The opposition in Azerbaijan has long been considered a dysfunctional political group that does not threaten the ruling regime. Large swathes of the Azerbaijani public see opposition forces as badly organized, poorly funded, and vulnerable, allowing the Aliyev regime to stand largely unchallenged in the political arena. The traditional opposition’s image of failure drove newly emerging groups t...

A comparative analysis was made of the public's attitudes toward the use of animals in scientific research in 15 different nations. The intensity of opposition to animal research was found to vary from relatively low levels in Japan and the United States to much higher levels in France, Belgium, and Great Britain. More women than men were opposed to animal research in all 15 nations. Scientific...

A fireworks algorithm (FWA) is a recent swarm intelligence algorithm that is inspired by observing fireworks explosions. An adaptive fireworks algorithm (AFWA) proposes additional adaptive amplitudes to improve the performance of the enhanced fireworks algorithm (EFWA). The purpose of this paper is to add opposition-based learning (OBL) to AFWA with the goal of further boosting performance and ...