Search

This paper demonstrates the use of "big data" to target behavioural interventions that aim to reduce environmental pollution. The data relate to ongoing noncompliance with the EU Nitrates Directive among farmers in Ireland. We compiled more than 1.2 million records from disparate administrative data, then employed multi-level statistical analysis to model regulatory breaches. The novel statistical associations generated shed light on possible reasons for noncompliance and allow us to predict violations more accurately than a regulatory rule of thumb previously used to target a behavioural 'nudge'. By quantifying variation in likely rates of false positives and false negatives, the models can be used to improve the efficiency of the behavioural intervention. The work illustrates how big data can combine with behavioural interventions to support better environmental enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is the policy of the Chinese Communist Party that the country should become a great maritime power. In this article, Martin N Murphy and Peter Roberts provide an overview of what this means militarily, where China is laying down a challenge to the US and its regional neighbours, where it is falling short, and what this has to do with Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russia’s use of hybrid warfare techniques has raised concerns about the security of the Baltic States. Gary Schaub, Jr, Martin Murphy and Frank G Hoffman recommend a series of measures to augment NATO’s Readiness Action Plan in the Baltic region, including increasing the breadth and depth of naval exercises, and improving maritime domain awareness through cooperative programmes. They also suggest unilateral and cooperative measures to develop a sound strategic communications strategy to counter Moscow’s information operations, reduce dependence on Russian energy supplies and build the resilience of critical undersea and maritime infrastructure. Finally, the article proposes that more attention be devoted to resolving unsettled maritime boundaries between Latvia and Lithuania, and between Denmark and Poland, to reduce the chance that these can be exploited to increase regional instability as part of a larger hybrid campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/Study Context: This study examined the potential impact of self-reported depressive symptoms on the age-related capacity for inhibition and suppression, utilizing a negative priming paradigm. Methods: One hundred eighty-five community-residing adults varying in age (98 younger adults, Mage = 22; 87 older adults, Mage = 69) completed a nonconscious priming task, the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), the White Bear Suppression Inventory (WBSI), the Depression Sensitivity Scale (DSS), a free thought suppression task, as well as several measures indexing overall cognitive ability and psychomotor speed. Hierarchical regressions investigated the interaction of depressive symptoms with age and its effect on both positive and negative priming performance, indexing both facilitation and inhibition effects, respectively. Results: Results support the hypothesis that noncognitive factors affect effortful performance among older adults, although this influence varied with the specific component of the GDS, i.e., Dysphoria, Social Withdrawal, and Cognitive Control, and with the measure of depressive symptoms, i.e., GDS versus DSS. Conclusion: These data suggest that aging's impact on both facilitation and inhibition, e.g., positive and negative priming, are to an extent, a function of individual differences in depressive symptoms that interact with age in influencing the necessity to reallocate one's cognitive resources to deal with depressive thoughts and feelings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the economic rise of powers such as China that wish to reinterpret the global order underpinning trade and international law, there is renewed requirement for Western navies to think about how maritime power can contribute to the protection of commerce in the twenty-first century. In this article, Martin N Murphy explores the intersection that is now evident between economic, financial and maritime warfare, assessing how maritime power can once again be used in the exploitation of economic and financial weakness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maritime violence perpetrated by non-state actors is a feature of the Indian Ocean. This includes the piracy, which has occurred most prominently off Somalia but also in the waters of Bangladesh, India and Indonesia, and terrorism perpetrated by al-Qaeda, the Tamil separatist movement in Sri Lanka, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and the Pakistani Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) against the Indian city of Mumbai. This paper aims to chart why opportunities for non-state actors to use violence to advance their interests may continue across the region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article identifies the salient lessons from three specific periods--the Graeco-Roman, Atlantic piracy and its extension into the Indian Ocean during the early Seventeenth Century, and piracy off China during the Ch' ing dynasty--that can most usefully inform the counter-piracy effort off Somalia. It makes the point that piracy's sinuous character has always given rise to conceptual and definitional difficulties; but that while law has had an important voice in piracy matters since Roman times it has never been the only voice. It suggests that modern pirate hunters, by treating piracy as akin to a domestic criminal activity, have shackled the effectiveness of violent suppression which their historical predecessors found so useful, while at the same time undervaluing the fundamental roles of politics and economics in piracy formation and the continuous struggle to make the seas safe for legitimate commerce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Somali piracy is the single biggest maritime threat since the Second World War, with consequences resonating far beyond Somali shores that have political, geostrategic, naval, economic and human security aspects. Martin Murphy analyses each of these in turn, and argues that only a multi–layered approach, intertwining long-term political and economic incentives with a short-term clamp-down on pirate activities, can provide an effective and lasting solution. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article examines the use of naval power by insurgent forces engaged in asymmetric warfare. The Confederate commerce raiders of the U.S. Civil War are cited. Successes achieved by the naval forces of the Tamil Tigers separatist movement in Sri Lanka are presented. The attack by al-Qaeda operatives on the U.S.S. Cole in a Yemeni harbor in 2000 is given. The gray area between naval guerrilla warfare and piracy is noted.

Supporting the needs of those affected by the conflict in Northern Ireland requires more than just a clinical consideration of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. We need to recognise that for many, the violence and disruption to life has been all too pervasive and is often still present. This article describes the approach employed by the NOVA service in helping people manage the impacts of specific and continuous traumas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the various research designs and analytic tools to help clinicians defect treatment effects. Visual analysis procedures are designed to aid practitioners in detecting clinical change for the purpose of practice evaluation. Clinicians will usually have very short baseline data streams to work with and, often, limited treatment phase data streams as well. Further, the data points tend to be serially dependent, resulting in problems with statistical inference when applying conventional statistics, which assume independence. According to W.R. Nugent, representing baseline trend by drawing a straight line connecting the first and last data points in the baseline phase. However, if the difference between the first and second data points in the baseline phase is more than 2.5 times the difference between any other two adjacent data points in the phase, the line is drawn from the mean between points one and two. Once the trend and variability are identified, the user can evaluate the treatment-phase data points against the baseline properties.

Making training easy and rapid has been a goal for those who train older learners. Even though they may initially produce easy and rapid performance change, however, some training conditions may actually hinder learning by reducing subsequent retention and generalization (Schmidt & Bjork, 1992). To assess this, older and younger adults were trained on an algorithm for mentally squaring two-digit numbers. Half of our participants received training in a high-variability content condition involving problems widely dispersed across the range of decade and l's digits of two-digit numbers; the other participants were in the lowvariability content condition that involved training problems with a narrow range. For both age groups, highvariability training resulted in inferior performance at the end of training, compared to low-variability training. Consistent with Schmidt and Bjork, however, high-variability trained younger adults were marginally better at retention, and were significantly better on nontrained transfer problems. In contrast, high-variability trained older adults did not differ from their low-variability trained agemates at either retention or generalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our aim was to investigate how older and younger adults find information using the World Wide Web (Web) in a naturalistic setting. After brief training in using a Web browser, 29 older (M=70.6 years) and 30 younger (M=21.8 years) adults conducted Web searches to answer two questions. Age was related to search performance on difficult problems; older adults were somewhat less efficient on the first search and were somewhat less likely to find a correct answer on the second. Age differences in computer attitudes were small; the effects of the training and search experience on attitudes were positive, large, and similar for young and old. With brief but well-designed training, novice older adults were successful in their Web searches and they had very positive reactions to the Web experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]