Geographies of Chemical Warfare in Vietnam: The Merry Band of Retirees

This review explores the recent development of research on rainbow herbicides as chemical weapons and the geographies of chemical warfare in what is now the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. While the use and impacts of Agent Orange have previously been well documented, the production and extensive application of five other rainbow agents by the United States military has only recently been investigated in detail. What is exceptional about this research of chemical warfare landscapes is that the 23 refereed journal publications in this review were designed, implemented, and published in a unique collective research project by Ken Olson and a Merry Band of Military Retirees. Their groundbreaking research portfolio includes many geographical dimensions and the political ecology of chemical warfare. This includes the extensive exposure of civilians in Vietnam to these chemical agents, exposure of US military personnel in Southeast Asia and Panama, exposure of civilians near the private industrial sites that produced these rainbow agents in North America and the hazardous soil contamination that perseveres at these sites in Vietnam and the US. Given this impressive research depth and global scope, this review explores the unique way this research portfolio was developed by a Merry Band of Retirees through an interview with its leader, Ken Olson. It examines the goals and ethical orientation of these military veterans, the political ecology involved, the creative strategies they utilized to produce this innovative research, and how they changed the way Veterans exposed to chemical warfare agents are treated by the US government.

Multiple chemical warfare agent simulant decontamination by self-driven microplasma

Low-temperature plasma is a green and high-efficiency technology for chemical warfare agent(CWA)decontamination.However,traditional plasma devices suffer from the problems of highpower composition and large power-supply size,which limit their practical applications.In this paper,a self-driven microplasma decontamination system,induced by a dielectric-dielectric rotary triboelectric nanogenerator(dd-r TENG),was innovatively proposed for the decontamination of CWA simulants.The microplasma was characterized via electrical measurements,optical emission spectra and ozone concentration detection.With an output voltage of-3460 V,the dd-r TENG can successfully excite microplasma in air.Reactive species,such as OH,O(1D),Hαand O3were detected.With input average power of 0.116 W,the decontamination rate of 2-chloroethyl ethyl sulfide reached 100%within 3 min of plasma treatment,while the decontamination rates of malathion and dimethyl methylphosphonate reached(65.92±1.65)%and(60.88±1.92)%after 7 min of plasma treatment,respectively.In addition,the decontamination rates gradually decreased with the increase in the simulant concentrations.Typical products were identified and analyzed.This study demonstrates the broad spectrum and feasibility of the dd-r TENG-microplasma for CWA elimination,which provides significant guidance for their practical applications in the future.

“Cyberspace” or “Cyber warfare”研究热点与趋势分析

运用CitespaceⅡ信息可视化图谱软件对"cyberspace" or "cyber warfare"研究文献数据进行分析,绘制了共引网络图谱,并依据图谱中关键节点文献的知识基础,对研究热点及趋势进行了初步探讨,得出国外研究的热点与前沿的相关结论,对"cyberspace" or "cyber warfare"的研究具有一定的参考价值。

Anthrax: A disease of biowarfare and public health importance

Bioterrorism has received a lot of attention in the first decade of this century. Biological agents are considered attractive weapons for bioterrorism as these are easy to obtain, comparatively inexpensive to produce and exhibit widespread fear and panic than the actual potential of physical damage. Bacillus anthracis(B. anthracis), the etiologic agent of anthrax is a Gram positive, spore forming, non-motile bacterium. This is supposed to be one of the most potent BW agents because its spores are extremely resistant to natural conditions and can survive for several decades in the environment. B.anthracis spores enter the body through skin lesion(cutaneous anthrax), lungs(pulmonary anthrax), or gastrointestinal route(gastrointestinal anthrax) and germinate, giving rise to the vegetative form. Anthrax is a concern of public health also in many countries where agriculture is the main source of income including India. Anthrax has been associated with human history for a very long time and regained its popularity after Sept 2001 incidence in United States. The present review article describes the history, biology, life cycle, pathogenicity, virulence, epidemiology and potential of B. anthracis as biological weapon.

Electro-Optical Effect Measurement of Thin-Film Material Using PM Fiber Mach-Zehnder Interferometer

A polarization-maintaining （PM） fiber Mach-Zehnder （MZ） interferometer has been established to measure the EO effect of very thin film materials with optical anisotropy. Unlike a common MZ interferometer, all the components are connected via polarization-maintaining fibers. At the same time, a polarized DFB laser with a maximum power output of 10mW is adopted as the light source to induce a large extinction ratio. Here,we take it to determine the electro-optical coefficients of a very thin superlattice structure with GaAs, KTP, and GaN as comparative samples. The measured EO coefficients show good comparability with the others.

Waveform design for radar and extended target in the environment of electronic warfare

Transmit waveform optimization is critical to radar system performance. There have been a fruit of achievements about waveform design in recent years. However, most of the existing methods are based on the assumption that radar is smart and the target is dumb, which is not always reasonable in the modern electronic warfare. This paper focuses on the waveform design for radar and the extended target in the environment of electronic warfare. Three different countermeasure models between smart radar and dumb target, smart target and dumb radar, smart radar and smart target are proposed. Taking the signal-to-interferenceplus-noise ratio(SINR) as the metric, optimized waveforms for the first two scenarios are achieved by the general water-filling method in the presence of clutter. For the last case, the equilibrium between smart radar and smart target in the presence of clutter is given mathematically and the optimized solution is achieved through a novel two-step water-filling method on the basis of minmax theory. Simulation results under different power constraints show the power allocation strategies of radar and target and the output SINRs are analyzed.

An approach for predicting digital material consumption in electronic warfare

Electronic warfare is a modern combat mode,in which predicting digital material consumption is a key for material requirements planning(MRP).In this paper,we introduce an insensitive loss function(ε) and propose a ε-SVR-based prediction approach.First,we quantify values of influencing factors of digital equipments in electronic warfare and a small-sample data on real consumption to form a real combat data set,and preprocess it to construct the sample space.Subsequently,we establish the ε-SVR-based prediction model based on "wartime influencing factors-material consumption" and perform model training.In case study,we give 8 historical battle events with battle damage data and predict 3 representative kinds of digital materials by using the proposed approach.The results illustrate its higher accuracy and more convenience compared with other current approaches.Taking data acquisition controller prediction as an example,our model has better prediction performance(RMSE=0.575 7,MAPE(%)=12.037 6 and R^2=0.996 0) compared with BP neural network model(RMSE=1.272 9,MAPE(%)=23.577 5 and R^2=0.980 3) and GM(1,1) model(RMSE=2.095 0,MAPE(%)=24.188 0 and R^2=0.946 6).The fact shows that the approach can be used to support decision-making for MRP in electronic warfare.

Electronic warfare in the optical band:Main features,examples and selected measurement data

The paper presents the possibilities of,and methods for,acquiring,analysing and processing optical signals in order to recognise,identify and counteract threats on the contemporary battleground.The main ways electronic warfare is waged in the optical band of the electromagnetic wave spectrum have been formulated,including the acquisition of optical emitter signatures,as well as ultraviolet(UV)and thermal(IR)signatures.The physical parameters and values describing the emission of laser radiation are discussed,including their importance in terms of creating optical signatures.Moreover,it has been shown that in the transformation of optical signals into signatures,only their spectral and temporal parameters can be applied.This was confirmed in experimental part of the paper,which includes our own measurements of spectral and temporal emission characteristics for three types of binocular laser rangefinders.It has been further shown that through simple registration and quick analysis involving comparison of emission time parameters in the case of UV signatures in“solar-blind”band,various events can be identified quickly and faultlessly.The same is true for IR signatures,where the amplitudes of the recorded signal for several wavelengths are compared.This was confirmed experimentally for UV signatures by registering and then analyzing signals from several events during military exercises at a training ground,namely Rocket Propelled Grenade(RPG)launches and explosions after hitting targets,trinitrotoluene(TNT)explosions,firing armour-piercing,fin-stabilised,discarding sabots(APFSDS)or high explosive(HE)projectiles.The final section describes a proposed model database of emitters,created as a result of analysing and transforming the recorded signals into optical signatures.

Electro-optical properties cholesteric liquid of polymer stabilized crystal film＊

Liquid crystals （LCs） and polymers are extensively used in various electro-optical applications. In this paper, normal mode polymer stabilized cholesteric LC film is prepared and studied. The effects of chiral dopant and monomer concentrations on the electro-optical properties, such as contrast ratio, driving voltage, hysteresis width and response time, are investigated. The reasons of electro-optical properties influenced by the concentrations of the materials are discussed. Through the proper material recipe, the electro-optical properties of polymer stabilized cholesteric LC film can be optimized.

A joint optimization algorithm for focused energy delivery in precision electronic warfare

Focused energy delivery(FED) is a technique that can precisely bring energy to the specific region,which arouses wide attention in precision electronic warfare(PREW).This paper first proposes a joint optimization model with respect to the locations of the array and the transmitted signals to improve the performance of FED.As the problem is nonconvex and NP-hard,particle swarm optimization(PSO) is adopted to solve the locations of the array,while designing the transmitted signals under a feasible array is considered as a unimodular quadratic program(UQP) subproblem to calculate the fitness criterion of PSO.In the PSO-UQP framework established,two methods are presented for the UQP subproblem,which are more efficient and more accurate respectively than previous works.Furthermore,a threshold value is set in the framework to determine which method to adopt to take full advantages of the methods above.Meanwhile,we obtain the maximum localization error that FED can tolerate,which is significant for implementing FED in practice.Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the joint optimization algorithm,and the correctness of the maximum localization error derived.

Grid architecture model of network centric warfare

NCW(network centric warfare) is an information warfare concentrating on network. A global network-centric warfare architecture with OGSA grid technology is put forward,which is a four levels system including the user level, the application level, the grid middleware layer and the resource level. In grid middleware layer,based on virtual hosting environment, a BEPL4WS grid service composition method is introduced. In addition, the NCW grid service model is built with the help of Eclipse-SDK-3.0.1 and Bpws4j.

Electro-optical dual modulation on resistive switching behavior in BaTiO3/BiFeO3/TiO2 heterojunction

The novel BaTiO3/BiFeO3/TiO2 multilayer heterojunction is prepared on a fluorine-doped tinoxide(FTO) substrate by the sol–gel method. The results indicate that the Pt/Ba TiO3/BiFeO3/TiO2/FTO heterojunction exhibits stable bipolar resistive switching characteristic, good retention performance, and reversal characteristic. Under different pulse voltages and light fields, four stable resistance states can also be realized. The analysis shows that the main conduction mechanism of the resistive switching characteristic of the heterojunction is space charge limited current(SCLC) effect. After the comprehensive analysis of the band diagram and the P–E ferroelectric property of the multilayer heterojunction, we can deduce that the SCLC is formed by the effect of the oxygen vacancy which is controlled by ferroelectric polarizationmodulated change of interfacial barrier. And the effective photo-generated carrier also plays a regulatory role in resistance state(RS), which is formed by the double ferroelectric layer Ba TiO3/BiFeO3 under different light fields. This research is of potential application values for developing the multi-state non-volatile resistance random access memory(RRAM) devices based on ferroelectric materials.

Review and Analysis: Successful Use of Soil Tunnels in Medieval and Modern Warfare and Smuggling

For more than 2500 years, soil tunnels have been used in warfare and smuggling. Initially tunnels were utilized to attack fortresses that were underlain by unconsolidated (non-bedrock) soil materials. Later tunnels provided housing and served as smuggling corridors. The medieval warfare undermining technique involved digging soil tunnels with wooden or beam props to hold up the soil ceilings. Then flammable material, such as hay or straw, was put in the tunnel and set on fire. The fire burnt the support beams which collapsed the soil tunnel ceilings and undermined the overlying perimeter wall. Later gunpowder and dynamite replaced fire when attempting to collapse a tunnel, fortress or perimeter defense. Modern warfare soil tunnels were the pathways used to move troops, weapons and supplies to the other side of a border or wall for surprise attacks. Most of the soil tunnels were placed in easy-to-dig unconsolidated soil materials that had a low water table and were not subject to flooding. Eventually, machinery was used to drill through bedrock permitting deeper and longer tunnels for troop movement or smuggling. However, when drilling through bedrock under international borders, the process creates both noise and vibrations which were often detected by the enemy. Once discovered the tunnels were often collapsed by blowing up the tunnel, injection of gas, filling with water or wastewater, or inserting barriers. A series of case studies will be examined with the goal of determining soil and site criteria required to permit successful tunneling. The most restrictive soil and geologic conditions will be identified as well as potential mitigation methods used to overcome the site restrictions will be documented. Countries with warfare or smuggling issues along their borders, such as Israel and United States, need to identify the sections of the border most likely to be undermined by soil tunnels. In the case of Israel their entire border is susceptible as a result of the favorable arid climate, soils and geology. The US border with Mexico can become vulnerable wherever a new wall is created. Without a wall there is usually no need for soil tunnels. The US Department of Homeland Security and border patrol will need to monitor the noise and vibrations, just like the Israel does, to identify future soil tunnel locations. Eventually most of 3200 km border will have a wall that will become the target of more soil tunnels for smuggling goods and people from Mexico into the United States.

Experimental study of electro-optical-switched pulsed Nd:YAG laser

We report the specification of a compact and stable side diode-pumped Q-switched pulsed Nd：YAG laser. We ex- perimentally study and compare the performance of the pulsed Nd：YAG laser in the free-running and Q-switched modes at different pulse repetition rates from 1 Hz to 100 Hz. The laser output energy is stabilized by using a special configu- ration of the optical resonator. In this laser, an unsymmetrical concave-concave resonator is used and this structure helps the mode volume to be nearly fixed when the pulse repetition rate is increased. According to the experimental results in the Q-switched operation, the laser output energy is nearly constant around 70 mJ with an FWHM pulse width of 7 ns at 100 Hz. The optical-to-optical conversion efficiency in the Q-switched regime is 17.5%.

Electro-Optical Properties of Carbon Nanotubes Obtained by High Density Plasma Chemical Vapor Deposition

In this work, we studied the electro-optical properties of high-aligned carbon nanotubes deposited at room temperature. For this, we used the High Density Plasma Chemical Vapor Deposition system. This system uses a new concept of plasma generation: a planar coil is coupled to an RF system for plasma generation. This was used together with an electrostatic shield, for plasma densification, thereby obtaining high-density plasmas. The carbon nanotubes were deposited using pure methane plasmas. Three methods were used for the surface modification of the sample: reference substrate (silicon wafer only submitted to a chemical cleaning), silicon wafer with surface roughness generated by plasma etching, silicon wafer with a thin iron film and silicon wafer with diamond nano powder used as precursor materials. For each kind of silicon wafer surface, the carbon nanotubes were deposited with two different deposition times (two and three hours). The carbon nanotubes structural characteristics were analyzed by Atomic Force Microscope and Scanning Electronic Microscope. The carbon nanotubes electrical characteristics were observed by Raman Spectroscopy and the carbon nanotubes electro-optical properties were analyzed by current vs voltage electrical measurements and photo-luminescence spectroscopy measurements. The photoelectric effect in the carbon nanotubes were determined by photo-induced current measurements. In this work, we obtained carbon nanotubes with semiconductor properties and carbon nanotubes with metallic properties. The electro-optical effects depend strongly on the substrate preparation and the deposition parameters of the carbon nanotubes. The carbon nanotubes are high aligned and show singular properties that can be used for many applications.

Electro-optical properties of high birefringence liquid crystal compounds with isothiocyanate and naphthyl group

Liquid crystal（LC） compound with isothiocyanate and naphthyl group is an attractive high birefringence LC material,and can be used in optical devices. In this paper, the electro-optical properties of a series of this type of LC compounds were investigated. The melting points and enthalpy values of these LC compounds were higher than those of corresponding compounds with the phenyl group. These compounds exhibited high birefringence with a maximum value of 0.66. Fluorine substitution in the molecular almost does not affect the birefringence value. When these LC compounds with the naphthyl group were dissolved in a commercial LC mixture, the electro-optical properties depending on temperature were investigated. In the low-temperature region, LC mixtures with the naphthyl-group LC compounds exhibited higher viscosity than pure commercial LCs. In the high-temperature region, viscosity values very closely approached each other. When response performance was investigated, figure-of-merit（FoM） values were measured. The Fo M values of LC mixtures containing LC compounds with naphthyl group were lower than those of reference benzene LCs in the low-temperature region. However, in the high-temperature region, the results were reversed. These isothiocyanate LC compounds with naphthyl group can be applied in special fast-response LC device, particularly the ones used under high-temperature conditions.

Preparation and Microstructural,Structural,Optical and Electro-Optical Properties of La Doped Pmn-Pt Transparent Ceramics

Transparent relaxor ferroelectric ceramics of the system lanthanum modified lead magnesium niobate have been investigated for a variety of electro-optic properties could make these materials alternatives to (Pb,La)(Zr,Ti)O3. However, a study that relates the properties in function stoichiometric formula, it has not been analyzed heretofore. Therefore, in this work the effect of A-site substitution of La+3 in the characterization microstructural, structural, optical and electro-optical on (1-x)[Pb(1-3/2y)Lay(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3]-xPbTiO3 and (1-z)[(1-x)Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3+xPbTiO3]+zLa2O3 has been performed. It was observed that the properties according to the stoichiometric formula and the PT had a maximum whose behavior was related to the addition of lanthanum in each stoichiometries.

New concepts and their applications in underwater acoustic warfare simulation system

An underwater acoustic warfare simulation system (UAWSS) with a structure of high level architecture (HLA) is studied based upon a previous research project. With the experience and lessons learned, some new concepts are adopted in the implementation of UAWSS according to the essence of simulation and the objective of the system, among which are simulation synthetic environment, signal processing at other simulation nodes, decomposition of underwater sound channel, channel varying law and rules on system and parts evaluation, etc. Applications of these new ideas show that they are effective.

Study on QOS Routing in Network Centric Warfare

The concept of network centric warfare （NCW） and the distributed equal-node network architecture in NCW are introduced in this paper. The data flow requirement model in NCW is presented. Based on synthetic analysis of network resource, the QOS （Quality of Service） parameters and their characters, the high requirement of real-time synchronization in NCW, the single QOS routing constraint, and the network latency between the detector and weapon control station, are presented. To take an example for 3-node brigade （regiment） level NCW demonstration platform, the algorithm of end-to-end network latency and path information in NCW are presented. The algorithm program based on Server/Client architecture is developed. The optimal path is the link whose latency between the detector and weapon control station is the smallest. This paper solves the key issue and satisfies the needs on network latency in NCW. The study results can be widely applied in the decision of the optimal path which is based on multiple service provision points.

Tensor-Centric Warfare VI: A Global Warfare Model

We propose a global warfare model that integrates the models of the whole tensor-centric warfare series, represented as a high-dimensional entangled warfare category. Its underpinning metaphysics is “entangled fusion”: this is the macroscopic entanglement concept inspired by high-dimensional (HD) quantum computation (the “quantum brain”), in which any number of entangled wave-functions can be highly correlated, with neuron-like signaling among them. From this entangled perspective, war and battle is seen essentially as a holistic phenomenon: if any one of a set of mutually entangled warring parties is removed from the equation, then the war as it is instantly stops, possibly to be replaced by a new conflict between the remaining parties but distinct from that which it supplants. The formal global warfare framework developed in this paper expresses this fundamental idea of arbitrary many interrelated/entangled conflicts, each of them defined by its own battle-manifold (with warfighting tensor fields acting on it) and occurring (more-or-less) simultaneously on the planet;we call this entangled