Accreditation Fraud in Brazilian Military Hospitals: Why “Tone at the Top” Matters

This article shows under which circumstances fraudulent accreditation can occur in Brazilian military hospitals, calling attention to the tone at the top as a critical aspect of military fraud deterrence – and hence as a critical aspect of this branch of military ethics. The problems allegedly found in Brazilian military health institutions were revealed through in-depth interviews conducted with 29 professionals who reported to work or have worked in a Brazilian military hospital. These fraud allegations were mostly associated with false documentation and procedures designed to give the appearance that legal requirements for accreditation were met and could be traced back to a weak or corrupt “tone at the top” coming from military higher ranks.     

China’s Search for a ‘Strategic Air Force’

Once dismissed by many outside observers, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) has undergone an impressive transformation over the past two decades, emerging as one of the world’s premier air forces. As it continues to modernize, it is focused on becoming a ‘strategic air force.’ PLAAF strategists suggest this means it should play a decisive role in protecting Chinese national interests, field modern capabilities commensurate with China’s standing as a major power, and enjoy the institutional status befitting its role as a ‘strategic service,’ an important consideration given the historical dominance of the ground force in China’s military.     

Northern Ireland and minimum force: the refutation of a concept?

The debate over whether there exists a British counter-insurgency tradition of minimum force is one that has been thoroughly discussed. Is there anything left to say? This study suggests there is further insight to be attained if one explicitly evaluates the concept of minimum force in relation to the conduct of the security forces in the years of the Northern Ireland conflict. Through an examination of three key periods in the conflict, it will be shown that while there was invariably an awareness of the need to act with restraint among senior officers at the strategic level, this was often difficult to apply at the tactical level in the heat of confrontation. The argument demonstrates that the British Army, and other instruments of the state, rarely acted in a manner that could be described as ‘minimal’. Instead, it was the broader liberal values of the British state that explains largely the degrees of restraint exhibited by the government and security forces.     

Forecast horizons for the discounted dynamic lot-size problem allowing speculative motive

This article considers the dynamic lot-size problem under discounting, allowing speculative motive for holding inventory. A variable rolling-horizon procedure is presented, which, under certain regularity conditions, is guaranteed to generate an infinite-horizon optimal-production plan. We also discuss a fixed rolling-horizon procedure which provides a production plan that achieves an infinite-horizon cost within a user-specified tolerance ϵ of optimality. The fixed-horizon length T* needed in this procedure is given in terms of a closed-form formula that is independent of specific forecasted demands. We also present computational results for problems with a range of cost parameters and demand characteristics.     

Minimizing absolute and squared deviations of completion times with different earliness and tardiness penalties and a common due date

We consider a single-machine scheduling problem in which all jobs have the same due date and penalties are assessed for both early and late completion of jobs. However, earliness and tardiness are penalized at different rates. The scheduling objective is to minimize either the weighted sum of absolute deviations (WSAD) or the weighted sum of squared deviations (WSSD). For each objective we consider two versions of the problem. In the unconstrained version an increase in the due date does not yield any further decrease in the objective function. We present a constructive algorithm for the unconstrained WSAD problem and show that this problem is equivalent to the two-parallel, nonidentical machine, mean flow-time problem. For the unconstrained WSSD and the constrained WSAD and WSSD problems we propose implicit enumeration procedures based on several dominance conditions. We also report on our computational experience with the enumeration procedures.     

On the use of lexicographic min cost flows in evacuation modeling

Building evacuation problems can be represented as dynamic network-flow problems [3]. The underlying network structure of a building evolves through time yielding a time-expanded network (a dynamic network). Usually in such evacuation problems involving time, more than one objective function is appropriate. For example, minimizing the total evacuation time and evacuating a portion of the building as early as possible are two such objectives. In this article we show that lexicographical optimization is applicable in handling such multiple objectives. Minimizing the total evacuation time while avoiding cyclic movements in a building and “priority evacuation” are treated as lexicographical min cost flow problems.