The Future of the Joint Warfighting Headquarters: An Alternative Approach to the Joint Task Force

The US military must create standing, numbered, and regionally aligned Joint warfighting headquarters— American Expeditionary Forces (AEFs)—around a command council and a staff organized into Joint centers and cells. Calls for standing Joint force headquarters are not new, but the demonstrated military effectiveness of the Joint Task Force (JTF) model coupled with increasing service-specific resource requirements and tightening fiscal constraints have resulted in little evolution in joint force headquarters construction since the end of World War II. Analysis of the historical record has shown that joint warfighting is best conducted with a Joint warfighting command subordinate to the geographic combatant commands. However, the Joint Task Force model is problematic because the ad-hoc, post-crisis activation of JTFs, along with their antiquated command and control structure, inherently puts the United States at a strategic and operational disadvantage. In the future, the US military will primarily maintain its competitive advantage, especially in great-power competition, by being a superior and sustainable joint force sooner than its adversaries. The proposed AEFs draw on generations of hard-earned experience to maintain and grow American supremacy in Joint warfighting in an increasingly dangerous world.https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/1949/thumbnail.jp

The influence of wildlife water developments and vegetation on rodent abundance in the Great Basin Desert

Rodent communities have multiple functions including comprising a majority of the mammalian diversity within an ecosystem, providing a significant portion of the available biomass consumed by predators, and contributing to ecosystem services. Despite the importance of rodent communities, few investigations have explored the effects of increasing anthropogenic modifications to the landscape on rodents. Throughout the western United States, the construction of artificial water developments to benefit game species is commonplace. While benefits for certain species have been documented, several researchers recently hypothesized that these developments may cause unintentional negative effects to desert-adapted species and communities. To test this idea, we sampled rodents near to and distant from wildlife water developments over 4 consecutive summers. We employed an asymmetrical before-after-control-impact (BACI) design with sampling over 4 summers to determine if water developments influenced total rodent abundance. We performed an additional exploratory analysis to determine if factors other than free water influenced rodent abundance. We found no evidence that water developments impacted rodent abundance. Rodent abundance was primarily driven by vegetation type and year of sampling. Our findings suggested that water developments on our study area do not represent a significant disturbance to rodent abundance and that rodent abundance was influenced by the vegetative community and temporal factors linked to precipitation and primary plant production. Our findings represent one of the 1st efforts to determine the effects of an anthropogenic activity on the rodent community utilizing a manipulation design

Genetic differences between adenocarcinomas arising in Barrett's esophagus and gastric mucosa

Background & Aims: Barrett adenocarcinoma (BA+) and gastric adenocarcinoma comprise a related group of neoplasms that nevertheless have some distinct clinicopathologic characteristics. This study aimed at defining critical molecular abnormalities that may underlie differences between BA+ and gastric adenocarcinomas. Methods: We used comparative genomic hybridization for the analyses of 34 xenografts of adenocarcinomas that arose from esophageal or gastric origin. Results: All tumors, except one, exhibited DNA copy number alterations. Losses in 4q and 14q and gains at 2p and 17q were more frequent in proximal (esophageal, gastroesophageal junction [GEJ], and cardia) tumors than in distal (body and antrum) tumors (P ≤ 0.050). These changes were significantly higher in BA+ compared with distal tumors (P ≤ 0.040). In addition, losses in 5q and gains at 20q were significantly higher in BA+ than in distal cancers (P ≤ 0.040). Losses in 5q and 8p and gains at 2q, 6p, 12p, and 20q were significantly more frequent in BA+ tumors (P ≤ 0.050) than in GEJ and cardiac tumors without associated Barrett's esophagus. Additionally, losses in 14q, which were common in proximal tumors, were more often seen in BA+ (P = 0.100) than in other proximal tumors. Conclusions: Although these adenocarcinomas share some common genetic alterations, the differences in the DNA copy numbers in BA+ cases suggest that unique genetic alterations may be involved in these cancers' development. GASTROENTEROLOGY 2001;121:592-59