Deciding the Future: The Australian Army and the infantry fighting vehicle

The aim of this report is to inform government decision-makers on the ability of infantry fighting vehicle acquisition to meed the needs of Australia. It examines a number of factors that provide context for the government's upcoming decision. Those include how the IFVs fit into the Australian strategic environment, the ease with which the ADF can deploy them, their vulnerability to threats, and the ongoing utility of armour in light of the war in Ukraine

From Dependency to Armed Neutrality: Future Options for Australian National Security

While the rise of China has occasioned much debate from security commentators, they have been disappointedly silent on the other security risk that Australia must address: climate change. Without giving equal weight to climate change, any recommendations on the future security of Australia can only be incomplete and inadequate. Australia’s future security can only be assured by adopting a more holistic methodology than previously practiced. Traditional security challenges, such as the management of state-to-state relations, should be addressed within a framework that includes the natural world. Only by being cognisant of humanity’s interaction with the natural world can true national security be achieved. By considering both China and climate change this paper provides a more balanced assessment of Australia’s future security options. It concludes that the option that best meets the requirements of both challenges is a form of armed neutrality

Why be strong? The Swiss & Australian Responses to Fear

Defence thinkers routinely identify Australia as one of the safest countries in the world. However, Australia's future is likely to be more dangerous and troubling than its past has been. As such fear is likely to play a much greater role in the determination of Australia's security policy than it has in the recent past

Specificity of a whole blood IGRA in German nursing students

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Interferon-gamma release assays (IGRA) are used for tuberculosis (TB) screening in healthcare workers (HCWs). However, data on specificity of IGRA in serial testing of HCWs is sparse. Therefore the specificity and the negative predictive value of the IGRA - QuantiFERON-TB Gold In-Tube (QFT) - in German nursing students was investigated.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>194 nursing students at the start of their professional career were tested with the QFT. 14 nursing students were excluded from the specificity analysis, due to exposure to mycobacterium tuberculosis. Two of these subjects were QFT- positive. None of them developed disease during the year of follow-up. A study group of 180 students, all with very low risk of prior TB infection, remained in the specificity analysis. Subjects were monitored for at least two years with respect to the development of active TB disease. IGRA was performed at the start of the training and after one year.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The mean age of the study group (n = 180) was 23 years (range 18-53) with 70.9% female and 99.4% German born. The specificity of QFT was 98.9% (178/180; 95% CI 0.96-0.99); lowering the cut-off from 0.35 IU/ml to 0.1 IU/ml would have decreased specificity only slightly to 97.8% (176/180; 95% CI 0.94-0.99). Of the 154 nursing students available for re-testing, one student who initially scored positive reverted to negative, and one student initially negative converted to positive. None of the monitored group with initially negative QFT results developed TB disease, indicating a high negative predictive value of the IGRA in this population.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Following our data, QFT can serve as an effective tool in pre-employment TB screenings for HCWs. As its negative results were stable over time, specificity of the QFT in serial testing of HCWs is high. As the risk of acquiring TB infection in the German healthcare system appears to be low, our data supports the recommendation of performing TB screening only in those HCWs with known contact to TB patients or infectious materials.</p

The Salmonella effector SseJ disrupts microtubule dynamics when ectopically expressed in Normal Rat Kidney cells

Salmonella effector protein SseJ is secreted by Salmonella into the host cell cytoplasm where it can then modify host cell processes. Whilst host cell small GTPase RhoA has previously been shown to activate the acyl-transferase activity of SseJ we show here an un-described effect of SseJ protein production upon microtubule dynamism. SseJ prevents microtubule collapse and this is independent of SseJ's acyl-transferase activity. We speculate that the effects of SseJ on microtubules would be mediated via its known interactions with the small GTPases of the Rho family

Measurement of the cross-section and charge asymmetry of WW bosons produced in proton-proton collisions at s=8\sqrt{s}=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents measurements of the $W^+ \rightarrow \mu^+\nu$ and $W^- \rightarrow \mu^-\nu$ cross-sections and the associated charge asymmetry as a function of the absolute pseudorapidity of the decay muon. The data were collected in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 20.2~\mbox{fb^{-1}}. The precision of the cross-section measurements varies between 0.8% to 1.5% as a function of the pseudorapidity, excluding the 1.9% uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The charge asymmetry is measured with an uncertainty between 0.002 and 0.003. The results are compared with predictions based on next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations with various parton distribution functions and have the sensitivity to discriminate between them.Comment: 38 pages in total, author list starting page 22, 5 figures, 4 tables, submitted to EPJC. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2017-13

Search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at √ s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Results of a search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum are reported. The search uses 20.3 fb−1 of √ s = 8 TeV data collected in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Events are required to have at least one jet with pT > 120 GeV and no leptons. Nine signal regions are considered with increasing missing transverse momentum requirements between Emiss T > 150 GeV and Emiss T > 700 GeV. Good agreement is observed between the number of events in data and Standard Model expectations. The results are translated into exclusion limits on models with either large extra spatial dimensions, pair production of weakly interacting dark matter candidates, or production of very light gravitinos in a gauge-mediated supersymmetric model. In addition, limits on the production of an invisibly decaying Higgs-like boson leading to similar topologies in the final state are presente

Search for direct stau production in events with two hadronic tau-leptons in root s=13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of the supersymmetric partners ofτ-leptons (staus) in final stateswith two hadronically decayingτ-leptons is presented. The analysis uses a dataset of pp collisions corresponding to an integrated luminosity of139fb−1, recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LargeHadron Collider at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. No significant deviation from the expected StandardModel background is observed. Limits are derived in scenarios of direct production of stau pairs with eachstau decaying into the stable lightest neutralino and oneτ-lepton in simplified models where the two staumass eigenstates are degenerate. Stau masses from 120 GeV to 390 GeV are excluded at 95% confidencelevel for a massless lightest neutralino

Search for chargino-neutralino production with mass splittings near the electroweak scale in three-lepton final states in √s=13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for supersymmetry through the pair production of electroweakinos with mass splittings near the electroweak scale and decaying via on-shell W and Z bosons is presented for a three-lepton final state. The analyzed proton-proton collision data taken at a center-of-mass energy of √s=13  TeV were collected between 2015 and 2018 by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139  fb−1. A search, emulating the recursive jigsaw reconstruction technique with easily reproducible laboratory-frame variables, is performed. The two excesses observed in the 2015–2016 data recursive jigsaw analysis in the low-mass three-lepton phase space are reproduced. Results with the full data set are in agreement with the Standard Model expectations. They are interpreted to set exclusion limits at the 95% confidence level on simplified models of chargino-neutralino pair production for masses up to 345 GeV

Gamma Ray and Neutrino Flux from Annihilation of Neutralino Dark Matter at Galactic Halo Region in mAMSB Model

We consider the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP), neutralino in minimal anomaly mediated supersymmetry breaking model (mAMSB) to be a possible candidate for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMP) or cold dark matter and investigate its direct and indirect detections. The theoretically allowed supersymmetric parametric space for such a model along with the recent bounds from LHC is constrained by the WMAP results for relic densities. The spin independent and spin dependent scattering cross sections for dark matter off nucleon are thus constrained from the WMAP results. They are found to be within the allowed regions of different ongoing direct detection experiments. The annihilation of such dark matter candidates at the galactic centre produce different standard model particles such as gamma rays, neutrinos etc. In this work, we calculate the possible fluxes of these $\gamma$-rays and neutrinos coming from the direction of the galactic centre (and its neighbourhood) at terrestrial or satellite borne detectors. The calcutated $\gamma$-ray flux is compared with the observational results of HESS experiment. The neutrino flux of different flavours from the galactic centre and at different locations away from the galactic centre produced by WIMP annihilation in this model are also obtained for four types of galactic dark matter halo profiles. The detection prospects of such $\nu_\mu$ coming from the direction of the galactic centre at the ANTARES under sea detector are discussed in terms of muon signal yield from these muon neutrinos. Both the gamma and neutrino signals are estimated for four different dark matter halo profiles.Comment: 34 pages LaTeX, 36 postscript figures; Text and figures modified, new figures added; version published in J. Phys.