Cyber Power in the 21st Century

Historically, the United States Congress has acknowledged that a separate branch of military service is required to exert supremacy over each of the recognized Domains of Operation. Throughout the evolution of modern warfare, leading minds in military theory have come to the conclusion that due to fundamental differences inherent in the theory and tactics that must be employed in order to successfully wage war within a domain’s associated environment, a specialized force was needed - until now. With the recent inclusion of Cyberspace as an operational domain by the Department of Defense, the case should be made that it, too, is far too specialized an area to be rolled up into any or all of the current branches of service.This research investigated the concept of cyber power in the 21st century, what it means to wield it, and how this capability may be used to wage war. It argues that cyberspace as a domain should be treated no differently than the traditional warfighting domains: that it, too, is an arena where defense may best be secured by attacking the enemy, where battles occur for control of territory, where denial affects combat in other domains, and where political motives dictate the course of hostilities. Because the strategic challenges and concepts are the same and yet the environment so specialized, the research concludes that the only way to properly secure the domain and to prosecute war effectively is to create a U.S. Cyber Force

Universal linear relations between susceptibility and Tc in cuprates

We developed an experimental method for measuring the intrinsic susceptibility \chi of powder of cuprate superconductors in the zero field limit using a DC-magnetometer. The method is tested with lead spheres. Using this method we determine \chi for a number of cuprate families as a function of doping. A universal linear (and not proportionality) relation between Tc and \chi is found. We suggest possible explanations for this phenomenon.Comment: Accepted for publication in PR

Public Opinions of Unmanned Aerial Technologies in 2014 to 2019: A Technical and Descriptive Report

The primary purpose of this report is to provide a descriptive and technical summary of the results from similar surveys administered in fall 2014 (n = 576), 2015 (n = 301), 2016 (ns = 1946 and 2089), and 2018 (n = 1050) and summer 2019 (n = 1300). In order to explore a variety of factors that may impact public perceptions of unmanned aerial technologies (UATs), we conducted survey experiments over time. These experiments randomly varied the terminology (drone, aerial robot, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), unmanned aerial system (UAS)) used to describe the technology, the purposes of the technology (for economic, environmental, or security goals), the actors (public or private) using the technology, the technology’s autonomy (fully autonomous, partially autonomous, no autonomy), and the framing (promotion or prevention) used to describe the technology’s purpose. Initially, samples were recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, required to be Americans, and paid a small amount for participation. In 2016 we also examined a nationally representative samples recruited from Qualtrics panels. After 2016 we only used nationally representative samples from Qualtrics. Major findings are reported along with details regarding the research methods and analyses

Zeeman and Orbital Limiting Fields: Separated Spin and Charge Degrees of Freedom in Cuprate Superconductors

Recent in-plane thermal (Nernst) and interlayer (tunnelling) transport experiments in Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_{8+y}$ high temperature superconductors report hugely different limiting magnetic fields. Based on pairing (and the uncertainty principle) combined with the definitions of the Zeeman energy and the magnetic length, we show that in the underdoped regime both fields convert to the same (normal state) pseudogap energy scale $T^*$ upon transformation as orbital and spin (Zeeman) critical fields, respectively. We reconcile these seemingly disparate findings invoking separated spin and charge degrees of freedom residing in different regions of a truncated Fermi surface.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures; accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. B (Rapid Comm.

A Drone by Any Other Name: Purposes, End-User Trustworthiness, and Framing, but not Terminology, Affect Public Support for Drones

Projections indicate that, as an industry, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, commonly known as drones) could bring more than 100 000 jobs and $80 billion in economic growth to the U.S. by 2025 [1]. However, these promising projections do not account for how various publics may perceive such technologies. Understanding public perceptions is important because the attitudes of different groups can have large effects on the trajectory of a technology, strongly facilitating or hindering technology acceptance and uptake [2]. To advance understanding of U.S. public perceptions of UAV technologies, we conducted a nationwide survey of a convenience sample of 877 Americans recruited from Amazon’s pool of Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers. In our surveys, we used short scenarios to experimentally vary UAV characteristics, the end-users of the technology, and certain communication factors (terminology and framing). This allowed us to investigate the impacts of these factors alone and in combination. In addition, given the conflicts that sometimes arise around scientific findings and technologies (e.g., climate change, vaccines, [3], [4]), we also gave explicit attention to whether and how public support for UAVs varied by self-reported political ideology, issue attitudes, and perceptions of end-user trustworthiness. Finally, because UAVs for civilian purposes represented relatively new technologies at the time of the first survey, we examined whether public opinion is changing over time, as more people become aware of UAVs. We thus administered the same survey twice, separated by one year, in the fall of 2014 and 2015. The results of our experimental manipulations revealed a surprising lack of impact of terminology and UAV autonomy, a small impact of message framing and UAV end-user, and a relatively large impact of UAV purpose. We did not find that public attitudes changed much over the year between samples, and perceptions of end-user trustworthiness were strong predictors of public support. Still, our regression models only accounted for about 40% of the variance in public support, suggesting that additional variables should be studied in future work to gain a more complete understanding of public support for UAVs. We also found evidence of a small amount of political polarization of public opinion related to who was using the UAVs for what purpose, and this polarization appeared to be changing over time. Taken together, our results — which may be especially useful to UAV designers, marketers, and policy makers — suggest there is a need to establish that the UAVs are used for valued purposes and by users that publics find to be trustworthy. However, public judgments might be significantly impacted by personal or local ideologies rather than national priorities. In the next section, we describe in more detail prior research on public support for UAVs, and how we formulated our research questions and hypotheses. We then describe our methods, results, and findings in greater detail

The Effect of Splayed Pins on Vortex Creep and Critical Currents

We study the effects of splayed columnar pins on the vortex motion using realistic London Langevin simulations. At low currents vortex creep is strongly suppressed, whereas the critical current j_c is enhanced only moderately. Splaying the pins generates an increasing energy barrier against vortex hopping, and leads to the forced entanglement of vortices, both of which suppress creep efficiently. On the other hand splaying enhances kink nucleation and introduces intersecting pins, which cut off the energy barriers. Thus the j_c enhancement is strongly parameter sensitive. We also characterize the angle dependence of j_c, and the effect of different splaying geometries.Comment: 4 figure