The Production and Deposition of the Guisborough Helmet

In September 1878 the British Museum received a donation of a folded metal plate which had been embossed and gilded. Restoration of the object revealed that the folded plate was in fact the outer casing of a Roman copper alloy cavalry sports type helmet which dates to the late second or third century AD. The story of what became known as the Guisborough helmet began 14 years earlier in what was then the North Riding of Yorkshire when workers employed by the Cleveland Railway Company discovered a ‘very curious plate of metal’ during road construction. It appears that the helmet was deliberately prepared for deposition and buried at a depth of c30 cm close to a stream. Examination by the authors suggests that this was a high value item that had been repaired many times. Experimental evidence suggests that the decoration alone required approximately 16 h to fashion.     

文本情报信息筛选与聚类的一种处理方法

目前大数据时代情况下的信息有文本、图像、语音和视频等多种形式,而且信息的容量非常大,怎样高效、正确地筛选、分类和处理、利用这些信息,为决策者提供指挥与控制的科学依据显得尤为重要。据此对文本情报信息提出了一种文本聚类的特征选择以及特征变换的方法,利用单词在文本中的出现次数的概率来选择参与聚类的单词,并且对单词出现概率模型定义了特征变换函数,提高了文本信息的筛选、分类和处理的精度,能快速、准确地提取所需要的情报信息提供给指挥与控制的决策者参考、使用。     

Does defence expenditure have a spillover effect on income inequality? A cross-regional analysis in China

China’s defence expenditure has been growing rapidly along with GDP growth during the past two decades. Meanwhile, the income gap has continued to increase. There are conflicting views regarding whether the defence expenditure is capable of reducing income inequality. Therefore, this paper investigates the existence of any spillover effect of defence expenditure on income inequality, with a special focus on the regional differences among 31 provinces and 7 military regions in China. We extend panel cointegration and the impulse response function by using panel data during the period of 1997–2012. The empirical results show that the defence expenditure has an impact on income inequality, and the effect varies over different regions in China. The defence expenditure has a spillover effect on income inequality in the full sample panel and the southeastern panel. An increase in the defence expenditure does not crowd out social welfare spending due to the high level of economic development and government expenditure. On the contrary, in the northern panel, the effect is opposite because of the unbalanced economic development levels within the panel. Beijing as the capital of China, benefits more from the expansion of defence expenditure thus widening the income gap. In addition, the impulse response analyses further confirm a stronger effect of the defence expenditure on income inequality in the northern and the southeastern panels over a short period.     

A branch‐and‐price approach for the stochastic generalized assignment problem

In this article, we address a stochastic generalized assignment machine scheduling problem in which the processing times of jobs are assumed to be random variables. We develop a branch‐and‐price (B&P) approach for solving this problem wherein the pricing problem is separable with respect to each machine, and has the structure of a multidimensional knapsack problem. In addition, we explore two other extensions of this method—one that utilizes a dual‐stabilization technique and another that incorporates an advanced‐start procedure to obtain an initial feasible solution. We compare the performance of these methods with that of the branch‐and‐cut (B&C) method within CPLEX. Our results show that all B&P‐based approaches perform better than the B&C method, with the best performance obtained for the B&P procedure that includes both the extensions aforementioned. We also utilize a Monte Carlo method within the B&P scheme, which affords the use of a small subset of scenarios at a time to estimate the “true” optimal objective function value. Our experimental investigation reveals that this approach readily yields solutions lying within 5% of optimality, while providing more than a 10‐fold savings in CPU times in comparison with the best of the other proposed B&P procedures. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 61: 131–143, 2014     

Individual preferences and the demand for military expenditure*

Whose preferences determine the tradeoff between security and civilian output in deciding upon budget allocations to defence? This paper considers the role that consumer preferences might play in influencing military spending. We propose normative criteria to judge the economic or political efficiency of defence provision at a given time, and test them using Australian survey‐based micro‐data. Our results suggest that the political system has not delivered a simple social‐choice translation of individual preferences into collective outcomes, nor has it delivered results consistent with simple majority‐voting median preferences.     

Evaluating the trade‐off between military spending and investment in the United States

Using tests of a single equation model and cointegration techniques, this paper finds no evidence of a long run trade‐off, and some evidence of a short‐run trade‐off, between military spending and investment in post‐World War II United States data. The short‐run trade‐off is confined to the 1949–1971 period, and may be the result of the sharp expansion and contraction of military outlays in connection with the Korean and Vietnam Wars. In addition, cointegration techniques are used to identify a possible long‐run trade‐off between military spending and consumption.     

The Political Economy of Legislation on Terrorism

^{1 1}This research was funded in part by a grant from the Lowe Institute of Political Economy. The corresponding author is S. Brock Blomerg. We thank Chris Blomberg and Brianna Loyosa for their excellent research assistance on the project. This paper presents an empirical analysis of what drives congressional legislation on terrorism during the period 1995 to 2010. We utilize and augment current methodology to compile and analyze data on sponsorship and cosponsorship of terrorism related data. Our results on the sources of legislation on terrorism are largely in line with past examinations of the importance of committee membership and leadership, party majority-ship, and other political factors. Further, we find that the most significant and robust drive for legislation on terrorism is the September 11^th attacks. And while the impact of 9/11 affected legislative productivity everywhere, we find that it most significantly affected states surrounding New York and Washington D.C. Our results indicate that the economy may be one factor motivating politicians to legislate on terrorism; however, these results are not robust.     

Police Corruption: Towards a Working Definition

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) publication Interpretive Guidance on the Notion of Direct Participation in Hostilities under International Humanitarian Law, all civilians (including child soldiers) lose their immunity from direct targeting ‘for so long as’ their actions amount to direct participation in hostilities. All civilians can, however, access the revolving door of protection and return to their civilian activities – complete with full immunity from direct targeting – provided the nature of their direct participation was spontaneous and disorganised. Once it can be ascertained that their participation in hostilities amounts to continuous combative functions, they relinquish their access to the revolving door of protection, and can be targeted at all times until they abandon their formal or functional membership of the belligerent group. This piece analyses how the revolving door phenomenon and the notion of continuous combative functions apply in instances where civilian child soldiers are directly participating in hostilities.     

The BWC protocol mandate for failure

The stage may be set for what could be a historic turning point in America's reliance on nuclear weapons to meet its fundamental national security interests. Proponents of a refurbished nuclear stockpile and infrastructure are convinced that nuclear weapons will remain central to U.S. security interests, yet they admit that there is no national consensus on the need for and role of nuclear weapons. Nuclear opponents are gravely concerned that to the extent nuclear refurbishment creates a global perception that nuclear weapons remain essential instruments, it will eviscerate nuclear nonproliferation measures precisely at a time when nuclear ambitions are growing. Moreover, opponents see deterrence through advanced conventional weapons as decisively more credible than any nuclear alternative. With hopes of elevating discourse to the national level, this article examines the key current arguments pro and con within the specialist community and forecasts changes in the U.S. nuclear arsenal over the next decade. It concludes with a brief prognosis on prospects for complete nuclear disarmament.