The bandido or bandit uprisings that began in 1959 had their origins in the resistance of some peasants to agrarian reform. Many small property owners with a few coffee trees or tobacco plants or a ...small cattle herd feared the redistribution of private lands. Many landless rural laborers also joined the fight against the comunistas who administered the agrarian reforms. The Castro Regime maintained that the “real” peasants supported the Revolution. Indeed, rural residents who benefitted positively from land reform did fill out the militia units that fought the “bandits” in the Escambray Mountains and elsewhere on the island. The Cuban counterrevolution, in this regard, compares to the Vendée in France, the Cristero Revolt in Mexico, the kulaks of Russia, and the Contra Movement of Nicaragua. Sources : Cuban military records and CIA documents.
Advancements in rheumatoid-arthritis-(RA) therapies have shown considerable progresses in the comprehension of disease. However, the development of new potential agents with relative safety and ...efficacy continues and natural compounds have been considered as alternatives to identify new entities. Since previous in-vivo data and our in-vitro findings showed that torilin has a strong anti-inflammatory property, we further investigated its effect against collagen-induced-arthritis-(CIA) in mice. CIA-induced DBA/1J mice were treated with torilin or methotrexate (MTX) for 5-weeks. Arthritis severity was evaluated by arthritic score and joint histopathology. Draining lymph node (dLN), joint and peripheral-blood mononuclear-cell (PBMC) counts, and activation/localization of T-/B-lymphocytes, dendritic cells (DCs) and neutrophils were examined by FACS analysis. Serum anti-type-II-collagen-(CII) antibody levels and cultured-splenocyte and serum cytokines were also evaluated. Torilin markedly reduced CIA-induced arthritic score, histopathology and leukocyte counts. Besides, torilin suppressed CIA-activated T-cells including CD3+, CD3+/CD69+, CD8+, CD4+ and CD4+/CD25+ in dLNs or joints. It also modified CD19+ or CD20+/CD23+ (B-cells), MHCII+/CD11c+ (DCs) and Gr-1+/CD11b+ (neutrophil) subpopulations. It further depressed total anti-CII-IgG, anti-CII-IgG1 and anti-CII-IgG2a antibody productions. Moreover, while IFN-γ and IL-10 were not affected, torilin suppressed CIA-induced serum TNF-α, IL-1β and IL-6 levels. Interestingly, torilin also blocked IFN-γ, IL-17 and IL-6 cytokines while it did not affect IL-10 but enhanced IL-4 in splenocytes. These results show that torilin attenuated arthritis severity, modified leukocyte activations in dLNs or joints, and restored serum and splenocyte cytokine imbalances. Torilin may have immunomodulatory and anti-inflammatory properties with the capacity to ameliorate the inflammatory response in CIA-mice.
•Reduced CIA-induced clinical score, cellular infiltration & cartilage erosion.•Modulated CIA-activated T/B-cell & dendritic cell subpopulations in target organs.•Arrested T-cell & neutrophil infiltrations in the joints.•Inhibited anti-CII-antibodies & proinflammatory cytokines in serum or splenocytes.•Reduced inflammatory response, arthritis severity and modified cytokine imbalances.
Programmed death ligand (PDL) is a new member of the B7 family of costimulatory molecules that specifically interacts with programmed death 1 (PD-1) expressed on activated T cells, B cells, and ...myeloid cells. Collagen II (CII)-induced arthritis (CIA) is an experimental model of arthritis that has been used to dissect the pathogenesis of human rheumatoid arthritis. In this study, we have investigated the effects of PDL-Ig on CIA. Administration of PDL-Ig significantly ameliorated the disease as assessed by clinical arthritis score and histology in the joints. Expression of proinflammatory cytokines, such as IL-17 and IL-23, in the serum was reduced by PDL-Ig treatment. These results showed a beneficial effect of PDL-Ig on CIA through anti-inflammatory actions and inhibition of cell proliferation in response to CII, suggesting that the PD-1-PDL pathway may be involved in the pathogenesis of CIA, and thus PDL-Ig may be a useful therapy for the improvement of human rheumatoid arthritis.
This article analyses the archival documents of the Central Intelligence Agency. The sources of the post-war period provide an opportunity to see what forecasts the US intelligence personnel put ...forward. CIA analysts considered various scenarios of events, detailing military aspects and signs of potential aggression on the part of the USSR. CIA employees did a great job, predicting the possible occupation of Western Europe and the Middle East by the Soviet Union.
This article considers lessons learned from conducting research inside the intelligence community. Drawing on a year of ethnographic field work and interviews at the National Counterterrorism Center, ...I show that “boundary personnel”- people who navigate between the worlds of academia and national security - provide value added in the form of tacit knowledge that outside researchers would not be able to deliver. At the same time, these people face delays, challenges to freedom of information, and ethical considerations that are unique to their positions. Despite setbacks, social scientists must continue their engagement with national security organizations to further our understanding of how these powerful institutions operate.
Canonical information analysis Vestergaard, Jacob Schack; Nielsen, Allan Aasbjerg
ISPRS journal of photogrammetry and remote sensing,
March 2015, 2015-03-00, Letnik:
101
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Canonical correlation analysis is an established multivariate statistical method in which correlation between linear combinations of multivariate sets of variables is maximized. In canonical ...information analysis introduced here, linear correlation as a measure of association between variables is replaced by the information theoretical, entropy based measure mutual information, which is a much more general measure of association. We make canonical information analysis feasible for large sample problems, including for example multispectral images, due to the use of a fast kernel density estimator for entropy estimation. Canonical information analysis is applied successfully to (1) simple simulated data to illustrate the basic idea and evaluate performance, (2) fusion of weather radar and optical geostationary satellite data in a situation with heavy precipitation, and (3) change detection in optical airborne data. The simulation study shows that canonical information analysis is as accurate as and much faster than algorithms presented in previous work, especially for large sample sizes. URL: http://www.imm.dtu.dk/pubdb/p.php?6270
This paper analyzes the long-run effects of monetary policy on innovation and imitation in a North–South product-cycle model with foreign direct investment (FDI) and separate cash-in-advance (CIA) ...constraints on innovative R&D, adaptive R&D, and imitative R&D. We find that if the CIA constraint is applied to innovative R&D, then a decrease in the Northern nominal interest rate will reduce the rate of Northern innovation and the extent of FDI while raising the rate of Southern imitation and the North–South wage gap. Regarding the effects of the Southern monetary policy, the object that is liquidity-constrained plays a significant role. If adaptive (imitative) R&D is subject to the CIA constraint, then a decrease in the Southern nominal interest rate will reduce (raise) the rate of Northern innovation and the extent of FDI while raising (reducing) the rate of Southern imitation. The stability of the long-run equilibrium is examined. We also analyze the responses of social welfare for Northern and Southern consumers to monetary policy.
O Invisível a Olhos Vistos Alexandre Gindri Fávero
Arte da Cena,
12/2015, Letnik:
2, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Alexandre Fávero, encenador e sombrista da Cia. Teatro Lumbra, de Porto Alegre (RS), discorre, de maneira poética, sobre o ofício de mesclar luz e sombras.
During the Cold War, American labour organizations were at the centre of the battle for the hearts and minds of working people. At a time when trade unions were a substantial force in both American ...and European politics, the fiercely anti-communist American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO) set a strong example for labour organizations overseas. The AFL–CIO cooperated closely with the US government on foreign policy and enjoyed an intimate, if sometimes strained, relationship with the CIA. The activities of its international staff, and especially the often secretive work of Jay Lovestone and Irving Brown—whose biographies read like characters plucked from a Le Carré novel—exerted a major influence on relationships in Europe and beyond. Having mastered the enormous volume of correspondence and other records generated by staffers Lovestone and Brown, Carew presents a lively and clear account of what has largely been an unknown dimension of the Cold War. In impressive detail, Carew maps the international programs of the AFL–CIO during the Cold War and its relations with labour organizations abroad, in addition to providing a summary of the labour situation of a dozen or more countries including Finland, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Greece, and India. American Labour’s Cold War Abroad reveals how the Cold War compelled trade unionists to reflect on the role of unions in a free society. Yet there was to be no meeting of minds on this, and at the end of the 1960s the AFL–CIO broke with the mainstream of the international labour movement to pursue its own crusade against communism.
In an effort to contextualise the concept of intelligence liaison within the framework of International Relations theories, the paper argues that the genesis of liaison arrangements is driven by ...necessity and convenience - key tenets of realism. Specifically, the paper investigates U.S.-Pakistan intelligence liaison spanning over a period of three decades, from early 1980s - a time when religious terrorism spread its tentacles in the Indian subcontinent under the aegis of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence and occasionally, indirect support from the Central Intelligence Agency - till the killing of Osama Bin Laden in 2011. The question that is attempted to answer is: under what conditions do intelligence liaisons sustain? What drives cooperation or confrontation among intelligence services? The case study serves as an illustration of the realpolitik character of intelligence liaisons where interests and practicality-driven actions dominate moral and ethical considerations. Finally, using Randall Shweller's model of analysis of international alliances, the paper concludes that, more than honouring the purpose of the liaison arrangement, the complex adversarial liaison between the two intelligence agencies served as a medium for each other to balance their interests.
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