United States budgetary costs of Post-9/11 wars through FY2018

Originally published on the Watson Institute's Costs of War Project website: http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2017/USBudgetaryCostsFY2018The costs to the United States of post-9/11 wars will total more than $5.6 trillion by the end of fiscal year 2018, a new Costs of War report finds, and the average American taxpayer has spent$23,386 on these wars since 2001. “The U.S. wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the increased spending on homeland security and the departments of defense, state and veterans affairs since the 9/11 attacks have cost more than $4.3 trillion in current dollars through fiscal year 2017,” said Neta Crawford, Costs of War co-director and a professor of political science at Boston University. “Adding likely costs for fiscal year 2018 and estimated future obligations for veterans’ care, the costs of war total more than$5.6 trillion.

Concept paper on a curriculum initiative for energy, climate change, and sustainability at Boston University

[Summary] Boston University has made important contributions to the interconnected challenges of energy, climate change, and sustainability (ECS) through its research, teaching, and campus operations. This work reveals new opportunities to expand the scope of teaching and research and place the University at the forefront of ECS in higher education. This paper describes the framework for a University-wide curriculum initiative that moves us in that direction and that complements the University’s strategic plan. The central curricular objectives are to provide every undergraduate the opportunity be touched in some way in their educational program by exposure to some aspect of the ECS challenge, and to increase opportunities for every graduate student to achieve a focused competence in ECS. The initiative has six cornerstone initiatives. The first is the Campus as a Living Lab (CALL) program in which students, faculty and staff work together and use our urban campus and its community to study and implement ECS solutions. The second is a university-wide minor degree that helps students develop an integrated perspective of the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of sustainability. The third is one or more graduate certificate programs open to all graduate students. The fourth is an annual summer faculty workshop that develops new ECS curriculum and CALL opportunities. The fifth is web-based resource that underpins the construction of a vibrant knowledge network for the BU community and beyond. Finally, an enhanced sustainability alumni network will augment professional opportunities and generate other benefits. The learning outcomes of this initiative will be realized through the collaborative work of faculty, students, and staff from all 17 colleges and schools. The initiative will leverage existing BU student resources such as the Thurman Center, Build Lab, and Innovate@BU. Benefits of this initiative, beyond the curriculum, include acceleration towards the goals of our Climate Action Plan; improving the “sustainability brand” of BU; enhancing the ability to attract students and new faculty; strengthening our alumni and campus communities; deepening our ties with the city of Boston; and the potential to spin off new social and technological innovations.Published versio

Afghanistans Rising Civilian Death Toll Due to Airstrikes, 2017-2020

When the United States tightens its rules of engagement and restricts air strikes where civilians are at risk, civilian casualties tend to go down; when it loosens those restrictions, civilians are injured and killed in greater numbers. In 2017 the Pentagon relaxed its rules of engagement for airstrikes and escalated the air war in Afghanistan. The aim was to gain leverage at the bargaining table. From 2017 through 2019, civilian deaths due to U.S.and allied forces' airstrikes in Afghanistan dramatically increased

A New Survey for Giant Arcs

We report on the first results of an imaging survey to detect strong gravitational lensing targeting the richest clusters selected from the photometric data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) with follow-up deep imaging observations from the Wisconsin Indiana Yale NOAO (WIYN) 3.5m telescope and the University of Hawaii 88-inch telescope (UH88). The clusters are selected from an area of 8000 deg^2 using the Red Cluster Sequence technique and span the redshift range 0.1 < z < 0.6, corresponding to a comoving cosmological volume of ~ 2 Gpc^3. Our imaging survey thus targets a volume more than an order of magnitude larger than any previous search. A total of 240 clusters were imaged of which 141 had sub-arcsecond image quality. Our survey has uncovered16 new lensing clusters with definite giant arcs, an additional 12 systems for which the lensing interpretation is very likely, and 9 possible lenses which contain shorter arclets or candidate arcs which are less certain and will require further observations to confirm their lensing origin. The number of new cluster lenses detected in this survey is likely > 30. Among these new systems are several of the most dramatic examples of strong gravitational lensing ever discovered with multiple bright arcs at large angular separation. These will likely become 'poster-child' gravitational lenses similar to Abell 1689 and CL0024+1654. The new lenses discovered in this survey will enable future sysetmatic studies of the statistics of strong lensing and its implications for cosmology and our structure formation paradigm.Comment: 19 pages, 7 pages of Figures, submitted to AJ. Fixed Typo

Interleukin 1 Trials in Cancer Patients: A Review of the Toxicity, Antitumor and Hematopoietic Effects

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139898/1/onco0190.pd

Principia Leviathan

The moral duties of the United States in Iraq cannot be separated from the larger question of the security requirements of the United States and its larger moral duties as the world’s preeminent military and economic power. Moreover, even after the United States leaves Iraq these questions will not disap- pear, not least because it may find itself occupying more states in its war on ter- ror and against rogue states