The Dual-System Problem in Complex Conflicts

Conflict and fragile environments are increasingly complex and unpredictable, but the U.S. policy system itself is much more complex and unpredictable than most leaders appreciate. In this monograph, the authors argue that until we get a grasp on this “dual-system problem,” the United States will fall further and further behind in its strategic ambitions.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1393/thumbnail.jp

Using NVivo™ for Literature Reviews: The Eight Step Pedagogy (N7+1)

While a literature review is a necessary milestone to be completed by all researchers in a timely and efficient manner, it is often one of the most difficult aspects of the research journey. Moreover, traditional approaches often leave novice researchers, to struggle with the conceptualisation of their literature review, now complicated by the overwhelming quantity of research available online. This paper presents a rationale the use of Qualitative Data Analysis Software (QDAS) programs for literature reviews. QDAS tools allow the researcher to explore large amounts of textual documents to see patterns. These programs are often overlooked by novice researchers due to their complexity and the lack of expertise provided to assist them. To combat this dilemma our paper outlines the N7+1 approach to using Nvivo11™ for literature reviews. Through this approach researchers can develop an “auditable footprint,” keep everything in one place, and go paperless

Establishing Systems Competency in Enterprises: Recent Studies

The practice of systems engineering has evolved significantly over the past decade in response to new challenges, yet at the same time the engineering workforce has declined. Several studies also cite an erosion of engineering competency, particularly in government and aerospace/defense industry. The development of systems competency is critical; yet, we lack the empirical basis for developing a truly informed strategy for addressing this need. This talk will describe past and ongoing research on systems thinking and practice that is focused on informing the development of competency models and collaboration models. Competency models define the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed by individual systems professionals in an enterprise. Collaboration models specify success factors for groups and teams within and across enterprises who collectively work on a common objective. Establishing systems competency in enterprises involves empirical studies and case based research for the purpose of understanding how to achieve more effective systems engineering practice through understanding of the context in which systems engineering is performed and understanding the factors underlying the competency of the systems workforce. The talk will discuss three recent and ongoing research studies with highlights of interim research outcomes. The first research effort is focused on building empirical knowledge of the enablers, barriers and precursors of the development of systems thinking in individual engineers, and thus far included a study within the aerospace industry (Davidz 2006), and extended in an exploratory study within an aerospace government agency. A second line of research is looking at effective socio-technical practices of collaborative distributed systems engineering, that is, where teams are non-geographically collocated (Utter 2007). A third research project (Lamb 2008/ongoing) seeks to develop an empirical basis for collaborative systems thinking, defined as “an emergent behavior of teams resulting from the interactions of team members and utilizing a variety of thinking styles, design processes, tools, and languages to consider system attributes, interrelationships, context and dynamics towards executing systems design”. These recent and ongoing LAI studies seek to impact the effectiveness of individuals and groups to strengthen performance of modern enterprises involved in acquiring and developing complex systems

Identifying back pain subgroups: developing and applying approaches using individual patient data collected within clinical trials

There is good evidence that therapist delivered interventions have modest beneficial effects for people with low back pain (LBP). Identification of subgroups of people with LBP who may benefit from these different treatment approaches is an important research priority

Effective knowledge management in translational medicine

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The growing consensus that most valuable data source for biomedical discoveries is derived from human samples is clearly reflected in the growing number of translational medicine and translational sciences departments across pharma as well as academic and government supported initiatives such as Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) in the US and the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) of EU with emphasis on translating research for human health.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The pharmaceutical companies of Johnson and Johnson have established translational and biomarker departments and implemented an effective knowledge management framework including building a data warehouse and the associated data mining applications. The implemented resource is built from open source systems such as i2b2 and GenePattern.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The system has been deployed across multiple therapeutic areas within the pharmaceutical companies of Johnson and Johnsons and being used actively to integrate and mine internal and public data to support drug discovery and development decisions such as indication selection and trial design in a translational medicine setting. Our results show that the established system allows scientist to quickly re-validate hypotheses or generate new ones with the use of an intuitive graphical interface.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The implemented resource can serve as the basis of precompetitive sharing and mining of studies involving samples from human subjects thus enhancing our understanding of human biology and pathophysiology and ultimately leading to more effective treatment of diseases which represent unmet medical needs.</p

Searching for Exoplanets Using a Microresonator Astrocomb

Detection of weak radial velocity shifts of host stars induced by orbiting planets is an important technique for discovering and characterizing planets beyond our solar system. Optical frequency combs enable calibration of stellar radial velocity shifts at levels required for detection of Earth analogs. A new chip-based device, the Kerr soliton microcomb, has properties ideal for ubiquitous application outside the lab and even in future space-borne instruments. Moreover, microcomb spectra are ideally suited for astronomical spectrograph calibration and eliminate filtering steps required by conventional mode-locked-laser frequency combs. Here, for the calibration of astronomical spectrographs, we demonstrate an atomic/molecular line-referenced, near-infrared soliton microcomb. Efforts to search for the known exoplanet HD 187123b were conducted at the Keck-II telescope as a first in-the-field demonstration of microcombs

New Mechanics of Traumatic Brain Injury

The prediction and prevention of traumatic brain injury is a very important aspect of preventive medical science. This paper proposes a new coupled loading-rate hypothesis for the traumatic brain injury (TBI), which states that the main cause of the TBI is an external Euclidean jolt, or SE(3)-jolt, an impulsive loading that strikes the head in several coupled degrees-of-freedom simultaneously. To show this, based on the previously defined covariant force law, we formulate the coupled Newton-Euler dynamics of brain's micro-motions within the cerebrospinal fluid and derive from it the coupled SE(3)-jolt dynamics. The SE(3)-jolt is a cause of the TBI in two forms of brain's rapid discontinuous deformations: translational dislocations and rotational disclinations. Brain's dislocations and disclinations, caused by the SE(3)-jolt, are described using the Cosserat multipolar viscoelastic continuum brain model. Keywords: Traumatic brain injuries, coupled loading-rate hypothesis, Euclidean jolt, coupled Newton-Euler dynamics, brain's dislocations and disclinationsComment: 18 pages, 1 figure, Late

A Built-In Strategy for Containment of Transgenic Plants: Creation of Selectively Terminable Transgenic Rice

Plant transgenic technology has been widely utilized for engineering crops for trait improvements and for production of high value proteins such as pharmaceuticals. However, the unintended spreading of commercial transgenic crops by pollination and seed dispersal is a major concern for environmental and food safety. Simple and reliable containment strategies for transgenes are highly desirable. Here we report a novel method for creating selectively terminable transgenic rice. In this method, the gene(s) of interest is tagged with a RNA interference cassette, which specifically suppresses the expression of the bentazon detoxification enzyme CYP81A6 and thus renders transgenic rice to be sensitive to bentazon, a herbicide used for rice weed control. We generated transgenic rice plants by this method using a new glyphosate resistant 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS) gene from Pesudomonas putida as the gene of interest, and demonstrated that these transgenic rice plants were highly sensitive to bentazon but tolerant to glyphosate, which is exactly the opposite of conventional rice. Field trial of these transgenic rice plants further confirmed that they can be selectively killed at 100% by one spray of bentazon at a regular dose used for conventional rice weed control. Furthermore, we found that the terminable transgenic rice created in this study shows no difference in growth, development and yield compared to its non-transgenic control. Therefore, this method of creating transgenic rice constitutes a novel strategy of transgene containment, which appears simple, reliable and inexpensive for implementation

Accreting Millisecond X-Ray Pulsars

Accreting Millisecond X-Ray Pulsars (AMXPs) are astrophysical laboratories without parallel in the study of extreme physics. In this chapter we review the past fifteen years of discoveries in the field. We summarize the observations of the fifteen known AMXPs, with a particular emphasis on the multi-wavelength observations that have been carried out since the discovery of the first AMXP in 1998. We review accretion torque theory, the pulse formation process, and how AMXP observations have changed our view on the interaction of plasma and magnetic fields in strong gravity. We also explain how the AMXPs have deepened our understanding of the thermonuclear burst process, in particular the phenomenon of burst oscillations. We conclude with a discussion of the open problems that remain to be addressed in the future.Comment: Review to appear in "Timing neutron stars: pulsations, oscillations and explosions", T. Belloni, M. Mendez, C.M. Zhang Eds., ASSL, Springer; [revision with literature updated, several typos removed, 1 new AMXP added