What Ukraine Taught NATO about Hybrid Warfare

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 forced the United States and its NATO partners to be confronted with the impact of hybrid warfare far beyond the battlefield. Targeting Europe’s energy security, Russia’s malign influence campaigns and malicious cyber intrusions are affecting global gas prices, driving up food costs, disrupting supply chains and grids, and testing US and Allied military mobility. This study examines how hybrid warfare is being used by NATO’s adversaries, what vulnerabilities in energy security exist across the Alliance, and what mitigation strategies are available to the member states. Cyberattacks targeting the renewable energy landscape during Europe’s green transition are increasing, making it urgent that new tools are developed to protect these emerging technologies. No less significant are the cyber and information operations targeting energy security in Eastern Europe as it seeks to become independent from Russia. Economic coercion is being used against Western and Central Europe to stop gas from flowing. China’s malign investments in Southern and Mediterranean Europe are enabling Beijing to control several NATO member states’ critical energy infrastructure at a critical moment in the global balance of power. What Ukraine Taught NATO about Hybrid Warfare will be an important reference for NATO officials and US installations operating in the European theater.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1952/thumbnail.jp

Organization of chromosome ends in the rice blast fungus, Magnaporthe oryzae

Eukaryotic pathogens of humans often evade the immune system by switching the expression of surface proteins encoded by subtelomeric gene families. To determine if plant pathogenic fungi use a similar mechanism to avoid host defenses, we sequenced the 14 chromosome ends of the rice blast pathogen, Magnaporthe oryzae. One telomere is directly joined to ribosomal RNA-encoding genes, at the end of the ∼2 Mb rDNA array. Two are attached to chromosome-unique sequences, and the remainder adjoin a distinct subtelomere region, consisting of a telomere-linked RecQ-helicase (TLH) gene flanked by several blocks of tandem repeats. Unlike other microbes, M.oryzae exhibits very little gene amplification in the subtelomere regions—out of 261 predicted genes found within 100 kb of the telomeres, only four were present at more than one chromosome end. Therefore, it seems unlikely that M.oryzae uses switching mechanisms to evade host defenses. Instead, the M.oryzae telomeres have undergone frequent terminal truncation, and there is evidence of extensive ectopic recombination among transposons in these regions. We propose that the M.oryzae chromosome termini play more subtle roles in host adaptation by promoting the loss of terminally-positioned genes that tend to trigger host defenses

Short-Lived Trace Gases in the Surface Ocean and the Atmosphere

The two-way exchange of trace gases between the ocean and the atmosphere is important for both the chemistry and physics of the atmosphere and the biogeochemistry of the oceans, including the global cycling of elements. Here we review these exchanges and their importance for a range of gases whose lifetimes are generally short compared to the main greenhouse gases and which are, in most cases, more reactive than them. Gases considered include sulphur and related compounds, organohalogens, non-methane hydrocarbons, ozone, ammonia and related compounds, hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Finally, we stress the interactivity of the system, the importance of process understanding for modeling, the need for more extensive field measurements and their better seasonal coverage, the importance of inter-calibration exercises and finally the need to show the importance of air-sea exchanges for global cycling and how the field fits into the broader context of Earth System Science

Application of Ontology Translation

Abstract. An ontology provides a precise specification of the vocabulary used by a community of interest (COI). Multiple communities of interest may describe the same concept using the same or different terms. When such communities interact, ontology alignment and translation is required. This is typically a time consuming process. This paper describes Snoggle, an open source tool designed to ease development of ontology translation rules, and discusses its application to geospatial ontologies

Data from: Juvenile survival, competing risks, and spatial variation in mortality risk of a marine apex predator

Reliable estimates of mortality have been a major gap in our understanding of population ecology for marine animals. This is especially true for juveniles, which are often the most vulnerable age class and whose survival can strongly influence population growth. Thousands of pop‐up archival satellite tags (PAT) have been deployed on a variety of marine species, but analysis of these data has mainly been restricted to movement ecology and post‐handling survival following fisheries bycatch. We used PAT data to provide empirical estimates of annual survival and cause‐specific mortality for juveniles of a marine top predator. We tagged and tracked juvenile white sharks in the north eastern Pacific Ocean to (1) estimate survival rates and competing risks and (2) investigate intrinsic and environmental influences on mortality risk. We also evaluated the use of PAT data with respect to meeting assumptions of known‐fate survival models. Annual juvenile survival rate was 0.632 (SE = 0.15) and annual natural mortality rate (0.08, SE = 0.06) was lower than the rate of gillnet interactions (0.48, SE = 0.15). Mortality risk decreased with greater body length and was significantly greater (hazard ratio = 9.05, SE = 0.70) for juvenile sharks in Mexican waters, relative to California waters. The PAT data allowed for unambiguous determination of fate in most cases, aided by collaborative relationships with fishers and secondary tags deployed on a subset of sharks. Although caution must be exercised to establish whether assumptions are met, our work demonstrates that PAT data represent a widely available, untapped data source that could dramatically increase our understanding of marine population ecology. Synthesis and applications. Our research shows fisheries bycatch to be the main source of mortality for juvenile white sharks in the northeastern Pacific Ocean, highlighting the need for best practices, such as releasing sharks quickly following incidental capture. Furthermore, mortality risk for juveniles was greater in Mexican waters, such that survival may be lower in colder years when juveniles are likely to move south seeking warmer water. This could increase stochasticity in juvenile survival and negatively influence population growth for this apex predator

Benson et al. juvenile white shark shark survival data

Survival monitoring data from tracking satellite tagged juvenile white sharks. Data includes ID numbers, start and end dates of tracking data, fate of sharks at end of tracking period, total length in cm at tagging, location (Mexico or US), and sex