Managing the island territory : a historical perspective on sub-state nationalism in Corsica and Sardinia

Corsica (France) and Sardinia (Italy) are two islands of the western Mediterranean basin separated by a narrow strait. They share a problematic relationship with the mainland states to which they are associated, and from which they obtained their status of subnational island jurisdiction (SNIJ). The metropole/island relationship of these two islands is characterized by centrifugal tensions and the presence of sub-state nationalisms. These movements are different in terms of characteristics, strategies and electoral results, because of how France and Italy have managed the integration of the two islands, how the two island nationalisms have evolved, and how both metropolitan states have dealt with them. This article proposes a comparative history of Sardinian and Corsican nationalism and the relationship of Italy and France with these island territories. The intention is to analyse the two nationalisms, based almost exclusively on political science, with an historical perspective, highlighting the impact caused by the central states’ attitudes. In this way, the article points out how the differences between the political context of the two islands is defined by the different approach taken by France and Italy in managing their island territories.peer-reviewe

Contact tribology also affects the slow flow behavior of granular emulsions

Recent work on suspension flows has shown that contact mechanics plays a role in suspension flow dynamics. The contact mechanics between particulate matter in dispersions should depend sensitively on the composition of the dispersed phase: evidently emulsion droplets interact differently with each other than angular sand particles. We therefore ask: what is the role of contact mechanics in dispersed media flow? We focus on slow flows, where contacts are long-lasting and hence contact mechanics effects should be most visible. To answer our question, we synthesize soft hydrogel particles with different friction coefficients. By making the particles soft, we can drive them at finite confining pressure at all driving rates. For particles with a low friction coefficient, we obtain a rheology similar to that of an emulsion, yet with an effective friction much larger than expected from their microscopic contact mechanics. Increasing the friction coefficient of the particles, we find a flow instability in the suspension. Particle level flow and fluctuations are also greatly affected by the microscopic friction coefficient of the suspended particles. The specific rheology of our "granular emulsions" provides further evidence that a better understanding of microscopic particle interactions is of broad relevance for dispersed media flows

On the Minimum/Stopping Distance of Array Low-Density Parity-Check Codes

In this work, we study the minimum/stopping distance of array low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. An array LDPC code is a quasi-cyclic LDPC code specified by two integers q and m, where q is an odd prime and m <= q. In the literature, the minimum/stopping distance of these codes (denoted by d(q,m) and h(q,m), respectively) has been thoroughly studied for m <= 5. Both exact results, for small values of q and m, and general (i.e., independent of q) bounds have been established. For m=6, the best known minimum distance upper bound, derived by Mittelholzer (IEEE Int. Symp. Inf. Theory, Jun./Jul. 2002), is d(q,6) <= 32. In this work, we derive an improved upper bound of d(q,6) <= 20 and a new upper bound d(q,7) <= 24 by using the concept of a template support matrix of a codeword/stopping set. The bounds are tight with high probability in the sense that we have not been able to find codewords of strictly lower weight for several values of q using a minimum distance probabilistic algorithm. Finally, we provide new specific minimum/stopping distance results for m <= 7 and low-to-moderate values of q <= 79.Comment: To appear in IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory. The material in this paper was presented in part at the 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, Honolulu, HI, June/July 201