From “Shock and Awe” to Asymmetric Warfare in Modern Military Warfare

This study aims to present the strategies from “Shock and Awe” to asymmetric warfare in modern military warfare. The main points in the article are: Introduction: The lessons of a war - The Yom Kippur War; In the years before the Yom Kippur War; After the Yom Kippur War, the American military understood that it had to focus on mobile and rapid warfare against regular armies, an issue that had been neglected over the past decade; The “Shock and Awe” battle strategy. In conclusion: a very important element for coping with asymmetric warfare is the psychological strength of the civilian population. As stated, one of the ways of warfare of the weak side against the strong side is the marking the psychological sensitivity of the civilian population of the strong side as a target. A psychological attack on the civilian population can manifest itself in the launching of missiles at it, the control of its information, the multiplicity of casualties of its soldiers and the sowing of a sense of frustration in it due to prolonged confrontation.

The dynamics of appraisal: a review of 20 years of research using the Fortitude Questionnaire

Fortitude refers to the psychological strength to manage adversity and stay well. It is derived from adaptive cognitive appraisals of self, family, and social supports and has consistently been identified as a protective factor in psychological well-being. This study undertakes a scoping review of empirical research on the Fortitude Questionnaire, which was developed to assess levels of fortitude. The aims of the study were to categorize and catalogue studies that have used the Fortitude Questionnaire, identify the variables that have been linked to the scale, and determine the extent to which prior research has replicated the Fortitude Questionnaire’s psychometric properties. Arksey and O’Malley’s five-stage framework for scoping reviews was followed to review studies published between January 1999 and March 2020. A total of 51 studies met the inclusion criteria. The scoping review found that the Fortitude Questionnaire has been used in different contexts and among various sample groups across the lifespan, including vulnerable and high-risk populations. The scale has demonstrated sound reliability and studies have confirmed its factor structure. The scale has also been used as an independent, dependent, and intervening variable. Fortitude has been linked to positive and negative indicators of well-being, and intervention studies have indicated that fortitude is amenable to change. The findings of this scoping review provide a foundation for the development of appraisal restructuring programmes and interventions.

Classification of Body Constitution Based on TCM Philosophy and Deep Learning

There is a growing demand for alternative or complementary medicine in health care disciplines that uses a non-invasive instrument to evaluate the health status of various organs inside the human body. In this regard, we proposed a real-time, non-invasive, and painless technique to assess an individual’s health condition. Our approach is based on the combination of iridology and the philosophy of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The iridology chart presents perfect symmetry between the left and right eyes, and such a unique representation reveals the body constitution based on TCM philosophy, which classifies the aforementioned body constitution into a combination of nine categories to describe the varieties of genomic traits. In addition, we applied a deep-learning method along with the combination of iridology and TCM to predict the possible physiological or psychological strength or weakness of the subjects and give advice to them about how to take care of their health according to the body constitution assessment. We used several pre-trained convolutional neural networks (CNNs, or ConvNet), such as a residual neural network (ResNet50), InceptionV3, and dense convolutional network (DenseNet201), to classify the body constitution using iris images. In the experiments, the CASIA-Iris-Thousand database was used to perform this task. The experimental results showed that the proposed iris-based health assessment method achieved an 82.9% accuracy.

The Role of Religious Rituals in Fishing Community: A Study of Irakkam Fishermen in Pulicat Lake

This article focuses on the religious rituals associated with fishing and the processes that are in vogue in the fishermen community of Pulicat Lake. The role of the rituals in the contemporary socioeconomic context of the fishermen community is analyzed by applying functionalistic approach. The data were collected from the fishermen of Irakkam Island in Tada mandal of Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh state, by employing the qualitative techniques such as in-depth interview, observation, and focus group discussions. It is found that fishermen perform varieties of rituals such as annual worshipping of ancestral spirits, ritual of launching of new boat, worshipping of clan deities at clan level, and communal worship at village level. All these rituals are considerably functional in fulfilling the psychological needs of individuals and social needs of the community at the household, clan, and community levels. The psychological prop and social cohesion are found to be the most essential features of fishermen community to cope up with the social, economic, and environmental challenges, and these rituals function as instruments to instill psychological strength and social solidarity.

Mediating Effect of Positive Psychological Strength and Study Skills on Examination Anxiety among Nigerian College Students

Examination plays a vital role in the present contemporary educational setting as well as serving as an indicator and yardstick to place students in relation to their examination scores after they undergo the examination. However, students at different educational levels experience examination anxiety, which can interfere with making right decisions either before or during examinations and is considered to be a phenomenon associated with low examination scores. Therefore, the present research study was aimed at determining the mediating effect of positive psychological strengths between study skills and examination anxiety among Nigerian college students. The study employed survey research on 315 Nigerian college students. The result of the path analysis shows that study skills (SSK) have a significant and direct relationship on examination anxiety. The mediation between positive psychological strength (PPS) and examination anxiety is identified as being effective and significant. Therefore, positive psychological strength (PPS) acts as an effective mediator towards examination anxiety.