The power of precision air strikes and social media feeds in the 2012 Israel–Hamas conflict: ‘targeting transparency’

This article analyses the evolving uses of social media during wartime through the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) Spokesperson Facebook and Twitter accounts. The conflict between Israel and Hamas-affiliated groups in November 2012 has generated interesting data about social media use by a sovereign power in wartime and the resultant networked discourse. Facebook data is examined for effective patterns of dissemination through both content analysis and discourse analysis. Twitter data is explored through connected concept analysis to map the construction of meaning in social media texts shared by the IDF. The systematic examination of this social media data allows the authors’ analysis to comment on the evolving modes, methods and expectations for state public diplomacy, propaganda and transparency during wartime.     

Single-Degree-of-Freedom Characterization of Multi-Phase Passive Control Systems

A Multi-phase Passive Control System (MPCS) combines two passive control devices in order to offset the individual weaknesses and enhance structural performance, allowing the structure to respond effectively to varying levels of loading. Previous work involving a nine-story frame demonstrated the effectiveness of MPCSs but the fundamental understanding of the system was lacking. In order to more clearly understand the behavior and identify important parameters and parameter interactions, a single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) non-linear dynamic study was performed. The results offer significant insight towards developing structural systems adaptable to multi-objective performance-based design procedures that meet higher performance standards than for ductility-based design.     

A short history of dapsone, or an alternative model of drug development

From 1936 until 1996, the drug dapsone treated a diverse array of diseases, including tuberculosis, leprosy, malaria, and AIDS-related pneumonia. This article explores how dapsone transformed from a cure for one disease into a treatment for a totally different malady. This process of reinvention in the clinic represents an alternative model of drug development that the historical literature, focused on success in the laboratory, has largely ignored. The core of the paper discusses the reinvention of dapsone as an antimalarial in the Vietnam War through trials led by Robert J. T. Joy, a physician and military officer. As a case study, it offers a fresh perspective on the clinic-as-laboratory approach that other scholars have addressed in a civilian context. Viewing the randomized clinical trial (RCT) through a military prism will demonstrate how a combat environment combined with the regimentation of the armed forces affected the standard methodology of the RCT.     

Two Late Roman Wrecks from Southern Cyprus

Two scattered Late Roman shipwrecks were discovered in the course of underwater survey at Cape Zevgari and Avdimou Bay off the southern coast of Cyprus. Each was transporting a primary cargo contained in amphoras, in one case either local or from nearby Syria or Cilicia, and the other certainly from the southern Levantine coast. The two wrecks offer insight into regional maritime exchange networks within the socio-economic context of late antique commerce around the island. Both sites also contribute to a greater understanding of the utility of systematic shallow-water survey to shipwreck archaeology.
© 2007 The Author     

A Turke turn’d Quaker: conversion from Islam to radical dissent in early modern England

The study of the relationship between the anglophone and Islamic worlds in the seventeenth century has been the subject of increasing interest in recent years, and much attention has been given to the cultural anxiety surrounding “Turning Turke”, conversion from Christianity to Islam, especially by English captives on the Barbary coast. Conversion in the other direction has attracted far less scrutiny, not least because it appears to have been far less common. Conversion from Islam to any form of radical dissent has attracted no scholarship whatsoever, probably because it has been assumed to be non-existent. However, the case of Bartholomew Cole provides evidence that such conversions did take place, and examining the life of this “Turke turn’d Quaker” provides an insight into the dynamics of cross-cultural conversion of an exceptional kind.