Military doctrine, command philosophy and the generation of fighting power: genesis and theory

Military doctrine is one of the conceptual components of war. Its raison d’être is that of a force multiplier. It enables a smaller force to take on and defeat a larger force in battle. This article’s departure point is the aphorism of Sir Julian Corbett, who described doctrine as ‘the soul of warfare’. The second dimension to creating a force multiplier effect is forging doctrine with an appropriate command philosophy. The challenge for commanders is how, in unique circumstances, to formulate, disseminate and apply an appropriate doctrine and combine it with a relevant command philosophy. This can only be achieved by policy-makers and senior commanders successfully answering the Clausewitzian question: what kind of conflict are they involved in? Once an answer has been provided, a synthesis of these two factors can be developed and applied. Doctrine has implications for all three levels of war. Tactically, doctrine does two things: first, it helps to create a tempo of operations; second, it develops a transitory quality that will produce operational effect, and ultimately facilitate the pursuit of strategic objectives. Its function is to provide both training and instruction. At the operational level instruction and understanding are critical functions. Third, at the strategic level it provides understanding and direction. Using John Gooch’s six components of doctrine, it will be argued that there is a lacunae in the theory of doctrine as these components can manifest themselves in very different ways at the three levels of war. They can in turn affect the transitory quality of tactical operations. Doctrine is pivotal to success in war. Without doctrine and the appropriate command philosophy military operations cannot be successfully concluded against an active and determined foe.

Immunomodulatory effects of a probiotic drink containing Lactobacillus casei Shirota in healthy older volunteers

PURPOSE: There is growing evidence that probiotics confer health benefits to the host by modulating immune function, especially in older people, where immunosenescence is a feature even of healthy ageing. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of a probiotic drink containing Lactobacillus casei Shirota (LcS) on immune function in a healthy non-immunocompromised older population. METHODS: Thirty healthy old volunteers were recruited into a randomized placebo-controlled, single-blind crossover study. The volunteers were supplemented with the probiotic drink containing 1.3 × 10(10) CFU LcS or skimmed milk per day for 4 weeks, followed by 4 weeks of washout and were crossed over to the other treatment. Peripheral blood and saliva samples were collected at baseline and end of each treatment. RESULTS: Probiotic consumption was associated with a significant increase in natural killer (NK) cell activity relative to baseline and a significant decrease in the mean fluorescence intensity of CD25 expression in the resting T cells compared with placebo. Additionally, there was a trend towards an increased ratio of IL-10 to IL-12 relative to baseline after LcS intake. CONCLUSIONS: Consumption of a probiotic drink containing LcS improved NK cell activity and tended to produce a more anti-inflammatory cytokine profile in an older population.

Taylor v Caldwell (1863)

A Landmark Case is one which stands out from other less remarkable cases. Landmark status is generally accorded because the case marks the beginning or the end of a course of legal development. Taylor v Caldwell is regarded as a landmark case because it marks the beginning of a legal development: the introduction of the doctrine of frustration into English contract law. This chapter explores the legal and historical background to the case to ascertain if it is a genuine landmark. A closer scrutiny reveals that while the legal significance of the case is exaggerated, the historical significance of the cases reveals an unknown irony: the case is a suitable landmark to the frustration of human endeavours. While the existence of the Surrey Music Hall was brief, it brought insanity, imprisonment, bankruptcy and death to its creators.

Invisible and visible language planning: ideological factors in the family language policy of Chinese immigrant families in Quebec

This ethnographic inquiry examines how family languages policies are planned and developed in ten Chinese immigrant families in Quebec, Canada, with regard to their children’s language and literacy education in three languages, Chinese, English, and French. The focus is on how multilingualism is perceived and valued, and how these three languages are linked to particular linguistic markets. The parental ideology that underpins the family language policy, the invisible language planning, is the central focus of analysis. The results suggest that family language policies are strongly influenced by socio-political and economical factors. In addition, the study confirms that the parents’ educational background, their immigration experiences and their cultural disposition, in this case pervaded by Confucian thinking, contribute significantly to parental expectations and aspirations and thus to the family language policies.

A gradual depth-dependent change of connectivity features of supragranular pyramidal cells in rat barrel cortex

Recent experimental evidence suggests a finer genetic, structural and functional subdivision of the layers which form a cortical column. The classical layer II/III (LII/III) of rodent neocortex integrates ascending sensory information with contextual cortical information for behavioral read-out. We systematically investigated to which extent regular-spiking supragranular pyramidal neurons, located at different depths within the cortex, show different input-output connectivity patterns. Combining glutamate-uncaging with whole-cell recordings and biocytin filling, we revealed a novel cellular organization of LII/III: (i) “Lower LII/III” pyramidal cells receive a very strong excitatory input from lemniscal LIV and much fewer inputs from paralemniscal LVa. They project to all layers of the home column, including a feedback projection to LIV whereas transcolumnar projections are relatively sparse. (ii) “Upper LII/III” pyramidal cells also receive their strongest input from LIV, but in addition, a very strong and dense excitatory input from LVa. They project extensively to LII/III as well as LVa and Vb of their home and neighboring columns, (iii) “Middle LII/III” pyramidal cell show an intermediate connectivity phenotype that stands in many ways in-between the features described for lower versus upper LII/III. “Lower LII/III” intracolumnarly segregates and transcolumnarly integrates lemniscal information whereas “upper LII/III” seems to integrate lemniscal with paralemniscal information. This suggests a finegrained functional subdivision of the supragranular compartment containing multiple circuits without any obvious cytoarchitectonic, other structural or functional correlate of a laminar border in rodent barrel cortex.

Instantaneous threat detection based on a semantic representation of activities, zones and trajectories

Threat detection is a challenging problem, because threats appear in many variations and differences to normal behaviour can be very subtle. In this paper, we consider threats on a parking lot, where theft of a truck’s cargo occurs. The threats range from explicit, e.g. a person attacking the truck driver, to implicit, e.g. somebody loitering and then fiddling with the exterior of the truck in order to open it. Our goal is a system that is able to recognize a threat instantaneously as they develop. Typical observables of the threats are a person’s activity, presence in a particular zone and the trajectory. The novelty of this paper is an encoding of these threat observables in a semantic, intermediate-level representation, based on low-level visual features that have no intrinsic semantic meaning themselves. The aim of this representation was to bridge the semantic gap between the low-level tracks and motion and the higher-level notion of threats. In our experiments, we demonstrate that our semantic representation is more descriptive for threat detection than directly using low-level features. We find that a person’s activities are the most important elements of this semantic representation, followed by the person’s trajectory. The proposed threat detection system is very accurate: 96.6 % of the tracks are correctly interpreted, when considering the temporal context.

Preserved emotional awareness of pain in a patient with extensive bilateral damage to the insula, anterior cingulate, and amygdala

Functional neuroimaging investigations of pain have discovered a reliable pattern of activation within limbic regions of a putative "pain matrix" that has been theorized to reflect the affective dimension of pain. To test this theory, we evaluated the experience of pain in a rare neurological patient with extensive bilateral lesions encompassing core limbic structures of the pain matrix, including the insula, anterior cingulate, and amygdala. Despite widespread damage to these regions, the patient's expression and experience of pain was intact, and at times excessive in nature. This finding was consistent across multiple pain measures including self-report, facial expression, vocalization, withdrawal reaction, and autonomic response. These results challenge the notion of a "pain matrix" and provide direct evidence that the insula, anterior cingulate, and amygdala are not necessary for feeling the suffering inherent to pain. The patient's heightened degree of pain affect further suggests that these regions may be more important for the regulation of pain rather than providing the decisive substrate for pain's conscious experience.

Connectivity-based parcellation of the human frontal polar cortex

The frontal pole corresponds to Brodmann area (BA) 10, the largest single architectonic area in the human frontal lobe. Generally, BA10 is thought to contain two or three subregions that subserve broad functions such as multitasking, social cognition, attention, and episodic memory. However, there is a substantial debate about the functional and structural heterogeneity of this large frontal region. Previous connectivity-based parcellation studies have identified two or three subregions in the human frontal pole. Here, we used diffusion tensor imaging to assess structural connectivity of BA10 in 35 healthy subjects and delineated subregions based on this connectivity. This allowed us to determine the correspondence of structurally based subregions with the scheme previously defined functionally. Three subregions could be defined in each subject. However, these three subregions were not spatially consistent between subjects. Therefore, we accepted a solution with two subregions that encompassed the lateral and medial frontal pole. We then examined resting-state functional connectivity of the two subregions and found significant differences between their connectivities. The medial cluster was connected to nodes of the default-mode network, which is implicated in internally focused, self-related thought, and social cognition. The lateral cluster was connected to nodes of the executive control network, associated with directed attention and working memory. These findings support the concept that there are two major anatomical subregions of the frontal pole related to differences in functional connectivity.

Domestic Cats Constitute a Natural Reservoir of Human Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli Types

Feces of 70 diarrhoeic and 230 non-diarrhoeic domestic cats from Sao Paulo, Brazil were investigated for enteropathogenic (EPEC), enterohaemorrhagic (EHEC) and enterotoxigenic (ETEC) Escherichia coli types. While ETEC and EHEC strains were not found, 15 EPEC strains were isolated from 14 cats, of which 13 were non-diarrhoeic, and one diarrhoeic. None of 15 EPEC strains carried the bfpA gene or the EPEC adherence factor plasmid, indicating atypical EPEC types. The EPEC strains were heterogeneous with regard to intimin types, such as eae-theta (three strains), eae-kappa (n = 3), eae-alpha 1 (n = 2), eae-iota (n = 2), one eae-alpha 2, eae-beta 1 and eae-eta each, and two were not typeable. The majority of the EPEC isolates adhered to HEp-2 cells in a localized adherence-like pattern and were positive for fluorescence actin staining. The EPEC strains belonged to 12 different serotypes, including O111:H25 and O125:H6, which are known to be pathogens in humans. Multi locus sequence typing revealed a close genetic similarity between the O111:H25 and O125:H6 strains from cats, dogs and humans. Our results show that domestic cats are colonized by EPEC, including serotypes previously described as human pathogens. As these EPEC strains are also isolated from humans, a cycle of mutual infection by EPEC between cats and its households cannot be ruled out, though the transmission dynamics among the reservoirs are not yet understood clearly.

Detection of Mycoplasma pulmonis in laboratory rats and technicians

Five species of mycoplasma are associated with several rat diseases. Mycoplasma pulmonis is the most important and most studied, possibly causing disease in rats and undermining the validity of laboratory experiments. M. pulmonis was isolated in 144/240 laboratory rats and identified by PCR in 155/240. This species was also detected in 12 human individuals (technicians of a laboratory animal house hold) in contact with these rats. The results were confirmed by sequencing of DNA products. Mycoplasma species are host specific; however, M. pulmonis was identified in humans, suggesting a case of unspecific colonization. Statistical analysis shows a greater risk for M. pulmonis colonizing individuals who are exposed to infected rats in animal facilities than individuals who do not. The detection of M. pulmonis in humans indicates a new status for this mollicute mycoplasmas in animal-holding facilities.

The Family Novel in the Emerging Nation-State: A Comparative Study of Ba Jin’s Jia and Lev Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina

The theme of family in literature and in popular discourse occurs at times when the family as an institution is under attack. Attacks against the family coupled with defence of the family are viewed as the barometer of people’s satisfaction with the society in which they live. This outpouring of emotion, whether it is in defence of or attacking the family, is the result of the family’s position on the bridge between nature and society – a fortunate (or a detrimental) link between an individual and the units that make up a society. Across the United States and much of the western world, the battle for gay marriage and inclusive civil unions has revealed the fissures in our collective moral view of the family. The conservative concern about the absence of ‘family values’ is magnified by our situation in a world of flux. Inflation, war, terrorist threats, and the depletion of natural resources are but a few examples. When so much is unknown, how do we position ourselves? What anchors us to the past, gives us comfort in the present, and supports us in the future if not the family? Alternatively, what coddles us more in the past, shackles us more to the present, and lulls us more into a fixed conception of the future than the family? My research is not a sociological survey into the family nor does it stake any claims to understanding the present state of the family in society. The study seeks, however, to shed light on the rhetorical uses of the family by analysing two novels that are inextricably concerned with the theory of the family in times of heightened social change. In particular, my research focuses upon the social role and political meaning of the family in Anna Karenina and Jia.

The Schwarmgeister: The Development of Ecclesiastical Doctrine Through Schismatic Movements

Throughout the Christian story, Church doctrine and ecclesiology have been shrouded in controversy. From the Council of Nicea in 325, when are early Church fathers debated about the Trinity of Christ all the way to the modern day with Vatican II theological controversies have been important in the molding of Christian doctrine on the structure, role, and function of the Church. What makes those controversies different from the ones I treat in my thesis is that the previously mentioned controversies did not lead to schismatic divisions in the Church. The Donatist controversy and Luther's theological battle with Karlstadt were major movements that endangered the unity of the Church. These controversies propagated crucial writings and teachings in two major areas. The first area is the spiritual power and validity of the sacraments. Second is the role, function, and ecclesiology of the Church, with particular attention to the authority of the ministry. I want to demonstrate that these controversies refined the Church's thinking on sacramental issues such as baptism and Eucharist, as well as address the question of who has the power in the Church? And to what extent do they have the power to press reforms?

Bringing Japanese manufacturing systems to America: the feasibility of implementing just-in-time production in the United States

This paper addresses the feasibility of implementing Japanese manufacturing systems in the United States. The recent success of Japanese transplant companies suggests that Just-In-Time (JIT) production is possible within America's industrial environment. Once American workers receive proper training, they have little difficulty participating in rapid setup procedures and utilizing the kanban system. Japanese transplants are gradually developing Japanese-style relationships with their American supplier companies by initiating long-term, mutually beneficial agreements. They are also finding ways to cope with America's problem of distance, which is steadily decreasing as an obstacle to JIT delivery. American companies, however, encounter Significant problems in trying to convert traditionally organized, factories to the JIT system. This paper demonstrates that it is both feasible and beneficial for American manufacturers to implement JIT production techniques. Many of the difficulties manufacturers experience center around a general lack of information about JIT. Once a company realizes its potential for setup-time reduction, a prerequisite for the JIT system, workers and managers can work together to create a new process for handling equipment changeover. Significant results are possible with minimal investment. Also, supervisors often do not realize that the JIT method of ordering goods from suppliers is compatible with current systems. This "kanban system" not only enhances current systems but also reduces the amount of paperwork and scheduling involved. When arranging JlT delivery of supplier goods, American manufacturers tend to overlook important aspects of JIT supplier management. However, by making long-tenn commitments, initiating the open exchange of information, assisting suppliers in reaching new standards of performance, increasing the level of conununication, and relying more on suppliers' engineering capabilities, even American manufacturers can develop Japanese-style supplier relationships that enhance the effectiveness of the system.