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The iron‐armored chain horse is a military strategy in ancient China to enhance the combat force of the entire army, especially when individual fighters are vulnerable to being picked off one by one. Herein, this strategy is adopted to generate highly efficient metal‐free blue room temperature phosphorescence (RTP) using the world's largest production of dicarboxylate acid. By encapsulating the commercially available chemical disodium terephthalate (DTPA) within the iron armor of α‐cyclodextrin (α‐CD), and subsequently linking the iron‐armored DTPA@α‐CD horses into a crystalline array mediated by hydrogen bonds and Na+ coordination, a highly confined and segregated arrangement of DTPA is achieved, leading to heavy atom‐free deep‐blue phosphorescence with a maximum efficiency of 83.3%. Since the crystalline array of the iron‐armored chain horse DTPA@α‐CD can be facilely obtained through water evaporation, the current phosphorescent material allows for rapid, high‐throughput solution processing of deep‐blue afterglow display, offering an economic and environmentally benign approach for deep‐blue RTP materials and facilitating their application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the collaborative efforts at Pikes Peak State College to support veterans within the institution and community. In partnership with PPSC's Military and Veterans Program and with assistance from professional colleagues inside and outside the institution, two English faculty spearheaded efforts to organize events and create a military arts publication they hope to turn into a national journal that accepts submissions from across the country. In keeping with military strategies encouraging teamwork and adaptation, they have built a framework for ongoing military and veteran outreach in the Pikes Peak region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Combat-related gunshot wounds (GSW) may differ from those found in civilian trauma centers. Missile velocity, resources, logistics, and body armor may affect injury patterns and management strategies. This study compares injury patterns, management, and outcomes in isolated abdominal GSW between military (MIL) and civilian (CIV) populations. Methods: The Department of Defense Trauma Registry (DoDTR) and TQIP databases were queried for patients with isolated abdominal GSW from 2013 to 2016. MIL patients were propensity score matched 1:3 based on age, sex, and extraabdominal AIS. Injury patterns and in-hospital outcomes were compared. Initial operative management strategies, including selective nonoperative management (SNOM) for isolated solid organ injuries, were also compared. Results: Of the 6435 patients with isolated abdominal GSW, 183 (3%) MIL were identified and matched with 549 CIV patients. The MIL group had more hollow viscus injuries (84% vs. 66%) while the CIV group had more vascular injuries (10% vs. 21%) (p <.05 for both). Operative strategy differed, with more MIL patients undergoing exploratory laparotomy (95% vs. 82%) and colectomy (72% vs. 52%) (p <.05 for both). However, no difference in ostomy creation was appreciated. More SNOM for isolated solid organ injuries was performed in the CIV group (34.1% vs. 12.5%; p < 0.05). In-hospital outcomes, including mortality, were similar between groups. Conclusions: MIL abdominal GSW lead to higher rates of hollow viscus injuries compared to CIV GSW. MIL GSW are more frequently treated with resection but with similar ostomy creation compared to civilian GSW. SNOM of solid organ injuries is infrequently performed following MIL GSW. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite countless studies on victory in armed conflict, scholars disagree about the exact meaning of this term. This article, using primary sources in Hebrew and Arabic, aims to define victory and to discern between types of successful outcomes in war. We analyze three case studies of military collision between Israel and Hamas through a model featuring four levels: tactical, operational, strategic, and systemic. The study shows that in all three clashes (2008, 2012, 2014), the outcomes are difficult to evaluate because the boundaries between the definitions are foggy. It also concludes that neither side has achieved a strategic victory that breaks the status quo that has held since June 2007—though Hamas's leaders have claimed strategic victory due to the group's survival. Israel, without advanced planning, has relied on tactical wins for its strategic policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The processes that transitioned Sudan from a deeply securitized kleptocracy into a fledgling democracy have generated stressors that are now threatening its collapse. The country's two rival generals—Abdel Fattah al‐Burhan of the Sudan Armed Forces and Mohammed Hamden Dagalo (nom de guerre Hemedti) of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces—have plunged Sudan into a bloodbath. Khartoum, the capital that had been an island of civility since it was ransacked by Dervishes in 1885, has been engulfed in fierce battles since the two groups turned on each other in April 2023. Unpacking the host of factors that prompted the bloody conflict is a complex task, but the rivals and their allies are the chief culprits. Once created as a means to run counterinsurgency strategy on the cheap, the Rapid Support Forces has expanded its capacity and become a major power center. Originating in Darfur as a plunder machine of the Janjaweed militias, the group outgrew its function and became a private army capable of routing overlords in quick succession. This article traces the roots of the Rapid Support Forces to demonstrate the structural factors threatening Sudan's stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2020, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced the development of a new operational concept called Decisive Victory that aimed to change the way Israel fights wars and to redefine victory on the battlefield. The root cause of this change was the evolution in nonstate threats from armed groups in Gaza and Lebanon. The concept was to drive major reforms of the IDF in training, interoperability among the services, weapons procurement, and civil‐military relations. However, the efforts encountered significant challenges in terms of politics, financial resources, and the implications for the IDF's force structure. This article examines these developments to shed light on the evolving way of war in the Middle East and the struggle within the IDF to redefine its posture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Russo–Ukrainian war has lasted longer than expected due to a combination of two reasons: security threats and military‐strategic conflicts. It turned out that through this conflict, the paradigm of war has changed rapidly enough to be called a game changer. This article aims to provide a theoretical analysis of the main factors in Russia's foreign policy that concern a security threat to the instability of the geopolitical buffer zone and Greater Eurasian military strategy, including the leadership of Putinism 4.0, which influenced the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It examines the development aspects and implications of special military Operation Z, which is regarded as Russia's defense military strategy against conflicts with NATO's eastward expansion and Eurasian pluralism. The analysis found that Russia's military strategy and foreign policy will be preemptive and proactive in seeking international security and global order, but at times, however, they show defensive and reactive characteristics. As examined, external factors such as security threats to the identity of a great power in Eurasia, instability in the buffer zone, fear of encirclement on the border, and historical and ethnic factors are expected to serve as constant variables in the decision‐making process of Russia's military strategy and foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the past 15 years, there have been increasing calls for the United States to reduce its overseas force structure and to bring troops home. Such discussion accelerated during the Trump administration, and perceptions of American retrenchment were heightened by President Joe Biden's decision to withdraw from Afghanistan. This article asks the key question: Is Washington really engaging in a systematic pullout from the Middle East? Based on publicly available evidence, I argue that, contrary to common perceptions, the American military is actually increasing its forward presence in the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf region. In addition, I contend that the two other states that have the potential to replace the United States in the Middle East, Russia and China, are for multiple reasons incapable of doing so. In addition to puncturing the myths, the article contributes to the ongoing policy debates and theoretical literatures regarding Middle East security and great‐power competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the importance of emotions such as fear, enmity and hatred during the Wars of the Roses. Despite the large body of scholarship on the wars and extensive corpus of primary sources, historians have not looked at the Wars of the Roses from this perspective. This lacuna is unfortunate for two reasons. First, examining the role of emotions provides an additional insight into the wars that current discussions have viewed as tangential. Second, the Wars of the Roses provide a different way of viewing emotions in medieval warfare from studies of emotions in other wars. Discussions of emotions in medieval warfare tend to examine the experiences and mental worlds of individual combatants, the performative value of emotions in political conflict or the use of emotions in the memory of wars. In contrast, this article demonstrates that, during the Wars of the Roses, emotions had a real and tangible influence on the course and outcome of the wars, also influencing military strategy. This article highlights the potential of the late medieval English sources for revealing the use of emotions in war. It then examines three ways in which emotions shaped the wars: the personal enmities between successive dukes of Somerset and members of the House of York; regional hatreds between northerners and southerners; and finally collective hatred and blame directed towards individual councillors. Taken together, the material examined here provides new insights into the tangible effects that emotions had on the strategies of commanders and the politics a late medieval conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid advancement of commercial wearable sensing technologies provides an unprecedented opportunity to gather information that improves warfighter performance during military activities and to detect the onset of illness (such as COVID‐19) through surveillance. However, the promise of improved performance and illness prevention through these technologies remains unfulfilled because of the complexity of guaranteeing that technology development outside of the standard military acquisition cycle will meet military requirements. The key to meeting this challenge is to facilitate coordination among R&D efforts, commercially developed products, and military acquisition strategies. To address this, we developed an MBSE architecture and methodology for validating independently developed wearable system designs against military end‐user needs. This methodology includes developing a conceptual framework, a model library, and a capability needs matrix that maps defense mission characteristics to physiological states and product design implementations. This architecture allows military stakeholders to determine where capability gaps or opportunities for wider application of commercial technologies exist, thus providing a bridge between externally developed wearable sensing technologies and military acquisition strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current US military research focused on the development of pharmacological 'super soldiers' – soldiers enhanced through a variety of pharmaceuticals and biomedical technologies to perform far beyond what unenhanced soldiers can do – draws from and often mimics popular or pop‐cultural conceptions of the superhero. These biomedical and pharmacological interventions pose profound ethical problems and possibilities that are solved – in part – by imagining the new US super soldier as a superhero. Drugging soldiers to enhance their ability to fight and survive is a frightening proposition, and one that makes people uncomfortable; the solution is to imagine them as superheroes – as positive representations of the enhanced soldier on the side of good, somehow contained and controllable and fundamentally safe and unfrightening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Definitions of sea power in reputable studies can be classified into two broad categories: sea power as a form of military power at sea, and sea power as the capacity at or from the sea to influence others' actions or conditions. Despite the differences in definitions of sea power, the relevant literature written by international relations scholars, maritime historians, and naval affairs experts is abundant and has primarily focused on grand strategies, military strategies, and military doctrines. This paper briefly introduces an exceptional monograph on the logistic foundation of British maritime ascendancy, but it has not sufficiently explored the political processes of sea power. This paper thus utilises the concepts of politics, elite coalition, and power source to highlight the importance of studying the political processes behind the creation, maintenance, enhancement, and even corrosion and destruction of sea power. Specifically, building on the logistics of maritime ascendancy, this paper suggests that it is not only essential to examine how the state co‐ordinates all required resources for its sea power, but that it is also necessary to evaluate how elite coalitions amenable to sea power are organised and sustained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Armed drones are now a key component of military strategy; however, little empirical research has explored the phenomenon in terms of psychological processes. Previous research has emphasized the importance of basic human values for structuring understandings of and opinions towards foreign policy issues. Using a social representations approach, we used a multilevel modeling approach to explore the link between values and support for the use of armed drones in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Turkey. In line with our predictions, high priority of self‐transcendence values negatively predicted, and high priority of conservation values positively predicted, support for armed drones. Furthermore, given our theoretical framework, we specified that values should be conceptualized as prioritized or devalued within a particular context, and when values were specified as country‐level, as well as individual predictors, this led to an increase in model fit. These findings are discussed in light of a developing line of research on meta‐representations and their consequences for political opinion, and directions for future research are advanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International strategies vary in their potential to exploit and augment a firm's resources, especially its knowledge base. Resource-based analysis suggests clustering the diverse entry modes in terms of their exploitation and augmentation characteristics. We thus introduce a new categorization of entry modes based on their potential to augment the resources of an entrant. We then explore the antecedents of these modes, and advance testable propositions delimiting for which firms and in which circumstances each mode maximizes long-term value creation. Finally, we outline how our resource-based framework complements transaction-cost-based frameworks. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There exist two prominent accounts of how managers make sense of and take action in relation to strategic issues. The threat–opportunity (TO) and feasibility–urgency (FU) approaches primarily emphasize automatic/affective and active/deliberative strategic issue diagnosis processes, respectively. Current research, however, does not effectively integrate or fully explore the relationship between these two frameworks. We employ theory-building literature to develop a framework that highlights four distinct and increasingly integrative lenses through which such an exploration can be systematically carried out. Analyzing data from how firms reacted to the economic uncertainty of early 2003, the results of our study indicate that the FU approach is a better predictor of both intentions and actual responses than the TO approach. Our results also indicate that threat is positively related to urgency and negatively related to feasibility, while opportunity is positively related to feasibility and negatively related to urgency. Further, using the expectancy–instrumentality–valence (EIV) motivational theory as a framework, we factor analyze both TO and FU items, identifying three underlying constructs of favorability, urgency, and influence (which we dub FUI). FUI has a higher predictive efficacy than the TO approach alone. We highlight implications for theory building and research in the strategic issue diagnosis literature. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do strategic actions of borrowers and lenders affect corporate debt values? We find higher bond spreads for firms that can renegotiate debt contracts relatively easily. Consistent with theories of strategic debt service, the threat of strategic default depresses bond values ex ante, even though there may be efficiency gains from renegotiation ex post. However, the economic significance of the net effect is small, suggesting that bondholders have considerable bargaining power. The effect of strategic actions is higher when creditors are particularly vulnerable to strategic threats, including risky firms with high managerial shareholding, simple debt structures, and high liquidation costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We hypothesize that insiders strategically choose disclosure policies and the timing of their equity trades to maximize trading profits, subject to the litigation costs associated with disclosure and insider trading. Accounting for endogeneity between disclosures and trading, we find that when managers plan to purchase shares, they increase the number of bad news forecasts to reduce the purchase price. In addition, this relation is stronger for trades initiated by chief executive officers than for those initiated by other executives. Confirming this strategic behavior, we find that managers successfully time their trades around bad news forecasts, buying fewer shares beforehand and more afterwards. We do not find that managers adjust their forecasting activity when they are selling shares, consistent with higher litigation concerns associated with insider sales. Overall, our evidence suggests that insiders do exploit voluntary disclosure opportunities for personal gain, but only selectively, when litigation risk is sufficiently low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how the informational structure of loan markets interacts with banks' strategic behavior in determining lending standards, lending volume, and the aggregate allocation of credit. We show that, as banks obtain private information about borrowers and information asymmetries across banks decrease, banks may loosen their lending standards, leading to an equilibrium with deteriorated bank portfolios, lower profits, and expanded aggregate credit. These lower standards are associated with greater aggregate surplus and greater risk of financial instability. We therefore provide an explanation for the sequence of financial liberalization, lending booms, and banking crises observed in many emerging markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a novel approach to dynamic portfolio selection that is as easy to implement as the static Markowitz paradigm. We expand the set of assets to include mechanically managed portfolios and optimize statically in this extended asset space. We consider “conditional” portfolios, which invest in each asset an amount proportional to conditioning variables, and “timing” portfolios, which invest in each asset for a single period and in the risk-free asset for all other periods. The static choice of these managed portfolios represents a dynamic strategy that closely approximates the optimal dynamic strategy for horizons up to 5 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents a strong relationship between short-run reversals and stock illiquidity, even after controlling for trading volume. The largest reversals and the potential contrarian trading strategy profits occur in high turnover, low liquidity stocks, as the price pressures caused by non-informational demands for immediacy are accommodated. However, the contrarian trading strategy profits are smaller than the likely transactions costs. This lack of profitability and the fact that the overall findings are consistent with rational equilibrium paradigms suggest that the violation of the efficient market hypothesis due to short-term reversals is not so egregious after all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Papers published on the resource-based theory (RBT) have made clear its widespread application, heterogeneity, and usefulness as a strategic approach. This paper empirically analyzes the assumptions underlying the theory from an inductive perspective. The paper differs from previous works by identifying the main trends within the theory and by noting their diffusion among the leading management-oriented journals. Three main trends are shown to coexist within RBT: the resource-based view, the knowledge-based view, and the relational view. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores reasons why organizations adopt or reject human resource practices. Four theoretical approaches are brought to bear on this issue. According to the economic approach, organizations adopt HR practices that are economically beneficial to them. Similarly, the alignment approach views firms as adopting HR practices if these practices are aligned with strategic objectives. In contrast, the decision-making approach invokes a constrained-rationality model of managerial judgment, and the diffusion approach attributes the adoption/rejection decision to institutional pressures that encourage imitation. Literature in these areas is reviewed and the implications for HR research and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

HR outsourcing as an organizational strategy has increased substantially over the last decade. However, this trend has attracted little academic attention regarding how outsourcing decisions are made, the manner in which these decisions are implemented, how outsourcing effectiveness is measured, and its impact on organizational performance. In this article, we provide a critical review of the reasons for, the processes involved in, and the perceived effectiveness of HR outsourcing. We investigate the implications of HR outsourcing for the role of the HR function and for the various groups of people affected by this strategy. We argue that organizations should apply both the resource-based view and institutional theory when making outsourcing decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue that our model of learning in alliances (Khanna, Gulati and Nohria, 1998) is an economic model of strategy process. We discuss implications of this view for the strategy process vs. content debate, for the appropriate testing of models of strategy process, and for the role of economics in helping understand strategy process. We propose that the 'clean models' from economics and 'dirty hands' of traditional process inquiries offer research designs that are complementary rather than incompatible (Hirsch, Michaels and Friedman, 1987). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a game‐theoretic model of attack and defense of multiple networks of targets in which there exist intranetwork strategic complementarities among targets. The defender's objective is to successfully defend all the networks and the attacker's objective is to successfully attack at least one network of targets. Although there are multiple equilibria, we characterize correlation structures in the allocations of forces across targets that arise in all equilibria. For example, in all equilibria the attacker utilizes a stochastic “guerrilla warfare” strategy in which a single random network is attacked. (JEL C72, D74) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents that strategies which buy stocks that have performed well in the past and sell stocks that have performed poorly in the past generate significant positive returns over 3- to 12-month holding periods. We find that the profitability of these strategies are not due to their systematic risk or to delayed stock price reactions to common factors. However, part of the abnormal returns generated in the first year after portfolio formation dissipates in the following two years. A similar pattern of returns around the earnings announcements of past winners and losers is also documented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When a linguistically distinctive ethnicity is surrounded by much larger powers, its leader usually needs resources from one of them – and then that power may try to absorb it. The local leader quickly switches to reliance on the previous protector's main foreign enemy, simultaneously purging (often killing) domestic rivals. Albania's long history through Enver Hoxha, like North Korea's under Kim Jong‐un still, shows recurrent examples of this link between independence and dictatorship – although not all tyrants emerge in this way. The essay also discloses violent aspects of past South Korean politics that few readers of English know. Historical parallels can be observed without any universal covering “law.” Further examples explore limits of this method. History can inform policies toward nonproliferation (American, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean), elucidate the recent effects of surrounding pluralistic states on small countries, and provide evidence about the likely benefits of Korean patriotism and reunification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Since cyberattacks are nonphysical, standard theories of casus belli — which typically rely on the violent and forceful nature of military means — appear inapplicable. Yet, some theorists have argued that cyberattacks nonetheless can constitute just causes for war — generating a unilateral right to defensive military action — when they cause significant physical damage through the disruption of the target's computer systems. I show that this view suffers from a serious drawback: it is too permissive concerning the types of actions that generate casus belli since many essentially peaceful and non‐violent mechanisms can nonetheless cause physical damage. I resolve this difficulty by developing a sovereignty‐based account of casus belli and applying it to cyberwarfare. I argue that legitimate states have a constrained right to unilaterally respond with military force to unfriendly actions that bypass or overwhelm the political deliberations of the target state in order to force a change in behaviour contrary to the determinations of the people of the target state. This new account of casus belli avoids the problems of the consequence‐based view by plausibly restricting the types of unfriendly action that give rise to casus belli and yet offers an attractive explanation for why some cyberattacks nonetheless do generate a potential right to a unilateral defensive response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reintegration following deployment is a pivotal time for returning service members and at-home partners. We test logic derived from the relational turbulence model about depressive symptoms, relational uncertainty, and interference from a partner as predictors of people's appraisals of turmoil during the post-deployment transition. Participants were 118 military couples who completed an online questionnaire once per month for the first 3 months after homecoming. Multilevel models predicting people's appraisals of turmoil revealed (a) actor and partner effects of depressive symptoms, (b) actor effects of relational uncertainty, and (c) actor effects of interference from a partner that were apparent beyond people's appraisals of turmoil during the previous month. These findings advance both theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines smart power, specifically in relation to US counter-terrorism initiatives, focusing on US foreign aid as a soft power instrument. Economic aid and military aid are disbursed under the auspices of USAID and the military is tasked with soft and hard power strategies that have proven problematic to manage as 'an integrated grand strategy'. Identifying variables that accurately indicate the success or otherwise of smart power as a counter-terror strategy is problematic. Nevertheless a tentative correlation can be drawn between high levels of US aid and low levels of trust in the US in frontline Islamic states. This has led to slippage between hard and soft power and un-smart policy. Consequently a gap has emerged between what the US hopes that the international community will respond to in terms of smart power as a counter-terror initiative and what actually happens. The US has tended to revert to hard power tools in the face of this gap. I argue that foreign aid must not only be soft but 'sticky' in order for smart power strategies to succeed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This systematic review assessed the methodological quality of behavioural weight loss intervention studies conducted among adults and associations between quality and statistically significant weight loss outcome, strength of intervention effectiveness and sample size. Searches for trials published between January, 2009 and December, 2014 were conducted using PUBMED, MEDLINE and PSYCINFO and identified ninety studies. Methodological quality indicators included study design, anthropometric measurement approach, sample size calculations, intent-to-treat (ITT) analysis, loss to follow-up rate, missing data strategy, sampling strategy, report of treatment receipt and report of intervention fidelity (mean = 6.3). Indicators most commonly utilized included randomized design (100%), objectively measured anthropometrics (96.7%), ITT analysis (86.7%) and reporting treatment adherence (76.7%). Most studies (62.2%) had a follow-up rate > 75% and reported a loss to follow-up analytic strategy or minimal missing data (69.9%). Describing intervention fidelity (34.4%) and sampling from a known population (41.1%) were least common. Methodological quality was not associated with reporting a statistically significant result, effect size or sample size. This review found the published literature of behavioural weight loss trials to be of high quality for specific indicators, including study design and measurement. Identified for improvement include utilization of more rigorous statistical approaches to loss to follow up and better fidelity reporting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A robust and efficient dynamic grid strategy based on an overset grid coupled with mesh deformation technique is proposed for simulating unsteady flow of flapping wings undergoing large geometrical displacement. The dynamic grid method was implemented using a hierarchical unstructured overset grid locally coupled with a fast radial basis function (RBF)-based mapping approach. The hierarchically organized overset grid allows transferring the grid resolution for multiple blocks and overlapping/embedding the meshes. The RBF-based mapping approach is particularly highlighted in this paper in view of its considerable computational efficiency compared with conventional RBF evaluation. The performance of the proposed dynamic mesh strategy is demonstrated by three typical unsteady cases, including a rotating rectangular block in a fixed domain, a relative movement between self-propelled fishes and the X-wing type flapping-wing micro air vehicle DelFly, which displays the clap-and-fling wing-interaction phenomenon on both sides of the fuselage. Results show that the proposed method can be applied to the simulation of flapping wings with satisfactory efficiency and robustness. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hot spot policing is a popular policing strategy that addresses crime by assigning limited police resources to areas where crimes are more highly concentrated. We analyze this strategy using a game theoretic approach. The main argument against focusing police resources on hot spots is that it would simply displace criminal activity from one area to another. We provide new insights on the nature of the displacement effect with useful implications for the empirical analysis of crime-reduction effects of police reallocation. We also propose alternative place-based policies that display attractive properties in terms of geographic spillovers of crime reduction via optimal police reallocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trap‐assisted recombination is one of the main loss mechanisms in bulk‐heterojunction (BHJ) solar cells. Results suggest that introducing a near infrared (NIR) polymer into the 2,3‐bis(3‐(octyloxy)phenyl)quinoxaline (PIDTTQ):[6,6]‐phenyl C70 butyric acid methyl ester (PC70BM) host system suppresses trap‐assisted recombination in the binary blend, leading to a significant improvement of ≈60% in power conversion efficiency for ternary organic solar cells at low light intensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Precision weapons such as drones have become important elements of the military strategies of the United States and other countries. How does the use of precision weapons influence public support for the use of force? The public is averse to casualties, mission failure, and collateral damage. I argue that precision weapons increase the salience and importance of avoiding civilian harm. Individuals adopt their expectations about the outcomes of using these weapons and have lower tolerance for attacks that result in civilian deaths. This proposition is consistent with the results of two survey experiments. In the first, the possibility of civilian casualties leads to larger declines in support for the use of force than do military casualties or mission failure. In the second, respondents primed with information about an attack with precision weapons exhibited less tolerance for civilian harm than those primed with other weapons systems, despite the fact that the outcomes described to all respondents were identical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Russian military policy, strategy, military relations with nations and military readiness under Russian President Vladimir Putin from 2008 through 2015, including in regard to Russian defense spending, its relationship with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Russia's imperialist foreign policy. An overview of the United States' relations with Russia, including in regard to Russia's nuclear weapons capability relative to U.S. missile defenses, is provided. An overview of Russia's involvement in the Separatist Conflict in Ukraine is also provided.

When people interact in familiar settings, social conventions usually develop so that people tend to disregard alternatives outside the convention. For rational players to usually restrict attention to a block of conventional strategies, no player should prefer to deviate from the block when others are likely to act conventionally and rationally inside the block. We explore two set-valued concepts, coarsely and finely tenable blocks, that formalize this notion for finite normal-form games. We then identify settled equilibria, which are Nash equilibria with support in minimal tenable blocks. For a generic class of normal-form games, our coarse and fine concepts are equivalent, and yet they differ from standard solution concepts on open sets of games. We demonstrate the nature and power of the solutions by way of examples. Settled equilibria are closely related to persistent equilibria but are strictly more selective on an open set of games. With fine tenability, we obtain invariance under the insertion of a subgame with a unique totally mixed payoff-equivalent equilibrium, a property that other related concepts have not satisfied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This article explores the potential and limits of contemporary economic rights-based social activism by analysing an ongoing 'Right to Food Campaign' in India. While social movement theory often positions radical and reform strategies as alternatives, the RTF campaign has adopted a hybrid strategy: it has made a radical legal demand that the right to food be recognized as intrinsic to the right to life, while seeking implementation of this right through reform of existing government feeding programmes. The campaign's dual strategy reflects two distinct logics of human rights: a logic of non-derogable rights that are immediately actionable (such as the right to life) and a logic of progressive implementation of rights that can only be realized fully over time (such as economic rights). This article draws on original data to demonstrate that the campaign's radical legal demands framed around the non-derogable right to life have come closer to fulfilment than its reformist demands around progressive implementation. The RTF campaign's relative success in galvanizing legal action on hunger is tempered by ongoing challenges in sustaining grassroots-level mobilization and influencing public policy implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an oligopoly model with firms choosing to produce in one of two periods, we identify the circumstance under which a firm's having early information regarding stochastic demand results in market leadership. High demand volatility leads to Stackelberg competition with the information-advantaged firm leading. In the N-firm case an equilibrium with multiple leaders and multiple followers emerges endogenously. In a duopoly information acquisition game we identify conditions that determine whether neither, one, or both firms will pay to acquire early information and note that one firm's obtaining early information may generate a positive externality benefitting its competitor. Both symmetric and asymmetric outcomes are possible and Stackelberg market leadership may occur in equilibrium, but only when firms have different costs of information. Our finding that an information advantage may convey leadership which then affects the value of information to the players applies to other settings exhibiting first-mover advantage such as certain public good provision games. ( JEL C72, D82, L13) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that time priming leads consumers to adopt an alternative-based evaluation strategy, whereas money priming elicits the use of an attribute-based evaluation strategy. In Experiment 1, we used process tracing in Mouselab to test this proposition, and the results suggested that the effect of time versus money priming on the choice of product-evaluation strategy was mediated by a holistic versus piecemeal information-processing. The results of Experiments 2A and 2B showed that the use of time versus money priming to trigger the choice of an alternative-based versus attribute-based evaluation strategy may result in systematic preference reversals. Specifically, when time (versus money) was primed, the participants were found to be more likely to choose a product dominating on a verbally described (versus numerically described) attribute (Experiment 2A), and one dominating on a non-alignable (versus alignable) attribute (Experiment 2B). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Regulatory fit, or the match between an individual's regulatory orientation and the strategy used to sustain it, offers a pervasive predictor of customer behavior. Merely reaching a decision in a certain way influences the value of a decision or an outcome. In this research, we conduct a meta-analysis to more fully articulate the role of important conceptual moderators and demonstrate their differential effects on evaluation, behavioral intention, and behavior. In particular, we look at the source of regulatory focus (self-prime, situation-prime, chronic), the orientation (prevention, promotion), how fit is created (sustaining, matching), how fit is constructed (action, observation), and the scope of fit (incidental, integral). We also shed light on the role of several contextual factors. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper I use the case of Spanish to argue that language regularities may give rise to multiple strategies for marking focus. In addition to the well-known observation that focus can be marked by word order and intonation, I present experimental results regarding ellipsis that show that overt full DPs in subject position in Spanish are marked as focused. This strategy is linked to a language regularity, namely the availability of silent ( pro) subjects. In Spanish, there is a preference for pro subjects. Overt full DPs in subject position are marked, and the presence of overt full DPs is used to indicate focus on the subject (the pro-drop hypothesis). I will provide a novel syntactic analysis of the ellipsis structures, discuss discourse licensing conditions and present two experiments that investigate preferences in ellipsis resolution and argue in favor of the pro-drop hypothesis. Experiment 1 compares structural preferences for ellipsis resolution across bare argument ellipsis and replacives, investigating the role of syntax and the information-structure status of the subject. Experiment 2 compares the resolution of ellipsis with antecedents with overt DP subjects versus pro subjects. The paper also establishes links with the processing of ellipsis in other languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-sectoral community health care alliances are organizations that bring together individuals and organizations from different industry sectors to work collaboratively on improving the health and health care in local communities. Long-term success and sustainability of alliances are dependent on their ability to galvanize participants to take action within their 'home' organizations and institutionalize the vision, goals, and programs within participating organizations and the broader community. The purpose of this study was to investigate two mechanisms by which alliance leadership and management processes may promote such changes within organizations participating in alliances. The findings of the study suggest that, despite modest levels of change undertaken by participating organizations, more positive perceptions of alliance leadership, decision making, and conflict management were associated with a greater likelihood of participating organizations making changes as a result of their participation in the alliance, in part by promoting greater vision, mission, and strategy agreement and higher levels of perceived value. Leadership processes had a stronger relationship with change within participating organizations than decision-making style and conflict management processes. Open-ended responses by participants indicated that participating organizations most often incorporated new measures or goals into their existing portfolio of strategic plans and activities in response to alliance participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the majority of combat veterans reintegrate into civilian life without long-lasting problems, a sizable minority return from deployment with psychiatric or physical injuries that warrant medical attention. Even in the absence of diagnosable disorders, many experience functional problems that impede full reintegration into civilian life. Considerable resources have been allocated to studying, diagnosing, treating, and compensating combat-related disorders. This important work has resulted in significant improvements in healthcare for those with deployment-related difficulties. Nevertheless, many service members and veterans with reintegration difficulty may not receive needed help. Based on our review, we argue that in addition to treatment and compensation for diagnosable postdeployment problems, a comprehensive approach to reintegration is needed that includes partnership between the government, private sector, and the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]