scholarly journals Combat Readiness, Harm Aversion, and Promotion Eligibility: A Qualitative Study of U.S. Servicemembers Views on Tobacco Use and Control in the Military

2018 ◽  
Vol 184 (3-4) ◽  
pp. e175-e182
Author(s):  
Raj C Singaraju ◽  
Janet N Myers ◽  
Jill T Owczarzak ◽  
Andrea C Gielen
BMJ Open ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. e039367
Author(s):  
Clive Tan ◽  
Lavinia Lin ◽  
Mervyn Lim ◽  
Seeu Kun Ong ◽  
Mee-Lian Wong ◽  
...  

ObjectivesTo explore tobacco use patterns and factors influencing tobacco use in young Singaporean men serving military national service.MethodsA qualitative study using in-depth telephone interviews and maximum variation sampling was conducted with 29 Singaporean men who have completed their national service in 2017–2018. Data were analysed using thematic analysis.ResultsMore than half (51.7%) of the participants started smoking before age 18, with a mean age of smoking initiation at 16 years. At the individual level, the two main contributing factors to tobacco use were smoking as a coping mechanism, and physical or psychological addiction. Financial concern was reported as the key motivation to quit smoking. At the interpersonal level, peers and superiors played an influential role in the smoking habits of the participants. When superiors took additional measures against smoking behaviours, it contributed to their decision to smoke less. At the organisation level, some unintended consequences were reported as a result of the strict tobacco control measures implemented by the military, such as the designated smoking areas within the camps become regarded as an area for socialisation.ConclusionInformed by the Socio-Ecological Model, this study has provided insights into the multifaceted and interactive effect of individual, interpersonal and organisational factors that influence tobacco use in young men serving military national service in the Singapore and Asian context. The study insights provided an understanding of the local context before designing programmes or changing regulations to further discourage tobacco usage in the military.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 1887-1891
Author(s):  
Todor Kalinov

Management and Command253 are two different words and terms, but military structures use them as synonyms. Military commanders’ authorities are almost equal in meaning to civilian managers’ privileges and power. Comparison between military command and the civilian management system structure, organization, and way of work shows almost full identity and overlapping. The highest in scale and size military systems are national ministries of defense and multinational military alliances and coalitions. Military systems at this level combine military command structures with civilian political leadership and support elements. Therefore, they incorporate both military command and civilian management organizations without any complications, because their nature originated from same source and have similar framework and content. Management of organizations requires communication in order to plan, coordinate, lead, control, and conduct all routine or extraordinary activities. Immediate long-distance communications originated from telegraphy, which was firstly applied in 19th century. Later, long-distance communications included telephony, aerial transmitting, satellite, and last but not least internet data exchange. They allowed immediate exchange of letters, voice and images, bringing to new capabilities of the managers. Their sophisticated technical base brought to new area of the military command and civilian management structures. These area covered technical and operational parts of communications, and created engineer sub-field of science, that has become one of the most popular educations, worldwide. Communications were excluded from the military command and moved to separate field, named Computers and Communications. A historic overview and analysis of the command and management structures and requirements shows their relationships, common origin, and mission. They have significant differences: management and control are based on humanities, natural and social sciences, while communications are mainly based on engineering and technology. These differences do not create enough conditions for defragmentation of communications from the management structures. They exist together in symbiosis and management structures need communications in order to exist and multiply their effectiveness and efficiency. Future defragmentation between military command and communications will bring risks of worse coordination, need for more human resources, and worse end states. These risks are extremely negative for nations and should be avoided by wide appliance of the education and science among nowadays and future leaders, managers, and commanders.


Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 999
Author(s):  
Ahmad Taher Azar ◽  
Anis Koubaa ◽  
Nada Ali Mohamed ◽  
Habiba A. Ibrahim ◽  
Zahra Fathy Ibrahim ◽  
...  

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly being used in many challenging and diversified applications. These applications belong to the civilian and the military fields. To name a few; infrastructure inspection, traffic patrolling, remote sensing, mapping, surveillance, rescuing humans and animals, environment monitoring, and Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) operations. However, the use of UAVs in these applications needs a substantial level of autonomy. In other words, UAVs should have the ability to accomplish planned missions in unexpected situations without requiring human intervention. To ensure this level of autonomy, many artificial intelligence algorithms were designed. These algorithms targeted the guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) of UAVs. In this paper, we described the state of the art of one subset of these algorithms: the deep reinforcement learning (DRL) techniques. We made a detailed description of them, and we deduced the current limitations in this area. We noted that most of these DRL methods were designed to ensure stable and smooth UAV navigation by training computer-simulated environments. We realized that further research efforts are needed to address the challenges that restrain their deployment in real-life scenarios.


Author(s):  
Denis S. Lapay

The study is devoted to the Moscow Military Railway School activities in the command and control staff qualifying for the Special Corps of Railway Troops during its existence from 1932 to 1941. The relevance of the research is due to the lack of the issues of construction and training studies of the Special Railway Corps military personnel and the little studied aspects of command and control staff training in the Moscow Military Railway School during the period of Russian historiography. Factor analysis of justification of Railway School foundation historical necessity is carried out. We reveal the main activities of the military authorities, management and teaching staff of the school to train specialists for the Railway troops of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. The experience of deploying the material and training base of the military school within a limited time frame is analyzed. The specificities of the school’s variable staffing system are also noted. The background for the school establishment discontinuing is analyzed, and the conclusion is drawn that this reorganization in March 1941 on the eve of the Great Patriotic War is unjustified, as well as the need to restore historical memory of the school.


Author(s):  
Mahnaz SOLHI ◽  
Esmaeil FATTAHI ◽  
Zahra Sadat MANZARI ◽  
Prakash C. GUPTA ◽  
Mehdi KARGAR ◽  
...  

Background: Smokeless tobacco use is a public health problem in some parts of the world. The major objective of this study was to investigate the reasons and factors of consumption. Methods: A content analysis was conducted on articles for the past thirty years (1989-2019). We reviewed and selected 400 abstracts of original articles from PubMed databases by the search strategy, and reviewed one by one. Among these, 45 abstracts were selected, in which the patterns of use, the reasons for using, and the determinants and predictors were described. Eleven papers were selected based on the results and related to the research objectives. The results of these articles were evaluated precisely word by word and phrase by phrase with content analysis method and inductive approach. Results: The reasons for the use of smokeless tobacco fell in two main themes: socio-cultural structure; and, beliefs, each contained Sub-themes such as "culture and living conditions", "laws", "family and peer relationships", "beliefs related to psychological" and "beliefs related to physical influences", "beliefs", "The role of harm perceptions ". Conclusion: There was a difference between beliefs, cultures and social conditions among the people about using of smokeless tobacco and the association of these factors is investigated in future studies. We also suggest for the prevention and control of smokeless tobacco use, cultural norms and beliefs will need to address adequately.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-55
Author(s):  
Saiyid Radzuwan Syed Sopi

The 14th general election (GE 14) reveals that Pakatan Harapan (PH) had become a ruling party (2018-2020), but they failed to get any parliamentary or state assembly seats in Kelantan. The failure of PH to expand their influence in Kelantan is due to several traditional factors that are difficult for PH to break it out. This study is a qualitative study and reference materials that are physical and online are used as reference sources. In addition, information regarding political scenario in Kelantan also obtained through interviews with some respondents live in Kelantan. Therefore, this research found that the desire of PH to expand their influence in Kelantan was blurred. This is because PAS wisely set up a long-term political strategy by strengthening the education system under YIK, producing many hardcore supporters or fanatic followers, controlling the ‘surau’ and the mosques according to their needs and control of the state administration. Furthermore, PH needs to make concrete reformations to the party’s management such as producing talented young leaders and fostering a spirit of cooperation among members of the PH coalition if they are still interested in power in Kelantan.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 158
Author(s):  
Thomas Atmaja Adi ◽  
Ganesha Wandawa ◽  
Wahyu Hidayat

<div><p class="Els-history-head">Threats to the security of the Republic of Indonesia are classified as military and non-military threats. One of the non-military threats is the danger of an epidemic, which includes a threat with a public safety dimension. The growth of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) cases has been very fast. As of August 4, 2020, globally 18.14 million cases were confirmed worldwide with 691,013 deaths or a Case Fatality Ratio (CFR) of 3.8%. The 2019-nCoV Outbreak became a COVID-19 pandemic which has an impact on public health and the world economy. ASEAN Plus member countries are deploying militaries to help contain the spread and control the effects of this pandemic. The military is deployed because it is considered a trained resource and is better prepared to deal with emergencies. The purpose of this study is to analyse the joint action of the regional military in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study uses an explanative qualitative method using NVivo as a data processing tool and data analysis using Soft System Methodology (SSM). The results of this study found that the joint regional military actions that have been carried out to stem the spread of COVID-19 are dominated by activities carried out by the ASEAN Center of Military Medicine (ACMM) as the leading sector, activities that have been carried out are the exchange of information and sharing practical activities in managing COVID-19, holding a Tabletop Exercise (TTX) for public health emergency response, joint research and sharing health materials among ASEAN Plus member countries. Meanwhile, the ASEAN Plus network of biological and radiological defense experts has yet to show specific activities to curb the COVID-19 pandemic.</p></div>


PLoS ONE ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (10) ◽  
pp. e0240690
Author(s):  
Rachana Desai ◽  
Robert A. C. Ruiter ◽  
Ansuyah Magan ◽  
Priscilla S. Reddy ◽  
Liesbeth A. G. Mercken

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 190-142
Author(s):  
Khairul Nizam Bin Zainal Badri

Aceh is regarded as the strongest ally of the Ottomans in the east, in the 16th century and 17th century AD. At that time, the two governments exchanged gifts with each other, and benefited together; whether in the form of trade, or in the form of technology and the military. The historical record notes that Aceh started making official relations with the Ottomans during the reign of Sultan Salahuddin, which is the 2nd in the Sultanate of Aceh. Yet to be studied in this paper is that the establishment of diplomatic relations between Aceh and Turkey during the reign of Sultan Alauddin Mansur Shah. Remarkably, Sultan Alauddin Mansur Shah hailed from Perak, but was crowned the 8th Ruler of Aceh. This qualitative study uses the library approach entirely to highlight the role and contribution of Sultan Alauddin Mansur Shah in efforts to strengthen cooperation between Aceh and Turkey. With the help of the Ottomans, he launched an attack on the Portuguese in Melaka. Aceh’s strength even feared by the Portuguese authorities in Goa, India, forcing them to seek assistance from Lisbon. In conclusion, Sultan Alaudin Mansur Shah not only gained recognition from the Ottoman government but also succeeded in upholding the greatness of Islam; when reviving the trade routes of Muslims and looking after the welfare of Muslims in the archipelago.


Author(s):  
Ashfaq Rehman ◽  
Shughla Ashfaq ◽  
Taj Muharram Khan

This paper aims to analyse the reasons of strained civil-military relations between the Army under General Pervaiz Musharraf as Chief of Army Staff and the civilian government under the premiership of Nawaz Sharif. A mixed method approach has been adopted for collection of primary and secondary data for this descriptive, theoretical, and qualitative study. The analysis shows that the relations between the two institutions i.e., the civilian government and the military were deteriorated due to an ill-fated Kargil war launched by the then Army Chief solely on his own decision. The war under the guise of Kashmiri mujahedeen movement became an unpleasant event for Pakistan in the international community. The situation compelled the elected government to declare withdrawal of the para-military forces unilaterally thus causing further damages in terms of human and material losses. The military, opposition parties and other groups in the country blamed the civilian government for this failure. Therefore, the post Kargil war developments became a major source of contention between civil and military leadership. The events and reasons leading to the removal of Army Chief, dismissal of elected government and dissolution of national and provincial assemblies have been critically analysed in this study.


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