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Why do similarly sized peacekeeping missions vary in their effectiveness to protect civilians in conflicts? We argue that peace operations with a large share of troops from countries with high-quality militaries are better able to deter violence from state and non-state actors and create buffer zones within conflict areas, can better reach remote locations, and have superior capabilities – including diplomatic pressure by troop contributing countries – to monitor the implementation of peace agreements. These operational advantages enable them to better protect civilians. Combining data from military expenditures of troop contributing countries together with monthly data on the composition of peace operations, we create a proxy indicator for the average troop quality of UN PKOs. Statistical evidence from an extended sample of conflicts in Africa and Asia between 1991 and 2010 supports our argument.

Screw withdrawal force is a key mechanical property related to the load-bearing capacity and reliability of mechanically fastened timber structures. This study investigates the screw withdrawal performance of cross-laminated timber (CLT) manufactured from spruce, beech, and poplar, including both homogeneous and hybrid layups. The selected species represent materials with different densities and regional availability in Hungary. A one-component polyurethane adhesive was used for panel manufacturing. Screw withdrawal force was determined using two methods: a universal testing machine (UTM) and a manual portable device (MPD). The highest withdrawal forces were observed in beech-based configurations, while the lowest values were measured for spruce. Poplar-based configurations demonstrated intermediate but competitive performance, exceeding the reference spruce values. Statistical evaluation confirmed a significant effect of layup configuration on withdrawal resistance. The MPD measurements were on average approximately 9% higher than UTM results, indicating a consistent and quantifiable inter-method difference. The results demonstrate that hybrid CLT configurations can be optimized by combining species of different densities and that portable testing methods provide reliable estimates of withdrawal performance. These findings contribute to the understanding of connection behavior in hybrid CLT and support the practical application of semi-destructive testing methods for in-situ assessment.

The best leaders harness the potential ofpeople and ideas to achieve their organizations goal. In Reimaginative Leadership, a reconceptualization of leadership inthe twenty-first century is posited. Focussing on the Caribbean, Canute S.Thompson advances a new narrative and offers a different lens from which toview leaders and workers. Divided into three parts, Reimaginative Leadership examines theorigins, nature and application of a reimagined leadership based on care,courage, trust and accountability in response to the new generation of workers.Building on his earlier work in LeadershipReimagination: A Primer of Principles and Practice (2013) and Locating the Epicentre of EffectiveEducational Leadership in the 21st Century (2015), Thompson takes ahumanistic approach and articulates nine concepts as the fundamental basis fora new theory of leadership. Intended for the leader and worker alike, Reimaginative Leadership provides aguide to navigating challenging and complex issues in the twenty-first-centuryorganization.

The contemporary security environment is characterized by an increase in complexity, shifting dynamics and a rising number of wars being carried out in a vague and flexible warfare environment. Naturally, this requires military leaders to adapt more rapidly to the challenges than ever before; today, army commanders have to behave more like diplomats, intellectuals, academics, and technicians in this respect. This book provides an eclectic and analytic conceptional study regarding military leadership and its components and dynamics. This work on the phenomenon of military leadership is a valuable original reference book for academics, scientists, students, and professional members of the armed forces, as well as for anyone else interested in personal development issues. This second edition includes two new chapters ('On The Basic Leadership Requirements That Today's Leaders Are Expected To Possess' and 'From Authoritarian To Authentic Military Leadership'), and updated versions of many chapters from the first edition.

Feature selection (FS) is commonly thought of as a pre-processing strategy for determining the best subset of characteristics from a given collection of features. Here, a novel discrete artificial gorilla troop optimization (DAGTO) technique is introduced for the first time to handle FS tasks in the healthcare sector. Depending on the number and type of objective functions, four variants of the proposed method are implemented in this article, namely: (1) single-objective (SO-DAGTO), (2) bi-objective (wrapper) (MO-DAGTO1), (3) bi-objective (filter wrapper hybrid) (MO-DAGTO2), and (4) tri-objective (filter wrapper hybrid) (MO-DAGTO3) for identifying relevant features in diagnosing a particular disease. We provide an outstanding gorilla initialization strategy based on the label mutual information (MI) with the aim of increasing population variety and accelerate convergence. To verify the performance of the presented methods, ten medical datasets are taken into consideration, which are of variable dimensions. A comparison is also implemented between the best of the four suggested approaches (MO-DAGTO2) and four established multi-objective FS strategies, and it is statistically proven to be the superior one. Finally, a case study with COVID-19 samples is performed to extract the critical factors related to it and to demonstrate how this method is fruitful in real-world applications.

Jack Margolin is an independent researcher who has studied private military contractors and Russian criminal networks since 2014.He previously led conflict finance investigations at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, a non-profit investigating crime and conflict.

Effective pain control is an underappreciated aspect of managing opioid withdrawal, and its absence presents a significant barrier to successful opioid detoxification. Accordingly, there is an urgent need for effective non-opioid treatments to facilitate opioid detoxification. l-Tetrahydropalmatine (l-THP) possesses powerful analgesic properties and is an active ingredient in botanical formulations used in Vietnam for the treatment of opioid withdrawal syndrome. In this study, rats receiving morphine (15 mg/kg, i.p.) for 5 days per week displayed a progressive increase in pain thresholds during acute 23 h withdrawal as assessed by an automated Von Frey test. A single dose of l-THP (5 or 7.5 mg/kg, p.o.) administered during the 4th and 5th weeks of morphine treatment significantly improves pain tolerance scores. A 7-day course of l-THP treatment in animals experiencing extended withdrawal significantly attenuates hyperalgesia and reduces the number of days to recovery to baseline pain thresholds by 61% when compared to vehicle-treated controls. This indicates that the efficacy of l-THP on pain perception extends beyond its half-life. As a non-opioid treatment for reversing a significant hyperalgesic state during withdrawal, l-THP may be a valuable addition to the currently limited arsenal of opioid detoxification treatments.