scholarly journals Cultural evolution of military camouflage

2017 ◽  
Vol 372 (1724) ◽  
pp. 20160351 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laszlo Talas ◽  
Roland J. Baddeley ◽  
Innes C. Cuthill
Keyword(s):  
Computer Vision ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
The Other ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Computational Techniques ◽  
Animal Coloration ◽  
Multiple Functions ◽  
Colour Patterns ◽  
Perception Function

While one has evolved and the other been consciously created, animal and military camouflage are expected to show many similar design principles. Using a unique database of calibrated photographs of camouflage uniform patterns, processed using texture and colour analysis methods from computer vision, we show that the parallels with biology are deeper than design for effective concealment. Using two case studies we show that, like many animal colour patterns, military camouflage can serve multiple functions. Following the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, countries that became more Western-facing in political terms converged on NATO patterns in camouflage texture and colour. Following the break-up of the former Yugoslavia, the resulting states diverged in design, becoming more similar to neighbouring countries than the ancestral design. None of these insights would have been obtained using extant military approaches to camouflage design, which focus solely on concealment. Moreover, our computational techniques for quantifying pattern offer new tools for comparative biologists studying animal coloration. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Animal coloration: production, perception, function and application'.

scholarly journals The current and future state of animal coloration research

2017 ◽  
Vol 372 (1724) ◽  
pp. 20160352 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Endler ◽  
Johanna Mappes
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Manipulation ◽  
Model System ◽  
Broad Context ◽  
The Other ◽  
Animal Coloration ◽  
Future State ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Visual Signalling ◽  
Colour Patterns ◽  
Perception Function

Animal colour patterns are a model system for understanding evolution because they are unusually accessible for study and experimental manipulation. This is possible because their functions are readily identifiable. In this final paper of the symposium we provide a diagram of the processes affecting colour patterns and use this to summarize their functions and put the other papers in a broad context. This allows us to identify significant ‘holes’ in the field that only become obvious when we see the processes affecting colour patterns, and their interactions, as a whole. We make suggestions about new directions of research that will enhance our understanding of both the evolution of colour patterns and visual signalling but also illuminate how the evolution of multiple interacting traits works. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Animal coloration: production, perception, function and application’.

The Propaganda Feedback Loop

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yochai Benkler ◽  
Robert Faris ◽  
Hal Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Feedback Loop ◽  
The Other ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
The Public ◽  
False Reporting ◽  
Media Ecosystem ◽  
Crowd Out ◽  
Selection Of

This chapter presents a model of the interaction of media outlets, politicians, and the public with an emphasis on the tension between truth-seeking and narratives that confirm partisan identities. This model is used to describe the emergence and mechanics of an insular media ecosystem and how two fundamentally different media ecosystems can coexist. In one, false narratives that reinforce partisan identity not only flourish, but crowd-out true narratives even when these are presented by leading insiders. In the other, false narratives are tested, confronted, and contained by diverse outlets and actors operating in a truth-oriented norms dynamic. Two case studies are analyzed: the first focuses on false reporting on a selection of television networks; the second looks at parallel but politically divergent false rumors—an allegation that Donald Trump raped a 13-yearold and allegations tying Hillary Clinton to pedophilia—and tracks the amplification and resistance these stories faced.

Historical Writing in the Balkans

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulf Brunnbauer
Keyword(s):  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
The Other ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Balkan Countries ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

This chapter analyzes historiography in several Balkan countries, paying particular attention to the communist era on the one hand, and the post-1989–91 period on the other. When communists took power in Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, and Yugoslavia in 1944–5, the discipline of history in these countries—with the exception of Albania—had already been institutionalized. The communists initially set about radically changing the way history was written in order to construct a more ideologically suitable past. In 1989–91, communist dictatorships came to an end in Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Albania. Years of war and ethnic cleansing would ensue in the former Yugoslavia. These upheavals impacted on historiography in different ways: on the one hand, the end of communist dictatorship brought freedom of expression; on the other hand, the region faced economic displacement.

Computer Vision and robotics in postal automation

1999 ◽  
Vol 18 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 265-273
Author(s):  
Giovanni B. Garibotto
Keyword(s):  
Image Processing ◽  
Computer Vision ◽  
Pattern Recognition ◽  
Material Handling ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Short Description ◽  
The Other ◽  
Functional Requirements ◽  
Postal Automation ◽  
And Robotics

The paper is intended to provide an overview of advanced robotic technologies within the context of Postal Automation services. The main functional requirements of the application are briefly referred, as well as the state of the art and new emerging solutions. Image Processing and Pattern Recognition have always played a fundamental role in Address Interpretation and Mail sorting and the new challenging objective is now off-line handwritten cursive recognition, in order to be able to handle all kind of addresses in a uniform way. On the other hand, advanced electromechanical and robotic solutions are extremely important to solve the problems of mail storage, transportation and distribution, as well as for material handling and logistics. Finally a short description of new services of Postal Automation is referred, by considering new emerging services of hybrid mail and paper to electronic conversion.

scholarly journals Ethnic Hatred and Universal Benevolence: Ethnicity and Loyalty in Precolonial Myanmar, and Britain

2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 310-338
Author(s):  
Victor Lieberman
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Pressures ◽  
Legal Equality ◽  
The One

AbstractInsisting on a radical divide between post-1750 ideologies in Europe and earlier political thought in both Europe and Asia, modernist scholars of nationalism have called attention, quite justifiably, to European nationalisms’ unique focus on popular sovereignty, legal equality, territorial fixity, and the primacy of secular over universal religious loyalties. Yet this essay argues that nationalism also shared basic developmental and expressive features with political thought in pre-1750 Europe as well as in rimland—that is to say outlying—sectors of Asia. Polities in Western Europe and rimland Asia were all protected against Inner Asian occupation, all enjoyed relatively cohesive local geographies, and all experienced economic and social pressures to integration that were not only sustained but surprisingly synchronized throughout the second millennium. In Western Europe and rimland Asia each major state came to identify with a named ethnicity, specific artifacts became badges of inclusion, and central ethnicity expanded and grew more standardized. Using Myanmar and pre-1750 England/Britain as case studies, this essay reconstructs these centuries-long similarities in process and form between “political ethnicity,” on the one hand, and modern nationalism, on the other. Finally, however, this essay explores cultural and material answers to the obvious question: if political ethnicities in Myanmar and pre-1750 England/Britain were indeed comparable, why did the latter realm alone generate recognizable expressions of nationalism? As such, this essay both strengthens and weakens claims for European exceptionalism.

scholarly journals Zero-Tolerance in Catalonia: Policing the Other in Public Space

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Lundsteen ◽  
Miquel Fernández González
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Zero Tolerance ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Effects ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Sociocultural Practices

AbstractRecent studies have argued for more nuanced understandings of zero tolerance (ZT) policing, rendering it essential to analyze the significance and actual workings of the policies in practice, including the context in which they are introduced. This article aims to accomplish this through a comparison of two case studies in Catalonia: one in the neighborhood of Raval in Barcelona and one in Salt—a municipality in the comarca (or county) of Girona. We identify a transformation in the use of ZT policies in Catalonia and a contradiction between their social effects and proclaimed objectives. This article attempts to address how specific sociocultural groups gain power and privilege from these policies. The main argument is that a set of commonsensical ideas have become hegemonic, which allows and naturalizes certain sociocultural practices in urban space, while persecuting others, fundamentally pitting two categories against each other: the desired civil citizen and the undesirable and uncivil stranger.

scholarly journals Animal coloration: production, perception, function and application

2017 ◽  
Vol 372 (1724) ◽  
pp. 20170047 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Caro ◽  
Mary Caswell Stoddard ◽  
Devi Stuart-Fox
Keyword(s):  
Animal Coloration ◽  
Perception Function

Influencing travel behaviour

2019 ◽  
pp. 107-130
Author(s):  
Stewart Barr ◽  
John Preston
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Behaviour Change ◽  
Social Marketing ◽  
Quantitative Study ◽  
Behavioural Change ◽  
Travel Behaviour ◽  
Air Travel ◽  
The Other ◽  
Car Travel

As travel planning’s theoretical underpinnings have broadened from engineering and economics to embrace psychology and sociology, an emphasis has been placed on social marketing and nudge theory. It is argued that this is consistent with a neo-liberal trend towards governing from a distance. Using two case studies, one a qualitative study of reducing short-haul air travel, the other a quantitative study of attempts to reduce local car travel, it is found that actual behaviour change is limited. This seems to arise because behavioural change has been too narrowly defined and overly identified with personal choice.

Policy and Practice: An Overview

1990 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
David K. Cohen ◽  
Deborah Loewenberg Ball
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Classroom Practice ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Early Report ◽  
State Policies ◽  
The Other ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
School Practices ◽  
The One

Policymakers in the U. S. have been trying to change schools and school practices for years. Though studies of such policies raise doubts about their effects, the last decade has seen an unprecedented increase in state policies designed to change instructional practice. One of the boldest and most comprehensive of these has been undertaken in California, where state policymakers have launched an ambitious effort to improve teaching and learning in schools. We offer an early report on California's reforms, focusing on mathematics. State officials have been promoting substantial changes in instruction designed to deepen students' mathematical understanding, to enhance their appreciation of mathematics and to improve their capacity to reason mathematically. If successful, these reforms would be a sharp departure from existing classroom practice, which attends chiefly to computational skills. The research reported here focuses on teachers' early responses to the state's efforts to change mathematics instruction. The case studies of five teachers highlight a key dilemma in such ambitious reforms. On the one hand, teachers are seen as the root of the problem: their instruction is mechanical, often boring, and superficial. On the other hand, teachers are cast as the key agents of improvement because students will not learn the new mathematics that policymakers intend unless teachers learn that math and teach it. But how can teachers teach a mathematics that they never learned, in ways they never experienced? That is the question explored in this special issue.

scholarly journals The perfection of mimicry: an information approach

2017 ◽  
Vol 372 (1724) ◽  
pp. 20160340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas N. Sherratt ◽  
Casey A. Peet-Paré
Keyword(s):  
Value Of Information ◽  
Animal Coloration ◽  
Information Approach ◽  
Complex Information ◽  
Lack Of Information ◽  
Stripe Order ◽  
Future Value ◽  
Perception Function

We consider why imperfect deceptive mimics can persist when it appears to be in the predator's interest to discriminate finely between mimics and their models. One theory is that a receiver will accept being duped if the model and mimic overlap in appearance and the relative costs of attacking the model are high. However, a more fundamental explanation for the difficulty of discrimination is not based on perceptual uncertainty, but simply based on a lack of information. In particular, predators in the process of learning may cease sampling imperfect mimics entirely because the immediate pay-off and future value of information is low, allowing such mimics to persist. This outcome will be particularly likely when the model is relatively costly to attack and/or the discriminative rules the predator has to learn are complex. Information limitations neatly explain why predators tend to adopt discriminative rules based on single traits (such as stripe colour), rather than on combinations of traits (such as stripe order). They also explain why predators utilize certain salient discriminative traits while ignoring equally informative ones (a phenomenon known as overshadowing), and why imperfect mimics may be more common in phenotypically diverse prey communities. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Animal coloration: production, perception, function and application’.

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