Boon or Threat?

The information revolution has come to dominate national security planning as much as it has come to dominate econimic and social life. But this revolution, building on and subsimong previous post-World War II revolutions, represents more than cumulative technology advances

Military Innovation and the American Revolution in Military Affairs

Two objectives motive this study: relating key aspects of an intrinsically important military innovation period of interest to students of U.S. defense transformation and proposing an innovation framework to facilitate additional military innovation studies. The innovation period spans 1973 through 1986. A military innovation framework is proposed to help students of military change assess contextual and organizational factors influencing the ripeness of an innovation milieu

Brillouin Optomechanics.

Optical resonators are the basis of any experiment where it is desirable to confine light. The most basic optical resonator, a Fabry-Perot etalon, can be as simple as a colorful layer of oil over water, or as complicated as the parallel mirrors in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. When looking for new phenomena, it is often useful to increase intensity. One example is optomechanics which was born after dissipation in resonators was reduced to a level where deformation caused by light pressure became significant. Intensity is related to the circulating power over the transverse area of the mode. Whispering gallery resonators can be ideal as they offer quality factors over 100 billion and can confine light to a transverse mode area smaller than a wavelength squared. While previous work in optomechanics relied on the force of light on the device walls, here we use the force of light on an acoustical density wave. We demonstrate a new family of optomechanics based on Brillouin scattering. Brillouin scattering is most widely known as a loss mechanism in telecom applications in which stimulated scattering limits the usable power. Here we show that stimulated Brillouin scattering of light from sound can be used as an optomechanical actuation mechanism for high frequency (11 GHz) acoustical vibrations. Owing to ultrahigh optical and mechanical quality factors, we are able to excite mechanical vibrations in Silica whispering gallery resonators at microWatt input powers and gained for the first time access to mechanical WGM in microresonators. While WGMs were first studied as mechanical phenomena in domed cathedrals, the term is currently used to describe optical modes despite the fact that light does not whisper. Here I enabled access to real (acoustical) whispering gallery modes in microresonators which further enabled us to transform Brillouin scattering into a cooling process. The combination of forward stimulated Brillouin scattering and backward stimulated Brillouin scattering allowed excitation of modes from 50 MHz to 11 GHz in frequency, and enabled for the first time reversing the energy transfer direction in the Brillouin process to allow cooling.PhDElectrical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/99985/1/tomesmat_1.pd

The Management of Bilateral Ureteric Injury following Radical Hysterectomy

Iatrogenic ureteric injury is a well-recognised complication of radical hysterectomy. Bilateral ureteric injuries are rare, but do pose a considerable reconstructive challenge. We searched a prospectively acquired departmental database of ureteric injuries to identify patients with bilateral ureteric injury following radical hysterectomy. Five patients suffered bilateral ureteric injury over a 6-year period. Initial placement of ureteric stents was attempted in all patients. Stents were placed retrogradely into 6 ureters and antegradely into 2 ureters. In 1 patient ureteric stents could not be placed and they underwent primary ureteric reimplantation. In the 4 patients in which stents were placed, 2 were managed with stents alone, 1 required ureteric reimplantation for a persistent ureterovaginal fistula, and 1 developed a recurrent stricture. No patient managed by ureteric stenting suffered deterioration in serum creatinine. We feel that ureteric stenting, when possible, offers a safe primary management of bilateral ureteric injury at radical hysterectomy

A MADS-box gene-induced early flowering pear (Pyrus communis L.) for accelerated pear breeding

There have been a considerable number of studies that have successfully sped up the flowering cycle in woody perennial horticultural species. One particularly successful study in apple (Malus domestica) accelerated flowering using a silver birch (Betula pendula) APETALA1/FRUITFULL MADS-box gene BpMADS4, which yielded a good balance of vegetative growth to support subsequent flower and fruit development. In this study, BpMADS4 was constitutively expressed in European pear (Pyrus communis) to establish whether this could be used as a tool in a rapid pear breeding program. Transformed pear lines flowered within 6–18 months after grafting onto a quince (Cydonia oblonga) rootstock. Unlike the spindly habit of early flowering apples, the early flowering pear lines displayed a normal tree-like habit. Like apple, the flower appearance was normal, and the flowers were fertile, producing fruit and seed upon pollination. Seed from these transformed lines were germinated and 50% of the progeny flowered within 3 months of sowing, demonstrating a use for these in a fast breeding program