Revisiting the Past : Israeli identity, thick recognition and conflict transformation

Intractable conflicts are by definition difficult to resolve. This study ventures into the identity dynamics of those conflicts and argues that those identity aspects must be addressed in order to locate constituencies for change. Through the employment o theories of conflict transformation, identity and narrative, the dissertation forwards thoughts regarding the importance of inside actors formulating narratives of recognition of the opponent in conflict. Through the recognition of deeply held identity aspects, such as the others' narratives of history, conflict relations might develop into new and more peaceful forms. This study uses the Israeli debates over New History as a critical case in order to develop the concept of thick recognition. Through elaborations on the case, the processes by which thick recignition are introduced and circumstances which make them either take root or wane are explored. The study identifies inside actors, here understood as memory-agents forwarding different view of history, as crucial in the process of transforming conflictual relations. The disseratation hence challenges the traditional focus on third party interventions and elite negotations within conflict teory, and suggests that those have little to offer as long as profound identity dynamics in conflicts, as well as interactions among their inside actors, are disregarded

Anticipation Induces Polarized Collective Motion in Attraction Based Models

Moving animal groups are prime examples of natural complex systems. In most models of such systems each individual updates its heading based on the current positions and headings of its neighbors. However, recently, a number of models where the heading update instead is based on the future anticipated positions/headings of the neighbors have been published. Collectively these studies have established that including anticipation may have drastically different effects in different models. In particular, anticipation inhibits polarization in alignment-based models and in one alignment-free model, but promotes polarization in another alignment-free model. Indicating that our understanding of how anticipation affects the behavior of alignment-free models is incomplete. Given that attraction is a component of many alignment-free models we include anticipation in an attraction only model here to investigate. We establish that anticipation induces polarized collective motion and inhibits swarming and milling in combination with attraction alone. We also show that anticipation orients milling groups when attraction is sufficiently strong, but not otherwise. Finally, we derive an explicit heading update formula for this model with anticipation that allows for a simple heuristic explanation of its polarization inducing capacity. Due to the biological plausibility of both attraction and anticipation we believe that utilizing these components to explain collective motion in animal groups may be advantageous in some cases

Genetisk struktur hos Skandinaviska lodjur

The Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx), a feline spread all over Eurasia has, as many other carnivores, been severely hunted, and due to this many populations of lynx have suffered from bottlenecks and fragmentation. As bottlenecks and fragmentation may have detrimental effects on the genetic status of a population, researchers have been keen to look closer into the genetic status of the lynx. With the development of next generation sequencing and improved analyses of genetics this research into lynx genetics has been enabled. Research has shown that there indeed are signs of genetic structuring between lynx populations, at least on a larger scale. In this report the genetic structure within the Scandinavian lynx population was examined by analyzing DNA from Swedish and Norwegian. 6 possible clusters were suggested within the population, and all but 4 individuals were successfully assigned into one of these 6 clusters. Further analyses of the fixation between suggested clusters revealed that fixation was very low, implying that the population structure within the Scandinavian lynx population is weak. This is probable as the population suffered briefly from a bottleneck and has later expanded rapidly throughout the two countries, which could be a causation of the weak genetic differentiation within the population

The two-state impasse in Israel/Palestine—The EU caught between egalitarian norms and expansionist realpolitik

In recent years, many academics as well as local actors have started to question the feasibility of a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. Increased Israeli unilateralism, expansionism as well as weak Palestinian institutions have instead pointed toward a “one-state-reality” where Israel is in de facto control over all lands. This in turn reveals a paradox, where international policymakers, most prominently in the EU and the US, and international organizations like the UN, seem determined to insist on a two-state solution, even though all facts on the ground indicate a move away from such a vision where the egalitarian principles inherent in the two-state solution exists in constant tension with expansionist attempts to establish Israeli sovereignty also on Palestinian land. This article unpacks various visions for the future in Israel-Palestine, based on egalitarian principles on the one hand and expansionist ones on the other and display how they current co-exist in a very uneasy relationship. The over-arching aim of the article is to understand how the EU relates to this paradox. We do this in three steps; first we conduct a mapping of visions for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict according to either egalitarian or expansionist principles, where we find one- as well as two-state solutions; second, we conduct a historical analysis on EU positions with regards to the abovementioned principles for solving the conflict, related to other powerful international actors' visions; lastly, we move to an investigation of current developments captured through recent speeches, documents and semi-structured interviews with centrally placed EU staff. Our main conclusion is that even though the EU is determined to hold on to the two state-solution, it however lacks willingness and/or power-resources to push Israel in that direction. Our interviewees seem painfully aware of the lack of viability of the two-state-solution and hence welcome criticism which could push for more egalitarian tendencies in Israel by appealing to its democratic-self-image. Here the current spread of the apartheid narrative among international organizations and an increased international human rights rhetoric emphasizing equal rights for two peoples seem to have left the EU balancing on a tight-rope where they have to choose between standing by status quo, risking supporting ultra-nationalist Israeli sovereignty-aspirations, or criticizing those, instead exposing itself to accusations of antisemitism

Parturition, problems during parturition and care of kittens and queen postpartum

En honkatt går dräktig i ungefär 63 dagar. Förlossningen indelas i tre stadier: öppningsstadiet, utdrivingsstadiet och efterbörsstadiet. Under dessa stadier kan mycket gå fel. Honan kan drabbas av dystoki som antingen kan ha maternellt eller foetalt ursprung. Den vanligaste orsaken till maternell dystoki är värksvaghet som kan bero på att hon är orolig, upplever smärta eller att hon känner sig störd. Foetal dystoki beror oftast på fellägen. Dystoki kan behandlas antingen medicinskt eller kirurgiskt. Under anestesin vid ett kejsarsnitt är det viktigt att välja läkemedel som påverkar kattungarna minimalt, eftersom de flesta preparaten förs över från honan via placenta till fostren. Detta kan orsaka andningsdepression och kattungarna behöver då assistens. Konstgjord andning och hjärtmassage kan då behövas. Efter förlossningen kan honan drabbas av ett antal komplikationer exempelvis mastit, hypokalcemi och kvarbliven efterbörd. Honan sköter vanligtvis ungarna under den första perioden genom att slicka dem, se till att navelsträngen är av, dia dem samt ge dem värme. Gör hon inte detta måste ungarna få hjälp. Om honan dör eller inte kan ge kattungarna di behöver de födas upp artificiellt

Bistability and Switching Behavior in Moving Animal Groups

Moving animal groups such as schools of fish and flocks of birds frequently switch between different group structures. Standard models of collective motion have been used successfully to explain how stable groups form via local interactions between individuals, but they are typically unable to produce groups that exhibit spontaneous switching. We are only aware of one model, constructed for barred flagtail fish that are known to rely on alignment and attraction to organize their collective motion, that has been shown to generate this type of behavior in 2D (or 3D). Interestingly, another species of fish, golden shiners, do exhibit switching but have been shown to use attraction and repulsion, not alignment, to coordinate themselves in schools. Suggesting that switching may be explained by attraction and repulsion alone, without an alignment interaction. Here we introduce a model based on attraction and repulsion only and show that groups exhibiting switching similar to that observed in experiments with golden shiners emerges. We also establish that switching occur in two boundary-free extensions of the model. Our work suggests that the bistability and switching behavior observed in golden shiners and other moving animal groups may be explained via attractive and repulsive interactions alone

Solving the shepherding problem: heuristics for herding autonomous, interacting agents.

Herding of sheep by dogs is a powerful example of one individual causing many unwilling individuals to move in the same direction. Similar phenomena are central to crowd control, cleaning the environment and other engineering problems. Despite single dogs solving this 'shepherding problem' every day, it remains unknown which algorithm they employ or whether a general algorithm exists for shepherding. Here, we demonstrate such an algorithm, based on adaptive switching between collecting the agents when they are too dispersed and driving them once they are aggregated. Our algorithm reproduces key features of empirical data collected from sheep-dog interactions and suggests new ways in which robots can be designed to influence movements of living and artificial agents

Deriving mesoscopic models of collective behaviour for finite populations

Animal groups exhibit emergent properties that are a consequence of local interactions. Linking individual-level behaviour to coarse-grained descriptions of animal groups has been a question of fundamental interest. Here, we present two complementary approaches to deriving coarse-grained descriptions of collective behaviour at so-called mesoscopic scales, which account for the stochasticity arising from the finite sizes of animal groups. We construct stochastic differential equations (SDEs) for a coarse-grained variable that describes the order/consensus within a group. The first method of construction is based on van Kampen's system-size expansion of transition rates. The second method employs Gillespie's chemical Langevin equations. We apply these two methods to two microscopic models from the literature, in which organisms stochastically interact and choose between two directions/choices of foraging. These `binary-choice' models differ only in the types of interactions between individuals, with one assuming simple pair-wise interactions, and the other incorporating higher-order effects. In both cases, the derived mesoscopic SDEs have multiplicative, or state-dependent, noise. However, the different models demonstrate the contrasting effects of noise: increasing order in the pair-wise interaction model, whilst reducing order in the higher-order interaction model. Although both methods yield identical SDEs for such binary-choice, or one-dimensional, systems, the relative tractability of the chemical Langevin approach is beneficial in generalizations to higher-dimensions. In summary, this book chapter provides a pedagogical review of two complementary methods to construct mesoscopic descriptions from microscopic rules and demonstrates how resultant multiplicative noise can have counter-intuitive effects on shaping collective behaviour.Comment: Second version, 4 figures, 2 appendice

Robot Collection and Transport of Objects: A Biomimetic Process

Animals as diverse as ants and humans are faced with the tasks of collecting, transporting or herding objects. Sheepdogs do this daily when they collect, herd, and maneuver flocks of sheep. Here, we adapt a shepherding algorithm inspired by sheepdogs to collect and transport objects using a robot. Our approach produces an effective robot collection process that autonomously adapts to changing environmental conditions and is robust to noise from various sources. We suggest that this biomimetic process could be implemented into suitable robots to perform collection and transport tasks that might include – for example – cleaning up objects in the environment, keeping animals away from sensitive areas or collecting and herding animals to a specific location. Furthermore, the feedback controlled interactions between the robot and objects which we study can be used to interrogate and understand the local and global interactions of real animal groups, thus offering a novel methodology of value to researchers studying collective animal behavior