The archaeology of the military orders: the material culture of holy war

This paper reviews the current state of research into the archaeology of the military orders. It contrasts the advances made by historians and archaeologists, with the latter continuing to focus on the particularism of individual sites, with an emphasis on architectural analyses. Historians have contributed new insights by adopting a supranational approach. This paper argues that archaeologists can build on this by adopting a more problem-oriented, comparative approach. Drawing on examples from frontier and heartland territories, archaeological approaches are subdivided into material investment, material identity and cultural landscapes, to place sites of the military orders within a long-term, multi-scalar contexts. This contributes to a broader social and economic understanding of the orders, who contributed significantly to urbanisation, rural development and trade, and invested in material expressions of their authority and ideology. The paper concludes that more holistic, inter-regional approaches will move the archaeological study of the military orders forward

Influenza vaccination for immunocompromised patients: systematic review and meta-analysis from a public health policy perspective.

Immunocompromised patients are vulnerable to severe or complicated influenza infection. Vaccination is widely recommended for this group. This systematic review and meta-analysis assesses influenza vaccination for immunocompromised patients in terms of preventing influenza-like illness and laboratory confirmed influenza, serological response and adverse events

Interinstitutional dimension concerning planning, training and force engagement as response to the hybrid war

The proliferation of risks and unconventional threats, especially the hybrid ones, requires the finding of integrated security solutions, both nationally and internationally. The beginning of the millennium reveals new ideas for conducting military conflicts. Thus, within the future confrontations characterized by a high degree of complexity, awareness of the need and development of some mechanisms necessary for the inter-institutional integration and the effects of the actions of all power tools, military and civilian, is a priority of major significance. In this regard, the present article presents some mechanisms, guidelines and methods that could lead to inter-institutional integration

INTERINSTITUTIONAL DIMENSION CONCERNING PLANNING, TRAINING AND FORCE ENGAGEMENT AS RESPONSE TO THE HYBRID WAR

The proliferation of risks and unconventional threats, especially the hybrid ones, requires the finding of integrated security solutions, both nationally and internationally. The beginning of the millennium reveals new ideas for conducting military conflicts. Thus, within the future confrontations characterized by a high degree of complexity, awareness of the need and development of some mechanisms necessary for the inter-institutional integration and the effects of the actions of all power tools, military and civilian, is a priority of major significance. In this regard, the present article presents some mechanisms, guidelines and methods that could lead to inter-institutional integration

Influence of Graphene Oxide Concentration when Fabricating an Electrochemical Biosensor for DNA Detection

We have investigated the influence exerted by the concentration of graphene oxide (GO) dispersion as a modifier for screen printed carbon electrodes (SPCEs) on the fabrication of an electrochemical biosensor to detect DNA hybridization. A new pretreatment protocol for SPCEs, involving two successive steps in order to achieve a reproducible deposition of GO, is also proposed. Aqueous GO dispersions of different concentrations (0.05, 0.1, 0.15, and 0.2 mg/mL) were first drop-cast on the SPCE substrates and then electrochemically reduced. The electrochemical properties of the modified electrodes were investigated after each modification step by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), while physicochemical characterization was performed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and Raman spectroscopy. Finally, the sensing platform was obtained by the simple adsorption of the single-stranded DNA probe onto the electrochemically reduced GO (RGO)-modified SPCEs under optimized conditions. The hybridization was achieved by incubating the functionalized SPCEs with complementary DNA target and detected by measuring the change in the electrochemical response of [Fe(CN)6]3–/4– redox reporter in CV and EIS measurements induced by the release of the newly formed double-stranded DNA from the electrode surface. Our results showed that a higher GO concentration generated a more sensitive response towards DNA detection