Age Differences in Personal Risk Perceptions: A Note on an Exploratory Descriptive Study

The authors test for differences in risk perceptions among different age groups

Jump jets for the ADF?

This report argues that the costs of Australia acquiring F-35B Joint Strike Fighter short take-off, vertical landing aircraft outweigh the potential benefits. Overview Is there a case for Australia to acquire F-35B Joint Strike Fighter short take-off, vertical landing (STOVL) aircraft to operate from the two new Canberra-class landing helicopter docks (LHDs)? The government has directed that this question be addressed in the development of the 2015 Defence White Paper. This report is an independent assessment of the costs and potential benefits of such an acquisition. Reintroducing organic naval air power into the ADF would be a big strategic decision, and very complex and expensive, so it’s important to have a clear view of the circumstances in which it might be beneficial enough to be worth pursuing. And it’s important to be aware not only of the direct costs but also of the potential risks and opportunity costs. Overall, this report concludes that the benefits would be marginal at best, wouldn’t be commensurate with the costs and other consequences for the ADF, and would potentially divert funding and attention from more valuable force

A versatile force: the future of Australia's special operations capability

This study aims to provide an understanding of the Australian Defence Force\u27s special operations capability and what it offers to government in both peace and wartime. Summary Over the past decade, the demands of the ADF’s global and regional operations saw an unprecedented growth in Australia’s special operations capability. Indeed, Special Operations Forces became the ‘capability of choice’ for the Australian Government. However, as the ADF enters a period of transition from almost constant high-tempo operations to what might be a ‘soft power decade’, there’s a need to consider the future of the capability. Against this background, this study aims to inform policy decisions by providing an understanding of the special operations capability and what it offers to government in both peace and wartime. It argues against possible temptations to cut the capability. In a changing strategic environment, Special Operations Forces will continue to be an important instrument of Australian defence policy. The study entails a number of concrete policy recommendations to strengthen and readjust the special operations capability for a new era

Expanding alliance: ANZUS cooperation and Asia–Pacific security

Is an alliance conceived as a bulwark against a resurgence of Japanese militarism and which cut its military and intelligence teeth in the Cold War is still relevant to today’s strategic concerns? Overview The alliance between Australia and the US, underpinned by the formal ANZUS Treaty of 1951, continues to be a central part of Australian defence and security thinking and an instrument of American policy in the Asia–Pacific. How is it that an alliance conceived as a bulwark against a resurgence of Japanese militarism and which cut its military and intelligence teeth in the Cold War is still relevant to today’s strategic concerns? The answer is partly—and importantly—that the core values of the ANZUS members are strongly aligned, and successive Australian governments and American presidential administrations have seen great value in working with like-minded partners to ensure Asia–Pacific security. Far from becoming a historical curiosity, today it’s not just relevant, but of greater importance than has been the case in the past few decades. To explore new ideas on how to strengthen the US–Australia alliance, ASPI conducted a high-level strategic dialogue in Honolulu in July this year. Discussions canvassed the future strategic environment; the forthcoming Australian Defence White Paper; budget, sovereignty and expectation risks; and cooperation in the maritime, land, air, cyber, space and intelligence domains. A key purpose of the Honolulu dialogue was to help ASPI develop policy recommendations on the alliance relationship for government. This report is the product of those discussions

More flexible, less coherent: NATO after Lisbon

At its 2010 Lisbon summit, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) took significant steps towards becoming a modern alliance. In the face of a changing security environment and divergent strategic interests among 28 members, NATO adapted its strategic concept and reformed its way of formulating strategy. The new strategic concept advances conflict management as a core task for the alliance. In combination with a greater emphasis on developing partnerships, NATO conceptually strengthened its profile as a global security actor. The summit also reflected a new approach to formulating NATO strategy by providing the Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen with a strong role in setting the strategic agenda. Indeed, he assumed a more supranational function rather than acting as a representative of all allies. But as the Libya operation demonstrates, NATO will struggle to maintain cohesion in an increasingly 'polycentric' alliance. While the focus on conflict management will make the alliance more flexible, it will also become a less coherent global security actor

User requirements for multimedia indexing and retrieval of unedited audio-visual footage - RUSHES

Multimedia analysis and reuse of raw un-edited audio visual content known as rushes is gaining acceptance by a large number of research labs and companies. A set of research projects are considering multimedia indexing, annotation, search and retrieval in the context of European funded research, but only the FP6 project RUSHES is focusing on automatic semantic annotation, indexing and retrieval of raw and un-edited audio-visual content. Even professional content creators and providers as well as home-users are dealing with this type of content and therefore novel technologies for semantic search and retrieval are required. As a first result of this project, the user requirements and possible user-scenarios are presented in this paper. These results lay down the foundation for the research and development of a multimedia search engine particularly dedicated to the specific needs of the users and the content

ELAN as flexible annotation framework for sound and image processing detectors

Annotation of digital recordings in humanities research still is, to a largeextend, a process that is performed manually. This paper describes the firstpattern recognition based software components developed in the AVATecH projectand their integration in the annotation tool ELAN. AVATecH (AdvancingVideo/Audio Technology in Humanities Research) is a project that involves twoMax Planck Institutes (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen,Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle) and two FraunhoferInstitutes (Fraunhofer-Institut für Intelligente Analyse- undInformationssysteme IAIS, Sankt Augustin, Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institute,Berlin) and that aims to develop and implement audio and video technology forsemi-automatic annotation of heterogeneous media collections as they occur inmultimedia based research. The highly diverse nature of the digital recordingsstored in the archives of both Max Planck Institutes, poses a huge challenge tomost of the existing pattern recognition solutions and is a motivation to makesuch technology available to researchers in the humanities

Die U.S. Army nach dem Irakkrieg: Lehren und Versäumnisse

"Der künftige Zuschnitt des amerikanischen Heeres (U.S. Army) steht seit dem Irakkonflikt im Mittelpunkt der militärpolitischen Diskussion in den USA. Im Kern geht es um die Frage, welche Lehren aus dem Krieg und der ihm nachfolgenden Stabilisierungsphase für die künftige Ausrichtung der amerikanischen Landstreitkräfte gezogen werden müssen. Denn im Verlauf des Konflikts wurde offenkundig, daß die U.S. Army in einem schwierigen Spannungsfeld zwischen Intervention und Stabilisierung operiert. In der Phase der offensiven, hochintensiven Kampfhandlungen haben militärisch-technologische Innovationen den amerikanischen Streitkräften zu einem unerwartet schnellen militärischen Sieg verholfen. Dieser Erfolg war jedoch insofern nur relativ, als die U.S. Army auf die anschließende Phase der Stabilisierung nur unzureichend vorbereitet war. Da dieses militärische Aufgabenspektrum künftig jedoch integraler Bestandteil von Operationen amerikanischer Landstreitkräfte sein wird, erschien eine Anpassung der U.S. Army an die Anforderungen von Konflikten mit niedriger und mittlerer Intensität nach dem Irakkrieg überfällig. Die Studie untersucht, inwieweit die U.S. Army seit Ende des Irakkriegs tatsächlich mit Anpassungen reagiert hat. Sie kommt zu dem Ergebnis, daß die neue Heeresführung unter General Schoomaker zwar auf die Erfahrungen im Irak mit der Entscheidung reagiert hat, den Ausbau der Interventionsfähigkeit der Landstreitkräfte durch einen prozeßorientierten Transformationsansatz erheblich zu beschleunigen. Gleichwohl betrachtet auch sie Stabilisierungsoperationen ungeachtet der negativen Erfahrungen im Irak nur als nachgeordnete Aufgabe. Für die US Army wird daher ein prekäres Ungleichgewicht zwischen gesteigerter Interventions- und unzureichender Stabilisierungsfähigkeit kennzeichnend bleiben." (Autorenreferat

The Absent Agent: Orangutans, Communities, and Conservation in Indonesian Borneo

Data Availability: The data presented in the manuscript is not accessible due to privacy restrictions.Copyright: © Schreer 2022. In a time of unprecedented species loss, whose absence matters in international biodiversity conservation? Who or what is made absent in this process, and how? Drawing on scholarship that focuses on the agency of absence, this article explores how the orangutan (Pongo spp.)—a popular conservation flagship species—becomes present in Bornean villagers' lives. It offers a new understanding of flagship species action by examining the complex, often unseen relational dynamics through which orangutans influence community-conservation encounters. As the study shows, conservationists' efforts to mitigate the absence of species through a combination of imaginative, discursive, and material variables inadvertently 'absences' Bornean villagers and their concerns. Reflecting on this process of absencing, the paper moreover discusses how notions of absence inform contemporary conservation thought and action.European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 758494)