1,342 research outputs found
Ideology isn't everything: transnational terrorism, recruitment incentives, and attack casualties
In the current literature, the primary determinants of terrorist attack casualty rates have been attributed to religious fundamentalism. While zealotry, martyrdom, and the pursuit of salvation certainly empower religious fundamentalists with the liberty to decimate human targets, I argue that the sustaining necessity to recruit more terrorists from within the population, not religious fundamentalism alone, is an important predictor of the brutality of an attack. When targets are located within a potential recruitment population, there is an imminent need to restrict violence, as unnecessary collateral damage turns potential supporters away, rather than attracts them. Conversely, transnational attacks occurring outside the recruitment population abrogate these restrictions on violence. I test this argument on terrorist attacks from 1998â2005 and find empirical evidence that transnational attacks are a predictive cause of high casualty rates in a target population.Security and Global Affair
Refugees, perceived threat & domestic terrorism
Refugeesâ effect on domestic terrorism is conditioned by host-country social perception (attitude about living next-door to foreigners) and economic competition. These hypotheses are tested cross-nationally from 1995-2014 leveraging data from the World Values Survey. The results show social perception matters. When refugee flow to a country increases from the mean to 75th percentile, it does not statistically alter domestic terrorism risk. But when a host-countryâs preference to not live next-door to foreigners is accounted for and changes from the mean (20.9%) to 75th percentile (30.3%), the change in refugee flow increases the risk of domestic terrorism by 40%.Security and Global Affair
The political roots of domestic environmental sabotage
In this paper, we demonstrate that when environmentalist niche parties compete in a given constituency over a number of elections, but continually fail to win seats, then environmental sabotage becomes more frequent in that constituency. When mainstream tactics fail, radical tactics are used more frequently. Using a new data-set on the success rates of all Green Party candidates in US states, we show that environmental sabotage occurs more often when Green Party candidates fail to win even minor offices. This is true even when we control for other political expressions of environmentalism, such as interest group activity, and when we define âsuccessâ through votes not seats. We discuss the implications of this for environmental politics, for social movements and democracy, and for political violence in the US.Security and Global Affair
Modified mode-expansion on a BPS wall related to the nonlinear realization
We propose a modified mode-expansion of the bulk fields in a BPS domain wall
background to obtain the effective theory on the wall. The broken SUSY is
nonlinearly realized on each mode defined by our mode-expansion. Our work
clarifies a relation between two different approaches to derive the effective
theory on a BPS wall, {\it i.e.} the nonlinear realization approach and the
mode-expansion approach. We also discuss a further modification that respects
the Lorentz and symmetries broken by the wall.Comment: LaTeX file, 21 pages, no figure
Focusdata: foreign policy through language and sentiment
Countries routinely translate official statements and state media articles from native languages to English. Over time, these articles provide a window into what each government is trying to portray to the world. The FOCUSdata Project provides yearsâ worth of text and language sentiment ratings for hundreds of thousands of articles from state media and ministry of foreign affairsâ websites from North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran. Information is an important foreign policy tool and national security strategists analyze how it influences the attitudes and behaviors of foreign audiences. This article introduces the FOCUSdata Project and shows how the sentiment data provide unique abilities to analyze Russia's and Iran's reactions to US policies and events and NGO human rights campaigns. Evaluating countriesâ official narratives improves understanding of government signals to outside actors, reactions to crises and foreign policy tools, and interests regarding (un)favorable developments. Governmentsâ sentiment provides unique explanatory power.Security and Global Affair
Core Structure of Global Vortices in Brane World Models
We study analytically and numerically the core structure of global vortices
forming on topologically deformed brane-worlds with a single toroidally compact
extra dimension. It is shown that for an extra dimension size larger than the
scale of symmetry breaking the magnitude of the complex scalar field at the
vortex center can dynamically remain non-zero. Singlevaluedness and regularity
are not violated. Instead, the winding escapes to the extra dimension at the
vortex center. As the extra dimension size decreases the field magnitude at the
core dynamically decreases also and in the limit of zero extra dimension size
we reobtain the familiar global vortex solution. Extensions to other types of
defects and gauged symmetries are also discussed.Comment: 6 two column pages, 3 figure
The Nicaragua protest crisis in 2018â2019: assessing the logic of government responses to protests
English:Despite constant monitoring, we lack a good explanation for the 2018â2019 protest crisis in Nicaragua. The escalation of protests, repression, duration, and the death toll are surprising. Applying a novel political and economic cost framework, we benchmark Nicaraguaâs historical and recent political protests and explain the Ortega administrationâs responses, thus providing a rich case (with comparative data for context) that makes sense of this extraordinary period of protest. The empirical analysis buttresses our qualitative case study of protest motivations and tactics and extreme state violence that define four phases of the conflict. The combination of qualitative and quantitative analyses creates one of the first robust studies of protestâresponse dynamics of this protest crisis. We conclude that these protests are unique with respect to previous protests in the country and the region and that government repression was a logical response in some phases but was inconsistently applied.Spanish:A pesar del constante seguimiento, carecemos todavĂa de una buena explicaciĂłn para la crisis del 2018â2019 en Nicaragua. La escalada de las protestas, la represiĂłn, la duraciĂłn y el nĂșmero de muertos son sorprendentes. Aplicando un novedoso marco analĂtico de costos polĂticos y econĂłmicos, este estudio compara las protestas polĂticas pasadas en Nicaragua con las recientes y explica hasta quĂ© punto las respuestas del gobierno de Ortega fueron extraordinarias y sin precedentes. El anĂĄlisis empĂrico refuerza nuestro estudio de caso cualitativo sobre las motivaciones y tĂĄcticas de las protestas y la violencia estatal extrema que definen las cuatro fases de la crisis. La combinaciĂłn de anĂĄlisis cualitativos y cuantitativos hace de este articulo uno de los primeros estudios sĂłlidos sobre la dinĂĄmica de respuesta a las protestas nicaragĂŒenses. Concluimos que estas protestas son Ășnicas con respecto a otras anteriores en el paĂs y en la regiĂłn y que la represiĂłn gubernamental fue una respuesta lĂłgica en algunas de las fases pero se aplicĂł de forma inconsistente.Security and Global Affair
Entanglement in the quantum Ising model
We study the asymptotic scaling of the entanglement of a block of spins for
the ground state of the one-dimensional quantum Ising model with transverse
field. When the field is sufficiently strong, the entanglement grows at most
logarithmically in the number of spins. The proof utilises a transformation to
a model of classical probability called the continuum random-cluster model, and
is based on a property of the latter model termed ratio weak-mixing. Our proof
applies equally to a large class of disordered interactions
String Loop Corrections to Kahler Potentials in Orientifolds
We determine one-loop string corrections to Kahler potentials in type IIB
orientifold compactifications with either N=1 or N=2 supersymmetry, including
D-brane moduli, by evaluating string scattering amplitudes.Comment: 80 pages, 4 figure
Nab: Measurement Principles, Apparatus and Uncertainties
The Nab collaboration will perform a precise measurement of 'a', the
electron-neutrino correlation parameter, and 'b', the Fierz interference term
in neutron beta decay, in the Fundamental Neutron Physics Beamline at the SNS,
using a novel electric/magnetic field spectrometer and detector design. The
experiment is aiming at the 10^{-3} accuracy level in (Delta a)/a, and will
provide an independent measurement of lambda = G_A/G_V, the ratio of
axial-vector to vector coupling constants of the nucleon. Nab also plans to
perform the first ever measurement of 'b' in neutron decay, which will provide
an independent limit on the tensor weak coupling.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, talk presented at the International
Workshop on Particle Physics with Slow Neutrons, Grenoble, 29-31 May 2008; to
appear in Nucl. Instrum. Meth. in Physics Research
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