The DoD Law of War Manual and its Critics: Some Observations

The U.S. Department of Defense’s (DoD) new Law of War Manual has generated serious debate about its treatment of a variety of issues including human shields, the status of journalists, cyber operations, the precautions to be taken prior to attacks and even the role of honor in war. Although this article does not purport to be a comprehensive response to every critique of the Manual and, indeed, cites opportunities for its improvement, it nevertheless concludes that on balance the Manual provides an excellent, comprehensive and much-needed statement of DoD’s view of the lex lata of the law of war

Book Review

The aviation industry is facing many challenges concerning environmental effects associated to an overall increase in air travel. In order to analyse these environmental effects, the possibility for measurement in the areas connected to the aviation industry is essential. Metrics measuring progress towards meeting goals, called key performance indicators, are used in order to meet this requirement. The purpose of the thesis is to map and evaluate the various environmental key performance indicators that are utilised within European Air Traffic Management today, and the development underway for the future. Suggestions to LFV regarding suitable e-KPIs, and how they can be used within their organisation are also provided. Several organisations and initiatives, including the European Union, EUROCONTROL, Single European Sky, the International Civil Aviation Organisation and the Civil Air Navigation Service Organisation, as well as the British and French air navigation service providers, in addition to other stakeholders within the industry, have been investigated in terms of their work in the environmental area and which indicators they utilise. The investigation is based on a literature study and interviews conducted with stakeholders within previously mentioned organisations. Out of 39 indicators found during the mapping, seven remain after an initial selection and an analysis based on the utilisation of the SMART-model. In addition to the use of the SMART-model, the choice of suitable indicators is also based on the fact that the whole spectrum of a flight, meaning all phases, including planning, taxi-out, departure, en route, descent and arrival as well as taxi-in, should be taken into consideration

Mathematical models of missile launching, part i

Mathematical model of missile launchin

Photometry of Irregular Satellites of Uranus and Neptune

We present BVR photometric colors of six Uranian and two Neptunian irregular satellites, collected using the Magellan Observatory (Las Campanas, Chile) and the Keck Observatory, (Manua Kea, Hawaii). The colors range from neutral to light red, and like the Jovian and the Saturnian irregulars (Grav et al. 2003) there is an apparent lack of the extremely red objects found among the Centaurs and Kuiper belt objects. The Uranian irregulars can be divided into three possible dynamical families, but the colors collected show that two of these dynamical families, the Caliban and Sycorax-clusters, have heterogeneous colors. Of the third possible family, the 168-degree cluster containing two objects with similar average inclinations but quite different average semi-major axis, only one object (U XXI Trinculo) was observed. The heterogeneous colors and the large dispersion of the average orbital elements leads us to doubt that they are collisional families. We favor single captures as a more likely scenario. The two neptunians observed (N II Nereid and S/2002 N1) both have very similar neutral, sun-like colors. Together with the high collisional probability between these two objects over the age of the solar system (Nesvorny et al. 2003, Holman et al. 2004), this suggests that S/2002 N1 be a fragment of Nereid, broken loose during a collision or cratering event with an undetermined impactor.Comment: 13 pages (including 3 figures and 2 tables). Submitted to ApJ Letter

Journal Staff

Current assessment methods after an ACL injury do not consider how the individuals themselves experience their participation in activities or what factors they think have affected their current activity level

Molluscs from a shallow-water whale-fall and their affinities with adjacent benthic communities on the Swedish west coast

We conducted a species-level study of molluscs associated with a 5-m long carcass of a minke whale at a depth of 125 m in the Kosterfjord (North Sea, Sweden). The whale-fall community was quantitatively compared with the community commonly living in the surrounding soft-bottom sediments. Five years after the deployment of the dead whale at the sea floor, the sediments around the carcass were dominated by the bivalve Thyasira sarsi, which is known to contain endosymbiotic sulphur-oxidizing bacteria, while background sediments were dominated by another thyasirid, T. equalis, less dependent on chemosynthesis for its nutrition. The Kosterfjord samples were further compared at the species level with mollusc abundance data derived from the literature, including samples from different marine settings of the west coast of Sweden (active methane seep, fjords, coastal and open marine environments). The results show high similarity between the Kosterfjord whale-fall community and the community that developed in one of the Swedish fjords (Gullmar Fjord) during hypoxic conditions. This study indicates that at shallow-water whale-falls, the sulphophilic stage of the ecological succession is characterized by generalist chemosynthetic bivalves commonly living in organic-rich, sulphidic environments. © 2014 Taylor & Francis

Control technology overview in CSI

A brief control technology overview is given in Control Structures Interaction (CSI) by illustrating that many future NASA mission present significant challenges as represented by missions having a significantly increased number of important system states which may require control and by identifying key CSI technology needs. The JPL CSI related technology developments are discussed to illustrate that some of the identified control needs are being pursued. Since experimental confirmation of the assumptions inherent in the CSI technology is critically important to establishing its readiness for space program applications, the areas of ground and flight validation require high priority

Flight telerobot mechanism design: Problems and challenges

Problems and challenges of designing flight telerobot mechanisms are discussed. Specific experiences are drawn from the following system developments: (1) the Force Reflecting Hand Controller, (2) the Smart End Effector, (3) the force-torque sensor, and a generic multi-degrees-of-freedom manipulator