Maritime Security and Governance Staff Course

The WPS strategy, which was first established in 2000 by the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, aims to address the impact of conflict on women and to ensure their meaningful participation in peacebuilding and conflict resolution processes. The strategy recognizes that peace and security cannot be achieved without the full and equal participation of women. By integrating WPS into PME curriculum (first pillar of the strategy), students in joint military PME institutions are provided with a comprehensive understanding of the role of women in conflict and peacebuilding, as well as the importance of their involvement in these processes.    The integration of WPS into PME curriculum has numerous benefits for students in the security sector and for meeting the strategy goals of the WPS strategy. By promoting gender equality and highlighting the importance of women\u27s participation in conflict resolution and peacebuilding, PME programs can contribute to a more inclusive and effective security sector and help to achieve the goal of a safer and more secure world through educating mid-grade officers and civilians who will likely be involved in these operations.https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/wps/1007/thumbnail.jp

The causes and outcomes of coup during civil war

Though approximately one in four coup attempts takes place during an ongoing civil war, scholars have not yet analyzed how the incidence of civil war affects coup attempts and outcomes. We conduct the first empirical analysis of the relationship between ongoing civil war and coup activity, finding (1) war increases the risk of a coup attempt, though (2) war-time coup attempts are significantly less likely to be successful, and (3) the risk of war-time coup is much higher when states face stronger rebel groups that pose greater threats to the political survival of the incumbent government. We attribute these findings to the pernicious effect of ongoing war on the welfare of the military elites and soldiers who have the greatest capacity to execute a coup attempt. As war diminishes their welfare and creates uncertainty about the future of the state, potential plotters become more willing to accept riskier coup attempts than they might plot during peace-time. Coup motivations are greatest when incumbents are more likely to lose their wars, and this causes coup plotters to attempt more and riskier coups when rebels are relatively strong

Spending on Stability: The Relationship between Public Goods Provision and Regime Survival

Under what conditions can leaders use government spending to reduce the incidence of coup d\u27état and civil war? My dissertation addresses this question by considering when leaders might use public goods (public health, education, etc.) and private goods (graft, elite pacts, etc.) to co-opt potential revolutionaries and coup plotters. The dissertation begins with a formal model of the strategic environment in which leaders decide to allocate resources and challengers opt whether to fight the regime (Chapter 2). The model is solved for two sets of hypotheses that are tested with quantitative analyses in subsequent chapters. The third chapter turns to the spending hypotheses and shows that the leaders of weak regimes alter government spending to placate their most likely challengers. Weak exclusive regimes increase public goods provision while they are vulnerable to popular challenges, while weak inclusive regimes increase private goods provision to purchase the support of powerful elites. Chapter 4 evaluates the stability hypotheses to determine whether these shifts in spending successfully reduce the likelihood of coup and civil war. The findings are mixed. Weak and exclusive regimes can reduce the likelihood of civil conflict by more than 50% by increasing public goods provision from one standard deviation below to one standard deviation above the mean. However, increased private goods provision does not offer the same benefits for inclusive regimes. Chapter 5 uses a nested analysis case comparison of two transitional sub-Saharan democracies to better understand how weak inclusive governments can remain stable without shifting money from public goods provision toward elite interests. The project results in three major contributions. First, governments shift public and private goods provision as they become more or less vulnerable to domestic extra-institutional challenges. Second, benevolence pays for the leaders of exclusive regimes. When these regimes are weak, there exists a very strong positive relationship between public goods provision and regime stability. Finally, the leaders of inclusive regimes need not decrease public goods provision to reduce the likelihood of coup and civil war, but some democratic institutions are more conducive to both social welfare and regime stability than others

Online tools for assessing the climatology and predictability of rainfall and temperature in the Indo-Gangetic plains based on observed datasets and seasonal forecast models

Rainfall in the Northern India-Nepal-Bangladesh region is crucial for farmers, water managers and others in the region. Most precipitation falls predominantly during the south Asian summer monsoon season. The phase of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) affects the monsoon as well as winter rainfall in some of the region, but the spring predictability barrier and weakness of ENSO-monsoon relationships lead to relatively low-to-moderate seasonal forecast skill in the region during summer. This report documents a set of tools developed to facilitate the analysis of the mean climate and the predictability of seasonal climate in the region and presents preliminary results for the summer monsoon season. These tools advance the tailoring of historical and forecast climate information for agriculture and increase the accessibility of the information via online map rooms to benefit stakeholders throughout the region

The rise predicts the fall : how the method of leader entry affects the method of leader removal in dictatorships

How does the way a non-democratic leader takes power affect the stability of her government? Prior research identifies irregular leader entries—those violating the regime's norms for leader selection—to be especially likely to foreshadow subsequent unconstitutional transitions. This paper shows how some forms of irregular leader entry can actually protect leaders from most threats of forced removal from power. When leaders use a strong and loyal coalition of supporters to overthrow their predecessors and their entire ruling regimes, as they do in successful rebellions, popular uprisings, and major regime changing coups, they explicitly prove their strength to any potential rivals. These leaders are substantially less likely to be ousted than leaders who take power in ways that do not convey strength so convincingly, such as normal succession and elite reshuffling. We analyze an original dataset of non democratic leader transitions and show that accounting for the strength demonstrated during a leader’s entry to power substantially improves our ability to predict how and when the leader will eventually leave office

The symmetries and scaling of tidal tails in galaxies

(Abriged) We present analytic models for the formation and evolution of tidal tails and related structures following impulsive disturbances in galaxy collisions. Since the epicyclic approximation is not valid for large radial excursions, we use orbital equations of the form we call p-ellipses. These have been shown to provide accurate representations of orbits in power-law halo potentials. In the case of a purely tidal disturbance the resulting tidal tails have simple structure. Scalings for their maximum lengths and other characteristics as functions of the tidal amplitude and the exponent of the power-law potentials are described. The analytic model shows that azimuthal caustics (orbit crossing zones) are produced generically in these tails at a fixed azimuth relative to the point of closest approach. Long tails, with high order caustics at their base are also produced at larger amplitudes. The analysis is extended to nonlinear disturbances and multiple encounters, which break the symmetries of tidal perturbations. As the strength of the nonlinear terms is varied the structure of the resulting forms varies from symmetric tails to one-armed plumes. Cases with two or more impulse disturbances are also considered as the simplest analytic models distinguishing between prograde and retrograde encounters. A specific mechanism for the formation of tidal dwarf galaxies at the end of tails is suggested as a consequence of resonance effects in prolonged encounters. Qualitative comparisons to Arp Atlas systems suggest that the limiting analytic cases are realized in real systems. We identify a few Arp systems which may have swallowtail caustics, where dissipative gas streams converge and trigger star formation. UV and optical images reveal luminous knots of young stars at these 'hinge clump' locations.Comment: MNRAS accepted, 24 pages, 21 figure

A Magnetohydrodynamic Model of the M87 Jet I: Superluminal Knot Ejections from HST-1 as Trails of Quad Relativistic MHD Shocks

This is the first in a series of papers that introduces a new paradigm for understanding the jet in M87: a collimated relativistic flow in which strong magnetic fields play a dominant dynamical role. Here wefocus on the flow downstream of HST-1 - an essentially stationary flaring feature that ejects trails of superluminal components. We propose that these components are quad relativistic magnetohydrodynamic shock fronts (forward/reverse fast and slow modes) in a narrow jet with a helically twisted magnetic structure. And we demonstrate the properties of such shocks with simple one-dimensional numerical simulations. Quasi-periodic ejections of similar component trails may be responsible for the M87 jet substructures observed further downstream on 100 - 1,000 pc scales. This new paradigm requires the assimilation of some new concepts into the astrophysical jet community, particularly the behavior of slow/fast-mode waves/shocks and of current-driven helical kink instabilities. However, the prospects of these ideas applying to a large number of other jet systems may make this worth the effort.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, Accepted for Publication in Ap

Durrington Walls to West Amesbury by way of Stonehenge: a major transformation of the Holocene landscape

A new sequence of Holocene landscape change has been discovered through an investigation of sediment sequences, palaeosols, pollen and molluscan data discovered during the Stonehenge Riverside Project. The early post-glacial vegetational succession in the Avon valley at Durrington Walls was apparently slow and partial, with intermittent woodland modification and the opening-up of this landscape in the later Mesolithic and earlier Neolithic, though a strong element of pine lingered into the third millennium BC. There appears to have been a major hiatus around 2900 cal BC, coincident with the beginnings of demonstrable human activities at Durrington Walls, but slightly after activity started at Stonehenge. This was reflected in episodic increases in channel sedimentation and tree and shrub clearance, leading to a more open downland, with greater indications of anthropogenic activity, and an increasingly wet floodplain with sedges and alder along the river’s edge. Nonetheless, a localized woodland cover remained in the vicinity of DurringtonWalls throughout the third and second millennia BC, perhaps on the higher parts of the downs, while stable grassland, with rendzina soils, predominated on the downland slopes, and alder–hazel carr woodland and sedges continued to fringe the wet floodplain. This evidence is strongly indicative of a stable and managed landscape in Neolithic and Bronze Age times. It is not until c 800–500 cal BC that this landscape was completely cleared, except for the marshy-sedge fringe of the floodplain, and that colluvial sedimentation began in earnest associated with increased arable agriculture, a situation that continued through Roman and historic times

Frontiers of seismology

The British Seismology Meeting 2019 took place at the University of Edinburgh over three days, 4–6 September. The first British Seismology Meeting, BSM2017, was held in Reading in April 2017 (Lieser et al.2018); there had been earlier seismology meetings in the UK, but no wide-ranging cross-disciplinary meetings since Frontiers of Seismology in Edinburgh 2009 (Sargeant et al.2009). In his welcoming address at BSM2017, Dmitry Stor-chak expressed a wish that it would be the first in a series of such meetings, which he thought should become a regular event, perhaps every two years. At the end of the BSM2017 meeting, Anton Ziolkowski offered the University of Edinburgh as a potential venue for BSM2019.BSM2019: Frontiers of Seismology attracted about 70 scientists from the UK and abroad, to present and discuss seismological research, establish new contacts and strengthen existing links. A feature of the meeting was that all posters were available in a large space adjacent to the lecture theatre for viewing, presentation and discussion for the whole period, including coffee breaks, lunch and evening drinks. Feedback from the meeting was very positive. This article presents a brief summary of each session

The relative clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of three contrasting approaches to partner notification for curable sexually transmitted infections: a cluster randomised trial in primary care

Since 1998 there has been a substantial increase in reported cases of sexually transmitted infection (STI), most strikingly in the 16–24 years age group.1 Across genitourinary medicine (GUM) clinics in the UK in 2007, young people accounted for 65% of chlamydia cases, 50% of cases of genital warts and 50% of gonorrhoea infections.1 Chlamydia is the most common STI in under-25s. Since 1998, the rate of diagnosed chlamydia has more than doubled in the 16–24 years age group (from 447 per 100,000 in 1998 to 1102 per 100,000 in 2007). This may be because of a combination of a higher proportion of young people testing, improved diagnostic methods and increased risk behaviour.1 Chlamydia infection can frequently go undetected, particularly in women, as it is often asymptomatic.1 If left untreated, chlamydia can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease and infertility in women. This highlights the importance of testing this higher-risk age group to ensure prompt diagnosis and treatment. It is estimated that 11–12% of 16- to 19-year-olds presenting at a GUM clinic with an acute STI will become reinfected within a year.2 In order to minimise reinfection, preventative measures are required, including effective methods of notifying partners to ensure rapid diagnosis and treatment and reduce the likelihood of index patients being reinfected from the same source