Applications « Solomon Asch Center

Correlates of radical localism across American counties April 15, 2024 Juan MerizaldeChristopher Linebargera Independent Researcher, Arlington, VA, USAb School of Criminology, University of Massachusetts-Lowell, Lowell, MA, USA
Examining the counterinsurgency-counterterrorism tradeoff: the effects of targeted strikes on militant attacks February 26, 2024 Brittnee CarterThomas GuarrieriDaniel S. Smitha Department of Political Science, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USAb National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USAc Department of Political Science, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USADr. Brittnee Carter is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Kansas.Dr. Thomas Guarrieri is an Associate Research Scientist at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism and the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Global Terrorism Studies Minor at the University of Maryland.Daniel S. Smith is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at The Ohio State University.
Keeping up appearances: US domestic extremist organizations and the effects of membership on domestic terrorism perpetrators February 13, 2024 Andrew VitekDepartment of Political Science, Penn State University, University Park, USA
International kidnapping by non-state actors: Exploring the relationship between political predictors and the selection of victims January 26, 2024 Kathryn M. LambertDepartment of National Security, American Military University Online, USA
Foreign fighters from the far right and extreme left in the Russia–Ukraine conflict January 23, 2024 Nicola GuerraItalian Studies, University of Turku, Turku, Finland

US drone strikes could be classed as war crimes, says Amnesty International

Variations of this story have been produced by many major news organizations around the world, including the New York Times (“Civilian Deaths in Drone Strikes Cited in Report“, “The Deaths of Innocents“), al Jazeera (“US strikes condemned in rights report“) in addition to the Guardian story directly linked by this post. This appears to be […]

SenseFly and Drone Adventures Toss UAVs Off the Summit of Matterhorn

Not only did these drones get good aerial photographs of very rough terrain, they used teamwork to do so. In labs, roboticists are developing the methods for dozens or robots to work together, but for now six UAVs coordinating flight patterns and dividing a job between them are an impressive sample of things to come.

Rise of the drone hobbyists

The drone industry owes much to the hobbyists and universities who developed much of the technology. Going forward, the industry will owe even more to the hobbyists for creating acceptance and familiarity amongst the wider public. The article mentions the recent story of a man who died in an accident involving his drone helicopter. The […]

Machine gun-toting robots may soon back up U.S. soldiers

Various kinds of unmanned vehicles have long been used in war – from self-guiding missiles and torpedoes to the more recent bomb-disposal robots. This article points toward a future where unmanned vehicles will not just track targets selected by humans or keep humans out of dangerous situations, but actively and autonomously assist human soldiers.

At Drone Conference, Talk of Morals and Toys

At New York University this weekend, there was a drone conference focused on commercial and private use. Needless to say, privacy and other moral hazards were a major topic. Or, as the articles author described it, “the checkered reputation remained the day’s subtext.” Many of the visitors and speakers quoted in the article explicitly connected […]

European Defense Firms’ Drone Push Remains Elusive

Despite interest, the United States and Israel remain the dominant manufacturers of drones. Some of Europe’s problems seem to originate from bad management – see the part about their being more requested variants of a drone than countries offering to buy it. Others come down to bad PR management – namely Germany’s EuroDrone project, killed […]

Drone Pilot Fights for Right to Profit in the Unmanned Skies

The subject of drone regulation is very much up in the air. As the word “drone” covers anything from a bird-sized toy to something dozens of feet wide, the current blanket rules often seem arbitrary or unfair. This article describes a man who is arguing in court that the FAA has no authority on unmanned […]

‘Terminator’ Robots Kill Jellyfish, ‘Sliced Up’ To Eliminate Swarms

In what sounds like the start of a science fiction plot, a Korean university group is developing a swarm of robots designed to kill swarms of jellyfish. However, the technology, particularly the planned “cooperative strategies” part, has a lot of potential uses, such as fishing, trash/debris removal, and mitigating oil spills to name a few.

Aging F-16 Converted Into a Target-Practice Drone

The word “drone” is a controversial one. It originally referred to automated targets for training, such as the F-16 in this article. While many in the Air Force (as well as other UAV operators) detest the term, ‘drone’ appears to be becoming the standard word for the technology. A similar linguistic example would be how […]

DOJ calls for drone privacy policy 7 years after FBI’s first drone launched

The greatest public concern over domestic drones is privacy. As UAVs become more common and more widely used, the debate over their use and regulation will only get more intense. This year’s revelations about the NSA has presumably not helped various departments’ arguments for self-regulation, though surveys on the subject of drones remain rare and […]

Published by the University of Texas Press the book features 100 of Hyman's photographs and six critical essays that depict and discuss the emotional aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks -- a time when people from all walks of life created and encountered memorials to those who were murdered. Vernacular art appeared almost everywhere—on walls, trees, playgrounds, vehicles, houses, tombstones, and even on bodies. This outpouring of grief and other acts of remembrance impelled photographer Jonathan Hyman to document and preserve these largely impermanent, spontaneous expressions. This book, a unique archive of 9/11 public memory, is the result of his compiling a collection of 20,000 photographs, along with field notes and personal interviews. For more information about the book or to purchase it, visit the book's page at Amazon or Facebook.

Sramana Majumdar

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