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"Price, Bryan C."
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Targeting Top Terrorists: How Leadership Decapitation Contributes to Counterterrorism
Several states, including Israel and the United States, have put decapitation tactics, which seek to kill or capture leaders of terrorist organizations, at the forefront of their counterterrorism efforts. The vast majority of scholarly work on decapitation suggests, however, that leadership decapitation is ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst. Contrary to this conventional wisdom, leadership decapitation significantly increases the mortality rate of terrorist groups, although the results indicate that the effect of decapitation decreases with the age of the group, even to a point where it may have no effect at all. This finding helps to explain the previously perplexing mixed record of decapitation effectiveness. Terrorist groups are especially susceptible to leadership decapitation because their organizational characteristics (they are violent, clandestine, and values based) amplify the difficulties of leadership succession. Additionally, in contrast to the conventional wisdom regarding the durability of terrorist groups, politically relevant terrorist groups (defined as those with at least four attacks including one attack resulting in a fatality) endure significantly longer than previously believed.
Journal Article
Removing the devil you know: Unraveling the puzzle behind decapitation effectiveness and terrorist group duration
Leaders matter, but they matter more in some organizations than they do in others, and they matter more during certain periods of an organization's life cycle than in other periods. Learning why, where, and when leaders matter in organizations is important for a number of reasons, not the least of which is a desire to understand how power is manipulated in our everyday social, economic, and political relationships. However, learning about leaders is especially important in understanding terrorist groups, including their formation, behavior, and dissolution. The US has made leadership decapitation, a term that describes a policy of killing or capturing a group's head leader or leaders, a cornerstone of its counterterrorism strategy, yet there have been no systematic studies showing it is even an effective strategy in winning the so-called “war on terror.” We know very little about the effects of leadership succession on terrorist group behavior. Some studies even conclude that leadership decapitation strategies are not only ineffective, but counterproductive as well (Jordan, forthcoming). In this dissertation, the author uses a creative conceptual framework and a functional typology of organizations to show why leaders matter more in terrorist groups than in other organizational types. Additionally, it features an advanced statistical modeling technique from the field of biomedicine that is applied to an original data set of terrorist groups and their leaders. I use large-n statistical analysis and an in-depth case study of Hamas to unravel the puzzle of decapitation effectiveness and explain what covariates affect terrorist group duration and how. Although removing leaders of terrorist groups may have some unintended consequences and is no guarantee of successfully dissolving the terrorist group, it substantially increases the mortality rate of terrorist groups, even after controlling for a group's operational capability, alliance network, ideology, and the target state's regime type and counterterrorism capacity.
Dissertation
US must kill and capture terrorist leaders as soon as possible. It works
The United States made killing and capturing terrorist leaders a key focus of its counterterrorism strategy following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. In addition to getting Osama bin Laden, President Obama's number one counterterrorism priority upon taking office, his administration has netted scores of other high-profile leaders, including Al Qaeda leaders Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen and Abu Yahya al-Libi in Pakistan.
Newspaper Article
US must kill and capture terrorist leaders as soon as possible. It works
[...]religious groups were almost five times as likely to collapse as nationalist groups after losing their leadership to a targeted killing or capture. [...]the earlier in its life cycle that a terrorist group loses its leadership, the more likely it is to collapse. The detrimental effects on a group from loss of leadership diminish by 50 percent in the first 10 years, and after 20 years, killing or capturing a leader may have no effect on the group at all. [...]states that choose to employ this method of eliminating leadership as a counterterrorism tactic should allocate their resources accordingly, concentrating their time and money on killing and capturing leaders of terrorist groups as early in their existence as possible.
Newspaper Article
Projected increase in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis from 2015 to 2040
Although amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is relatively rare, the socioeconomic significance of the disease is extensive. It is therefore vital to project the epidemiologic trend of ALS. To date, there have been few published studies attempting to estimate the number and distribution of ALS cases in the upcoming years. Here we show that the number of ALS cases across the globe will increase from 222,801 in 2015 to 376,674 in 2040, representing an increase of 69%. This increase is predominantly due to ageing of the population, particularly among developing nations. This projection is likely an underestimate due to improving healthcare and economic conditions. The results should be used to inform healthcare policy to more efficiently allocate healthcare resources.
The socioeconomic burden of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is high, but the projected number of cases in the upcoming years is unclear. Here, the authors estimate the number and distribution of ALS cases to 2040, and show that cases are projected to increase, particularly in developing nations.
Journal Article
The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: Public Data, Formats, Reduction, and Archiving
Breakthrough Listen is the most comprehensive and sensitive search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) to date, employing a collection of international observational facilities including both radio and optical telescopes. During the first three years of the Listen program, thousands of targets have been observed with the Green Bank Telescope (GBT), Parkes Telescope and Automated Planet Finder. At GBT and Parkes, observations have been performed ranging from 700 MHz to 26 GHz, with raw data volumes averaging over 1 PB day−1. A pseudo-real time software spectroscopy suite is used to produce multi-resolution spectrograms amounting to approximately 400 GB h−1 GHz−1 beam−1. For certain targets, raw baseband voltage data is also preserved. Observations with the Automated Planet Finder produce both two-dimensional and one-dimensional high-resolution (R ∼ 105) echelle spectral data. Although the primary purpose of Listen data acquisition is for SETI, a range of secondary science has also been performed with these data, including studies of fast radio bursts. Other current and potential research topics include spectral line studies, searches for certain kinds of dark matter, probes of interstellar scattering, pulsar searches, radio transient searches and investigations of stellar activity. Listen data are also being used in the development of algorithms, including machine-learning approaches to modulation scheme classification and outlier detection, that have wide applicability not just for astronomical research but for a broad range of science and engineering. In this paper, we describe the hardware and software pipeline used for collection, reduction, archival, and public dissemination of Listen data. We describe the data formats and tools, and present Breakthrough Listen Data Release 1.0 (BLDR 1.0), a defined set of publicly available raw and reduced data totaling 1 PB.
Journal Article
Validity of Inertial Measurement Units to Measure Lower-Limb Kinematics and Pelvic Orientation at Submaximal and Maximal Effort Running Speeds
Inertial measurement units (IMUs) have been validated for measuring sagittal plane lower-limb kinematics during moderate-speed running, but their accuracy at maximal speeds remains less understood. This study aimed to assess IMU measurement accuracy during high-speed running and maximal effort sprinting on a curved non-motorized treadmill using discrete (Bland–Altman analysis) and continuous (root mean square error [RMSE], normalised RMSE, Pearson correlation, and statistical parametric mapping analysis [SPM]) metrics. The hip, knee, and ankle flexions and the pelvic orientation (tilt, obliquity, and rotation) were captured concurrently from both IMU and optical motion capture systems, as 20 participants ran steadily at 70%, 80%, 90%, and 100% of their maximal effort sprinting speed (5.36 ± 0.55, 6.02 ± 0.60, 6.66 ± 0.71, and 7.09 ± 0.73 m/s, respectively). Bland–Altman analysis indicated a systematic bias within ±1° for the peak pelvic tilt, rotation, and lower-limb kinematics and −3.3° to −4.1° for the pelvic obliquity. The SPM analysis demonstrated a good agreement in the hip and knee flexion angles for most phases of the stride cycle, albeit with significant differences noted around the ipsilateral toe-off. The RMSE ranged from 4.3° (pelvic obliquity at 70% speed) to 7.8° (hip flexion at 100% speed). Correlation coefficients ranged from 0.44 (pelvic tilt at 90%) to 0.99 (hip and knee flexions at all speeds). Running speed minimally but significantly affected the RMSE for the hip and ankle flexions. The present IMU system is effective for measuring lower-limb kinematics during sprinting, but the pelvic orientation estimation was less accurate.
Journal Article