Are Drone Strikes Effective in Afghanistan and Pakistan? On the Dynamics of Violence between the United States and the Taliban

Strikes by unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, have been the primary weapon used by the United States to combat the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This paper examines the dynamics of violence involving drone strikes and the Taliban/Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan from January 2007 to December 2010. We find that drone strikes do not have any significant impact on terrorist violence in Afghanistan but that drone strikes do have a significant impact on Taliban/Al-Qaeda violence in Pakistan. We find that our results are robust to examining different time periods and lag structures. We also examine the impact of successful and unsuccessful drone strikes (which did or did not succeed in targeted killing of a militant leader) on terrorist attacks by the Taliban. We find strong negative impacts of unsuccessful drone strikes on Taliban violence in Pakistan, showing the deterrent effects are quite strong, while the incapacitation effects appear to be weak or non-existent.time series models, conflict

Alzheimer's disease research group (ADRG)

In these last few years, there has been a growing consensus in Europe and beyond on the need of increasing research on neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer's disease and other related dementias. The societal impact and financial consequences of these diseases are already being felt and will continue to grow with the projected rise in the elderly population. Currently, there are over 35 million individuals with dementia worldwide, a figure that will treble by the year 2050. It has been estimated that formal and informal dementia care costs a total of €445 billion (2009 data),' equivalent to 1 % of the global gross domestic product. It is therefore not surprising that the European Union supports various funding programmes in the hope of enhancing diagnosis, provide better treatment and improve care pathways and support for individuals with dementia, their caregivers and relatives.peer-reviewe

A Depth-Based Algorithm for Manipulating Deformable Objects Using Smooth Parametric Surfaces and Energy Minimisation

International audienceIn this brief work, we present a new method for controlling deformations of soft objects by using parametric surfaces as a new type of deformation feedback features. This new approach allows us to actively deform objects into complex 3D shapes. A kinematic-based motion controller is derived using an energy minimisation strategy

Digital and Cash Transaction in Indonesian Local Government

Differences in the quality of economic development among regions Java and outside Java will affect gap of quality in banking infrastructure among these areas. The purpose of this study is to analyze the cash and digital transactions in Java and outside Java. This research uses descriptive analytical method and the cross sectional method for data collection. Result of this study is the total nominal use of E-banking services in each province shows a fairly high rate. Percentage growth in the use of E-banking services continues to increase, although not very high growth

Dynamic Routing and Spectrum Assignment with Non-Disruptive Defragmentation

International audienceL'augmentation du trafic Internet motive une évolution des réseaux WDM traditionnels vers les réseaux optiques élastiques (Elastic Optical Networks, EON). Les EONs sont conçus pour optimiser l'utilisation des ressources optiques; ils permettent l'attribution de bandes de largeurs quelconques et offrent ainsi plus de souplesse que les réseaux WDM avec leurs bandes fixes. Cependant, la gestion du spectre dans les EONs devient plus difficile du fait de la fragmentation. Dans ce papier, nous proposons deux algorithmes qui permettent de résoudre le problème de Routage et d'Allocation de Spectre d'une nouvelle requête en utilisant une technique de défragmentation non-perturbatrice

Vision-Based Control for Robots by a Fully Spiking Neural System Relying on Cerebellar Predictive Learning

The cerebellum plays a distinctive role within our motor control system to achieve fine and coordinated motions. While cerebellar lesions do not lead to a complete loss of motor functions, both action and perception are severally impacted. Hence, it is assumed that the cerebellum uses an internal forward model to provide anticipatory signals by learning from the error in sensory states. In some studies, it was demonstrated that the learning process relies on the joint-space error. However, this may not exist. This work proposes a novel fully spiking neural system that relies on a forward predictive learning by means of a cellular cerebellar model. The forward model is learnt thanks to the sensory feedback in task-space and it acts as a Smith predictor. The latter predicts sensory corrections in input to a differential mapping spiking neural network during a visual servoing task of a robot arm manipulator. In this paper, we promote the developed control system to achieve more accurate target reaching actions and reduce the motion execution time for the robotic reaching tasks thanks to the cerebellar predictive capabilities.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, 1 tabl

A Neurorobotic Embodiment for Exploring the Dynamical Interactions of a Spiking Cerebellar Model and a Robot Arm During Vision-based Manipulation Tasks

While the original goal for developing robots is replacing humans in dangerous and tedious tasks, the final target shall be completely mimicking the human cognitive and motor behaviour. Hence, building detailed computational models for the human brain is one of the reasonable ways to attain this. The cerebellum is one of the key players in our neural system to guarantee dexterous manipulation and coordinated movements as concluded from lesions in that region. Studies suggest that it acts as a forward model providing anticipatory corrections for the sensory signals based on observed discrepancies from the reference values. While most studies consider providing the teaching signal as error in joint-space, few studies consider the error in task-space and even fewer consider the spiking nature of the cerebellum on the cellular-level. In this study, a detailed cellular-level forward cerebellar model is developed, including modeling of Golgi and Basket cells which are usually neglected in previous studies. To preserve the biological features of the cerebellum in the developed model, a hyperparameter optimization method tunes the network accordingly. The efficiency and biological plausibility of the proposed cerebellar-based controller is then demonstrated under different robotic manipulation tasks reproducing motor behaviour observed in human reaching experiments

Role of endolysosomes and inter-organellar signaling in brain disease

Endosomes and lysosomes (endolysosomes) are membrane bounded organelles that play a key role in cell survival and cell death. These acidic intracellular organelles are the principal sites for intracellular hydrolytic activity required for the maintenance of cellular homeostasis. Endolysosomes are involved in the degradation of plasma membrane components, extracellular macromolecules as well as intracellular macromolecules and cellular fragments. Understanding the physiological significance and pathological relevance of endolysosomes is now complicated by relatively recent findings of physical and functional interactions between endolysosomes with other intracellular organelles including endoplasmic reticulum, mitochondria, plasma membranes, and peroxisomes. Indeed, evidence clearly indicates that endolysosome dysfunction and inter-organellar signaling occurs in different neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s disease (AD), HIV-1 associated neurocognitive disease (HAND), Parkinson’s disease (PD) as well as various forms of brain cancer such as glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). These findings open new areas of cell biology research focusing on understanding the physiological actions and pathophysiological consequences of inter-organellar communication. Here, we will review findings of others and us that endolysosome de-acidification and dysfunction coupled with impaired inter-organellar signaling is involved in the pathogenesis of AD, HAND, PD, and GBM. A more comprehensive appreciation of cell biology and inter-organellar signaling could lead to the development of new drugs to prevent or cure these diseases