Browsing by Subject "Defense"
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Item Analysis of the size, accessibility, and profitability of international defense sales in times of U.S. budget uncertainty(2015-05) Massey, Daniel Lee; Gholz, Eugene, 1971-; Gilbert, StephenImmediately prior to and following cuts to the U.S. defense budget in 2013, executives and board members from Lockheed Martin, Boeing, BAE Systems, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics specifically cited the need to increase international sales to make up for lost U.S. revenue. Some statements predict aggressive international growth in the immediate future, while others take a more moderate or long-term approach. The purpose of this paper is to assess whether the international defense market is sufficiently large, accessible, and profitable for U.S. defense companies to maintain or grow overall revenue and profitability in the face of static or shrinking defense budgets in the United States.Item In search of a cyber Manhattan Project : assorted thoughts on U.S. cyberattack by and for the computer illiterate(2011-08) Civins, Braden Eph; Chesney, Robert M.; Weaver, Catherine, 1971-National discourse on cyberconflict has largely focused on defensive concerns, or protecting “critical infrastructure” from cyber threats. By contrast, the U.S. government’s employment of cyberattack is shrouded in secrecy and receives scant public attention. The seminal study on U.S. cyberattack, published by the National Academy of Sciences in 2009, noted that the clandestine nature of U.S. cyber operations hinders “widespread understanding and debate about the nature and implications of U.S. cyberattack.” This secrecy has contributed to a policy and legal framework for cyberattack that the NRC-NAS Report called “ill-formed, underdeveloped and highly uncertain.” Since the NRC-NAS Report was published, the U.S. government has signaled an unprecedented seriousness of purpose in addressing cyberconflict. It has marshaled its cyber resources under the leadership of a single “Cyber Command” and attempted to articulate formal “cyberstrategy.” Media reports from 2010-11 provide rare insight into cyberattack decision-making, and describe gradual development of policy and process for a specific type of cyberattack. The topic of U.S. cyberattack merits revisiting. This Report surveys the current international environment regarding cyberconflict, traces the development of “cyberstrategy” by the Executive Office of the President (EoP) and the Department of Defense (DoD) to make general points about the U.S. approach to cyberattack, and examines the statutory framework applicable to U.S. cyberattack in a narrow set of cases. This Report draws on news media reports about a series of cyberattack incidents to examine the dynamics of the cyberattack policy-making process, discusses recent attempts to address these issues, and summarizes lessons learned.Item The political economy of military spending, freedom, conflicts, and economic growth in developing countries(Texas A&M University, 2006-08-16) Attar, Riad AThis study assesses the effect of politics on economic growth in developing societies. In this study I developed and applied an augmented production function model to 69 developing countries with several political variables: regime type, institutional freedom, political freedom, political stability, and ideological base. I investigated how changes of political contexts affect economic growth by applying non-linear least squares, and cross national time series techniques to the production function defensegrowth model utilizing time series data from 1960 to 2002. The results show that the impacts of political variables on economic growth are at least as significant as the economic variables; the externality of non-military spending has positive and significant impact on economic growth in the majority of countries; and the impacts of economic and military variables and their externalities?? effects on economic growth differ with different political contexts. The main findings of the study provide guidelines to policy decision makers in evaluating their ??guns??-??butter?? alternatives.Item Transcriptional regulation in cowpea bruchid guts during adaptation to a plant defense protease inhibitor and screening of mutants that are altered in jasmonate-regulated signal transduction pathways using Arabidopsis thaliana(2009-05-15) Moon, JaewoongTo study the interaction between plants and insects I performed the experiments to find out the counter-defense mechanism of insects when insects were attacked by the defense protein of plants. Jasmonate (JA) is one of the most important plant hormones that is involved in plant defense mechanism. I studied to find out the components of JA signal transduction by T-DNA insertion mutant screening. In the first study, transcriptional regulation in cowpea bruchid guts during adaptation to a plant defense protease inhibitor, cowpea bruchid, when fed on a diet containing the soybean cysteine protease inhibitor soyacystatin N (scN), activates an array of counter-defense genes to adapt to the negative effects of the inhibitor and regain its normal rate of feeding and development. A collection of 1,920 cDNAs was obtained by differential subtraction with cDNAs prepared from guts of the 4th instar larvae of scNadapted (reared on scN-containing diet) and scN-unadapted (reared on regular scN-free diet) cowpea bruchids. Subsequent expression profiling using DNA microarray and northern blot analyses identified 94 transcript species from this collection that are responsive to dietary scN. The full-length cDNA of an scN-inducible cathepsin B-like cysteine protease was obtained. Its transcriptional response to scN during larval development contrasts with the pattern of the cathepsin L family, the major digestive enzymes. These results suggest cathepsin B-like cysteine proteases may play a crucial role in cowpea bruchid adaptation to dietary scN. In the second study, screening of mutants that are altered in jasmonate-regulated signal transduction pathways using Arabidopsis thaliana was performed. Mutant screening strategy using T-DNA insertion mutagenesis and AVP-LUC as a reporter enabled to find JA-signal transduction mutants of Arabidopsis thaliana, 9 underregulated mutants and 6 over-regulated mutants. 20B15 showed reduced VSP1, THI2.1 expression and increased PDF1.2 expression as compared to wild type when treated with JA. These data strongly suggested that 20B15 is a JA signaling mutant. 49R1, 49R2 and 49R3 had same T-DNA insertion site (At1g53540) and showed about 10-fold higher AVP-LUC expression level than wild type when JA was treated. Genetic analysis showed the mutation of these plants was recessive and tight linkage between mutant phenotype and T-DNA insertion in At1g53540.