Critical Technologies: How is the DoD Protecting These Valuable Assets?

Excerpt from the Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Acquisition Research SymposiumCritical technologies—such as elements of artificial intelligence and biotechnology—are those necessary to maintain U.S. technological superiority. As such, they are frequently the target of theft, espionage, and illegal export by adversaries. Prior Department of Defense (DoD) efforts to identify these technologies were considered by some military officials to be too broad to adequately guide protection. This presentation examines (1) the DoD’s recent efforts to identify and protect its critical technologies and (2) opportunities for these efforts to inform government-wide protection efforts.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Protecting Critical Technologies

Symposium PresentationApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Demographics and food waste trends of Common Ground Garden CSA members in Central Minnesota

The Common Ground Garden is a ministry of the Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict, and provides CSA produce shares for 18 weeks to community members. A summer research project was conducted to evaluate the general demographics and food waste habits of members of Common Ground. Access to fresh, in-season produce is a struggle in many parts of the country, and this pilot study was designed to better understand the demographics, vegetable consumption, and food waste behaviors of the members of this particular CSA. Investigating the accessibility of local agriculture and CSA programs, as well as the health demographics and dietary habits of members provides valuable information on the efficacy of an increasingly popular vegetable source

Uncovering a Feminist Spirituality: Christianity as a Visual Framework in Leonora Carrington\u27s Iconography

Leonora Carrington’s paintings are rife with symbolic tension—swirling interactions and narratives that seemingly beg to be untangled. According to feminist art historian Susan Aberth, however, in Carrington’s work “it is not that certain embedded symbols have no meaning; it is that these symbols cannot and do not ‘illustrate’ ideas in the manner we are accustomed to.” Unlike the biblical images that colored her Catholic upbringing, Carrington’s work possesses no legend to reveal the hidden significance of her symbolisms, which serve more aptly as self-portraits than didactic allegories. Carrington spent years struggling to escape her Catholic family, and she pokes fun at crystalized Christian motifs throughout her artistic career by repurposing their traditional narrative language. Carrington utilizes the iconographies as a platform for communicating the widespread spiritual and philosophical influences she has become known for commingling in her work, from occultism and hermeticism to Jungian symbols. The goal of this paper is to trace Carrington’s repeated reconstructions of traditional Christian representational frameworks as an evolution parallel with her changing conceptions of masculine and feminine power. The research seeks to capture Christian imagery both as the foundation of Carrington’s deliberately indecipherable iconographic language and as a device for subverting patriarchal notions of religion in favor of a revived, yet novel feminine spirituality. The paper will accomplish its aims with a survey of both the specific symbols and techniques that Carrington employs in her painting that indicate deliberate and potentially unintended Christian influence. While the far-reaching codes embedded in Carrington’s oeuvre are nearly innumerable, deconstructing her Christian imagery provides insight into the beginnings of a feminist religious iconography for the modern era

Victorian Representations of Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I

The rivalry of Mary, Queen of Scots and her English cousin Elizabeth I is a storied one that has consumed both popular and historical imaginations since the two queens reigned in the sixteenth century. It is often portrayed as a tale of contrasts: on one end, Gloriana with her fabled red hair and virginity, the bastion of British culture and Protestant values, valiantly defending England against the schemes of the Spanish and their Armada. On the other side is Mary, Queen of Scots, the enchanting and seductive French-raised Catholic, whose series of tragic, murderous marriages gave birth to both the future James I of England and to schemes surrounding the English throne. Elizabeth gave the order for Mary’s execution in 1587 after discovery of her complicity in a plot to assassinate the Virgin Queen. Since that moment, the cousins have been depicted in text, song, story, and image, always haunted by the shadow of the other. Representations of the rival queens Mary, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I intensified in number in the early Victorian period in Great Britain as another queen, Victoria, took the throne in 1837. These representations, part of the cultural dialogue surrounding women and their place in the world, particularly the idea of women’s queenship in the domestic sphere, are both flattering and derogatory towards their subjects. This conflict in representation is itself reflective of Victorian gender and political concerns as Victoria married, had children, and was widowed. Representations of the two 16th –century monarchs serve to either critique or approve the 19th-century Queen Victoria. The contrast between portrayals of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I offer a unique insight into Victorian conceptions of gender and women’s roles in the political and private life of the British nation in the period from the 1820s to the 1890s

Gendered Ideas in Women\u27s Publications: West German Women, 1945-1950

The postwar period in West Germany offered women a unique opportunity to extend their traditionally limited sphere. German women accepted new roles as providers in the home and laborers in the work force in the crisis period that followed after the zero hour. These new roles have peaked gender historians interest. Historians\u27 descriptions of postwar German women lead one to assume women\u27s new roles would make them feminists, as women would realize the significance of their postwar contribution. However, German women continued to cling to traditional roles and ideas that had existed since the turn of the century. This work examines a variety of postwar women\u27s publications to hear women\u27s traditional and feminist arguments and discern their expectations for life in the new Germany. Ultimately, the interplay of West Germany\u27s historical experiences and West German women\u27s expectations for social, economic, and political acceptance, reflected in their writings, illustrates their conservative expectations for equality after World War II

Creating Automated Interactive Video Playback for Studies of Animal Communications

Video playback is a technique used to study the visual communication and behaviors of animals. While video playback is a useful tool, most experiments lack the ability for the visual stimulus to interact with the live animal. The limited number of experiments involving interactive video playback can be attributed partially to the lack of software available to conduct instructive interactive video playback experiments. To facilitate such interactive experiments, I have created a method that combines real-time animations with video tracking software. This method may be used to conduct interactive playback experiments. To demonstrate this method, a prototype was created and used to conduct automated mating choice trials on female swordtail fish. The results of the mating choice trials show that this prototype is able to create effectively interactive visual stimulus automatically. In addition, the results show that the interactive video playback has a measurable effect on the female swordtail fish, Xiphophorus birchmanni

Software for Data Acquisition AMC Module with PCI Express Interface

Free Electron Laser in Hamburg (FLASH) and XRay Free Electron Laser (XFEL) are linear accelerators that require a complex and accurate Low Level Radio Frequency (LLRF) control system. Currently working systems are based on aged Versa Module Eurocard (VME) architecture. One of the alternatives for the VME bus is the Advanced Telecommunications and Computing Architecture (ATCA) standard. The ATCA based LLRF controller mainly consists of a few ATCA carrier boards and several Advanced Mezzanine Cards (AMC). AMC modules are available in variety of functions such as: ADC, DAC, data storage, data links and even CPU cards. This paper focuses on the software that allows user to collect and plot the data from commercially available TAMC900 board