THE NEXUS OF GLOBALIZATION AND NEXT-GENERATION NONPROLIFERATION

Although globalization has created opportunities for nuclear and biological proliferation dangers to take root and grow, it also has opened the door to new solutions. Original ideas and approaches are needed to develop a stronger, more flexible next-generation nonproliferation strategy that accounts for the increasingly important integration of economic, political, and technological issues. The foundation of this strategy should focus on tapping the power of market-based mechanisms, understanding how commercially driven decisions affect proliferation threats, establishing new partnerships, and forging cohesion among the current nonproliferation mechanisms. The implementation of such a strategy will require forceful leadership, a cultural shift from both policymakers and the range of stakeholders, and consensus building within the international community.     

NUCLEAR TERRORISM AND THE GLOBAL POLITICS OF CIVILIAN HEU ELIMINATION

An increasing number of countries recognize the special risks of nuclear terrorism associated with the civilian use and storage of and commerce in highly enriched uranium (HEU). They are especially concerned that non-state actors might gain access to HEU and use it to build and detonate improvised nuclear devices. The risk is aggravated by the very large global stocks of HEU, some of which are inadequately protected. Although HEU has few commercial uses, and most experts believe it is technically feasible to substitute low-enriched uranium for HEU in nearly all civilian applications, efforts to reduce HEU stocks have been impeded by a variety of economic, political, and strategic considerations. This article analyzes the nature of these impediments and discusses what is required to overcome them.     

卫星柔性热控薄膜材料充放电效应试验

针对柔性热控薄膜材料导电/绝缘多层复合、微纳尺寸厚度的结构特点,采用10～70 KeV电子辐照的方法开展了kapton基二次表面镜薄膜材料充放电特性的测试试验,获得了表面充电电位、静电放电频次等关键参数,并采用蒙特卡罗方法研究了辐照电子在多层薄膜材料内的输运规律。研究结果表明由于kapton基二次表面镜薄膜结构的特殊性,当辐照电子能量为10 KeV时未发生静电放电现象,随着电子能量不断增加,薄膜材料的表面充电电位幅值与静电放电频次呈先上升后下降的变化规律,且在电子能量为25 KeV时空间充放电效应最为显著。     

Peace-building or structural violence? Deconstructing the aftermath of Nigeria/Cameroon boundary demarcation

ABSTRACT

There is a great conviction that the International Court of Justice’s ruling in 2002 on the Bakassi boundary dispute between Nigeria and Cameroon, and Nigeria’s decision to obey the ruling may have stopped a fierce inter-state war over the boundary. Indeed, many then ascribed to the whole boundary demarcation process as peacebuilding, disregarding the structural changes marked by the violence of forced migration. This article explores how the boundary delimitation has produced particular sorts of structural violence characterised by state neglect, loss of livelihoods and destitution. Thus, the article argues that although a full-blown war was avoided, the socio-economic conditions of the Nigerian populations on both sides of the border were not adequately considered and guaranteed as part of the peace-building agenda. It further argues that Nigeria, like many post-colonial states with the concentration of developments in major cities, neglects rural and border communities. Thus, the border communities accommodating the former Bakassi residents have further degenerated into ‘ill-governed’ spaces. This article uses structural violence as a framework to analyse the primary and secondary data to provide some deeper insights into the issues of violence being experienced by the local populations living on both sides of the demarcated border.     

Initiating a cooperative denuclearization effort with North Korea

ABSTRACT

As the United States and North Korea pursue negotiations on a “denuclearization” agreement, the two countries should consider initiating cooperative measures as a way to build confidence and encourage finalization of a complete agreement. Based on lessons from the initial engagements carried out under the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program in states of the former Soviet Union (FSU), initial cooperation should focus on safety and security, training, and infrastructure elimination. By offering to implement these initiatives now while negotiations are underway, the United States could gain additional insights into North Korean intentions. These early initiatives could be proposed without compromising the US maximum-pressure campaign on North Korea by using the current authorities of the CTR program and carefully designing specific exemptions that may be required for any agreed measures. If North Korea is truly interested in pursuing disarmament efforts, the initial cooperative projects would enable them to begin reaping potential benefits while negotiations continue with sanctions still in place. These initial proposals could also be expanded to include additional international partners such as Russia, China, South Korea, and Japan. Such programs and initiatives would support and supplement longer-term strategies to address North Korean weapons-of-mass-destruction challenges.     

The ballot or the bomb belt: the roots of female suicide terrorism before and after 9/11

ABSTRACT

In recent years, an upward trend in terrorist attacks has mirrored an increase in suicide attacks. According to our preliminary analysis, the events of September 11^th marked a sea change in the number of terrorist attacks. While a rich literature has evaluated why terrorists participate in suicide attacks, none have considered the uptick in volume after 9/11, and fewer yet have considered how female fighters may be contributing to this. We evaluate how both structural and female-specific factors affect the likelihood of female fighter suicide attacks. Recent literature discovered a trend in terrorist groups using females as suicide bombers due to cultural norms that permit them to get closer to targets. We test our theory using data from the Chicago Project on Security and Threats Suicide Attack Database (CPOST-SAD) and various datasets from the Quality of Government (QOG) compendium for the 1986–2016 time period. We construct a series of models that consider both female-specific and structural factors that could explain variation in the number of female suicide attacks. Our results indicate that our models encompass relatively stable patterns. Female political empowerment, female educational attainment, and female employment rates are significant and positive in our post-9/11 models, indicating that they may increase female suicide attacks. Democracy is a relevant structural factor and generally yields a positive effect on female suicide attacks across both time periods and multiple models. Ethnic fractionalization is significant in both time periods but yields a negative effect before 9/11 and a positive effect in the later period.     

Cost analysis of warranty policies

This article analyzes two general warranty policies involving an initial free replacement period, followed by a pro rata period. We examine the short-run total costs and longrun average costs under these policies. Formulas for both consumer costs and manufacturer profits under warranty are derived. We also study the expected number of purchases over the product life cycle under both policies. Bounds for the expected total costs and expected number of purchases are obtained for the case where the failure distribution of the item is new better than used.     

Level product form QSF processes and an analysis of queues with Coxian interarrival distribution

In this article, we study a class of Quasi‐Skipfree (QSF) processes where the transition rate submatrices in the skipfree direction have a column times row structure. Under homogeneity and irreducibility assumptions we show that the stationary distributions of these processes have a product form as a function of the level. For an application, we will discuss the ‐queue that can be modeled as a QSF process on a two‐dimensional state space. In addition, we study the properties of the stationary distribution and derive monotonicity of the mean number of the customers in the queue, their mean sojourn time and the variance as a function of for fixed mean arrival rate. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logisticsxs 66:57–72, 2019