Transferts d'armement et gestion des conflits : le cas de la guerre Iran/lrak (Partie 2)

Les récentes propositions pour contrôler les transferts d'armes en direction du golfe Persique sont bâties selon un schéma à partir duquel ces transferts sont considérés comme le principal facteur d'exacerbation des conflits régionaux. Ces propositions manquent toutefois de précision quant à leur rôle dans la gestion et le contrôle de ces conflits. L'étude par l'auteur des manipulations des transferts pendant les huit ans de la guerre Iran-lrak aide à dissiper une partie de la confusion en mettant en lumière deux types d'influence : le pouvoir structurel et le pouvoir de contraindre. Les transferts d'armes n'ont que peu d'influence sur les politiques spécifiques des combattants (pouvoir de contraindre), alors que des tentatives pour changer l'échelle des options militaires et stratégiques (pouvoir structurel) ont eu plus de succès, et pourraient servir de cadre à l'élaboration des politiques de contrôle de la région par les fournisseurs d'armes. A la lumière de cette analyse, l'article esquisse un modèle des politiques multilatérales de transfert d'armes vers le Moyen-Orient.Recent proposals to control arms transfers to the Persian Gulf were built on the belief that major weapons suppliers exacerbated regional conflicts through their commerce. However, such proposals are unclear on the role that arms transfers should play in the external powers' strategies to control or manage regional conflicts. A detailed case-study of the way in which arms transfers were manipulated during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War helps in clearing away some of this confusion by highlighting two types of influence arms suppliers can gain : bargaining power and structural power The case-study illustrates that arms transfers provide little influence over the combatant's specific policies (bargaining power), while attempts to alter the range of military and strategic options open to them (structural power) are more successful, and should guide arms suppliers' efforts to frame control policies for the region. The paper, following its own analysis, offers some suggestions for the designing of multilateral arms transfer policies for the Middle East

Transferts d'armement et gestion des conflits : le cas de la guerre Iran-Irak (Partie 1)

Les récentes propositions pour contrôler les transferts d'armes en direction du golfe Persique sont bâties selon un schéma à partir duquel ces transferts sont considérés comme le principal facteur d'exacerbation des conflits régionaux. Ces propositions manquent toutefois de précision quant à leur rôle dans la gestion et le contrôle de ces conflits. L'étude par l'auteur des manipulations des transferts pendant les huit ans de la guerre Iran-lrak aide à dissiper une partie de la confusion en mettant en lumière deux types d'influence : le pouvoir structurel et le pouvoir de contraindre. Les transferts d'armes n'ont que peu d'influence sur les politiques spécifiques des combattants (pouvoir de contraindre), alors que des tentatives pour changer l'échelle des options militaires et stratégiques (pouvoir structurel) ont eu plus de succès, et pourraient servir de cadre à l'élaboration des politiques de contrôle de la région par les fournisseurs d'armes. A la lumière de cette analyse, l'article esquisse un modèle des politiques multilatérales de transfert d'armes vers le Moyen-Orient.Recent proposals to control arms transfers to the Persian Gulf were built on the belief that major weapons suppliers exacerbated regional conflicts through their commerce. However, such proposals are unclear on the role that arms transfers should play in the external powers' strategies to control or manage regional conflicts. A detailed case-study of the way in which arms transfers were manipulated during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War helps in clearing away some of this confusion by highlighting two types of influence arms suppliers can gain : bargaining power and structural power The case-study illustrates that arms transfers provide little influence over the combatant's specific policies (bargaining power), while attempts to alter the range of military and strategic options open to them (structural power) are more successful, and should guide arms suppliers' efforts to frame control policies for the region. The paper, following its own analysis, offers some suggestions for the designing of multilateral arms transfer policies for the Middle East

Do you cite what you tweet? Investigating the relationship between tweeting and citing research articles

The last decade of altmetrics research has demonstrated that altmetrics have a low to moderate correlation with citations, depending on the platform and the discipline, among other factors. Most past studies used academic works as their unit of analysis to determine whether the attention they received on Twitter was a good predictor of academic engagement. Our work revisits the relationship between tweets and citations where the tweet itself is the unit of analysis, and the question is to determine if, at the individual level, the act of tweeting an academic work can shed light on the likelihood of the act of citing that same work. We model this relationship by considering the research activity of the tweeter and its relationship to the tweeted work. Results show that tweeters are more likely to cite works affiliated with their same institution, works published in journals in which they also have published, and works in which they hold authorship. It finds that the older the academic age of a tweeter the less likely they are to cite what they tweet, though there is a positive relationship between citations and the number of works they have published and references they have accumulated over time

Rivervis::a tool for visualising river ecosystems

There is a growing need to better understand and communicate multi-dimensional river ecosystem processes and properties at the catchment scale for both scientific research and integrated catchment management. Data visualisation is believed as a very useful approach to support this need. However, there is a lack of visualisation applications tailored for river ecosystems, especially for visualising both river environmental data and their spatial and topological relations. To fill up the gap, this paper introduces an R package rivervis, which has been developed as a free, easy-to-use and efficient visualisation solution for river ecosystems. This novel tool is able to visualise riverine data in a compact and comparable way, with retaining the river network topology and reflecting real distance between sites of interest. The rivervis package visualises variables according to their measurement types – either quantitative or qualitative/semi-quantitative data. This type-based principle makes the package applicable for a wide range of scenarios with data in forms of index values, condition gradings and categories. By producing topological river network diagrams, the package helps to understand the functioning and interconnections of riverine ecosystem at the catchment scale, especially the longitudinal upstream-downstream and tributary-mainstream connectivity and relationships. It can also be used to study the associations between biological communities, physical conditions and anthropogenic activities. The Ballinderry River Basin in the UK, as a data-rich river basin with a reasonable complex river network, is used to demonstrate the rationale, functions and capabilities of the R-package

Developing composite indicators for ecological water quality assessment based on network interactions and expert judgment

Increasingly, composite indicators and multi-criteria approaches are applied in environmental assessment and decision-making, including the EU Water Framework Directive. For example, integrated evaluation of aquatic ecosystem conditions and functioning usually involves a group of criteria, such as biological organisms and communities, physicochemical and hydromorphological variables, which are measured individually and combined by a weighted linear function into an overall 'score’. We argue that the network interactions of evaluation components are useful information for expert judgments, which have not been sufficiently considered in existing multi-criteria combination strategies in environmental assessment and management. Built upon the Analytic Network Process and demonstrated with the Chishui River Basin in China, this paper introduces a network-based expert judgment approach to construct ecological water quality indicators, and to determine and adjust their variable weight settings with information of interaction networks. This approach has potential to construct composite indicators for a broad environmental context.</p

Gyromagnetic Factors and Atomic Clock Constraints on the Variation of Fundamental Constants

We consider the effect of the coupled variations of fundamental constants on the nucleon magnetic moment. The nucleon g-factor enters into the interpretation of the measurements of variations in the fine-structure constant, alpha, in both the laboratory (through atomic clock measurements) and in astrophysical systems (e.g. through measurements of the 21 cm transitions). A null result can be translated into a limit on the variation of a set of fundamental constants, that is usually reduced to alpha. However, in specific models, particularly unification models, changes in alpha are always accompanied by corresponding changes in other fundamental quantities such as the QCD scale, Lambda_QCD. This work tracks the changes in the nucleon g-factors induced from changes in Lambda_QCD and the light quark masses. In principle, these coupled variations can improve the bounds on the variation of alpha by an order of magnitude from existing atomic clock and astrophysical measurements. Unfortunately, the calculation of the dependence of g-factors on fundamental parameters is notoriously model-dependent.Comment: 35 pages, 3 figures. Discussions of the effects of the polarization of the non-valence nucleons, spin-spin interaction and nuclear radius on the nuclear g-factor are added. References added. Matches published versio

A Maximum Torque Per Ampere Control Strategy for Induction Motor Drives

In this paper, a new control strategy is proposed which is simple in structure and has the straightforward goal of minimizing the stator current amplitude for a given load torque. It is shown that the resulting induction motor efficiency is reasonably close to optimal and that the approach is insensitive to variations in rotor resistance. Although the torque response is not as fast as in field-oriented (FO) control strategies, the response is reasonably fast. In fact, if the mechanical time constant is large relative to the rotor time constant, which is frequently the case, the sacrifice in dynamic performance is insignificant relative to FO strategie

Migration pattern of Gambel’s White-crowned Sparrow along the Pacific Flyway

White-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys) populations of western North America exhibit dramatic differences in life history strategies including migration behavior. However, individual migration strategies and population-level migratory patterns remain largely unknown for this species. Here, we focused on the long-distance migratory subspecies, Gambel’s White-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys gambelii). We used ringing, tracking and stable hydrogen isotope (δ2H) analysis of individuals migrating along the Pacific Flyway to assess individual phenology and routes as well as the pattern of connectivity between breeding and non-breeding sites. Results from all three methods, consisting of 79 ring recoveries, four light level geolocator tracks and 388 feather δ2H values, indicate low degrees of migratory connectivity. The isotope data provide evidence for leapfrog migration with the more southerly populations traveling greater distances to the breeding grounds than more centrally wintering individuals. Location estimates of four annual journeys revealed individually consistent migration strategies with relatively short flight bouts separated by two to three and two to six stopover sites during spring and autumn migration, respectively. However, combined results from all methods indicate high variability in migration distance among individuals. These findings confirm the phenotypic flexibility observed within this species and highlight the potential of White-crowned Sparrows for further investigations of evolutionary adaptations to ongoing changes in the environment

Tethered Satellites as an Enabling Platform for Operational Space Weather Monitoring Systems

Tethered satellites offer the potential to be an important enabling technology to support operational space weather monitoring systems. Space weather "nowcasting" and forecasting models rely on assimilation of near-real-time (NRT) space environment data to provide warnings for storm events and deleterious effects on the global societal infrastructure. Typically, these models are initialized by a climatological model to provide "most probable distributions" of environmental parameters as a function of time and space. The process of NRT data assimilation gently pulls the climate model closer toward the observed state (e.g., via Kalman smoothing) for nowcasting, and forecasting is achieved through a set of iterative semi-empirical physics-based forward-prediction calculations. Many challenges are associated with the development of an operational system, from the top-level architecture (e.g., the required space weather observatories to meet the spatial and temporal requirements of these models) down to the individual instruments capable of making the NRT measurements. This study focuses on the latter challenge: we present some examples of how tethered satellites (from 100s of m to 20 km) are uniquely suited to address certain shortfalls in our ability to measure critical environmental parameters necessary to drive these space weather models. Examples include long baseline electric field measurements, magnetized ionospheric conductivity measurements, and the ability to separate temporal from spatial irregularities in environmental parameters. Tethered satellite functional requirements are presented for two examples of space environment observables