Understanding Terrorist Organizations with a Dynamic Model

Terrorist organizations change over time because of processes such as recruitment and training as well as counter-terrorism (CT) measures, but the effects of these processes are typically studied qualitatively and in separation from each other. Seeking a more quantitative and integrated understanding, we constructed a simple dynamic model where equations describe how these processes change an organization's membership. Analysis of the model yields a number of intuitive as well as novel findings. Most importantly it becomes possible to predict whether counter-terrorism measures would be sufficient to defeat the organization. Furthermore, we can prove in general that an organization would collapse if its strength and its pool of foot soldiers decline simultaneously. In contrast, a simultaneous decline in its strength and its pool of leaders is often insufficient and short-termed. These results and other like them demonstrate the great potential of dynamic models for informing terrorism scholarship and counter-terrorism policy making.Comment: To appear as Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science v2: vectorized 4 figures, fixed two typos, more detailed bibliograph

Analysing and controlling the tax evasion dynamics via majority-vote model

Within the context of agent-based Monte-Carlo simulations, we study the well-known majority-vote model (MVM) with noise applied to tax evasion on simple square lattices, Voronoi-Delaunay random lattices, Barabasi-Albert networks, and Erd\"os-R\'enyi random graphs. In the order to analyse and to control the fluctuations for tax evasion in the economics model proposed by Zaklan, MVM is applied in the neighborhod of the noise critical $q_{c}$. The Zaklan model had been studied recently using the equilibrium Ising model. Here we show that the Zaklan model is robust and can be reproduced also through the nonequilibrium MVM on various topologies.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, LAWNP'09, 200

The fitness of African malaria vectors in the presence and limitation of host behaviour

<p>Background Host responses are important sources of selection upon the host species range of ectoparasites and phytophagous insects. However little is known about the role of host responses in defining the host species range of malaria vectors. This study aimed to estimate the relative importance of host behaviour to the feeding success and fitness of African malaria vectors, and assess its ability to predict their known host species preferences in nature.</p> <p>Methods Paired evaluations of the feeding success and fitness of African vectors Anopheles arabiensis and Anopheles gambiae s.s in the presence and limitation of host behaviour were conducted in a semi-field system (SFS) at Ifakara Health Institute, Tanzania. In one set of trials, mosquitoes were released within the SFS and allowed to forage overnight on a host that was free to exhibit natural behaviour in response to insect biting. In the other, mosquitoes were allowed to feed directly on from the skin surface of immobile hosts. The feeding success and subsequent fitness of vectors under these conditions were investigated on 6 host types (humans, calves, chickens, cows, dogs and goats) to assess whether physical movements of preferred host species (cattle for An. arabiensis, humans for An. gambiae s.s.) were less effective at preventing mosquito bites than those of common alternatives.</p> <p>Results Anopheles arabiensis generally had greater feeding success when applied directly to host skin than when foraging on unrestricted hosts (in five of six host species). However, An. gambiae s.s obtained blood meals from free and restrained hosts with similar success from most host types (four out of six). Overall, the blood meal size, oviposition rate, fecundity and post-feeding survival of mosquito vectors were significantly higher after feeding on hosts free to exhibit behaviour, than those who were immobilized during feeding trials.</p> <p>Conclusions Allowing hosts to move freely during exposure to mosquitoes was associated with moderate reductions in mosquito feeding success, but no detrimental impact to the subsequent fitness of mosquitoes that were able to feed upon them. This suggests that physical defensive behaviours exhibited by common host species including humans do not impose substantial fitness costs on African malaria vectors.</p&gt

Instances and connectors : issues for a second generation process language

This work is supported by UK EPSRC grants GR/L34433 and GR/L32699Over the past decade a variety of process languages have been defined, used and evaluated. It is now possible to consider second generation languages based on this experience. Rather than develop a second generation wish list this position paper explores two issues: instances and connectors. Instances relate to the relationship between a process model as a description and the, possibly multiple, enacting instances which are created from it. Connectors refers to the issue of concurrency control and achieving a higher level of abstraction in how parts of a model interact. We believe that these issues are key to developing systems which can effectively support business processes, and that they have not received sufficient attention within the process modelling community. Through exploring these issues we also illustrate our approach to designing a second generation process language.Postprin

Instability of Democracy as Resource Curse

We suggest a dynamic game theoretic model to explain why resource abundance may lead to instability of democracy. Stationary Markov perfect equilibria of this game with four players – Politician, Oligarch, Autocrat and Public (voters) – are analyzed. Choosing a rate of resource rent tax, potential Autocrat competes with conventional Politician for the office, and Oligarch, the owner of the resource wealth, bribes Politician to influence her decisions. Actual Autocrat's tax policy may be different from the announced one. If the difference is large, then Public may revolt or Oligarch may organize a coup to throw Autocrat down. It is shown that the probability of democracy preservation is decreasing in the amount of resources if the institutional quality is low enough. It does not depend on the amount of resources, if the institutional quality is higher than a threshold. The level of the threshold, however, depends positively on the resource wealth. We have found also that under very low institutional quality, a paradoxical effect takes place: the probability of democracy preservation may decrease with small improvements of institutional quality. It is shown as well that Oligarch earns larger part of rent under democracy than under autocracy. This result conforms to empirical observation which is demonstrated in the paper: under low quality of institutions, democratization leads to higher inequality and inequality entails worsening of the attitude to democracy

Characteristics of Terrorism

Individual terrorist are frequently behaving seemingly absurd, e.g. by carrying out suicide operations, while activities of the terrorist organisations as a whole often seem to be conducted in a very effective way. These facts caused many researchers to regard the leaders representing the organisations like rational entities, while the followers are supposed to be just obeying and, hence, to be irrational. In this paper we offer a different approach which postulates rationality of all involved agents. We demonstrate how these agents’ behaviour could be modelled, while taking into account options of the terrorist leaders to influence their followers. From our model approaches to counter terrorism on both the leadership as well as the follower level can be derived