Balkan Holocausts?: Serbian and Croatian victim centred propaganda and the war in Yugoslavia

Balkan Holocausts compares and contrasts Serbian and Croatian propaganda from 1986 to 1999, analysing each group's contemporary interpretations of history and current events. It offers a detailed discussion of holocaust imagery and the history of victim-centred writing in nationalism theory, including the links between the comparative genocide debate, the so-called holocaust industry and Serbian and Croatian nationalism. No studies on Yugoslavia have thus far devoted significant space to such analysis. Offering a detailed analysis of Serbian and Croatian propaganda over the internet, the book discusses how and why the internet war was as important as the ground wars in Kosovo, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. No other study has fully examined the importance of the Internet as a propaganda tool in wartime. Finally, Balkan Holocausts offers a theme by theme analysis of Serbian and Croatian propaganda, using contemporary media sources, novels, academic works and journals. Many of the writers reviewed have not been studied in any depth elsewhere thus far, and there is a definite need to criticise and compare their works. The role of Slobodan Miloevic in the construction of Serbophobia is considered fully as is Tito's involvement in the war, and the important Moslem question. This study throws comparative light on the use and abuse of propaganda in other contemporary and recent conflicts around the world. It will cast a fascinating and illuminating light on the Balkan conflict, setting the conflict in its proper psychological and intellectual context, wherein war fever and paranoia led eventually to war crimes of the lowest possible nature

Balkan Holocausts? Serbian and Croatian victim centred propaganda and the war in Yugoslavia

"Balkan Holocausts compares and contrasts Serbian and Croatian propaganda from 1986 to 1999, analysing each group's contemporary interpretations of history and current events. It offers a detailed discussion of holocaust imagery and the history of victim-centred writing in nationalism theory, including the links between the comparative genocide debate, the so-called holocaust industry and Serbian and Croatian nationalism. No studies on Yugoslavia have thus far devoted significant space to such analysis. Offering a detailed analysis of Serbian and Croatian propaganda over the internet, the book discusses how and why the internet war was as important as the ground wars in Kosovo, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. No other study has fully examined the importance of the Internet as a propaganda tool in wartime. Finally, Balkan Holocausts offers a theme by theme analysis of Serbian and Croatian propaganda, using contemporary media sources, novels, academic works and journals. Many of the writers reviewed have not been studied in any depth elsewhere thus far, and there is a definite need to criticise and compare their works. The role of Slobodan Miloevic in the construction of Serbophobia is considered fully as is Tito's involvement in the war, and the important Moslem question. This study throws comparative light on the use and abuse of propaganda in other contemporary and recent conflicts around the world. It will cast a fascinating and illuminating light on the Balkan conflict, setting the conflict in its proper psychological and intellectual context, wherein war fever and paranoia led eventually to war crimes of the lowest possible nature.

Balkan holocausts? Comparing genocide myths and historical revisionism in Serbian and Croatian nationalist writing: 1986-1999.

This thesis explores, from both a theoretical and practical basis, how and why Serbian and Croatian nationalist elites used victim centred propaganda to legitimate new state creation during the collapse of Communist Yugoslavia (1986-1999). This often involved applying imagery from the Jewish Holocaust, with overt comparisons between Jewish suffering and the imagined genocides of Serbs and Croats. Chapters 'One' and 'Two' discuss why a rhetoric of victimisation and persecution has been an enduring aspect of national identity, from the ancient Hebrews onwards. This theoretical section develops a model for analysing nationalist teleology, comprising a Golden Age, a Fall from grace, and a Redemption. It also provides a critique of nationalism theory, analysing its successes and failures in understanding the importance of victim centred propaganda and the Holocaust in nationalism writings. Chapters 'Three' to 'Nine' examine how a fear of genocide was used by Serbian and Croatian nationalists to push their people into wars of "self defence". Through a detailed examination of primary source material, these chapters dissect many of the arguments advanced during the conflicts in, Kosovo, Croatia, and Bosnia-Hercegovina. Important comparisons can be made about how history was revised and what purpose these revisions served. Serbian and Croatian propaganda is divided into specific time periods. The time periods examined include the earliest eras, from the 3rd to the 15th centuries AD, followed by the medieval era, and the 19th century. The 20th century is divided into several periods, beginning with the first kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918), World War II, Communist Yugoslavia, the breakdown of the Federation, and the rise of nationalism and violence. A chapter on Bosnia-Hercegovina and the Bosnian Moslems demonstrates how effectively Serbian and Croatian propaganda was applied to a third party

Getting to the Meat of It: The Effects of a Captive Diet upon the Skull Morphology of the Lion and Tiger

Zoo animals are crucial for conserving and potentially re-introducing species to the wild, yet it is known that the morphology of captive animals differs from that of wild animals. It is important to know how and why zoo and wild animal morphology differs to better care for captive animals and enhance their survival in reintroductions, and to understand how plasticity may influence morphology, which is supposedly indicative of evolutionary relationships. Using museum collections, we took 56 morphological measurements of skulls and mandibles from 617 captive and wild lions and tigers, reflecting each species’ recent historical range. Linear morphometrics were used to identify differences in size and shape. Skull size does not differ between captive and wild lions and tigers, but skull and mandible shape does. Differences occur in regions associated with biting, indicating that diet has influenced forces acting upon the skull and mandible. The diets of captive big cats used in this study predominantly consisted of whole or partial carcasses, which closely resemble the mechanical properties of wild diets. Thus, we speculate that the additional impacts of killing, manipulating and consuming large prey in the wild have driven differentiation between captive and wild big cats

Individually Unique Body Color Patterns in Octopus (Wunderpus photogenicus) Allow for Photoidentification

Studies on the longevity and migration patterns of wild animals rely heavily on the ability to track individual adults. Non-extractive sampling methods are particularly important when monitoring animals that are commercially important to ecotourism, and/or are rare. The use of unique body patterns to recognize and track individual vertebrates is well-established, but not common in ecological studies of invertebrates. Here we provide a method for identifying individual Wunderpus photogenicus using unique body color patterns. This charismatic tropical octopus is commercially important to the underwater photography, dive tourism, and home aquarium trades, but is yet to be monitored in the wild. Among the adults examined closely, the configurations of fixed white markings on the dorsal mantle were found to be unique. In two animals kept in aquaria, these fixed markings were found not to change over time. We believe another individual was photographed twice in the wild, two months apart. When presented with multiple images of W. photogenicus, volunteer observers reliably matched photographs of the same individuals. Given the popularity of W. photogenicus among underwater photographers, and the ease with which volunteers can correctly identify individuals, photo-identification appears to be a practical means to monitor individuals in the wild

Dietary treatment in Dutch children with phenylketonuria:An inventory of associated social restrictions and eating problems

OBJECTIVES: Dietary treatment in phenylketonuria (PKU) is known to cause eating problems, but knowledge of both prevalence and magnitude, especially for social restrictions, is scarce. Our aim was to evaluate the social restrictions and eating problems that children with PKU and their caregivers experience with dietary treatment. METHODS: A web-based questionnaire, based on the Behavioral Pediatrics Feeding Assessment Scale with additional PKU-specific questions, was developed in close collaboration with and distributed by the Dutch PKU Association, which sent an e-mail to its members containing a link to the questionnaire. The questionnaire was completed by caregivers of children with PKU in the Netherlands and caregivers of age-matched children without PKU. Data were analyzed with the Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U test using SPSS. RESULTS: Compared with caregivers of children in the control group (ages 1-16 y; n = 50), caregivers of children with PKU (ages 1-16 y; n = 57) reported more difficulty in offering food variety, experienced more stress when eating an evening meal outside the home and during vacation, and were stricter about (accidental) spilling of food during dinner by the child (P < 0.05). They also reported to being angrier, more frustrated, and more anxious when feeding their child, and they more often felt that their child's eating pattern had a negative influence on the child's general health (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: This pilot study provides further evidence that restriction of social activities and eating problems associated with dietary restrictions is more common in children with PKU, and warrants awareness on this topic among professionals working with these children

Best practices for constructing, preparing, and evaluating protein-ligand binding affinity benchmarks

Free energy calculations are rapidly becoming indispensable in structure-enabled drug discovery programs. As new methods, force fields, and implementations are developed, assessing their expected accuracy on real-world systems (benchmarking) becomes critical to provide users with an assessment of the accuracy expected when these methods are applied within their domain of applicability, and developers with a way to assess the expected impact of new methodologies. These assessments require construction of a benchmark - a set of well-prepared, high quality systems with corresponding experimental measurements designed to ensure the resulting calculations provide a realistic assessment of expected performance when these methods are deployed within their domains of applicability. To date, the community has not yet adopted a common standardized benchmark, and existing benchmark reports suffer from a myriad of issues, including poor data quality, limited statistical power, and statistically deficient analyses, all of which can conspire to produce benchmarks that are poorly predictive of real-world performance. Here, we address these issues by presenting guidelines for (1) curating experimental data to develop meaningful benchmark sets, (2) preparing benchmark inputs according to best practices to facilitate widespread adoption, and (3) analysis of the resulting predictions to enable statistically meaningful comparisons among methods and force fields

Seeing the Fruit for the Leaves: Robotically Mapping Apple Fruitlets in a Commercial Orchard

Aotearoa New Zealand has a strong and growing apple industry but struggles to access workers to complete skilled, seasonal tasks such as thinning. To ensure effective thinning and make informed decisions on a per-tree basis, it is crucial to accurately measure the crop load of individual apple trees. However, this task poses challenges due to the dense foliage that hides the fruitlets within the tree structure. In this paper, we introduce the vision system of an automated apple fruitlet thinning robot, developed to tackle the labor shortage issue. This paper presents the initial design, implementation,and evaluation specifics of the system. The platform straddles the 3.4 m tall 2D apple canopy structures to create an accurate map of the fruitlets on each tree. We show that this platform can measure the fruitlet load on an apple tree by scanning through both sides of the branch. The requirement of an overarching platform was justified since two-sided scans had a higher counting accuracy of 81.17 % than one-sided scans at 73.7 %. The system was also demonstrated to produce size estimates within 5.9% RMSE of their true size.Comment: Accepted at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2023

Ross, Macdonald, and a Theory for the Dynamics and Control of Mosquito-Transmitted Pathogens

Ronald Ross and George Macdonald are credited with developing a mathematical model of mosquito-borne pathogen transmission. A systematic historical review suggests that several mathematicians and scientists contributed to development of the Ross-Macdonald model over a period of 70 years. Ross developed two different mathematical models, Macdonald a third, and various “Ross-Macdonald” mathematical models exist. Ross-Macdonald models are best defined by a consensus set of assumptions. The mathematical model is just one part of a theory for the dynamics and control of mosquito-transmitted pathogens that also includes epidemiological and entomological concepts and metrics for measuring transmission. All the basic elements of the theory had fallen into place by the end of the Global Malaria Eradication Programme (GMEP, 1955–1969) with the concept of vectorial capacity, methods for measuring key components of transmission by mosquitoes, and a quantitative theory of vector control. The Ross-Macdonald theory has since played a central role in development of research on mosquito-borne pathogen transmission and the development of strategies for mosquito-borne disease prevention