Deterrence and Balance of Power : Case Study of Strategy Failure in Parity of Power

Deterrence strategy has been practiced over the ages and still remains a vital component of a country’s national security strategy. Over time, decision-makers have sought ways to effectively deter their adversaries. As decision-makers have applied new tactics to deter, scholars have also tried to improve the explanatory and prescriptive strengths of deterrence theory. However, there still remains much to be desired, evident by continued interest on the subject. This thesis aims to answer the following research question: “What makes deterrence succeed or fail?” “Under which circumstances is deterrence more effective?” In particular, this thesis will examine the relationship between the balance of power between the deterrer and the attacker. “What aspect of the balance of power between the actors strongly influences the decision to defy an opponent’s deterrent threat and attack?” To verify the main argument and hypotheses, this thesis conducted three single-case studies on cases of deterrence. Through two cases of deterrence failure and one case of deterrence success, this thesis was demonstrated that deterrence is more likely to fail when there is a parity of power, compared to when it is concentrated

Meta-analysis of turnover intention among child welfare workers

High rates of turnover among public child welfare (CW) workers has a detrimental influence on social workers, clients and their families, agencies, and states. Although the severity and prevalence of the problem are well understood, it was only recently that research on turnover among CW workers became more popular. Our understanding of the phenomenon, however, is still lacking and requires quantitative research synthesis. To address this research gap, the purpose of this study is to conduct a meta-analysis of the existing literature on turnover intention among child welfare workers. Among 144 potentially qualifying studies, twenty two studies were included in this meta-analytic study. Utilizing Hunter and Schmidt (2004)'s method, this study quantitatively combined and analyzed 36 predictors from the included studies. Overall, predictors related to CW worker attitudes and perceptions (e.g., organizational commitment and job satisfaction) had the highest influence on turnover intention among CW workers. On the other hand, demographic predictors, such as age, race, and gender, showed small or negligible effects on turnover intention. Among work-related predictors, stress-related predictors and sub-factors of burnout had medium to high influence on turnover intention while predictors related to decision-making showed medium effect sizes. Among predictors in work environment category, various types of support predictors had varying influence on turnover intention while such variables as perceptions of fairness and policy had relatively high effect sizes of around .4. Several commonly-studied factors with proven validity, such as organizational commitment, stress, job satisfaction, professional commitment, and organizational climate, emerged as some of the strongest predictors. Other variables, such as perceptions of fairness, safety concern, and policy, were also shown to be strong predictors, but have received relatively less attention. While caseload is commonly thought of as one of major drivers of turnover, this study showed that caseload had little effect on turnover intention of CW workers. This study highlights several key areas of further research. First, job performance and economy-related factors are rarely utilized in studies of turnover intention among CW workers and therefore, deserve greater attention. Second, studies with private CW workers were relatively small compared to studies with public CW workers. Third, there has been a conceptual confusion of turnover intention measures, which future research can help to further clarify. The theoretical and practical implications highlighted by this study are also discussed.Social Work, Graduate College o

A-Mash: Providing Single-App Illusion for Multi-App Use through User-centric UI Mashup

Mobile apps offer a variety of features that greatly enhance user experience. However, users still often find it difficult to use mobile apps in the way they want. For example, it is not easy to use multiple apps simultaneously on a small screen of a smartphone. In this paper, we present A-Mash, a mobile platform that aims to simplify the way of interacting with multiple apps concurrently to the level of using a single app only. A key feature of A-Mash is that users can mash up the UIs of different existing mobile apps on a single screen according to their preferences. To this end, A-Mash 1) extracts UIs from unmodified existing apps (dynamic UI extraction) and 2) embeds extracted UIs from different apps into a single wrapper app (cross-process UI embedding), while 3) making all these processes hidden from the users (transparent execution environment). To the best of our knowledge, A-Mash is the first work to enable UIs of different unmodified legacy apps to seamlessly integrate and synchronize on a single screen, providing an illusion as if they were developed as a single app. A-Mash offers great potential for a number of useful usage scenarios. For instance, a user can mashup UIs of different IoT administration apps to create an all-in-one IoT device controller or one can mashup today's headlines from different news and magazine apps to craft one's own news headline collection. In addition, A-Mash can be extended to an AR space, in which users can map UI elements of different mobile apps to physical objects inside their AR scenes. Our evaluation of the A-Mash prototype implemented in Android OS demonstrates that A-Mash successfully supports the mashup of various existing mobile apps with little or no performance bottleneck. We also conducted in-depth user studies to assess the effectiveness of the A-Mash in real-world use cases. © 2022 ACM

Ceylonins G–I: spongian diterpenes from the marine sponge Spongia ceylonensis

Three new spongian diterpenes, ceylonins G–I (1–3), were isolated from the marine sponge Spongia ceylonensis collected in Indonesia, together with five known spongian diterpenes (4–8). Only 4 inhibited USP7 with an IC50 value of 8.2 μM