Attack on the Brain: Neurowars and Neurowarfare

Is neurotechnology leading nation-states toward a new domain of war? Neuroscience is on the verge of deciphering the human brain. As a result, brains will become a part of the battlefield against which attacks will be directed. As neuroscientist James Giordano argued: “the brain is the next battlespace.” It is foreseeable that this will have tremendous implications for warfare and could amount to a true military revolution in the sense of military historian Williamson Murray: it would completely change the characteristics of conflict, as well as transform state and society

Five Strategies for Practising Interdisciplinarity

The purpose of this short paper is to discuss five approaches or strategies for conducting interdisciplinary research. All of these strategies have their promises and pitfalls, which will be explored. Although all researchers are certainly well advised to look beyond their own discipline, it is also clear that little could be gained by choosing an interdisciplinary research strategy just for the sake of it. In the end, it very much depends on the problem that the researcher aims to solve whether a disciplinary or an interdisciplinary approach would be more successful. Furthermore, it is also important which strategy of interdisciplinarity is chosen and with what kind of aim or ambition. The major questions are whether the aim is to solve a narrow research problem, which may benefit from an interdisciplinary approach, whether it is a problem that arises and is attacked in a non-academic context, whether the problem is in itself complex and discipline-transgressing, whether this fact may require the sharing of concepts, theories and methods across disciplines, or whether the array of problems is so big and complex that it necessitates the creation of a superdiscipline. Depending on the answers to these questions an individual researcher or a research community will choose one of the five different strategies discussed

What Are Academic Disciplines? Some Observations on the Disciplinarity vs. Interdisciplinarity Debate

This paper examines disciplines and disciplinarity through the lenses of certain academic disciplines including philosophy, anthropology, sociology, history, management and education

Wireless Stimulation of Antennal Muscles in Freely Flying Hawkmoths Leads to Flight Path Changes

Insect antennae are sensory organs involved in a variety of behaviors, sensing many different stimulus modalities. As mechanosensors, they are crucial for flight control in the hawkmoth Manduca sexta. One of their roles is to mediate compensatory reflexes of the abdomen in response to rotations of the body in the pitch axis. Abdominal motions, in turn, are a component of the steering mechanism for flying insects. Using a radio controlled, programmable, miniature stimulator, we show that ultra-low-current electrical stimulation of antennal muscles in freely-flying hawkmoths leads to repeatable, transient changes in the animals' pitch angle, as well as less predictable changes in flight speed and flight altitude. We postulate that by deflecting the antennae we indirectly stimulate mechanoreceptors at the base, which drive compensatory reflexes leading to changes in pitch attitude.United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agenc

Peri-operative red blood cell transfusion in neonates and infants: NEonate and Children audiT of Anaesthesia pRactice IN Europe: A prospective European multicentre observational study

BACKGROUND: Little is known about current clinical practice concerning peri-operative red blood cell transfusion in neonates and small infants. Guidelines suggest transfusions based on haemoglobin thresholds ranging from 8.5 to 12 g dl-1, distinguishing between children from birth to day 7 (week 1), from day 8 to day 14 (week 2) or from day 15 (≥week 3) onwards. OBJECTIVE: To observe peri-operative red blood cell transfusion practice according to guidelines in relation to patient outcome. DESIGN: A multicentre observational study. SETTING: The NEonate-Children sTudy of Anaesthesia pRactice IN Europe (NECTARINE) trial recruited patients up to 60 weeks' postmenstrual age undergoing anaesthesia for surgical or diagnostic procedures from 165 centres in 31 European countries between March 2016 and January 2017. PATIENTS: The data included 5609 patients undergoing 6542 procedures. Inclusion criteria was a peri-operative red blood cell transfusion. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The primary endpoint was the haemoglobin level triggering a transfusion for neonates in week 1, week 2 and week 3. Secondary endpoints were transfusion volumes, 'delta haemoglobin' (preprocedure - transfusion-triggering) and 30-day and 90-day morbidity and mortality. RESULTS: Peri-operative red blood cell transfusions were recorded during 447 procedures (6.9%). The median haemoglobin levels triggering a transfusion were 9.6 [IQR 8.7 to 10.9] g dl-1 for neonates in week 1, 9.6 [7.7 to 10.4] g dl-1 in week 2 and 8.0 [7.3 to 9.0] g dl-1 in week 3. The median transfusion volume was 17.1 [11.1 to 26.4] ml kg-1 with a median delta haemoglobin of 1.8 [0.0 to 3.6] g dl-1. Thirty-day morbidity was 47.8% with an overall mortality of 11.3%. CONCLUSIONS: Results indicate lower transfusion-triggering haemoglobin thresholds in clinical practice than suggested by current guidelines. The high morbidity and mortality of this NECTARINE sub-cohort calls for investigative action and evidence-based guidelines addressing peri-operative red blood cell transfusions strategies. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov, identifier: NCT02350348

Fifth Generation Warfare, Hybrid Warfare, and Gray Zone Conflict: A Comparison

Strategists have noted substantial changes in warfare since the end of the Cold War. They have proposed several concepts and theories to account for the fact that the practice of war has largely departed from a Clausewitzian understanding of war and the centrality of physical violence in it. Emerging modes of conflict are less focused on the instrumental use of force to achieve political objectives and are more centered on notions of perception management, narratives, asymmetry or irregular conflict, the adversarial uses of norms, and covert and ambiguous uses of force. This article aims to systematically compare three more recent theories of war or political conflict, namely fifth generation warfare (5GW), hybrid warfare (HW), and gray zone conflict. The article demonstrates that although they have the same intellectual roots, they are also different in terms of what they suggest about the nature of contemporary and near future conflict. Each of them can enrich our understanding of contemporary warfare, which will be the key to mastering these new modes of conflict short of (theater conventional) war

Military privatisation and the revolution in military affairs

This thesis examines the connection between technological change and military privatisation, which includes the privatisation of military assets, as well as the outsourcing of services from the armed forces to the private sector. The main argument is that increasing technological complexity of military equipment in the information age has led to an increasing reliance of the armed forces on private companies in respect to maintaining, managing, and even operating military equipment and networks. The armed forces lack already the competence and the resources for carrying out many important tasks including research, training, and operational support services.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Blockchain Empowers Social Resistance and Terrorism Through Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

The invention of the Internet has changed the way social resistance, revolutionary movements and terror groups are organized with new features such as loose network organization, netwars, social media campaigns, and lone wolf attacks. This article argues that blockchain technology will lead to more far-reaching changes in the organization of resistance to authority. Blockchain is a distributed ledger that records transactions using a consensus protocol, and when it meets objective conditions, it also enables smart contracts that execute transactions. Blockchain technology is not only a system for transferring value, but also it is a trustless system in which strangers can cooperate without the need for having to trust each other, as computer code governs their interactions. Blockchain will not only allow resistance/ terror organizations to easily receive donations globally, to have assets that a government can easily confiscate, and to disseminate censorship-resistant propaganda, but more importantly, to operate and cooperate across the world in a truly leaderless, coordinated, and highly decentralized fashion. Governments will need to be more proactive in the area of blockchain technology to mitigate some of the dangers to political stability that may emerge from it