Classification of the Socio-Psychological Aspects of Protecting Soft Targets: a Case Study for Evacuation of the Railway Terminals

Current crisis management approaches to protect soft targets make assumptions about average visitors/listeners/viewers or passengers. They do not give much consideration to impacts of diversity of potentially evacuated persons with regard to socio-psychological parameters/factors that may lead to practical problems and complications during the evacuation itself. At the same time, the soft target operators have various means of machine vision tools at their disposal, but do not use these records for more thorough analysis of evacuation planning needs. Based on this observation, the article identifies and analyzes the socio-psychological aspects that may significantly affect behavior and decisions of persons during the evacuation and thus total evacuation time.

Natural killer cell immune synapse formation and cytotoxicity are controlled by tension of the target interface

Natural Killer (NK) cells can kill infected or transformed cells via a lytic immune synapse. Diseased cells may exhibit altered mechanical properties but how this impacts NK cell responsiveness is unknown. We report that human NK cells were stimulated more effectively to secrete granzymes A and B, FasL, granulysin and IFNγ, by stiff (142 kPa) compared to soft (1 kPa) planar substrates. To create surrogate spherical targets of defined stiffness, sodium alginate was used to synthesise soft (9 kPa), medium (34 kPa), or stiff (254 kPa) cell-sized beads, coated with antibodies against activating receptor NKp30 and the integrin LFA-1. Against stiff beads, NK cells showed increased degranulation. Polarisation of the microtubule-organising centre (MTOC) and lytic granules were impaired against soft targets, which instead resulted in the formation of unstable kinapses. Thus, by varying target stiffness to characterise the mechanosensitivity of immune synapses, we identify soft targets as a blind spot in NK cell recognition.

Securing Schools against Terrorist Attacks

The population is nowadays increasingly threatened by events that have an immediate impact on their health and lives. One of the most endangered targets are the so-called soft targets. These are such targets that are characterized by a high population concentration, and low or even no level of security against violent or even terrorist attacks. The research carried out by the authors clearly showed that one of the important and easily vulnerable soft targets are schools. This article focuses on the safety of schools and their facilities. The authors focused on finding out the safety of schools as soft targets in the Czech Republic. The security level of schools was measured at selected nursery, elementary, and secondary schools in the city of Brno. As well as technical elements, other factors contributing to the overall safety of schools were also verified. It was found that although a large number of schools have at least basic elements of security available, systemic and organizational measures are not sufficient for technical measures to be important.

Sousse Attacks: A New Perspective on Soft Target Defense and Modern-Day Terrorism Threat

The Sousse attacks embody the main characteristics of terrorism and insurgency as pursued by ISIS. They are presented here as overarching examples of the underlying themes examined in this paper. In the first section, we give an outline of the facts that occurred in Sousse, Tunisia, highlighting features that mark the importance of the events in themselves and in the broader context of terrorism studies. In the second section, we offer a qualitative analysis of the traits of modern-day terrorism threat in the post-ISIS era—in particular, a marked preference for soft targets, all-around enemification of nonconformers, loose ties with perpetrators, massive use of communication technologies and propaganda, dissemination of paramilitary and insurgency know-how, and training. In the third and final section, we discuss the lessons that can be drawn from the events of Sousse, with a specific focus on soft target defense, as relevant for future challenges emerging from the rise and fall of ISIS as a pseudo-state entity and the dissemination of its personnel, ideology, and knowledge outside the territories it once occupied. In particular, we propose a departure from the model of soft target protection to one of defense.