Slovakia - a playground for nationalism and national identity : manifestations of the national identity of the Slovaks 1918-1920

Väitöskirja, Joensuun yliopisto

The profiling of false identity documents: a promising method to fight identity fraud

Under the influence of intelligence-led policing models, crime analysis methods have known of important developments in recent years. Applications have been proposed in several fields of forensic science to exploit and manage various types of material evidence in a systematic and more efficient way. However, nothing has been suggested so far in the field of false identity documents.This study seeks to fill this gap by proposing a simple and general method for profiling false identity documents which aims to establish links based on their visual forensic characteristics. A sample of more than 200 false identity documents including French stolen blank passports, counterfeited driving licenses from Iraq and falsified Bulgarian driving licenses was gathered from nine Swiss police departments and integrated into an ad hoc developed database called ProfID. Links detected automatically and systematically through this database were exploited and analyzed to produce strategic and tactical intelligence useful to the fight against identity document fraud.The profiling and intelligence process established for these three types of false identity documents has confirmed its efficiency, more than 30% of documents being linked. Identity document fraud appears as a structured and interregional criminality, against which material and forensic links detected between false identity documents might serve as a tool for investigation.

Identidad nacional, lengua y escuela = National identity, language and school

La globalización cuestiona la existencia de una relación mimética entre ciudadanía y Estado-nación. Las identidades homogéneas, sustentadas ideológicamente en nociones como «lengua nacional», plantean problemas en sociedades en las que ha crecido espectacularmente la diversidad lingüística e identitaria. Cataluña es un territorio en el que una parte de la población afirma una identidad catalana distinta a la española y viceversa. Además, se ha teorizado que la identidad catalana y la lengua catalana coexisten mutuamente. Por eso, se suceden voces que defienden la presencia del catalán en la educación escolar como fuente de la identidad nacional catalana, mientras que otras voces defienden su presencia simplemente como una buena manera de aprender el catalán cuando no se puede aprender en el medio social y familiar. En los últimos años, Cataluña ha recibido casi un millón de personas extranjeras que han modificado notablemente su situación sociolingüística. Las últimas encuestas manifiestan que un 6,3% de la población utiliza habitualmente una lengua distinta del catalán y del castellano. En este marco, mostramos las construcciones identitarias de un grupo de adolescentes de origen extranjero que están en el segundo ciclo de la ESO. Los datos fueron recogidos mediante dos grupos de discusión de seis-siete estudiantes de distinto origen, lengua propia y tiempo de residencia en Cataluña. Los resultados muestran la importancia del lugar de origen en la construcción de la identidad. Además, los participantes que afirman sentimientos catalanes o españoles no los relacionan con la lengua sino con los intercambios sociales que han establecido con sus iguales de origen naciona. Las intervenciones muestran también las dificultades para promover identidades múltiples desde el contexto escolar que eviten actitudes racistas y xenófobas y sirvan para promover proyectos colectivos de futuro en los que se pueda vivir desde una cierta diferencia

A noninvasive method for measuring the velocity of diffuse hydrothermal flow by tracking moving refractive index anomalies

Diffuse flow velocimetry (DFV) is introduced as a new, noninvasive, optical technique for measuring the velocity of diffuse hydrothermal flow. The technique uses images of a motionless, random medium (e.g.,rocks) obtained through the lens of a moving refraction index anomaly (e.g., a hot upwelling). The method works in two stages. First, the changes in apparent background deformation are calculated using particle image velocimetry (PIV). The deformation vectors are determined by a cross correlation of pixel intensities across consecutive images. Second, the 2-D velocity field is calculated by cross correlating the deformation vectors between consecutive PIV calculations. The accuracy of the method is tested with laboratory and numerical experiments of a laminar, axisymmetric plume in fluids with both constant and temperaturedependent viscosity. Results show that average RMS errors are ∼5%–7% and are most accurate in regions of pervasive apparent background deformation which is commonly encountered in regions of diffuse hydrothermal flow. The method is applied to a 25 s video sequence of diffuse flow from a small fracture captured during the Bathyluck’09 cruise to the Lucky Strike hydrothermal field (September 2009). The velocities of the ∼10°C–15°C effluent reach ∼5.5 cm/s, in strong agreement with previous measurements of diffuse flow. DFV is found to be most accurate for approximately 2‐D flows where background objects have a small spatial scale, such as sand or gravel

Detection of moving groups among early type stars

Our procedure to detect moving groups in the solar neighbourhood (Chen et al., 1997) in the four-dimensional space of the stellar velocity components and age has been improved. The method, which takes advantadge of non-parametric estimators of density distribution to avoid any a priori knowledge of the kinematic properties of these stellar groups, now includes the effect of observational errors on the process to select moving group stars, uses a better estimation of the density distribution of the total sample and field stars, and classifies moving group stars using all the available information. It is applied here to an accurately selected sample of early-type stars with known radial velocities and Strömgren photometry. Astrometric data are taken from the HIPPARCOS catalogue (ESA, 1997), which results in an important decrease in the observational errors with respect to ground-based data, and ensures the uniformity of the observed data. Both the improvement of our method and the use of precise astrometric data have allowed us not only to confirm the existence of classical moving groups, but also to detect finer structures that in several cases can be related to kinematic properties of nearby open clusters or associations.

LKB1 and AMPK differentially regulate pancreatic β-cell identity.

Fully differentiated pancreatic β cells are essential for normal glucose homeostasis in mammals. Dedifferentiation of these cells has been suggested to occur in type 2 diabetes, impairing insulin production. Since chronic fuel excess ("glucotoxicity") is implicated in this process, we sought here to identify the potential roles in β-cell identity of the tumor suppressor liver kinase B1 (LKB1/STK11) and the downstream fuel-sensitive kinase, AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK). Highly β-cell-restricted deletion of each kinase in mice, using an Ins1-controlled Cre, was therefore followed by physiological, morphometric, and massive parallel sequencing analysis. Loss of LKB1 strikingly (2.0-12-fold, E<0.01) increased the expression of subsets of hepatic (Alb, Iyd, Elovl2) and neuronal (Nptx2, Dlgap2, Cartpt, Pdyn) genes, enhancing glutamate signaling. These changes were partially recapitulated by the loss of AMPK, which also up-regulated β-cell "disallowed" genes (Slc16a1, Ldha, Mgst1, Pdgfra) 1.8- to 3.4-fold (E<0.01). Correspondingly, targeted promoters were enriched for neuronal (Zfp206; P=1.3×10(-33)) and hypoxia-regulated (HIF1; P=2.5×10(-16)) transcription factors. In summary, LKB1 and AMPK, through only partly overlapping mechanisms, maintain β-cell identity by suppressing alternate pathways leading to neuronal, hepatic, and other characteristics. Selective targeting of these enzymes may provide a new approach to maintaining β-cell function in some forms of diabetes.-Kone, M., Pullen, T. J., Sun, G., Ibberson, M., Martinez-Sanchez, A., Sayers, S., Nguyen-Tu, M.-S., Kantor, C., Swisa, A., Dor, Y., Gorman, T., Ferrer, J., Thorens, B., Reimann, F., Gribble, F., McGinty, J. A., Chen, L., French, P. M., Birzele, F., Hildebrandt, T., Uphues, I., Rutter, G. A. LKB1 and AMPK differentially regulate pancreatic β-cell identity.

Cloning of an interferon-gamma regulated human melanoma-associated antigen: identity to the intercellular adhesion molecule ICAM-1.

The human melanoma-associated antigen identified by the monoclonal antibody (mAb) Me14-D12 is a cell surface protein whose expression is induced by interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma). We have recently reported the molecular cloning of a genomic probe specific for the gene and mRNA of this protein. By screening with the genomic probe, we have now isolated a full length 3.0 kb cDNA from a Raji cell line-derived lambda-gt10 library. Sequence analysis of this cDNA showed a 99.8% homology with the intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1). Mouse Ltk- cells stably transfected with the human cDNA clone were found to express the ICAM-1 antigenic determinants detected by mAb Me14-D12 and a reference anti-ICAM-1 mAb, as judged by surface immunofluorescence. Immunoprecipitation of surface-iodinated proteins with mAb Me14-D12 revealed the presence of a 90 kD molecule with identical mobility to ICAM-1. In addition, mAb Me14-D12 could inhibit the phorbolester-stimulated aggregation of U937 cells. The findings show that the human melanoma-associated Me14-D12 antigen is the adhesion molecule ICAM-1.

Translating from India and the Moving Space of Translation (Illustrated by the Works of Ajñeya)

The inadequacies and obsolescence of Eurocentric theories based on a binaryand static worldview have become a staple topic of postcolonial studies, and tosome extent also of translation studies. Nonetheless, the literary texts that arecalled upon in order to show the dynamism and hybridity of (post)modern worksbelong for the most part to the languages of the former colonial powers, especiallyEnglish, and remain inserted in a system that construes literatures interms of opposition. As a consequence, there is outside India a doubly misleadingunderstanding of Indian literatures other than those written in English:firstly, that translations of works in Hindi and in the Indian bhāṣā seem to belacking, if not inexistent, and secondly, that these "minor" literatures - as theyare regularly termed - are still often viewed as being highly dependent on theidea of "tradition," in opposition to the "postmodern" hybridity of the literatureswritten in the "dominant" languages, such as English or French. Againstthese views and supported by the analysis of Ajñeya's works in Hindi togetherwith their English translations, this paper aims to show: 1) that translationsfrom Hindi, which are not in fact non-existent, are mainly carried out in India,and 2) that Ajñeya's works, while representing a significant instance of the effectivehybridity present in Indian literatures, help to illustrate the moving spaceof translation. This demonstration effectively invalidates the above-mentionedoppositional standpoint.

National Identity and the Preference for State Opting-Out in the Basque Country

We argue that preferences for secession are the expression of a common unobserved mechanisms determining national identity. This paper examines the hypothesis of independence of both preferences for secession (independent Euskadi) and Basque national identity in the light of Akerloff and Kranton (2000). We deal with psychological determinants of individuals' national identity formation as well as those that influence the propensity of individuals to support the secession of their perceived ¿imagined community¿ or nation.. We undertake econometric survey analysis for the Basque Country using a bivariate probit model and publicly available data from the Spanish Centre for Sociological Research. Our results provide robust evidence of a common determination of national identity and political preferences for the secession of the Basque Country consistently with Akerloff and Kranton model.