"Army of One" to "Army Strong" : visual media and U.S. Army recruitment during Bush"s "War on Terror"

From Bush’s September 20, 2001 “War on Terror” speech to Congress to President-Elect Barack Obama’s acceptance speech on November 4, 2008, the U.S. Army produced visual recruitment material that addressed the concerns of falling enlistment numbers—due to the prolonged and difficult war in Iraq—with quickly-evolving and compelling rhetorical appeals: from the introduction of an “Army of One” (2001) to “Army Strong” (2006); from messages focused on education and individual identity to high-energy adventure and simulated combat scenarios, distributed through everything from printed posters and music videos to first-person tactical-shooter video games. These highly polished, professional visual appeals introduced to the American public during a time of an unpopular war fought by volunteers provide rich subject matter for research and analysis. This dissertation takes a multidisciplinary approach to the visual media utilized as part of the Army’s recruitment efforts during the War on Terror, focusing on American myths—as defined by Barthes—and how these myths are both revealed and reinforced through design across media platforms. Placing each selection in its historical context, this dissertation analyzes how printed materials changed as the War on Terror continued. It examines the television ad that introduced “Army Strong” to the American public, considering how the combination of moving image, text, and music structure the message and the way we receive it. This dissertation also analyzes the video game America’s Army, focusing on how the interaction of the human player and the computer-generated player combine to enhance the persuasive qualities of the recruitment message. Each chapter discusses how the design of the particular medium facilitates engagement/interactivity of the viewer. The conclusion considers what recruitment material produced during this time period suggests about the persuasive strategies of different media and how they create distinct relationships with their spectators. It also addresses how theoretical frameworks and critical concepts used by a variety of disciplines can be combined to analyze recruitment media utilizing a Selber inspired three literacy framework (functional, critical, rhetorical) and how this framework can contribute to the multimodal classroom by allowing instructors and students to do a comparative analysis of multiple forms of visual media with similar content.

Policy implications of public health workforce development for disaster preparedness in the United States

Public health efforts were initiated in the United States with legislative actions for enhancing food safety and ensuring pure drinking water. Some additional policy initiatives during the early 20th century helped organize and coordinate relief efforts for victims of natural disasters. By 1950's the federal government expanded its role for providing better health and safety to the communities, and its disaster relief activities became more structured. A rise in terrorism related incidents during the late 1990's prompted new proactive policy directions. The traditional policy and program efforts for rescue, recovery, and relief measures changed focus to include disaster preparedness and countermeasures against terrorism.^ The study took a holistic approach by analyzing all major disaster related policies and programs, in regard to their structure, process, and outcome. Study determined that United States has a strong disaster preparedness agenda and appropriate programs are in place with adequate policy support, and the country is prepared to meet all possible security challenges that may arise in the future. The man-made disaster of September 11th gave a major thrust to improve security and enhance preparedness of the country. These new efforts required large additional funding from the federal government. Most existing preparedness programs at the local and national levels are run with federal funds which is insufficient in some cases. This discrepancy arises from the fact that federal funding for disaster preparedness programs at present are not allocated by the level of risks to individual states or according to the risks that can be assigned to critical infrastructures across the country. However, the increased role of the federal government in public health affairs of the states is unusual, and opposed to the spirit of our constitution where sovereignty is equally divided between the federal government and the states. There is also shortage of manpower in public health to engage in disaster preparedness activities, despite some remarkable progress following the September 11th disaster.^ Study found that there was a significant improvement in knowledge and limited number of studies showed improvement of skills, increase in confidence and improvement in message-mapping. Among healthcare and allied healthcare professionals, short-term training on disaster preparedness increased knowledge and improved personal protective equipment use with some limited improvement in confidence and skills. However, due to the heterogeneity of these studies, the results and interpretation of this systematic review may be interpreted with caution.^

A simplified Probabilistic Safety Assesment of a Steam-Methane Reforming Hydrogen Production Plant coupled to a High-Temperature Gas Cooled Nuclear Reactor

A Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) is being developed for a steam-methane reforming hydrogen production plant linked to a High-Temperature Gas Cooled Nuclear Reactor (HTGR). This work is based on the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute’s (JAERI) High Temperature Test Reactor (HTTR) prototype in Japan. This study has two major objectives: calculate the risk to onsite and offsite individuals, and calculate the frequency of different types of damage to the complex. A simplified HAZOP study was performed to identify initiating events, based on existing studies. The initiating events presented here are methane pipe break, helium pipe break, and PPWC heat exchanger pipe break. Generic data was used for the fault tree analysis and the initiating event frequency. Saphire was used for the PSA analysis. The results show that the average frequency of an accident at this complex is 2.5E-06, which is divided into the various end states. The dominant sequences result in graphite oxidation which does not pose a health risk to the population. The dominant sequences that could affect the population are those that result in a methane explosion and occur 6.6E-8/year, while the other sequences are much less frequent. The health risk presents itself if there are people in the vicinity who could be affected by the explosion. This analysis also demonstrates that an accident in one of the plants has little effect on the other. This is true given the design base distance between the plants, the fact that the reactor is underground, as well as other safety characteristics of the HTGR. Sensitivity studies are being performed in order to determine where additional and improved data is needed.

Resilience analysis of networked systems-of-systems based on structural and dynamic interdependencies

Critical infrastructures support everyday activities in modern societies, facilitating the exchange of services and quantities of various nature. Their functioning is the result of the integration of diverse technologies, systems and organizations into a complex network of interconnections. Benefits from networking are accompanied by new threats and risks. In particular, because of the increased interdependency, disturbances and failures may propagate and render unstable the whole infrastructure network. This paper presents a methodology of resilience analysis of networked systems of systems. Resilience generalizes the concept of stability of a system around a state of equilibrium, with respect to a disturbance and its ability of preventing, resisting and recovery. The methodology provides a tool for the analysis of off-equilibrium conditions that may occur in a single system and propagate through the network of dependencies. The analysis is conducted in two stages. The first stage of the analysis is qualitative. It identifies the resilience scenarios, i.e. the sequence of events, triggered by an initial disturbance, which include failures and the system response. The second stage is quantitative. The most critical scenarios can be simulated, for the desired parameter settings, in order to check if they are successfully handled, i.e recovered to nominal conditions, or they end into the network failure. The proposed methodology aims at providing an effective support to resilience-informed design.

Environmental risk assessment in open pit blasting operations: compliance with ISO 31010:2010

All activities of an organization involve risks that should be managed. The risk management process aids decision making by taking account of uncertainty and the possibility of future events or circumstances (intended or unintended) and their effects on agreed objectives. With that idea, new ISO Standard has been drawn up. ISO 31010 has been recently issued which provides a structured process that identifies how objectives may be affected, and analyses the risk in term of consequences and their probabilities before deciding on whether further treatment is required. In this lecture, that ISO Standard has been adapted to Open Pit Blasting Operations, focusing in Environmental effects which can be managed properly. Technique used is Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), which is applied in all possible scenarios, providing to Blasting Professionals the tools to identify, analyze and manage environmental effects in blasting operations. Also this lecture can help to minimize each effect, studying each case. This paper also can be useful to Project Managers and Occupational Health and Safety Departments (OH&S) because blasting operations can be evaluated and compared one to each other to determine the risks that should be managed in different case studies. The environmental effects studied are: ground vibrations, flyrock and air overpressure (airblast). Sometimes, blasting operations are carried out near populated areas where environmental effects may impose several limitations on the use of explosives. In those cases, where these factors approach certain limits, National Standards and Regulations have to be applied.

Designing and simulating smart grids

Growing energy demands and the increased use of renewal energies have changed the landscape of power networks leading to new challenges. Smart Grids have emerged to cope with these challenges by facilitating the integration of traditional and renewable energy resources in distributed, open, and self-managed ways. Innovative models are needed to design energy infrastructures that can enable self-management of the power grid. Software architectures smoothly integrate the software that provides self-management to Smart Grids and their hardware infrastructures. We present a framework to design the software architectures of autonomous Smart Grids in an intuitive domain-oriented way and to simulate their execution by automatically generating the code from the designed autonomous smart grid architectures.

Cibercrimen y ciberterrorismo : ¿exageración mediática o realidad?

La expansión de las tecnologías de la información y las comunicaciones (TIC) ha traído muchas ventajas, pero también algunos peligros. Son frecuentes hoy en día las noticias sobre delitos relacionados con las TIC. Se usa a menudo el término cibercrimen y el de ciberterrorismo pero, ¿realmente son una amenaza para la sociedad?. Este trabajo realiza un análisis del cibercrimen y el ciberterrorismo. Para ello se hace un estudio en profundidad desde distintos puntos de vista. En primer lugar se analizan varios aspectos básicos de la materia: el contexto en el que se desarrollan estas actividades, el ciberespacio y sus características, las ventajas que tiene el cibercrimen respecto a la delincuencia tradicional, características y ejemplos de ciberterrorismo y la importancia de la protección de las infraestructuras críticas. Luego se realiza un estudio del mundo del cibercrimen, en el cual se muestran los distintos tipos de cibercriminales, los actos delictivos, herramientas y técnicas más habituales usadas por el cibercrimen, la web profunda y la criptomoneda; se indican asimismo varios de los grupos criminales más conocidos y algunas de sus acciones, y se realiza un estudio de las consecuencias económicas del cibercrimen. Finalmente se hace un repaso a los medios legales que distintos países y organizaciones han establecido para combatir estos hechos delictivos. Para ello se analizan estrategias de seguridad de distinto tipo aprobadas en multitud de países de todo el mundo y los grupos operativos de respuesta (tanto los de tipo policial como los CSIRT/CERT), además de la legislación publicada para poder perseguir el cibercrimen y el ciberterrorismo, con especial atención a la legislación española. De esta manera, tras la lectura de este Proyecto se puede tener una visión global completa del mundo de la ciberdelincuencia y el ciberterrorismo. ABSTRACT. The expansion of Information and Communications Technology (ITC) has brought many benefits, but also some dangers. It is very usual nowadays to see news about ITC-related crimes. Terms like cyber crime and cyber terrorism are usually used but, are they really a big threat for our society?. This work analyzes cyber crime and cyber terrorism. To achieve it, a deep research under different points of view is made. First, basic aspects of the topic are analyzed: the context where these activities are carried out, cyber space and its features, benefits for cyber criminals with respect to traditional crime, characteristics and relevant examples of cyber terrorism, and importance of critical infrastructures protection. Then, a study about the world of cyber crime is made, analyzing the typology of different kinds of cyber criminals, the most common criminal acts, tools and techniques used by cyber crime, and the deep web and cryptocurrency. Some of the most known criminal groups and their activities are also explored, and the economic consequences of cyber crime are assessed. Finally, there is a review of the legal means used by countries and organizations to fight against these unlawful acts; this includes the analysis of several types of security strategies approved by countries all around the world, operational response groups (including law enforcement and CSIRT/CERT) and legislation to fight cyber crime and cyber terrorism, with special emphasis on Spanish legal rules. This way, a global, complete view of the world around cyber crime and cyber terrorism can be obtained after reading this work.

Autonomous classification models in ubiquitous environments

Stream-mining approach is defined as a set of cutting-edge techniques designed to process streams of data in real time, in order to extract knowledge. In the particular case of classification, stream-mining has to adapt its behaviour to the volatile underlying data distributions, what has been called concept drift. Moreover, it is important to note that concept drift may lead to situations where predictive models become invalid and have therefore to be updated to represent the actual concepts that data poses. In this context, there is a specific type of concept drift, known as recurrent concept drift, where the concepts represented by data have already appeared in the past. In those cases the learning process could be saved or at least minimized by applying a previously trained model. This could be extremely useful in ubiquitous environments that are characterized by the existence of resource constrained devices. To deal with the aforementioned scenario, meta-models can be used in the process of enhancing the drift detection mechanisms used by data stream algorithms, by representing and predicting when the change will occur. There are some real-world situations where a concept reappears, as in the case of intrusion detection systems (IDS), where the same incidents or an adaptation of them usually reappear over time. In these environments the early prediction of drift by means of a better knowledge of past models can help to anticipate to the change, thus improving efficiency of the model regarding the training instances needed. By means of using meta-models as a recurrent drift detection mechanism, the ability to share concepts representations among different data mining processes is open. That kind of exchanges could improve the accuracy of the resultant local model as such model may benefit from patterns similar to the local concept that were observed in other scenarios, but not yet locally. This would also improve the efficiency of training instances used during the classification process, as long as the exchange of models would aid in the application of already trained recurrent models, that have been previously seen by any of the collaborative devices. Which it is to say that the scope of recurrence detection and representation is broaden. In fact the detection, representation and exchange of concept drift patterns would be extremely useful for the law enforcement activities fighting against cyber crime. Being the information exchange one of the main pillars of cooperation, national units would benefit from the experience and knowledge gained by third parties. Moreover, in the specific scope of critical infrastructures protection it is crucial to count with information exchange mechanisms, both from a strategical and technical scope. The exchange of concept drift detection schemes in cyber security environments would aid in the process of preventing, detecting and effectively responding to threads in cyber space. Furthermore, as a complement of meta-models, a mechanism to assess the similarity between classification models is also needed when dealing with recurrent concepts. In this context, when reusing a previously trained model a rough comparison between concepts is usually made, applying boolean logic. The introduction of fuzzy logic comparisons between models could lead to a better efficient reuse of previously seen concepts, by applying not just equal models, but also similar ones. This work faces the aforementioned open issues by means of: the MMPRec system, that integrates a meta-model mechanism and a fuzzy similarity function; a collaborative environment to share meta-models between different devices; a recurrent drift generator that allows to test the usefulness of recurrent drift systems, as it is the case of MMPRec. Moreover, this thesis presents an experimental validation of the proposed contributions using synthetic and real datasets.

Desenvolvimento de um método para diagnose de falhas na operação de navios transportadores de gás natural liquefeito através de redes bayesianas.

O Gás Natural Liquefeito (GNL) tem, aos poucos, se tornado uma importante opção para a diversificação da matriz energética brasileira. Os navios metaneiros são os responsáveis pelo transporte do GNL desde as plantas de liquefação até as de regaseificação. Dada a importância, bem como a periculosidade, das operações de transporte e de carga e descarga de navios metaneiros, torna-se necessário não só um bom plano de manutenção como também um sistema de detecção de falhas que podem ocorrer durante estes processos. Este trabalho apresenta um método de diagnose de falhas para a operação de carga e descarga de navios transportadores de GNL através da utilização de Redes Bayesianas em conjunto com técnicas de análise de confiabilidade, como a Análise de Modos e Efeitos de Falhas (FMEA) e a Análise de Árvores de Falhas (FTA). O método proposto indica, através da leitura de sensores presentes no sistema de carga e descarga, quais os componentes que mais provavelmente estão em falha. O método fornece uma abordagem bem estruturada para a construção das Redes Bayesianas utilizadas na diagnose de falhas do sistema.

Galician women translators in the 20th century: rewriting the history of translation from a gender and national approach

This article is the English version of “Traductoras gallegas del siglo XX: Reescribiendo la historia de la traducción desde el género y la nación” by Olga Castro. It was not published on the print version of MonTI for reasons of space. The online version of MonTI does not suffer from these limitations, and this is our way of promoting plurilingualism.

Development of a systems risk methodology for single and multi-modal transportation systems. Final report.

Transportation Department, Research and Special Programs Administration, Washington, D.C.

Transportation system safety methodology. First year final report.

Transportation Department, Office of University Research, Washington, D.C.

Reliability analysis for hazard and operability studies

Fault tree analysis is used as a tool within hazard and operability (Hazop) studies. The present study proposes a new methodology for obtaining the exact TOP event probability of coherent fault trees. The technique uses a top-down approach similar to that of FATRAM. This new Fault Tree Disjoint Reduction Algorithm resolves all the intermediate events in the tree except OR gates with basic event inputs so that a near minimal cut sets expression is obtained. Then Bennetts' disjoint technique is applied and remaining OR gates are resolved. The technique has been found to be appropriate as an alternative to Monte Carlo simulation methods when rare events are countered and exact results are needed. The algorithm has been developed in FORTRAN 77 on the Perq workstation as an addition to the Aston Hazop package. The Perq graphical environment enabled a friendly user interface to be created. The total package takes as its input cause and symptom equations using Lihou's form of coding and produces both drawings of fault trees and the Boolean sum of products expression into which reliability data can be substituted directly.

Traductoras gallegas del siglo XX:reescribiendo la historia de la traducción desde el género y la nación

Within the newly established field of Galician Studies, Feminist Theory has played a major role in revealing how women have contributed to the development of the Galician cultural polysystem. However, it is my contention that the translative facet of many women translators has not yet received enough critical attention. Therefore, within the framework of a growing interest in the roles played both by women and by translation in the development of societies, this article seeks to explore the history of translation in the context of Galicia, with a view to underscoring the contributions of women translators throughout the 20th century. The aim of the article is twofold: firstly, to offer an overview of translators such as Mercedes Vázquez Fernández Pimentel, Mari Luz Morales, Teruca Bouza Vila, María Barbeito, Amparo Alvajar, Xohana Torres, and Teresa Barro, in order to open up new areas for research so that subsequent studies can further examine their contributions in more depth. Secondly, it seeks to analyse the power relations which inform the activity of translation both from a gender and national approach.

Apollo 13 Risk Assessment Revisited

Fault tree methodology is the most widespread risk assessment tool by which one is able to predict - in principle - the outcome of an event whenever it is reduced to simpler ones by the logic operations conjunction and disjunction according to the basics of Boolean algebra. The object of this work is to present an algorithm by which, using the corresponding computer code, one is able to predict - in practice - the outcome of an event whenever its fault tree is given in the usual form.