The Social (and Religious) Meanings that Constitute War: The Crusades as Realpolitik vs. Socialpolitik

This paper aims to present a different, and thus a more complete, explanation for "wars" in general and the Crusades to the Holy Land in particular than the one given by realist and rationalist theories. It makes its theoretical contribution in the context of a recent debate among several IR scholars, such as John Ruggie, Marcus Fischer, Rodney Bruce Hall, and Friedrich Kratochwil, forwarding the constitutive nature of the explanation of war. Furthermore, it wishes to incorporate into IR research a more sensitive historical research on the Middle Ages and the Crusades, based on French historiography and the Annalists, highlighting the " mentalité " as a cognitive structure that constituted particular interests, patterns of politics, and ultimately the wars of the Crusades. To show the evolution of social institutions, such as norms of Just War, Christian chivalry, and the idea of the Last Emperor into social praxis, this paper also focuses on the crusading life itself through the Hohenstaufen Emperors, Henry VI and Frederick II.     

Normalization on the politicians’ messages level,equalization on the citizens’ discussions level: the 2015 Israeli elections campaign on Facebook

ABSTRACT

The question whether online social networks allow political challengers equal access to incumbents (equalization) or perpetuate the gaps between candidates (normalization) during an election campaign is central to political science studies. While so far, studies have relied on top-down analyses of citizens’ engagement with politicians’ messages to address the issue, we complemented this method with a bottom-up approach via analysis of independent citizen discussions of the different contenders on Facebook during the 2015 Israeli elections campaign. This approach is particularly relevant to social networks, where citizens are not only consumers but also producers of political information. Our study revealed that, whereas PM Netanyahu's posts attracted the most engagement, indicating normalization, on the citizen discussions realm contenders Herzog and Livni attracted more mentions, as well as Shares, Likes and participants than did PM Netanyahu. In addition, contender Bennett's posts managed to generate more Likes than PM Netanyahu, indicating equalization on the bottom-up level. These optimistic results highlight citizens’ discussion realms as a platform characterized by a more desired democratic discourse than that which can be found on politicians’ pages and emphasize the importance of including this realm in future analyses of equalization versus normalization.     

Intellectual Leadership of Leonardo da Vinci: A Bibliometric Study

The article evaluates the body of literature on Leonardo da Vinci using for the first time bibliometric and altmetric methods for data processing. The question of whether the literature on Leonardo da Vinci reflects his interdisciplinarity as scientist and artist is addressed. We argue that the medical and material sciences show a high number of citations to the respective publications, and much higher number of citations to publications ratio than the humanities and social sciences fields. We also found that there is no relationship between the number of publications for each research area and the citations (between productivity and quality). The largest category of papers, in terms of citations and in terms of the number of subfields, discussing da Vinci’s contribution to the various sciences, belongs to exact sciences. This finding is surprising as Leonardo da Vinci has become a synonym for the mysterious artist whose paintings consist of many messages that are difficult to explain. Therefore it seems natural that Leonardo the artist would get a lot of research attention. Nevertheless, the bibliometric findings show that the academic community has interest in his contributions to science, no less than in his work of art.     

How did the euro area survive the crisis?

Six recent books differ in their explanations as to how the euro area survived the crisis. In this review it is concluded that strong supranational institutions rather than German or Franco-German leadership, shared identity or the popular legitimacy of central institutions have been the crucial condition. Popular support for the euro has remained relatively high in many member states. While the crisis led to some expansion of the intergovernmental method, survival of the euro area required a great expansion in the powers of supranational institutions.     

The Effect of Time and Temperature on the Persistence and Quality of Latent Fingerprints Recovered from 60-Watt Incandescent Light Bulbs

To understand how time and temperature could affect latent fingerprints, wooden pallets were used to construct five units that each housed ten 60-watt incandescent light bulbs. Fingerprints were deposited on the top, middle, and base of the globes. The bulbs were powered on (except the control bulb in each unit) for 18, 48, 72, 120, 168, 336, 504, and 672 h. Fingerprints recovered from the bulbs by tape lift after black powder processing were given a quality score. A thermal imaging camera determined temperatures on three areas of the bulbs. Fingerprints on the top of the globe (156.3°C) had the lowest quality score, and fingerprints on the middle of the globe (112.6°C) had the highest quality score. The mean quality scores of the three temperature classes were within one standard deviation of one another, meaning there is no way to estimate fingerprint age based on its quality after heat exposure.     

Melancholic citizenship in the south Tel Aviv protest against global migration

Combining anthropological analysis with the discipline of urban studies and the theory of melancholy, this article offers the concept of ‘melancholic citizenship’ to describe the emotion of sadness aroused among a discriminated group of citizens in light of a process that highlights their social marginality. The case study explored is the struggle of old-time Mizrahi (Jews who immigrated to Israel from Arab countries) residents of the Hatikva neighborhood – a lower income neighborhood of south Tel Aviv – against the inflow of African migration to the area. Based on anthropological field work I conducted in the neighborhood between the years 2010–2013, I argue that the struggle of the longstanding residents aroused melancholic feelings among them when they realized that the global migration is a current indication of their discrimination as lower income Mizrahim who inhabit the city periphery and are located at the margins of Israeli society.     

Eisenhower's disarmament dilemma: From chance for peace to open skies proposal

President Eisenhower's image as a promoter of 'peace and nuclear disarmament' was established through speeches he made such as 'Atoms for Peace' (December 1953) and 'Open Skies' proposal (July 1955). However, Eisenhower's approach to the subject cannot be grasped without an understanding of his attitude towards the relationship between arms, war and disarmament. As he saw it, not only would the mere existence of nuclear weapons not trigger a war, they were actually the best guarantee against the eruption of a global conflagration. The real threat to world security was the repressive, closed, totalitarian and expansionist Soviet regime. War could be prevented only by a dramatic change in the competing - and threatening - ideology and social structure embedded in the Soviet system. Until then, the existence of nuclear weapons would ensure the free world's safety.