Breaking ranks: the emergence of representative associations in the Irish armed forces 1989-1992

This study contexualises the relationship between the armed forces and the civil authority in Ireland using and revising the theoretical framework advanced by Huntington. It tracks the evolution of the idea of a representive body for soldiers in the late 1980s, to the setting up of statutory associations under the Defence Amendment Act 1990. The study considers Irish soldiers political agitation and their use of peaceful democratic activities to achieve their aims. It highlights the fundamental policy arguments that were made against the idea of representation for the army and positions those arguments in the study of civil-military relations. Utilising unique access to secret Department of Defence files, it reveals in-depth ideological arguments advanced by the military authories in Ireland against independent representation. This thesis provides an academic study of the establishment of PDFORRA. It answers key questions regarding the change in the position of Irish government who were categorically opposed to the idea of representation in the army. It illustrates the involvement of other agencies such as the European Organisation of Military Associations (Euromil) reveals reciprocal support by the Irish associations to other emerging groups in Spain. Accessing as yet unpublished Department of Defence files, study analyses tension between the military authorities and the government. It highlights for the first time the role of enlisted personnel in the shaping of new state structures and successfully dismmisses Huntingtons theoretical contention that enlisted personnel are of no consequence in the study of civil-military relations. It fills a gap in our understanding, identified by Finer, as to how politicisation of soldiers takes place. This thesis brings a new dimension to the discipline of civil-military relations and creates new knowledge that will enhance our understanding of an area not covered previously.

Emergence and pathogenicity of highly virulent Cryptococcus gattii genotypes in the northwest United States.

Cryptococcus gattii causes life-threatening disease in otherwise healthy hosts and to a lesser extent in immunocompromised hosts. The highest incidence for this disease is on Vancouver Island, Canada, where an outbreak is expanding into neighboring regions including mainland British Columbia and the United States. This outbreak is caused predominantly by C. gattii molecular type VGII, specifically VGIIa/major. In addition, a novel genotype, VGIIc, has emerged in Oregon and is now a major source of illness in the region. Through molecular epidemiology and population analysis of MLST and VNTR markers, we show that the VGIIc group is clonal and hypothesize it arose recently. The VGIIa/IIc outbreak lineages are sexually fertile and studies support ongoing recombination in the global VGII population. This illustrates two hallmarks of emerging outbreaks: high clonality and the emergence of novel genotypes via recombination. In macrophage and murine infections, the novel VGIIc genotype and VGIIa/major isolates from the United States are highly virulent compared to similar non-outbreak VGIIa/major-related isolates. Combined MLST-VNTR analysis distinguishes clonal expansion of the VGIIa/major outbreak genotype from related but distinguishable less-virulent genotypes isolated from other geographic regions. Our evidence documents emerging hypervirulent genotypes in the United States that may expand further and provides insight into the possible molecular and geographic origins of the outbreak.

The Emergence of Access Controls in Small-Scale Fishing Commons: A Comparative Analysis of Individual Licenses and Common Property-Rights in Two Mexican Communities

Addressing global fisheries overexploitation requires better understanding of how small-scale fishing communities in developing countries limit access to fishing grounds. We analyze the performance of a system based on individual licenses and a common property-rights regime in their ability to generate incentives for self-governance and conservation of fishery resources. Using a qualitative before-after-control-impact approach, we compare two neighbouring fishing communities in the Gulf of California, Mexico. Both were initially governed by the same permit system, are situated in the same ecosystem, use similar harvesting technology, and have overharvested similar species. One community changed to a common property-right regime, enabling the emergence of access controls and avoiding overexploitation of benthic resources, while the other community, still relies on the permit system. We discuss the roles played by power, institutions, socio-historic, and biophysical factors to develop access controls. © 2012 The Author(s).

Design and Emergence in the Making of American Grand Strategy

The main research question of this thesis is how do grand strategies form. Grand strategy is defined as a state's coherent and consistent pattern of behavior over a long period of time in search of an overarching goal. The political science literature usually explains the formation of grand strategies by using a planning (or design) model. In this dissertation, I use primary sources, interviews with former government officials, and historical scholarship to show that the formation of grand strategy is better understood using a model of emergent learning imported from the business world. My two case studies examine the formation of American grand strategy during the Cold War and the post-Cold War eras. The dissertation concludes that in both these strategic eras the dominating grand strategies were formed primarily by emergent learning rather than flowing from advanced designs.

Decreased weed emergence in different crops scenarios under no tillage

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Emergence: a paradigm for robust and scalable distributed applications

Natural distributed systems are adaptive, scalable and fault-tolerant. Emergence science describes how higher-level self-regulatory behaviour arises in natural systems from many participants following simple rulesets. Emergence advocates simple communication models, autonomy and independence, enhancing robustness and self-stabilization. High-quality distributed applications such as autonomic systems must satisfy the appropriate nonfunctional requirements which include scalability, efficiency, robustness, low-latency and stability. However the traditional design of distributed applications, especially in terms of the communication strategies employed, can introduce compromises between these characteristics. This paper discusses ways in which emergence science can be applied to distributed computing, avoiding some of the compromises associated with traditionally-designed applications. To demonstrate the effectiveness of this paradigm, an emergent election algorithm is described and its performance evaluated. The design incorporates nondeterministic behaviour. The resulting algorithm has very low communication complexity, and is simultaneously very stable, scalable and robust.

Engineering emergence for cluster configuration

Distributed applications are being deployed on ever-increasing scale and with ever-increasing functionality. Due to the accompanying increase in behavioural complexity, self-management abilities, such as self-healing, have become core requirements. A key challenge is the smooth embedding of such functionality into our systems. Natural distributed systems such as ant colonies have evolved highly efficient behaviour. These emergent systems achieve high scalability through the use of low complexity communication strategies and are highly robust through large-scale replication of simple, anonymous entities. Ways to engineer this fundamentally non-deterministic behaviour for use in distributed applications are being explored. An emergent, dynamic, cluster management scheme, which forms part of a hierarchical resource management architecture, is presented. Natural biological systems, which embed self-healing behaviour at several levels, have influenced the architecture. The resulting system is a simple, lightweight and highly robust platform on which cluster-based autonomic applications can be deployed.

Scalable and efficient graph colouring in 3 dimensions using emergence engineering principles

This paper describes ways in which emergence engineering principles can be applied to the development of distributed applications. A distributed solution to the graph-colouring problem is used as a vehicle to illustrate some novel techniques. Each node acts autonomously to colour itself based only on its local view of its neighbourhood, and following a simple set of carefully tuned rules. Randomness breaks symmetry and thus enhances stability. The algorithm has been developed to enable self-configuration in wireless sensor networks, and to reflect real-world configurations the algorithm operates with 3 dimensional topologies (reflecting the propagation of radio waves and the placement of sensors in buildings, bridge structures etc.). The algorithm’s performance is evaluated and results presented. It is shown to be simultaneously highly stable and scalable whilst achieving low convergence times. The use of eavesdropping gives rise to low interaction complexity and high efficiency in terms of the communication overheads.

Urban labour, voice and legitimacy: economic development and the emergence of community unionism

Community unionism has emerged in the past decade as a growing strand of industrial relations research and is influencing trade union strategies for renewal. This article seeks to further develop the concept, while exploring the potential roles for unions in communities subject to projects of urban regeneration.

Journal citation among heterodox economists 1995-2007: Dynamics of community emergence

Purpose – This study aims to investigate the pattern among 17 heterodox economic journals over a prolonged period to provide evidence about the social dynamics among the group of researchers who publish in them and the extent to which they hold or develop a collective identity as heterodox economists. Design/methodology/approach – Traditional approaches to citation analysis are extended by the use of techniques from social network analysis. In addition to citation counts, measures of network position and clique membership are used to identify key journals and turning points in a longitudinal analysis. Findings – Important shifts in the nature of citation within the network of journals are identified in the 1998-2001 period and evidence is found of the emergence of a collective identity. Research limitations/implications – The methods prove a valuable extension of citation analysis and also focus greater consideration on the social relationships that citations represent. They are well suited to addressing the principal limitation of the study, its restriction to journals within the defined community rather than journals in general. Originality/value – This extends traditional approaches to citation analysis, provides an important new technique in identifying emergent collective identities and provides insight into the history and nature of the heterodox economic community.

The emergence of automated high-frequency flow cytometry: revealing temporal and spatial phytoplankton variability

Phytoplankton observation is the product of a number of trade-offs related to sampling processes, required level of diversity and size spectrum analysis capabilities of the techniques involved. Instruments combining the morphological and high-frequency analysis for phytoplankton cells are now available. This paper presents an application of the automated high-resolution flow cytometer Cytosub as a tool for analysing phytoplanktonic cells in their natural environment. High resolution data from a temporal study in the Bay of Marseille (analysis every 30 min over 1 month) and a spatial study in the Southern Indian Ocean (analysis every 5 min at 10 knots over 5 days) are presented to illustrate the capabilities and limitations of the instrument. Automated high-frequency flow cytometry revealed the spatial and temporal variability of phytoplankton in the size range 1−∼50 μm that could not be resolved otherwise. Due to some limitations (instrumental memory, volume analysed per sample), recorded counts could be statistically too low. By combining high-frequency consecutive samples, it is possible to decrease the counting error, following Poisson’s law, and to retain the main features of phytoplankton variability. With this technique, the analysis of phytoplankton variability combines adequate sampling frequency and effective monitoring of community changes.