Improving Ontology Recommendation and Reuse in WebCORE by Collaborative Assessments

In this work, we present an extension of CORE [8], a tool for Collaborative Ontology Reuse and Evaluation. The system receives an informal description of a specific semantic domain and determines which ontologies from a repository are the most appropriate to describe the given domain. For this task, the environment is divided into three modules. The first component receives the problem description as a set of terms, and allows the user to refine and enlarge it using WordNet. The second module applies multiple automatic criteria to evaluate the ontologies of the repository, and determines which ones fit best the problem description. A ranked list of ontologies is returned for each criterion, and the lists are combined by means of rank fusion techniques. Finally, the third component uses manual user evaluations in order to incorporate a human, collaborative assessment of the ontologies. The new version of the system incorporates several novelties, such as its implementation as a web application; the incorporation of a NLP module to manage the problem definitions; modifications on the automatic ontology retrieval strategies; and a collaborative framework to find potential relevant terms according to previous user queries. Finally, we present some early experiments on ontology retrieval and evaluation, showing the benefits of our system

Diplomacy and Security Community-Building: EU Crisis Management in the Western Mediterranean

ReviewBook Revie

Broadband suppression of backscattering at optical frequencies using low permittivity dielectric spheres

The exact suppression of backscattering from rotationally symmetric objects requires dual symmetric materials where ${\epsilon_r} = {\mu_r}$. This prevents their design at many frequency bands, including the optical one, because magnetic materials are not available. Electromagnetically small non-magnetic spheres of large permittivity offer an alternative. They can be tailored to exhibit balanced electric and magnetic dipole polarizabilities, which result in approximate zero backscattering. In this case, the effect is inherently narrowband. Here, we put forward a different alternative that allows broadband functionality: Electromagnetically large spheres made from low permittivity materials. The effect occurs in a parameter regime that approaches the trivial ${\epsilon_r} \to {\mu_r} =1$ case, where approximate duality is met in a weakly wavelength dependence fashion. Despite the low permittivity, the overall scattering response of the spheres is still significant. Radiation patterns from these spheres are shown to be highly directive across an octave spanning band. The effect is analytically and numerically shown using the Mie coefficients.Comment: 6 Figure

The ENP and EU-Maghreb relations

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Routledge via the ISBN in this recordThe recipients of the southern dimension of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) include a quite distinct grouping of countries, the Maghreb, which can be approached either as a full-fledged regional unit by itself or as a sub-regional setting comprised in the broader regional system of the Middle East and North Africa. The fact that the western part of the Arab world, or northwestern Africa, is constructed and recognised as a distinct geopolitical unit owes much to its intimate historical connection with – and external penetration by – European powers. Besides a similarly mixed Arab-Amazigh ethnic and linguistic background, and an also common Islamic religious identity, what has drawn the borders of the region as an imagined community is a somewhat shared colonial experience under the rule of predominantly France (in the case of the three “central Maghreb” countries, i.e. Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, as well as Mauritania) and secondarily Italy (Libya) and Spain (parts of Morocco and Western Sahara). For the purposes of geopolitical outlining and labelling, this commonality has prevailed over significant divergences between the concerned countries in terms of their contemporary histories – belonging to the Ottoman Empire, form and length of colonial rule, access to independence –, their economic, social and demographic structures, and their postcolonial political systems. This chapter addresses the questions of what are the structural characteristics of EU-Maghreb relations, and what factors account for these global features as well as bilateral differentiation vis-à- vis each individual country of the region in the framework of the ENP. The different answers provided are broadly connected to the main theoretical approaches in International Relations (IR), namely realism, liberalism and constructivism, incorporating also some insights from international political economy and postcolonialism. The following sections will examine the postcolonial legacies and background of the process of institutionalisation of EU-Maghreb relations; the debate on the degree of interdependence or dependency which can be observed in this relationship from an international political economy perspective; the realist hindrances to liberal region-building and integration between the Maghreb countries; and the allocation of foreign policy roles and bilateral differentiation between them in the context of the ENP. The focus will be placed on Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, since Mauritania is not included in the geopolitical scope of the ENP, Libya has so far remained outside most of the ENP structures despite being recognised as a potential participant, and the Western Sahara conflict has never been directly targeted by this EU policy

Global Power Shifts, Rational Choice and Role Conflict: Explaining the Trajectories of the Central Maghreb Countries’ EU Policies since 2011

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from IEMed via the link in this recordPresented at the EuroMeSCo Annual Conference 2018. On the occasion of the EuroMeSCo Annual Conference “Changing Euro-Mediterranean Lenses”, held in Rabat on 12-13 July 2018, distinguished analysts presented indeed their research proposals related to developments in Europe and their impact on how Southern Mediterranean states perceive the EU and engage in Euro-Mediterranean cooperation mechanisms. More precisely, the papers articulated around three main tracks: how strategies and policies of external actors including the European Union impact on Southern Mediterranean countries, how the EU is perceived by the neighbouring states in the light of new European and Euro-Mediterranean dynamics, and what is the state of play of Euro-Mediterranean relations, how to revitalize Euro-Mediterranean relations and overcome spoilers.This paper seeks to trace and explain the diverging and non-linear trajectories of the three central Maghreb countries’ foreign policies towards the EU since the 2011 Arab Uprisings. The analysis is situated within the big structural picture and debates about the putative decline of the Western-based liberal international order, including the EU’s influence over its neighbourhood. Change and continuity in the Tunisia, Moroccan and Algerian post-2011 EU policies are examined by contrasting various theory-based perspectives and explanatory factors, i.e. economic dependence or interdependence; global power shifts; national security, territoriality and sovereignty; and national identities and foreign policy roles. The findings suggest that these states’ economic (inter)dependence with the EU has remained largely a driver of continuity. Their trade structures have not significantly changed, although non-Western – mainly GCC – presence has become more relevant in terms of FDI. The drivers of change that explain specific bilateral turning points are mostly rational choices in the face of perceived challenges to national security, territoriality and sovereignty, as well as identity tensions resulting from foreign policy role conflicts. In such cases, the putative decline of the liberal international order may be providing increased opportunities for a potential normative ‘de-Europeanisation’, or ‘de-Europeanisation through discourse’, in spite of the material structure’s persistence

Modelling for a Living: Two-level Games and Rhetorical Action in the Foreign Debt Negotiations of Post-revolutionary Tunisia

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this record.This article discusses the global-level financial constraints that shape Tunisia’s foreign policy, this debtor state’s international agency and the way its post-2011 authorities have managed/negotiated the issue of foreign debt both internally and internationally, including the ‘odious debt’ inherited from the Ben Ali dictatorship and the renewed borrowing necessities of the country. Viewed against the backdrop of the geopolitical and economic vulnerability that has driven Tunisian foreign policy throughout history, foreign debt is shown to have featured as a highly politicised issue in the domestic sphere in 2011-2012, until the February 2013 crisis enabled an increasingly technocratic government to halt the parliamentary bill calling for a debt audit and to break the taboo on new borrowing from the IMF. On the external front, a distinction is drawn between an adaptive/compliant and a resistant type of foreign policy agency, which can be observed in the international action and rhetoric on this matter deployed by Essebsi and Marzouki respectively. Adaptive/compliant foreign policy agency is technocratic and de-politicising in nature, as it attempts to isolate or blackbox domestic politics when negotiating Tunisian foreign debt abroad – while paradoxically exploiting an ideal representation of Tunisia’s democratic transition (role modelling) in order to demand greater international financial support. Resistant foreign policy agency is more openly political inasmuch as its builds on post-revolutionary domestic politics and contestation. Although the latter approach bore some material fruit in the form of debt conversion measures by the country’s major bilateral creditors, adaptive/compliant foreign policy agency prevailed from 2013 onwards

Bottom-up Change in Frozen Conflicts: Transnational Struggles and Mechanisms of Recognition in Western Sahara

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Cambridge University Press via the DOI in this record.This article proposes a typology of causal mechanisms whereby transnational relations of recognition constitute conflict actors in frozen conflicts. While the agency of an emerging conflict actor manifests itself in ‘struggles for recognition’ motivated by experiences of ‘disrespect’, responses from different significant others vary in terms of motivations and pathways (mechanisms of recognition). Adapting Honneth’s tripartite division, the typology distinguishes between four forms of recognition; thin cognitive recognition, ‘respect’/rights, ‘esteem’/difference and ‘love’/empathy. Three transnational corrections are made in order to include transnational relations of recognition, non-state actors and unstructured social-relational forms of international/transnational recognition. The typology is applied to the conflict of Western Sahara, which has been reshaped by the rise of internal Sahrawi pro-independence groups (based inside the territory annexed by Morocco) as an increasingly relevant conflict actor, with their identity shifting from victims to human rights activists to activists involved in an unsolved conflict. This identity and social-status formation has been the product of transnational recognition from three significant others, i.e. the annexing state (Morocco), the contested state-inexile (SADR) and the international community. The overall effect of intermingling recognition processes, including various instrumental initiatives deprived of mutuality, has been increased struggle and conflict complexity rather than ‘recognitional peace’