Power Projection or Influence: Soviet Capabilities for the 1980s

Soviet capabilities will no doubt continue to grow and that growth has been and will be cause for concern but recent events, such as the invasion of Afghanistan, do not translate into immediate and comprehensive \u27\u27global reach

Strategy, the Soviet Union and the 1980s

It is essential that American strategists understand major Soviet economic, political, and military trends and same of the effects those trends may have on Soviet policy in order that they may propose alternatives to achieve U.S. national interests and objectives. This paper examines those U.S. interests and objectives, discusses Soviet trends and offers some suggestions for offsetting disadvantages in one area with advantages in another

Do sequential lineups impair underlying discriminability?

© 2020, The Author(s). Debate regarding the best way to test and measure eyewitness memory has dominated the eyewitness literature for more than 30 years. We argue that resolution of this debate requires the development and application of appropriate measurement models. In this study we developed models of simultaneous and sequential lineup presentations and used these to compare these procedures in terms of underlying discriminability and response bias, thereby testing a key prediction of diagnostic feature detection theory, that underlying discriminability should be greater for simultaneous than for stopping-rule sequential lineups. We fit the models to the corpus of studies originally described by Palmer and Brewer (2012, Law and Human Behavior, 36(3), 247–255), to data from a new experiment and to eight recent studies comparing simultaneous and sequential lineups. We found that although responses tended to be more conservative for sequential lineups there was little or no difference in underlying discriminability between the two procedures. We discuss the implications of these results for the diagnostic feature detection theory and other kinds of sequential lineups used in current jurisdictions

Study of the Amplitude of Pressure and Thrust Oscillations in a Lab-Scale Hybrid Rocket

Hybrid rockets are being studied as a potential replacement for the solid rocket boosters on the NASA space shuttle. One physical characteristic of hybrid rockets that must be understood and overcome is potentially severe pressure oscillations during combustion. Pressure oscillations inside the rocket combustion chamber lead to oscillations in the thrust of the rocket. These oscillations are damaging to potential human passengers and cargo and must be minimized. Current theories surmise that the oscillations are caused by combustion chamber geometry, oxygen feed line parameters, and/or fuel combustion characteristics. This study focuses on the role of the fuel characteristics in pressure and thrust oscillations. The standard hybrid rocket fuel is hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene (HTPB). A fuel additive, guanidinium azo-tetrazolate (GAT), has been shown to increase thrust and impulse of the rocket when added as 15% by mass to the fuel. This study compares the amplitude of the pressure and thrust oscillations of the rocket when burning HTPB fuels and when burning GAT-added fuels. Data from several firings at oxygen flow rates from 0.018 kg/sec to 0.054 kg/sec are analyzed. Results show the GAT-added fuel combustion shows no significant increase or decrease in the amplitude of the pressure and thrust oscillations

Exoskeletons and economics:indoor arthropod diversity increases in affluent neighbourhoods

In urban ecosystems, socioeconomics contribute to patterns of biodiversity. The ‘luxury effect’, in which wealthier neighbourhoods are more biologically diverse, has been observed for plants, birds, bats and lizards. Here, we used data from a survey of indoor arthropod diversity (defined throughout as family-level richness) from 50 urban houses and found that house size, surrounding vegetation, as well as mean neighbourhood income best predict the number of kinds of arthropods found indoors. Our finding, that homes in wealthier neighbourhoods host higher indoor arthropod diversity (consisting of primarily non-pest species), shows that the luxury effect can extend to the indoor environment. The effect of mean neighbourhood income on indoor arthropod diversity was particularly strong for individual houses that lacked high surrounding vegetation ground cover, suggesting that neighbourhood dynamics can compensate for local choices of homeowners. Our work suggests that the management of neighbourhoods and cities can have effects on biodiversity that can extend from trees and birds all the way to the arthropod life in bedrooms and basements