51 research outputs found

    Federal Budget Policy and Defense Strategy

    Get PDF
    Defense economist Dennis S. Ippolito dissects Federal budget practices over the past several decades, with a particular focus on sources and trends in our national deficit spending syndrome. Underlying his message is an unsettling truth, that no matter how the current debate over balancing the budget turns out, future cases for the Army Budget are going to have to be made in an even more challenging spending environment as discretionary spending margins shrink. Army professionals, now more than ever, need to be articulate advocates of landpower for the 21st century. But before articulate and reasoned arguments can be made for the kind of force that will ensure that the nation does, indeed, build and maintain the world\u27s best Army (or Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps), one must take into account the realities of the Federal budget.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1877/thumbnail.jp

    Budget Policy, Deficits, and Defense: A Fiscal Framework for Defense Planning

    Get PDF
    The author focuses on the spending policy, deficit and debt, and retirement and healthcare entitlement dynamics that will make it difficult, if not impossible, to fund current defense plans. Transformational strategies, he concludes, must be adjusted to lower and more volatile future spending levels. The most important adjustment is to shift spending priorities to readiness and traditional modernization needs that are more urgent in terms of capabilities than transformational technologies, as well as more predictable and controllable in terms of costs.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1744/thumbnail.jp

    Review of mass drug administration for malaria and its operational challenges.

    Get PDF
    Mass drug administration (MDA) was a component of many malaria programs during the eradication era, but later was seldomly deployed due to concerns regarding efficacy and feasibility and fear of accelerating drug resistance. Recently, however, there has been renewed interest in the role of MDA as an elimination tool. Following a 2013 Cochrane Review that focused on the quantitative effects of malaria MDA, we have conducted a systematic, qualitative review of published, unpublished, and gray literature documenting past MDA experiences. We have also consulted with field experts, using their historical experience to provide an informed, contextual perspective on the role of MDA in malaria elimination. Substantial knowledge gaps remain and more research is necessary, particularly on optimal target population size, methods to improve coverage, and primaquine safety. Despite these gaps, MDA has been used successfully to control and eliminate Plasmodium falciparum and P. vivax malaria in the past, and should be considered as part of a comprehensive malaria elimination strategy in specific settings

    Photon-tagged measurements of jet quenching with ATLAS

    Get PDF
    Events containing a high transverse momentum (pT) prompt photon offer a useful way to study the dynamics of the hot, dense medium produced in heavy ion collisions. Because photons do not carry color charge, they are unaffected by the medium, and thus provide information about the momentum, direction, and flavor (quark or gluon) of the asso- ciated hard-scattered parton before it begins to shower and become quenched. In particular, the presence of a high-pT photon can be used to select pp and Pb+Pb events with the same configuration before quenching, limiting the effects of quenching-induced selection biases present in other jet measurements. The large statistics pp and Pb+Pb data delivered by the LHC in 2015 allow for a detailed study of photon-tagged jet quenching effects, such as the overall parton energy loss and modified structure of the component of the shower which remains correlated with the initial parton direction (e.g. in cone). In this proceeding, photon-tagged measurements of jet quenching by ATLAS are reported

    Development and Validation of a Risk Score for Chronic Kidney Disease in HIV Infection Using Prospective Cohort Data from the D:A:D Study

    Get PDF
    Ristola M. on työryhmien DAD Study Grp ; Royal Free Hosp Clin Cohort ; INSIGHT Study Grp ; SMART Study Grp ; ESPRIT Study Grp jäsen.Background Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a major health issue for HIV-positive individuals, associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Development and implementation of a risk score model for CKD would allow comparison of the risks and benefits of adding potentially nephrotoxic antiretrovirals to a treatment regimen and would identify those at greatest risk of CKD. The aims of this study were to develop a simple, externally validated, and widely applicable long-term risk score model for CKD in HIV-positive individuals that can guide decision making in clinical practice. Methods and Findings A total of 17,954 HIV-positive individuals from the Data Collection on Adverse Events of Anti-HIV Drugs (D:A:D) study with >= 3 estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) values after 1 January 2004 were included. Baseline was defined as the first eGFR > 60 ml/min/1.73 m2 after 1 January 2004; individuals with exposure to tenofovir, atazanavir, atazanavir/ritonavir, lopinavir/ritonavir, other boosted protease inhibitors before baseline were excluded. CKD was defined as confirmed (>3 mo apart) eGFR In the D:A:D study, 641 individuals developed CKD during 103,185 person-years of follow-up (PYFU; incidence 6.2/1,000 PYFU, 95% CI 5.7-6.7; median follow-up 6.1 y, range 0.3-9.1 y). Older age, intravenous drug use, hepatitis C coinfection, lower baseline eGFR, female gender, lower CD4 count nadir, hypertension, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease (CVD) predicted CKD. The adjusted incidence rate ratios of these nine categorical variables were scaled and summed to create the risk score. The median risk score at baseline was -2 (interquartile range -4 to 2). There was a 1: 393 chance of developing CKD in the next 5 y in the low risk group (risk score = 5, 505 events), respectively. Number needed to harm (NNTH) at 5 y when starting unboosted atazanavir or lopinavir/ritonavir among those with a low risk score was 1,702 (95% CI 1,166-3,367); NNTH was 202 (95% CI 159-278) and 21 (95% CI 19-23), respectively, for those with a medium and high risk score. NNTH was 739 (95% CI 506-1462), 88 (95% CI 69-121), and 9 (95% CI 8-10) for those with a low, medium, and high risk score, respectively, starting tenofovir, atazanavir/ritonavir, or another boosted protease inhibitor. The Royal Free Hospital Clinic Cohort included 2,548 individuals, of whom 94 individuals developed CKD (3.7%) during 18,376 PYFU (median follow-up 7.4 y, range 0.3-12.7 y). Of 2,013 individuals included from the SMART/ESPRIT control arms, 32 individuals developed CKD (1.6%) during 8,452 PYFU (median follow-up 4.1 y, range 0.6-8.1 y). External validation showed that the risk score predicted well in these cohorts. Limitations of this study included limited data on race and no information on proteinuria. Conclusions Both traditional and HIV-related risk factors were predictive of CKD. These factors were used to develop a risk score for CKD in HIV infection, externally validated, that has direct clinical relevance for patients and clinicians to weigh the benefits of certain antiretrovirals against the risk of CKD and to identify those at greatest risk of CKD.Peer reviewe

    Measurement of the charge asymmetry in top-quark pair production in the lepton-plus-jets final state in pp collision data at s=8TeV\sqrt{s}=8\,\mathrm TeV{} with the ATLAS detector

    Get PDF

    ATLAS Run 1 searches for direct pair production of third-generation squarks at the Large Hadron Collider

    Get PDF

    Measurements of top-quark pair differential cross-sections in the eμe\mu channel in pppp collisions at s=13\sqrt{s} = 13 TeV using the ATLAS detector

    Get PDF

    Measurement of the W boson polarisation in ttˉt\bar{t} events from pp collisions at s\sqrt{s} = 8 TeV in the lepton + jets channel with ATLAS

    Get PDF

    Charged-particle distributions at low transverse momentum in s=13\sqrt{s} = 13 TeV pppp interactions measured with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

    Get PDF
    corecore