Patterns of Force: System Strength, Terrorism and Civil War

We jointly analyze the genesis of terrorism and civil war, providing a simple conceptual framework to explain why violent opposition groups choose distinct forms of violence (i.e., terrorism and open rebellion). We argue that the distinct modes of violent opposition are chosen by violent opposition groups in response to the strengths and weaknesses of the system they challenge. An empirical test of this hypothesis for 103 countries for the period of 1992 to 2004 indeed shows that the socio-economic strength and stability of a system is positively related to the likelihood of terrorism but negatively to incidences of more violent forms of violent opposition. We also show that poor conflict management (as a system weakness) positively impacts the likelihood incidences of more violent modes of violent opposition more likely. Furthermore, we find that system size is positively associated with all analyzed modes of violent opposition.terrorism, civil conflict, system strength

Patterns of Force: System Strength, Terrorism and Civil War

We jointly analyze the genesis of terrorism and civil war, providing a simple conceptual framework to explain why violent opposition groups choose distinct forms of violence (i.e., terrorism and open rebellion). We argue that the distinct modes of violent opposition are chosen by violent opposition groups in response to the strengths and weaknesses of the system they challenge. An empirical test of this hypothesis for 103 countries for the period of 1992 to 2004 indeed shows that the socio-economic strength and stability of a system is positively related to the likelihood of terrorism but negatively to incidences of more violent forms of violent opposition. We also show that poor conflict management (as a system weakness) positively impacts the likelihood incidences of more violent modes of violent opposition more likely. Furthermore, we find that system size is positively associated with all analyzed modes of violent opposition.

Design und hydraulische Leistung einer gegenläufigen Mikroturbine

Das Design, die Herstellung, die Simulation und die Prüfung von Rädern der gegenläufigen Mikroturbine für die Druckreduktion in Trinkwassernetzwerken

Bioimpedance-based authentication of defrosted versus fresh pork at the end of refrigerated shelf life

publishedVersio

Hemocyte-mediated phagocytosis differs between honey bee (Apis mellifera) worker castes

Peer reviewe

Weaker Ligands Can Dominate an Odor Blend due to Syntopic Interactions

Most odors in natural environments are mixtures of several compounds. Perceptually, these can blend into a new "perfume,” or some components may dominate as elements of the mixture. In order to understand such mixture interactions, it is necessary to study the events at the olfactory periphery, down to the level of single-odorant receptor cells. Does a strong ligand present at a low concentration outweigh the effect of weak ligands present at high concentrations? We used the fruit fly receptor dOr22a and a banana-like odor mixture as a model system. We show that an intermediate ligand at an intermediate concentration alone elicits the neuron's blend response, despite the presence of both weaker ligands at higher concentration, and of better ligands at lower concentration in the mixture. Because all of these components, when given alone, elicited significant responses, this reveals specific mixture processing already at the periphery. By measuring complete dose-response curves we show that these mixture effects can be fully explained by a model of syntopic interaction at a single-receptor binding site. Our data have important implications for how odor mixtures are processed in general, and what preprocessing occurs before the information reaches the brai

Teaching Software Process Modeling

Most university curricula consider software pro- cesses to be on the fringes of software engineering (SE). Students are told there exists a plethora of software processes ranging from RUP over V-shaped processes to agile methods. Furthermore, the usual students’ programming tasks are of a size that either one student or a small group of students can manage the work. Comprehensive processes being essential for large companies in terms of reflecting the organization structure, coordinating teams, or interfaces to business processes such as contracting or sales, are complex and hard to teach in a lecture, and, therefore, often out of scope. We experienced tutorials on using Java or C#, or on developing applications for the iPhone to gather more attention by students, simply speaking, as these are more fun for them. So, why should students spend their time in software processes? From our experiences and the discussions with a variety of industrial partners, we learned that students often face trouble when taking their first “real” jobs, even if the company is organized in a lean or agile shape. Therefore, we propose to include software processes more explicitly into the SE curricula. We designed and implemented a course at Master’s level in which students learn why software processes are necessary, and how they can be analyzed, designed, implemented, and continuously improved. In this paper, we present our course’s structure, its goals, and corresponding teaching methods. We evaluate the course and further discuss our experiences so that lecturers and researchers can directly use our lessons learned in their own curricula.Peer reviewe

Measuring Magnetic 1/f Noise in Superconducting Microstructures and the Fluctuation-Dissipation Theorem

The performance of superconducting devices like qubits, SQUIDs, and particle detectors is often limited by finite coherence times and 1/f noise. Various types of slow fluctuators in the Josephson junctions and the passive parts of these superconducting circuits can be the cause, and devices usually suffer from a combination of different noise sources, which are hard to disentangle and therefore hard to eliminate. One contribution is magnetic 1/f noise caused by fluctuating magnetic moments of magnetic impurities or dangling bonds in superconducting inductances, surface oxides, insulating oxide layers, and adsorbates. In an effort to further analyze such sources of noise, we have developed an experimental set-up to measure both the complex impedance of superconducting microstructures, and the overall noise picked up by these structures. This allows for important sanity checks by connecting both quantities via the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. Since these two measurements are sensitive to different types of noise, we are able to identify and quantify individual noise sources. The superconducting inductances under investigation form a Wheatstone-like bridge, read out by two independent cross-correlated dc-SQUID read-out chains. The resulting noise resolution lies beneath the quantum limit of the front-end SQUIDs and lets us measure noise caused by just a few ppm of impurities in close-by materials. We present measurements of the insulating SiO2 layers of our devices, and magnetically doped noble metal layers in the vicinity of the pickup coils at T = 30 mK - 800 mK and f = 1 Hz - 100 kHz.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure