Resource rents,institutions, and violent civil conflicts

Natural resources have been blamed for inducing slow growth and sparking civil conflicts and violence. This paper first develops a model to account for the hazard of armed civil conflicts as a manifestation of the natural resource curse, which is mediated by the quality of both economic and political institutions. We then use recently published data on institutional quality and natural resource rents to measure the potential impact of the resource curse on violent civil conflicts using a panel of data for over 100 countries in the period 1970–2010. Our model explicitly accounts for the role of good economic and political institutions in deterring the recourse to violence as well as the extent to which they might weaken the resource rents effect.     

Survey and technological analysis of laser and its defense applications

The laser technology has made remarkable progress over the past couple of decades.It is being widely employed in diverse domains,such as holography,space sciences,spectroscopy,medical sciences,micro and power electronics,industrial engineering,and most distinctively,as directed energy military weapons.Owing to their active transmissions,laser systems are similar to microwave radars to some extent;however,unlike conventional radars,the laser operates at very high frequencies thus making it a potent enabler of narrow-beam and high energy aerial deployments,both in offensive and defensive roles.In modern avionics systems,laser target indicators and beam riders are the most common devices that are used to direct the Laser Guided Weapons(LGW)accurately to the ground targets.Additionally,compact size and outstanding angular resolution of laser-based systems motivate their use for drones and unmanned aerial applications.Moreover,the narrow-beam divergence of laser emissions offers a low probability of intercept,making it a suitable contender for secure transmissions and safety-critical operations.Furthermore,the developments in space sciences and laser technology have given syner-gistic potential outcomes to use laser systems in space operations.This paper comprehensively reviews laser applications and projects for strategic defense actions on the ground or in space.Additionally,a detailed analysis has been done on recent advancements of the laser technology for target indicators and range-finders.It also reviews the advancements in the field of laser communications for surveillance,its earlier state of the art,and ongoing scientific research and ad-vancements in the domain of high energy directed laser weapons that have revolutionized the evolving military battlefield.Besides offering a comprehensive taxonomy,the paper also critically analyzes some of the recent contributions in the associated domains.     

Experimental and numerical investigation of zirconium jet performance with different liner shapes design

This paper studies the shaped charge jet performance in terms of different liner shapes including conical,bell,hemispherical and bi-conical liners.The critical angles and the relevant flow velocities for the zir-conium liner material were calculated analytically and numerically using Autodyn hydro-code.The relationship between the critical collapse angle and the flow velocity was determined for the conditions of jet formation and coherency.Penetration tests according to the standard testing procedures of API-RP34 (Section-Ⅱ) were performed to validate the numerical predictions of the jet performance of the studied liners.It was found that the four shaped charge liners all produced coherent jets with different performances.The penetration depth of the shaped charges with the bell and the bi-conical liner shapes increased by 10.3％ and 22％,respectively,while the crater diameter of shaped charge with hemispherical liner increased by 85％ representing the formation of an explosively-formed-projectile (EFP),when they are compared with the corresponding jet characteristics of a conical liner shaped charge.     

Minimizing the sum of absolute lateness in single-machine and multimachine scheduling

Kanet addressed the problem of scheduling n jobs on one machine so as to minimize the sum of absolute lateness under a restrictive assumption on their common due date. This article extends the results to the problem of scheduling n jobs on m parallel identical processors in order to minimize the sum of absolute lateness. Also, a heuristic algorithm for a more general version with no restriction on the common due date, for the problem of n-job single-machine scheduling is presented and its performance is reported.     

A new experimental way for the monitoring of the real/equivalent in-service-time of double base rocket propellant by coupling VST and PCA

The assessment of the real in-service-time(RIST)and the equivalent in-service-time(EIST)of double base rocket propellants(DBRPs)is of utmost importance for the safe storage and use of weapon systems as well as the efficiency of the accelerated aging plans.In this work,four DBRPs with similar chemical composition and different natural aging have been artificially aged at T = 338.65 K for 4 months with sampling every 30 days.The unaged and artificially aged samples have been investigated by vacuum stability test(VST)at five isothermal temperatures(T = 333.15 K,343.15 K,353.15 K,363.15 K,and 373.15 K).The volume of the evolved gases in VST was found to decrease with natural/artificial aging.Furthermore,the VST data were treated and subjected to principal component analysis(PCA).The results showed excellent discrimination of the DBRP samples according to their stability thermal properties.Most of the variance was described by the first principal component(PC1)whose scores were linearly correlated with the natural aging durations when PCA is applied on VST data obtained at T = 363.15 K.In light of the obtained results,a new experimental way for the estimation of the real/equivalent IST was proposed,which takes into account the impact of the natural aging of the sample.The approach predicts successfully the RIST of two similar DBRPs with a relative deviation of less than 2％.At the specific heating temperature T = 338.65 K,the developed model provides more conceivable EIST values,with asymptotic behavior against artificial aging duration evolution,thus overcoming some shortcomings of the common generalized van't Hoff formula(GvH).     

Mitigation of the blast load effects on a building structure using newly composite structural configurations

In this study, a nonlinear three-dimensional hydrocode numerical simulation was carried out using AUTODYN-3D to investigate the effect of blasting of a high explosive material (TNT) against several configurations of the composite structure. Several numerical models were carried out to study the effect of varying the thickness of the walls and the effect of adding an air layer or aluminum foam layer inside two layers of concrete in mitigating the effect of blast waves on the structure walls. The results showed that increasing the thickness of walls has a good effect on mitigating the effect of blast waves. When a layer of air was added, the effect of blast waves was exaggerated, while when a layer of aluminum foam was added the blast wave effects were mitigated with a reasonable percentage.     

Debt Burden,Military Spending And Growth In Sub-Saharan Africa: A Dynamic Panel Data Analysis

This article empirically explores the relationship between military expenditure, external debts and economic performance in the economies of sub-Saharan Africa using a sample of 25 countries from 1988–2007. In investigating the defence–external debt nexus, we employ three advanced panel techniques of fully modified OLS (FMOLS), Dynamic OLS (DOLS) and dynamic fixed effect (DFE) to estimate our model. We observe that military expenditure has a positive and significant impact on external debt in African countries. Real GDP affects the total debt stock of African countries with a negative relationship. Our empirical results based on long-run elasticities show that a 1% rise in national output leads to a decline in external debt by 1.52%, on average. Policy-wise, the study suggests that African countries need to strengthen areas of fiscal responsibility and pursue models that encourage rational spending, particularly reductions in military expenditure.     

Relative performance of novel blast wave mitigation system to conventional system based on mitigation percent criteria

Recent researches focused on developing robust blast load mitigation systems due to the threats of terrorist attacks. One of the main embraced strategies is the structural systems that use mitigation techniques. They are developed from a combination of structural elements and described herein as conventional systems. Among the promising techniques is that redirect the waves propagation through hollow tubes. The blast wave propagation through tubes provides an efficient system since it combines many blast wave phenomena, such as reflection, diffraction, and interaction. In this research, a novel blast load mitigation system, employed as a protection fence, is developed using a technique similar to the technique of the bent tube in manipulating the shock-wave. The relative performance of the novel system to the conventional system is evaluated based on mitigation percent criteria. Performances of both systems are calculated through numerical simulation. The proposed novel system proved to satisfy high performance in mitigating the generated blast waves from charges weight up to 500 kg TNT at relatively small standoff distances (5 m and 8 m). It mitigates at least 94％ of the blast waves, which means that only 6％ of that blast impulse is considered as the applied load on the targeted structure.