A Quagmire of Religion, Politics, and Violence : The Political Causes and Consequences of Militarized Religious Movements

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. - Blaise Pascal While sitting in the living room of my upper-middle class Muslim Egyptian host family, settling down for the evening, the mother of the family pulled out a shoebox and sat down next to me, clearly indicating it was time for me to put away the homework and learn an authentic lesson about Egyptian culture. Inside the shoebox were photos of her family over the decades, some dating even back to the 1930s. What appeared striking to my limited perspective was that in pictures all the way through the 1960s, the women were all wearing sleeveless dresses and attending what looked like cocktail parties. Also noticeable was the fact that the city was clean, and the traffic appeared orderly in every picture. In response to my surprise at the foreignness and beauty of the Cairo I saw in the pictures, she placed her hand on her heart and uttered the words that have inspired much of the research that follows: Kara, my heart mourns the Cairo that uneducated fundamentalists have robbed me of

Doppler lidar results from the San Gorgonio Pass experiments

During FY-84, the Doppler Lidar data from the San Gorgonio Pass experiments were analyzed, evaluated, and interpreted with regard to signal strength, signal width, magnitude and direction of velocity component and a goodness parameter associated with the expected noise level of the signal. From these parameters, a screening criteria was developed to eliminate questionable data. For the most part analysis supports the validity of Doppler Lidar data obtained at San Gorgonio Pass with respect to the mean velocity magnitude and direction. The question as to whether the Doppler width could be interpreted as a measure of the variance of the turbulence within the Doppler Lidar System (DLS) focal volume was not resolved. The stochastic nature of the Doppler broadening from finite residence time of the particles in the beam as well as other Doppler broadening phenomenon tend to mask the Doppler spread associated with small scale turbulence. Future tests with longer pulses may assist in better understanding

The Effect of Local Anesthesia When Used in Dental Restorative Cases Under General Anesthesia on Control of Intraoperative Physiologic Parameters and Post-Operative Comfort

Purpose: To determine the effect of local anesthesia on post-operative pain and physiologic parameters intraoperatively in patients undergoing dental care under general anesthesia. Methods: This study was modeled as a double-blinded randomized control trial. Patients included healthy children under the age of six scheduled for restorative dental treatment under general anesthesia. Patient behavior was evaluated pre and post-operatively using the FLACC score and post-operatively using the Parental Pain Score Measure. Intraoperatively, all participants followed a standardized general anesthesia protocol and were given either local anesthetic infiltration by the dental surgeon performing the surgery or no anesthesia was utilized. Intraoperatively physiologic stability was observed during points of potential stimulation noted by fluctuations in heart rate, and respiratory rate, ETCO2. Results: No statistically significant differences in FLACC score and PPPM score were seen between the two treatment groups. Intraoperatively, patients treated with preemptive LA had statistically significant lower heart rates and ETCO2 than those patients who did not receive local anesthesia

Evaluating the Effects of Collaborative Problem Resolution Training

The longitudinal effects of a collaborative consultation training program called Collaborative Problem Resolution (CPR) were evaluated in this study. A 50-item written questionnaire was completed by 27 special educators, nine general educators and one administrator

Scaling analysis applied to the NORVEX code development and thermal energy flight experiment

A scaling analysis is used to study the dominant flow processes that occur in molten phase change material (PCM) under 1 g and microgravity conditions. Results of the scaling analysis are applied to the development of the NORVEX (NASA Oak Ridge Void Experiment) computer program and the preparation of the Thermal Energy Storage (TES) flight experiment. The NORVEX computer program which is being developed to predict melting and freezing with void formation in a 1 g or microgravity environment of the PCM is described. NORVEX predictions are compared with the scaling and similarity results. The approach to be used to validate NORVEX with TES flight data is also discussed. Similarity and scaling show that the inertial terms must be included as part of the momentum equation in either the 1 g or microgravity environment (a creeping flow assumption is invalid). A 10(exp -4) environment was found to be a suitable microgravity environment for the proposed PCM

Operationalizing Offensive Social Engineering for the Air Force

Social engineering is the art and science of persuading individuals to bypass in place security mechanisms causing the unintended release of information. It is a low tech solution to a high tech problem and is as much an art as a science. As is true of many such solutions, social engineering is both ill-defined yet extremely effective. Its low cost, high payoff nature makes it an extremely attractive alternative to adversaries that do not have access to all the resources of a nation state. However, with full backing, the weapon can become that much more effective. Social engineering is something the Department of Defense already does. All branches of the military have Red Teaming organizations that use social engineering methods as part of their mission to assess and improve internal security measures. While network and physical protection mechanisms have become more robust, the human remains the weak point of any defense, and social engineering will nearly always succeed. As the Air Force organizes, trains, and equips its new cyber warrior force, it will need to operationalize social engineering principles in order to grow a repeatable, sustainable capability. However social engineering remains a poorly defined concept for the Air Force in particular and the Department of Defense in general. It is some- thing practiced but on a limited scope and with little standardization. Despite its successes, social engineering has yet to achieve widespread acceptance. The focus of this paper is on the use of offensive social engineering. There are three main points. First, establish legitimacy and demonstrate that social engineering is in fact compatible with existing Air Force and Joint military doctrine. This is done with a thorough analysis of doctrine and historical writings about military deception, psychological operations, and related concepts

Control of Oscillatory Thermocapillary Convection in Microgravity

This project focused on the generation and suppression of oscillatory thermocapillary convection in a thin liquid layer. The bulk of the research was experimental in nature, some theoretical work was also done. ne first phase of this research generated, for the first time, the hydrothermal-wave instability predicted by Smith and Davis in 1983. In addition, the behavior of the fluid layer under a number of conditions was investigated and catalogued. A transition map for the instability of buoyancy-thermocapillary convection was prepared which presented results in terms of apparatus-dependent and apparatus-independent parameters, for ease of comparison with theoretical results. The second phase of this research demonstrated the suppression of these hydrothermal waves through an active, feed-forward control strategy employing a CO2 laser to selectively heat lines of negative disturbance temperature on the free surface of the liquid layer. An initial attempt at this control was only partially successful, employing a thermocouple inserted slightly below the free surface of the liquid to generate the control scheme. Subsequent efforts, however, were completely successful in suppressing oscillations in a portion of the layer by utilizing data from an infrared image of the free surface to compute hydrothermal-wave phase speeds and, using these, to tailor the control scheme to each passing wave

ROBUST DECISION FOREST INFERENCE ALGORITHM IN PRESENCE OF MISSING FEATURE VALUES

Presented herein is a novel algorithm for inference on decision forest models that increases the robustness of the decisions in the presence of missing features in the data. The proposed algorithm ensures that tree decisions are supported by a minimal amount of non-missing features. Experiments have demonstrated that the proposed algorithm not only increases the robustness of the model, but also increase the model’s predictive performance

Electron microscopical and histochemical studies on the transverse striated muscles of birds after prolonged hypokinesis

Studies of the gastrocnemius muscle were carried out in 4 month old cockerels of the laying hybrid after hypokinesis lasting 15 and 30 days. It was found that restricted movement resulted in dystrophic changes of myotibrils, enlargement of the sarcoplasmic reticulum and oedem of interfibrillar spaces. Histochemical studies revealed focuses of increased activity of non-specific esterase, decreased activity of dehydrogenase of lactic acid and a positive reaction of acid phosphatase