The future of jihad: what next for ISIL and al-Qaeda?

This report examines what the rise of ISIL means for al-Qaeda and how will it react. Overview ISIL is a real threat and must be targeted, but al-Qaeda shouldn’t be forgotten. Indeed, al-Qaeda should remain a key focus for international counterterrorism efforts. It’s a resilient and resolute terrorist organisation, but it’s also weaker than it’s been for many years. We should use this brief opportunity to dismantle the organisation completely. The report examines what the rise of ISIL means for al-Qaeda and how will it react. How will al-Qaeda seek to regain the oxygen of publicity that’s central to terrorist organisations if they’re to recruit, grow and, ultimately, challenge their enemies? Does the rise of ISIL signal the end of al-Qaeda or might al-Qaeda merge with ISIL, confront it head on or take some other course of action? The authors explore four alternative futures for al-Qaeda and ISIL and conclude that a worrying scenario of ‘one-upmanship’ is likely to take place between the two organisations in which al-Qaeda pursues a campaign of international attacks in order to regain the limelight

Player Productivity and Performance: An Econometric Approach to Team Management in Soccer

The motivation for this thesis concerns worker productivity as estimated from production functions. Identifying worker contributions allows for not just an understanding of economic theory but highlights ways in which business management and strategy can be more efficient. The setting for these analyses is professional soccer, where teams are analogous to businesses and workers are multi-million dollar assets in the form of players. Most of a soccer team’s income is tied to its success on the field and so a careful management of staff and players is necessary to their business potential. Sports are the perfect “laboratory” to study economic theory since workers can be observed on a regular basis and there is a large volume of existing data. With almost every game recorded in the modern age this allows for the opportunity to analyse not just worker productivity but also team processes and strategies. This thesis expands the production function literature using a framework from contest theory literature. Most research in soccer focuses on performance at the aggregate level while this thesis primarily considers performance at the player level. It consists of three papers, each providing a different insight into player productivity. Chapter I presents a brief introduction of the relevant literature and contextualizes the research. Chapter II measures the impact of different workers in a production process depending on their expected productivity, finding support for superstar theories over the O-Ring theory in the English Premier League. Chapter III looks at the effects of fatigue in professional soccer finding that under current scheduling in the English Premier League and European competition there are no statistically significant effects of receiving different days of rest on team performance. Chapter IV applies high dimensional techniques to European soccer data to predict match outcomes. The models perform almost as well and betting firms and can be used to estimate individual player contributions in the form of rankings. Chapter V concludes.PHDSport Management PhDUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147502/1/gbwilkin_1.pd

Navigating the Unknown: Barriers to Evidence-Based Defence and Security Policy in the EU

At a time when Europe faces numerous crises, there is a real need for rigorous evidence to underpin effective policymaking. However, a gap between academia and policy creates clear obstacles in the use of evidence in policymaking. Many of these enduring obstacles are manifest in the inherent differences between separate communities: academics have difficulty communicating research in an applicable manner, and policymakers, in turn, tend to focus on operational motivations. The gap widens considerably when foreign, security and defence policy within the complex institutional structures of the European Union is considered. In addition to these well known barriers to evidence-based policy, there are two more obstacles in the defence and security space: sovereignty and dispersed decision-making. A dialogue of best practices must be opened up to broker knowledge in the EU context

HCMV pUL135 remodels the actin cytoskeleton to impair immune recognition of infected cells

Immune evasion genes help human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) establish lifelong persistence. Without immune pressure, laboratory-adapted HCMV strains have undergone genetic alterations. Among these, the deletion of the UL/b’ domain is associated with loss of virulence. In a screen of UL/b’, we identified pUL135 as a protein responsible for the characteristic cytopathic effect of clinical HCMV strains that also protected from natural killer (NK) and T cell attack. pUL135 interacted directly with abl interactor 1 (ABI1) and ABI2 to recruit the WAVE2 regulatory complex to the plasma membrane, remodel the actin cytoskeleton and dramatically reduce the efficiency of immune synapse (IS) formation. An intimate association between F-actin filaments in target cells and the IS was dispelled by pUL135 expression. Thus, F-actin in target cells plays a critical role in synaptogenesis, and this can be exploited by pathogens to protect against cytotoxic immune effector cells. An independent interaction between pUL135 and talin disrupted cell contacts with the extracellular matrix

Enhancing the Air Stability of Dimolybdenum Paddlewheel Complexes : Redox Tuning through Fluorine Substituents

The optical and electrochemical properties of quadruply bonded dimolybdenum paddlewheel complexes (Mo2PWCs) make them ideal candidates for incorporation into functional materials or devices, but one of the greatest bottlenecks for this is their poor stability toward atmospheric oxygen. By tuning the potential at which the Mo2 core is oxidized, it was possible to increase the tolerance of Mo2PWCs to air. A series of homoleptic Mo2PWCs bearing fluorinated formamidinate ligands have been synthesized and their electrochemical properties studied. The oxidation potential of the complexes was tuned in a predictable fashion by controlling the positions of the fluorine substituents on the ligands, as guided by a Hammett relationship. Studies into the air stability of the resulting complexes by multinuclear NMR spectroscopy show an increased tolerance to atmospheric oxygen with increasingly electron-withdrawing ligands. The heteroleptic complex Mo2(DFArF)3(OAc) [where DFArF = 3,5-(difluorophenyl)formamidinate] shows remarkable tolerance to oxygen in the solid state and in chloroform solutions. Through the employment of easily accessible ligands, the stability of the Mo2 core toward oxygen has been enhanced, thereby making Mo2PWCs with electron-withdrawing ligands more attractive candidates for the development of functional materials

The effect of polymyxin on plant roots

Root growth of young seedlings of barley and other species was substantially inhibited when placed in 5-10 p.p.m. solutions of the antibiotic, polymyxin B. The inhibiting effect was suppressed by simultaneous presentation of an excess of calcium ions. Polymyxin solutions of the same concentration had no adverse effect on germination. Brief exposure of normal roots of seedlings to 50-100 p.p.m. polymyxin resulted in cessation of further growth or cation uptake, and irreversible injury accompanied by loss of organic and inorganic constituents from the root cells. Simultaneous presentation of calcium nullified these effects. It appears likely that calcium and polymyxin are retained at the same absorption sites, and that to prevent polymyxin absorption a large excess of calcium cations is required. If absorbed, however, polymyxin causes disorganization of cell membranes to the extent that cell contents are released into the medium. These observations parallel closely the bactericidal action of this antibiotic on certain microorganisms, and suggest that there are general features common to the cell walls of roots and bacteria.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/32524/1/0000619.pd

Regulation of human cytomegalovirus transcription in latency: beyond the major immediate-early promoter.

Lytic infection of differentiated cell types with human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) results in the temporal expression of between 170-200 open reading frames (ORFs). A number of studies have demonstrated the temporal regulation of these ORFs and that this is orchestrated by both viral and cellular mechanisms associated with the co-ordinated recruitment of transcription complexes and, more recently, higher order chromatin structure. Importantly, HCMV, like all herpes viruses, establishes a lifelong latent infection of the host--one major site of latency being the undifferentiated haematopoietic progenitor cells resident in the bone marrow. Crucially, the establishment of latency is concomitant with the recruitment of cellular enzymes that promote extensive methylation of histones bound to the major immediate early promoter. As such, the repressive chromatin structure formed at the major immediate early promoter (MIEP) elicits inhibition of IE gene expression and is a major factor involved in maintenance of HCMV latency. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that a distinct subset of viral genes is also expressed during latency. In this review, we will discuss the mechanisms that control the expression of these latency-associated transcripts and illustrate that regulation of these latency-associated promoters is also subject to chromatin mediated regulation and that the instructive observations previously reported regarding the negative regulation of the MIEP during latency are paralleled in the regulation of latent gene expression