Combatant recruitment and the outcome of war

Why do some civil wars terminate soon, with victory of one party over theother? What determines if the winner is the incumbent or the rebel group?Why do other conflicts last longer? We propose a simple model in whichthe power of each armed group depends on the number of combatants itis able to recruit. This is in turn a function of the relative 'distance' between group leaderships and potential recruits. We emphasize the moralhazard problem of recruitment: fighting is costly and risky so combatantshave the incentive to defect from their task. They can also desert alto-gether and join the enemy. This incentive is stronger the farther away thefighter is from the principal, since monitoring becomes increasingly costly.Bigger armies have more power but less monitoring capacity to preventdefection and desertion. This general framework allows a variety of interpretations of what type of proximity matters for building strong cohesivearmies ranging from ethnic distance to geographic dispersion. Di¤erentassumptions about the distribution of potential fighters along the relevantdimension of conflict lead to di¤erent equilibria. We characterize these,discuss the implied outcome in terms of who wins the war, and illustratewith historical and contemporaneous case studies.

Fertilité des sols agricoles sous vigne et sous blé de la région de Mohammedia-Benslimane (Maroc)

L’objectif de ce travail est l’évaluation agronomique de la qualité du sol sous vigne et sous blé dans la région Mohammedia-Benslimane au Maroc, à travers les indicateurs chimiques de la qualité du sol (pH, CE, CaCO3, Carbone organique total, Azote, Phosphore et Potassium). Les résultats de cette étude montrent que les valeurs du pH sont neutres à légèrement acides dans toutes les stations alors que les taux de carbone organique total et d’azote total sont plus élevés sous blé que sous vigne dans la région de Mohammedia Benslimane. Les valeurs moyennes du phosphore semblent globalement plus importantes dans les parcelles sous vigne (33.62 ppm) que dans les parcelles sous blé (25.51 ppm) et les teneurs moyennes enPotassium sont plus faibles (58,57 ppm) dans les sols vignobles que dans les sols sous blé (63,62 ppm).Mots-clés : Mohammedia-Benslimane, fertilité, Carbone organique total, azote, phosphore, potassium

Distributed state estimation in sensor networks with randomly occurring nonlinearities subject to time delays

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the links below - Copyright @ 2012 ACM.This article is concerned with a new distributed state estimation problem for a class of dynamical systems in sensor networks. The target plant is described by a set of differential equations disturbed by a Brownian motion and randomly occurring nonlinearities (RONs) subject to time delays. The RONs are investigated here to reflect network-induced randomly occurring regulation of the delayed states on the current ones. Through available measurement output transmitted from the sensors, a distributed state estimator is designed to estimate the states of the target system, where each sensor can communicate with the neighboring sensors according to the given topology by means of a directed graph. The state estimation is carried out in a distributed way and is therefore applicable to online application. By resorting to the Lyapunov functional combined with stochastic analysis techniques, several delay-dependent criteria are established that not only ensure the estimation error to be globally asymptotically stable in the mean square, but also guarantee the existence of the desired estimator gains that can then be explicitly expressed when certain matrix inequalities are solved. A numerical example is given to verify the designed distributed state estimators.This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 61028008, 60804028 and 61174136, the Qing Lan Project of Jiangsu Province of China, the Project sponsored by SRF for ROCS of SEM of China, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) of the UK under Grant GR/S27658/01, the Royal Society of the UK, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany

Effects of dietary protein and energy levels on growth and body composition of Caspian trout larva (Salmo trutta caspius)

A 3t2 factorial feeding trial of three dietary protein levels (45, 50 and 55%) and two dietary crude energy levels (4200 and 4600 cal/g) with three replications was conducted to investigate the proper dietary protein and energy levels for the growth of fingerling Caspian trout (Salmo trutta caspius). Fingerlings with average weight of 135 plus or minus 0.24mg were fed the experimental diets for 45 days

Optimal Parameters for Nonlinear Hirota-Satsuma Coupled KdV System by Using Hybrid Firefly Algorithm with Modified Adomian Decomposition

In this paper, several parameters of the non-linear Hirota-Satsuma coupled KdV system were estimated using a hybrid between the Firefly Algorithm (FFA) and the Modified Adomian decomposition method (MADM). It turns out that optimal parameters can significantly improve the solutions when using a suitably selected fitness function for this problem. The results obtained show that the approximate solutions are highly compatible with the exact solutions and that the hybrid method FFA_MADM gives higher efficiency and accuracy compared to the classic MADM method

High resolution imaging of IgG and IgM molecules by scanning tunneling microscopy in air condition

A scanning tunneling microscope is a powerful tool for obtaining micrographs from conductive and semiconductive materials. The imaging technique has recently been improved for microscopy of nanostructured biomaterials on highly ordered atomic surfaces. We describe, here, high resolution imaging of individual IgM and IgG using a scanning tunneling microscope (Nama-STM) in air condition. The biomolecules were immobilized on the surface of Highly Ordered Pyrolytic Graphite (HOPG). Obtained micrographs could reveal structural details of immunoglobulins G and M on the atomically flat surfaces. Obtained results confirmed that STM could be more useful than other microscopy techniques for the analysis of single biomolecules. © 2012 Sharif University of Technology. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

ENHANCING MOTIVATION TO WORK IN UNEMPLOYED PERSONS: LITHUANIA IN THE CONTEXT OF EU

This article provides an overview of the research in the area of motivation and activation of the unemployed and analyses work incentives for the unemployed applied in individual OECD and EU countries. In addition, the article provides the analysis of macro-level financial aspects of motivation to work in Lithuania and micro-level findings of a survey of persons registered with the Lithuanian Labour Exchange. It was found out that, in relative terms, employees should be interested in taking up low-paid jobs, but the low wage level does not ensure a decent living in reality. As a result, a relatively high portion of employees prefer undeclared work and social benefits to official employment. Findings of the survey of persons registered with the Lithuanian Labour Exchange have showed that satisfactory pay level is the strongest factor motivating persons to enter the labour market

The influence of layer defect in the Ferroelectric films

Using the modified transverse Ising model, and the effective field theory based on the probability distribution technique, the phase transition temperature, the polarization and susceptibility for ferroelectric thin films with structural defects are studied. It is shown that the defect layers in ferroelectric thin films can induce strong increase or decrease of the critical temperature of ferroelectric phase transition due to different exchange interactions in the defect layers. The obtained results are in qualitative agreement with experimental data for thin ferroelectric film with different thickness.Using the modified transverse Ising model, and the effective field theory based on the probability distribution technique, the phase transition temperature, the polarization and susceptibility for ferroelectric thin films with structural defects are studied. It is shown that the defect layers in ferroelectric thin films can induce strong increase or decrease of the critical temperature of ferroelectric phase transition due to different exchange interactions in the defect layers. The obtained results are in qualitative agreement with experimental data for thin ferroelectric film with different thickness

Do Open Access Dental Articles Enjoy Higher Altmetric Attention Scores, Twitter, Facebook, News, Wikipedia, Blog mentions, Mendeley Readers and Citations?

In order to access articles published in conventional (non-open access) journals, scientists must utilize tools such as subscriptions, site licenses or pay-per-view charges. In contrast, open access articles can be accessed without financial, legal or technical barriers. A large-scale study estimated that at least 28% of the academic literature is open access (19 million in total) and that this percentage is growing.[1] A recent survey showed an open access rate in field of dentistry at 45.8%.[2] It has been demonstrated that open access articles had 8% to 40% higher citations compared to non-open access articles; this has been termed, “open access citation advantage”.[3],[4],[5