-
Social identification, not obedience, is the motive for unspeakable acts
What makes soldiers abuse prisoners? How could Nazi officials condemn thousands of Jews to gas chamber deaths? What is going on when underlings help cover up a financial swindle? For half a decade or so, the dominant view – following the famous Milgram experiments – has been that people engage in barbaric acts because they have little insight into what they are doing and conform slavishly to the will of authority; new research suggests that we need to rethink obedience as the standard explanation for why people engage in cruel and brutal behavior
-
-
Police officers need sleep for health, performance
Forget bad guys and gunfire: Being a police officer can be hazardous to your health in other ways; a news study found that officers working the evening or night shifts were fourteen times more likely to get less restful sleep than day-shift officers, and also were subjected to more back-to-back shifts, exacerbating their sleep deficit – and that police officers who sleep fewer than six hours per night are more susceptible to a variety of health problems
-
-
New algorithm for wireless networks inspired by frog calls
Males of the Japanese tree frog have learnt not to use their calls at the same time so that the females can distinguish among them and locate the caller; scientists say this is a model that can be used for creating a more efficient wireless communication systems
-
-
Studying predator search patterns to improve human searches
The inspiration for the next Google or search-and-rescue drone may spring from a seemingly unlikely source: Watching how animals sniff out food; innovators in everything from robotics to Internet search engines study patterns that animal predators walk while searching for prey; mathematical models which have been used in the past to study these patterns, however, are in need of a little revamping, researchers say — because in the animal kingdom, scent plays a major role in tracking prey
-
-
Unmanned systems emulate animals’ conditioned fear-response mechanism for self-preservation
When animals in the wild engage in eating or grazing, their eyes, ears, and sense of smell continuously monitor the environment for any sense of danger; researchers developed a similar conditioned fear-response mechanism for unmanned systems
-
-
Will rising temperatures lead to rising crime rates?
General Strain Theory has become one of the leading explanations for crime, and Emory University’s Professor Robert Agnew, has become its chief architect; he argues that rising temperatures will lead to more strains — increased temperatures, heat waves, natural disasters, serious threats to livelihood (farming, herding, fishing), forced migrations on a massive scale, and social conflicts arising as nations and groups compete for increasingly scarce food, fresh water, and fuel – and more strains invariably lead to rising crime rates
-
-
Study suggests ways to cut billions from Pentagon budget
The Department of Defense currently spends $400 billion each year acquiring products and services from defense contractors. About $100 billion of the money is spent on administrative costs; one way to reduce the high administrative cists could be “relational contracting,” a concept that has helped private industry dramatically reduce the costs of doing business
-
-
New contracting model would allow the Pentagon to do more with less
Old-school, transactional product support paid defense contractors to ship spare parts and do repairs; it paid contractors to “fix-on-failure”; management experts say that DoD should adopt a different contracting model: Performance-Based Life Cycle Product Support Management, or PBL; under PBL, the military buys system performance, or outcomes, rather than products or services, and a contractor is responsible for providing a defined level of equipment readiness or availability, whatever the cost
-
-
Iran could test-fly ICBMs capable of striking U.S. within three years: Pentagon
A Pentagon report submitted to Congress on 29 June says Iran continues to make large strides in virtually all conventional, unconventional, and nuclear categories; the report focused most extensively on Iran’s inventory of ballistic missiles, and warned that Iran may be able to test-fly an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM), capable of striking American soil, within three years’ time; Iran also continues to supply men, money, training, and even sophisticated weapons systems to some of the world’s best-known terror groups
-
-
New research raises questions about iris recognition systems
Since the early days of iris recognition technologies, it has been assumed that the iris was a “stable” biometric over a person’s lifetime — “one enrollment for life”; researchers find, however, that iris biometric enrollment is susceptible to an aging process that causes recognition performance to degrade slowly over time
-
-
Using cold plasma to fight fires
Traditional fire-suppression technologies focus largely on disrupting the chemical reactions involved in combustion; from a physics perspective, however, flames are cold plasmas; DARPA, the Pentagon’s research arm, theorized that by using physics techniques rather than combustion chemistry, it might be possible to manipulate and extinguish flames
-
-
FDNY conducts live fire tests to test improvements in fire department tactics
In the name of science, but with aim of saving lives, preventing injuries, and reducing property losses, members of the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) spent much of the first two weeks in July setting fire to twenty abandoned townhouses on Governors Island, about a kilometer from the southern tip of Manhattan
-
-
Small, local energy technologies to help sustain vital services during blackouts
Researchers suggest that rethinking the solution to sustaining electric power — namely, starting small — could keep critical services going, even when the high-voltage grid is crippled; the U.S. military is already taking steps to protect its power supplies in the event of a massive grid failure by adopting small, local energy technologies, and California governor Jerry Brown recently announced that he wants 12,000 megawatts of such power supplies in his state
-
-
ONR new universal gateway improves network data sharing on Navy ships
On any Navy destroyer, cruiser, or carrier today, there are two networks: one for combat systems (weapons and sensors) and one for command and control, or C2, which also encompasses intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; there are some thirty interconnections between the two networks, making it difficult to integrate data into a real-time common operating picture, as well as expensive to maintain; the Office of Naval Research’s Universal Gateway, which collapses the 30 connections into a single portal
-
-
Voice recognition capabilities at the FBI -- from the 1960s to the present
Chris Archer, the online content editor at IDGA (the Institute for Defense & Government Advancement), talked with Hirotaka Nakasone, a senior scientist in the FBI’s Voice Recognition Program; Nakasone examines the use and effectiveness of current speaker authentication technologies at the FBI; highlights the various challenges which are unique to voice recognition, and discusses what plans are in place for capturing voice recordings in line with the FBI’s Next Generation Identification (NGI project)
-
More headlines
The long view
How Quickly Could Iran Make Nuclear Weapons Today?
For Iran, two of the three poles in the tent of building nuclear weapons – fissile material and delivery vehicles — are essentially complete. It will take them one week to enrich enough uranium to 90 percent for one bomb (and one month to enrich enough uranium for six bombs). Iran also has a variety of delivery systems, including nuclear-capable missiles: the delivery pole is ready. Weaponization is the pole that needs more work. The accelerated weaponization program can be accomplished in a matter of six months.
Fifty-Five Hours of Risk: The Dangerous Implications of Slow Attack Attribution
Assuming that its foreign adversaries’ recent violent threats are to be taken seriously, and that the likelihood of a direct attack against the United States is, if not on the rise, at least significant enough to warrant serious attention, the United States has an urgent mandate to prepare effective cognitive defenses. Foremost among these is the ability to quickly and accurately attribute attacks to their originators, and to deliver that information to the public through a trustworthy vehicle.
What Can We Learn from the Nation’s Historic Decline in Murders?
The U.S. endured a spike in gun violence during the pandemic, but it’s subsiding in many places. A researcher puts the latest homicide statistics into context — and warns lawmakers not to become complacent.
Is Left-Wing Terrorism Making a Comeback in Germany? Analyzing the “Engel – Guntermann Network”
For Germany, the reemergence of more violence orientated left-wing extremist actors has diversified the threat posed by non-state actors even further. Violent left-wing extremism is also of growing concern across Europe. While left-wing violent extremism does not currently represent as acute a threat as currently manifested by jihadist and right-wing terrorist attacks, the recent concerning trend among German left-wing extremists is toward greater violence and transnationalism.
Saving Seconds, Saving Lives: NIST-Funded Challenge Crowns Winners in 3D Tracking Technology
NIST has awarded $1.9 million to six teams for innovative 3D tracking solutions in the final phase of a competition. The winning designs combine localization and biometric monitoring, using sensors affixed to first responders’ equipment. This competition is part of an $8 million NIST-funded initiative to address first responders’ need for improved tracking in emergency settings where GPS falls short.
For First Responders, Communication with Their Teams is Essential
When a first responder enters a building during an emergency, they count on being able to communicate with their team at all times. Their safety and their ability to carry out the mission relies on knowing they can reach help and support anywhere that they need to go within a structure.