with the data that I collected. Empirical tests revealed several contradictable conclusions. The first main part of the empirical analysis was concerning three different tests aiming to identify whether the choices of insured individuals were correlated with their risk type. In the second part, I made again some tests for the existence of correlation between the choices of policyholders and their risk type but using more homogeneous samples

The content of pedagogical support of students’ social adaptation

© 2016 by iSER, International Society of Educational Research. In today's world the development of pedagogical science is influenced by a number of global trends, one of which is the dynamism of social processes. The relevance of understanding the problem of social adaptation of pedagogical support of students is determined by processes that occur in modern society. The purpose of the article is to determine the content of pedagogical support of students’ social adaptation. The leading method is the method of unfinished sentences, allowing to define a set of personal qualities, knowledge, skills and values, the formation of which in the course of purposeful activity of teachers, ensure successful social adaptation of students. An analysis of empirical data allowed to identify features of the implementation of pedagogical support of social adaptation of students in various fields of social adaptation (society, family, educational organizations, including informal communication, the sphere of personal adaptation). For each field there was identified a set of knowledge, life values, skills and social roles, the formation of which should be motivated by teachers in the course of carrying out their support. The findings of the article will enable practical education staff to carry out pedagogical support of social adaptation of students purposefully and systematically