Defence organizations have to meet the challenge of a changed focus in military missions towards asymmetric and irregular warfare and Stability, Security, Transition and Reconstruction (SSTR) operations. A range of operations (e.g., psychological operations, humanitarian missions) are performed in a large variety of locations and cultures (e.g., Africa, Asia). In this type of mission, influenci...

In this paper we o¤er a new theory of religion. Our theory relies on the assumption that individuals in society have di¤erent beliefs about the statistical relation between their actions in a strategic social interaction (speci…cally, a Prisoner’s Dilemma) and uncertain events that a¤ect their utility. This heterogeneity of beliefs allows for the endogenous emergence of religious institutions; ...

Scholars have debated the manner in which religious beliefs influence economic organization. This paper examines a particular case–the craft guilds of medieval England–to show how religious doctrines influence the ability of a group to enforce cooperation. When mortality rates are high, repeated interaction alone cannot sustain cooperation, but spiritual sanctions in the afterlife can sustain c...

This article explores the labeling of the iPhone as the ‘Jesus phone’ in order to demonstrate how religious metaphors and myth can be appropriated into popular discourse and shape the reception of a technology. We consider the intertextual nature of the relationship between religious language, imagery and technology and demonstrate how this creates a unique interaction between technology fans a...

Using data collected in the Tyva Republic, the present work sheds light on the dynamic nature of religious cognition. In doing so, it reveals important patterns in the representation and distribution of religious concepts in this remote corner of the globe. This paper first introduces a cognitive ecological account of religion by examining human representational structures and how they interact...

Turkey has long been a country which exercises secular state system. Its constitution identifies the country as a secular one, and state institutions are no doubt secular. It has been the state’s policy to exercise laicism on every level from education to legal system since the establishment of the Republic in 1923. Yet, this policy did not end up with Turkish people turning away from religion....

OBJECTIVES Homogamy, mating based on similarity, has been demonstrated for a great variety of traits such as age, education, religion, and physical and psychological traits. Recently, pro-fertile effects of religious as well as educational homogamy have been reported. We investigate whether ethnic homogamy also has a pro-fertile effect and whether ethnic and religious homogamy interact in their...

In this paper we present a mixed-initiative planning approach to human-robot interaction in a rescue domain. We deploy a model-based executive monitoring system to coordinate the operator’s interventions and the concurrent activities of a rescue rover. We show that this approach can enhance both operator situation awareness and human-robot interaction for the execution and control of the divers...