Leadership Competencies Needed by Future Army Education Services Officers

The purpose of this study was to identify which leadership competencies future Army Continuing Education System Education Services Officers will need to better structure leadership development within that organization. A Delphi survey was sent to 13 Southeast Region Army Education Services Officers (ESOs) and consisted of three rounds: the first two rounds were used to reach a consensus as to what competencies were considered important by the panel of experts, and the last round allowed the panel to rank each selected competency by its level of importance to future Education Services Officers. Using Army Field Manual 6-22, Army Leadership, the Army\u27s eight core competencies and associated components were used to formulate the initial round of 56 Yes or No responses. The first round included two open-ended questions and requested demographic data. Round Two was made up of 24 Yes or No response statements and two open-ended questions. The last round included the final 67 components that were ranked in order of importance on a five-point rating scale (Least Important, Important, Somewhat Important, Very Important, Critical). Using quantitative methods of frequencies and percentages, the results indicated that present Education Services Officers believe that almost all of the competencies listed in Field Manual 6-22 are important for future Education Services Officers. The additional knowledge, skills, abilities, and dispositions that make up the added competency components included: Understands the role of the Army within the Department of Defense; Leads with flexibility; Utilizes strategic planning and decision making methods; Understands budget development and fiscal planning; Identifies personnel and contracting requirements and understands both systems; Open to [learning about] technical, virtual, and Internet-based systems; and Encourages innovation. The information obtained from this study can provide a framework to assist Army leaders, Garrison Commanders, and hiring officials when reviewing applications for future Education Services Officers. Current Army Continuing Education System professionals can also use the data from this study to ensure they have sought out and received the necessary training and development in each competency area and are fully qualified to meet the demands of working as future Education Services Officers

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements