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Book Reviews, Usawc Press

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

Character Traits Strategic Leaders Need, Tami Davis Biddle

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Strategic leaders must possess a range of skills to work successfully in complex environments. To use those skills to best effect, they rely on character traits that enhance the likelihood of their effectiveness as leaders and maximize their success when working in teams. Certain elements of character facilitate work in demanding settings that rely heavily on communication, integration, and cooperation. Programs designed to educate senior leaders must help future national security professionals identify these traits and then practice and hone them. Highlighting individuals with challenging roles in World War II, this essay analyzes the qualities of character that enabled them …

From The Editor In Chief, Antulio J. Echevarria Ii

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

Dysfunctional Warfare: The Russian Invasion Of Ukraine, Rob Johnson

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was based on false premises, faulty assumptions, and a weak strategy. As the conflict has unfolded, heavy losses have imposed a strain on available Russian manpower. The Russian army reached a culminating point outside Kyiv and has exhibited little sign of operational learning. By contrast, Ukrainians have fought an existential war, making good use of dispersed light infantry tactics with high motivation levels. Western support has allowed them to compensate for their deficiencies in armaments and munitions. This commentary also shows military and policy leaders how the political context continues to impose limitations on the Ukrainians.

Putin’S Invasion Of Ukraine In 2022: Implications For Strategic Studies, Antulio J. Echevarria Ii

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

This special commentary examines critical issues for the field of strategic studies raised by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including the waning of major war, strategic coercion, and “War Amongst the People.” Drawing on previous scholarship and current events, this commentary considers the questions raised by the first major war of the twenty-first century. It provides recommendations for scholars and senior leaders on how to work together to address the questions of strategy and policy that have and continue to arise as the war progresses.

Problematic Ai — When Should We Use It?, Fredric Lederer

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Selective State Penetration: The Nexus Between Ungovernability And Terrorism In Egypt’S Northern Sinai (2011-2016), Karim Ashour

Future Journal of Social Science

Although Egypt experienced an unprecedented wave of political violence post-2011, terrorism in the North Sinai province is distinct in terms of sheer numbers, lethality, operational sophistication, and the range of actors involved in carrying out attacks. The objective of this paper is to provide an empirical explanation for why terrorism in Northern Sinai started earlier, lasted longer, was more frequently claimed, and was simply more deadly than in other Egypt provinces. The paper utilizes in-depth interviews with representatives of NGOs in Northern Sinai, journalists, residents, and security officials, as well as socio-economic data, terrorist incidents, and counter-terrorism operations to analyze …

Experimental Characterization And Manufacture Of Polymer Nanocomposite Dielectric Coatings For High-Temperature Superconductor Applications, Jacob Ryan Mahon

Theses and Dissertations

Increased implementation of high-temperature superconducting (HTS) power transmission has the potential to revolutionize the efficiency of electrical grids and help unlock a fully electric transportation infrastructure. Realizing the benefits of HTS systems has been impeded by a lack of available dielectric insulation materials that can 1) withstand the extreme cryogenic operating environment of superconductors and 2) demonstrate low temperature processing that is compatible with existing superconductor manufacturing methods. Solving this problem necessitates a high-performance dielectric material with multifunctional properties specifically suited for operation in HTS systems. A polyamide and silicon dioxide (PA/SiO2) nanocomposite material with exceptional thermal stability has been …

Trial By Combat In The Modern World, Michael L. Smith

Barry Law Review

The ancient practice of trial by combat was abandoned hundreds of years ago and has never been employed in America. Yet this has not stopped litigants and others from demanding trial by combat—a tactic which, while infrequent, implicates deeper questions of the history of American law. In the past several years, several high-profile demands for trial by combat have prompted media attention and caused several commentators to suggest that trial by combat may be an option for civil litigants. Most coverage and commentary only focuses on each instance of trial by combat as they arise—without attention to other examples of …

An Exploration Of Self-Identity Experiences Within The Lives Of Afro-Caribbean Women Undergraduate College Students: A Feminist Phenomenological Study, Shana J. Gelin

Dissertations - ALL

The purpose of this feminist phenomenological dissertation was to explore the self-identity experiences of Afro-Caribbean women undergraduate college students. In doing so, self-identity experiences, ethnic marginalization, and counseling experiences were explored for six participants. Data was collected and analyzed using Simone De Beauvoir's feminist framework of self-discovery/ rediscovery where two semi-structured interviews were conducted for each participant. This study resulted in six individual profiles illuminating the voices of each participant as well as collective themes. Findings from this study show that Afro-Caribbean women undergraduate college students filter their self-identity experiences through their ethnicity; meaning that participants understand other pieces of …

Fragmented Landscapes: An Archaeology Of Transformations In The Pra River Basin, Southern Ghana, Sean Hamilton Reid

Dissertations - ALL

This doctoral archaeological research examines the Pra River Basin in southern Ghana through lenses of landscape, temporality, and transformation. Drawing on the Annales school and the writings of Tim Ingold, this study moves away from binary constructions of natural and cultural landscape features toward a more integrated view of the landscape's long human history. The primary temporal focus of this research is the past three millennia but evidence recovered of even more ancient eras is also examined. The artifacts and features documented while surveying this landscape allow us to glimpse pre-Atlantic (pre-1450 CE) settlement patterns, subsistence, and technology, as well …

Exploring Crypsis In Dolomedes, Joshua Nichols

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Cryptic coloration and background matching are highly effective for some riparian spiders’ camouflage against detection by the human eye. Fishing spiders (genus Dolomedes, family Pisauridae), which are known to be cryptids, present anecdotal evidence of substrate specialization which suggest that these species may be adapted to specific microhabitats in riparian zones. Some of the semi-aquatic species of fishing spider utilize similar coloration to their riparian habitat and microhabitat choice has been previously documented. These characteristics increase effectiveness of their crypsis and could be explained by microhabitat specialization between two species. This project addresses which colors these spiders use, and explores …

Recovering The Gift Of Discerning Of Spirits: History, Hermeneutic, And Practical Tool For Ministry, James W. Baker Sr.

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

Abstract

Churches and ministries need to identify and recruit effective leaders. Employing the gift of discerning of spirits can help ministries identify quality leaders and avoid problems and pitfalls. This project aims to equip Pastors and Church Leaders to rediscover and utilize discerning of spirits in their leadership selection process. The significance of this project is that although there has been much written about spiritual gifts, little has been written specifically about the Discerning of Spirits and its application to leadership recruitment and development in modern ministry. It offers church and ministry leaders another avenue to recover and utilize the …

“For All You Know, I Might Be A Black Panther”: How The News Media Cultivated White Anxiety In The United States And Became A Modern Panopticon For Black Power, Caitlin Grace Leishman

History ETDs

Building upon French philosopher Michel Foucault’s analysis of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, I argue that throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, the news media and resulting culture nurtured and reinforced the postcolonial narratives that associated Blackness with criminality. I analyze the national newspaper coverage for their narrative portrayal of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP). The national media and U.S. government targeted the BPP and Black Power politics to discredit them and the overall movement for Black Liberation. I argue that this media-state project only intensified during the 1970s and into the 1980s with the country’s turn to …

Rosalind's Masculine Self: As You Like It And Criticism Of Male Communities, Faith Langford

Merge

No abstract provided.

Technology - Revealing Or Framing The Truth? A Jurisprudential Debate, Dana Neacsu

Law Faculty Publications

Technology is so much more than a prosthetic. But how much more? And what else is it? In the legal realm, its role is not yet clear. Such a lack of elucidation becomes problematic, especially when technology has the ability to convert assumptions into facts, and it takes on a truth-making, rather than a mere truth-revealing mission. This Article argues that it is problematic to enable technology to stand in for reflective thinking, and calls attention to the fact that evidentiary rules enable technology to decide what can be proven, ergo what truth is. Technology is a fork in the …

America: The World’S Police—How The Defund The Police Movement Frames An Analysis For Defunding The Military, Anya Kreider

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

In this article, the author examines the tenets of the Defund the Police movement and applies them to the American military to make the argument that not only should the police be defunded, but so should the American military. The purpose of this piece is to push the conversation regarding policing beyond American borders to examine American influence internationally. The article incorporates various Critical Race Theories to explore the intersection of policing and the military. The Defund the Police Movement also provides a framework for critiquing the American military because the American police and military are inextricably connected. Part I …

Small Business Cybersecurity: A Loophole To Consumer Data, Matthew R. Espinosa

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Small businesses and small minority owned businesses are vital to our nation’s economy; therefore legislation, regulation, and policy has been created in order to assist them in overcoming their economic stability issues and ensure they continue to serve the communities that rely on them. However, there is not a focus on regulating nor assisting small businesses to ensure their cybersecurity standards are up to par despite them increasingly becoming a victim of cyberattacks that yield high consequences. The external oversight and assistance is necessary for small businesses due to their lack of knowledge in implementing effective cybersecurity policies, the fiscal …

To The Shores Of Tripoli: A Barbary Retrospective, Kathleen J. Brett

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

The First and Second Barbary Wars were incredibly influential in shaping the diplomatic and military tactics of the early United States. These wars were fought against the Barbary states of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers, located on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa. The First Barbary War lasted between the years of 1801 to 1805. The First Barbary War began due to the United States’ desire to no longer pay tribute sums to the Barbary states, along with an increase in the number American merchantmen captured and enslaved by the Barbary states. Tripoli served as the primary aggressor in the …

“Infantry Would Not Do:” Appalachia, The Environment, And The Evolution Of Mountain Warfare During The American Civil War, Lucas Michael Wilder

Theses and Dissertations

Union General Ambrose E. Burnside launched his invasion of East Tennessee in the summer of 1863. The corps he used consisted of half-infantry and half-mounted units to utilize their speed to overcome mountain obstacles. The successful campaign and the capture of the agriculturally rich region of East Tennessee and its vital East Tennessee & Virginia Railroad deprived the Confederacy of resources, ultimately contributing to Confederate defeat. The American Civil War saw commanders plunge into the mountains of Appalachia and encounter a terrain and a people with which many were unacquainted. This dissertation argues that their tactics and strategies for dealing …

Design, Construction, And Characterization Of A Test Stand Used To Test Filter Media, Adam W. Parsons

Theses and Dissertations

Air filters are routinely used to remove various aerosols ranging from radioactive particles to airborne viruses. The overall performance of a filter may be simplified to consider only two main performance characteristics: 1) the efficiency at which particles are removed by the filter, and 2) the filter’s resistance to air flow. Per the DOE Nuclear Air Cleaning Handbook, HEPA filters require a minimum filter efficiency of 99.97% for particles 0.3 micrometers in diameter. Understanding how filters will perform with respect to time and mass loading is essential towards building more robust filters that operate more efficiently and safely. Analyzing the …

Sanctuary: The-Construction Of Communion, Carlos Salazar-Lermont

MFA in Visual Art

This thesis narrates the development of the multimedia art installation called Sanctuary. I unwrap the theoretical background of my practice, which is rooted in the theories of deconstruction by Jacques Derrida, and the rhizome theory by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. I approach my creative process as a grammatic of matter, space, and time, constructing meaning through an interplay of significants that connect to political, social, economic, and cultural implications. In the case of Sanctuary, I sought to create a path of empathy towards Venezuelan refugees in St. Louis, Missouri through the exploration of the concept of communion. …

Badger State Nationalism: World War I, The Ku Klux Klan, And The Politics Of 'Americanism' In 1915-1930 Wisconsin, William Levi

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The Ku Klux Klan is most synonymous with racism and religious bigotry, especially during the revival period of the 1920s. What is often less understood is the aggressively nationalist nature of the Klan, which in some locales proved to be its most potent symbol and recruiting tool, epitomized by the use of the American flag and the ‘100% Americanism’ slogan. In Wisconsin, where entry into World War I was least popular in 1917, the following months saw a series of ‘loyalty struggles’ develop; many Wisconsinites regretted their early lack of support and sought to prove their loyalty and patriotism to …

The Colonial Legacy Of Public Lands: Exploring Extractivism In The Bears Ears Region, Josephine W. Cohen

Student Theses 2015-Present

As the colonial ideals that underscore the United States’ founding have bled into modern environmental policy, Indigenous communities have continued to be disenfranchised from and systematically oppressed through the creation, protection, and management of public lands. This, in turn, has manifested as vast human rights abuses through methods of cultural and physical genocide. This thesis examines the role extractivism and land grabs on public lands play in violating the basic human rights of many Indigenous populations, using the case study of extractivism on Bears Ears National Monument as a guiding framework. Chapter 1 provides an overview of public lands and …

Predicting Rf Signal Degradation Through The Hypersonic Plasma Sheath Using Dsmcfoam And Pic Method, Andrew Derubertis, Ramesh K. Agarwal

Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science Independent Study

The transmission and degradation of RF signals through the plasma sheath surrounding hypersonic vehicles is investigated using a DSMC flow solver method. The OpenFoam library dsmcFoam is used to simulate flow around hypersonic bodies and obtain flow field properties to aid in calculations of signal degradation. The study of RF signal degradation and the viability of communications for hypersonic vehicles is of supreme importance for the future of aerospace as hypersonic travel and warfare is becoming technologically possible. Integrating over the output electron number density profile yields values for attenuation that drop below 100 decibels in the transmission window of …

Wrack Lines Volume 22, Number 1; Spring-Summer 2022, Judy Benson, Stephen Kurczy, Robert Miller, Judy Preston

Wrack Lines

"All Creatures Great and Mostly Small” is the theme of the Spring-Summer 2022 issue of Wrack Lines magazine, filled with stunning images and engaging articles about some of the marine and terrestrial animals around us and the people who devote their attention to them.

Articles explore the many creatures and artifacts found by divers around Plum Island and elsewhere in Long Island Sound; the fascinating life and work of bird painter Rex Brasher; and research into how a species of copepod will respond to climate change conditions in the marine environment. Another story calls us to appreciate some of the …

Imperialism In The Caribbean: Us Policies Towards Cuba And Haiti From The 1950s To The 1970s, Glory Jones, Constance Chen, Sean Dempsey

Honors Thesis

Haiti and Cuba are two Caribbean islands which prove to be prominent particularly in revolutionary culture and discourse, despite the clear differences in present-day material conditions of the islands themselves. Alongside each of the islands’ need for regional partnerships and aid, their significance in revolutionary culture connected the two islands in a distinct way. This connection is one that was forged mostly in the time period from the 1950s to the1970s, when the Cuban Revolution began and gave way to many connections to the historic Haitian Revolution. Another major factor creating such solidarity during this time period, as well as …

Introduction: Scottish Cosmopolitanism At The Fin De Siècle, Matthew Creasy

Studies in Scottish Literature

Introduces the topic of the special issue, reviews recent accounts of cosmopolitanism and scholarship on the Scottish fin de Siècle, and discusses how the essays that follow contribute to revaluation of Scottish literary culture in this period.

The Rise Of Neo-Fascist Populism And Islamophobia In The West, Mohamed Tawfiq Said Tabib

Dissertations and Theses

Trumpism can be defined as racist right-wing neo-fascist populism and nativism combined with a cult of personality. There is very little distinction between neo-fascists, the alt-right, and far-right groups. All can be identified by their socio-political philosophy and vehement beliefs of racial supremacy, ultranationalism, populism, xenophobia, nativism, and anti-immigrant sentiment, as well as being opposed to liberal Western democracy and its values. This thesis explores why there has been a popular international resurgence of far-right neo-fascist movements throughout the European Union and the United States and examines the impact on inter-group social and political relations with those of different racial …

Antenna Designs For Cubesat-Borne, Continuous-Waveform Radar, Logan E. Voigt, Reyhan Baktur

Utah Space Grant Consortium

CubeSat-borne radar has many potential applications in space exploration including tracking, imaging, and weather prediction. A continuous-waveform radar has advantages of compact size and low power consumption, making it suitable to implement on small platforms such as CubeSats. This paper demonstrates an isolation technique that overcomes the self-interference between the transmit and receive antennas inherent to continuous-waveform radar. The presented approach combines opposite circularly polarized antennas on two deployed solar panels to minimize the self-interference. The prototype antennas are tested on a 6U CubeSat frame and the results show more than 40 dB isolation, satisfying the power budget requirements.