Dr. Charles Morgan speaks to cadets and faculty at West Point about a range of topics, including psychology, neurobiology, and the science of humans at war. Dr. Morgan’s neurobiological and forensic research has established him as an international expert in post-traumatic stress disorder, eyewitness memory, and human performance under conditions of high stress.

The event was organized and hosted by the Modern War Institute at West Point.

Abstract
Less than a year after the global emergence of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, a novel vaccine platform based on mRNA technology was introduced to the market. Globally, around 13.38 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses of diverse platforms have been administered. To date, 72.3% of the total population has been injected at least once with a COVID-19 vaccine. As the immunity provided by these vaccines rapidly wanes, their ability to prevent hospitalization and severe disease in individuals with comorbidities has recently been questioned, and increasing evidence has shown that, as with many other vaccines, they do not produce sterilizing immunity, allowing people to suffer frequent re-infections. Additionally, recent investigations have found abnormally high levels of IgG4 in people who were administered two or more injections of the mRNA vaccines. HIV, Malaria, and Pertussis vaccines have also been reported to induce higher-than-normal IgG4 synthesis. Overall, there are three critical factors determining the class switch to IgG4 antibodies: excessive antigen concentration, repeated vaccination, and the type of vaccine used. It has been suggested that an increase in IgG4 levels could have a protecting role by preventing immune over-activation, similar to that occurring during successful allergen-specific immunotherapy by inhibiting IgE-induced effects. However, emerging evidence suggests that the reported increase in IgG4 levels detected after repeated vaccination with the mRNA vaccines may not be a protective mechanism; rather, it constitutes an immune tolerance mechanism to the spike protein that could promote unopposed SARS-CoV2 infection and replication by suppressing natural antiviral responses. Increased IgG4 synthesis due to repeated mRNA vaccination with high antigen concentrations may also cause autoimmune diseases, and promote cancer growth and autoimmune myocarditis in susceptible individuals.
URL: www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/11/5/991

Abstract

Plants are promising candidates as bioreactors for the production of oral recombinant proteins in the biopharmaceutical industry. As an initial step toward provision of an oral vaccine against the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), we have expressed a partial spike (S) protein of SARS-CoV in the cytosol of nuclear-transformed plants and in the chloroplasts of plastid-transformed plants. In the construction of both nuclear and plastid transformation vectors, a 2-kilobase nucleotide sequence encoding amino acids 1-658 of the SARS-CoV spike protein (S1) was modified with nucleotide changes, but not amino acid changes, to optimize codon usage for expression in plants. To investigate the subcellular localization of S1 during transient expression in tobacco leaves, a translational fusion consisting of S1 and the green fluorescent protein (GFP) was generated. Following agroinfiltration of tobacco leaves, analysis by laser confocal scanning microscopy revealed that the S1:GFP fusion protein was localized to the cytosol. In stable transgenic tobacco plants and lettuce plants generated by Agrobacterium-mediated transformation, tobacco and lettuce leaves were observed to express the S1 at high levels from the Cauliflower Mosaic Virus 35S promoter with Northern blot analysis. When the S1 was expressed in transplastomic tobacco, S1 messenger RNA and its corresponding protein were detected on Northern and Western blot analyses, respectively. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of producing S1 in nuclear- and chloroplast-transformed plants, indicating its potential in subsequent development of a plant-derived and safe oral recombinant subunit vaccine against the SARS-CoV in edible plants.

Fifth-generation warfare (5GW) is warfare that is conducted primarily through non-kinetic military action, such as social engineering, misinformation, cyberattacks, along with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and fully autonomous systems. Fifth generation warfare has been described by Daniel Abbot as a war of “information and perception”. There is no widely agreed upon definition of fifth-generation warfare, and it has been rejected by some scholars, including William S. Lind, who was one of the original theorists of fourth-generation warfare.

History

The term ‘fifth-generation warfare’ was first used in 2003 by Robert Steele. The following year, Lind criticised the concept, arguing that the fourth generation had yet to fully materialize.

In 2008, the term was used by Terry Terriff, who presented the 2003 ricin letters as a potential example, but stated that he was not entirely sure if it was a fifth-generation attack, claiming “we may not recognize it as it resolves around us. Or we might look at several alternative futures and see each as fifth generation.” Terriff argued that while fifth-generation warfare allows “super-empowered individuals” to make political statements through terrorism, they lack the political power to actually have their demands met.

Characteristics

Alex P. Schmid said that fifth-generation warfare is typified by its “omnipresent battlefield”, and the fact that people engaged in it do not necessarily use military force, instead employing a mixture of kinetic and non-kinetic force. In the 1999 book Unrestricted Warfare, by colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui of the People’s Liberation Army, they noted that in the years since the 1991 Gulf War, conventional military violence had decreased, which correlated to an increase in “political, economic, and technological violence”, which they argued could be more devastating than a conventional war.[8] On the contrary, Thomas P. M. Barnett believes that the effectiveness of fifth-generational warfare is exaggerated, as terrorism conducted by individuals, such as Timothy McVeigh or Ted Kaczynski, lacks the support of more organized movements. This was seconded by George Michael, who noted that in the United States, gang violence was responsible for far more deaths than lone wolf terrorist attacks.

L.C. Rees described the nature of fifth generation warfare as difficult to define in itself, alluding to the third law of science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke – “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth-generation_warfare

Further References

clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01994525

Sponsor:
U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command

Collaborators:
Seattle Children’s Research Institute (SCRI)
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Principal Investigator:Nimfa Teneza-Mora, MD,Naval Medical Research Center
Information provided by (Responsible Party):
U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command

***
Study Type : Interventional (Clinical Trial)
Actual Enrollment : 54 participants
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary Purpose: Prevention
Official Title: Phase 1 Trial With Challenge to Assess the Safety and Biomarkers of Protection in Malaria-naïve Adults of Immunization Via Mosquito Bite With Radiation-Attenuated Plasmodium Falciparum Sporozoites (IMRAS)
Actual Study Start Date : January 24, 2014
Actual Primary Completion Date : December 20, 2016
Actual Study Completion Date : February 2017
***

This is a Phase 1 open-labeled study. In addition to safety and tolerability of Plasmodium falciparum Sporozoites (PfRAS), this study is a comprehensive, systems biology-based effort to identify and validate biomarkers of protection with PfRAS immunization, comparing sterility protected to nonprotected study subjects. The goal of the trial design is to achieve approximately 50% sterile protection in order to facilitate the identification of biomarkers and correlates of protection.

Following true-immunization or mock-immunization, study subjects and nonimmunized infectivity controls will receive a challenge via the bites of 5 An stephensi mosquitoes carrying infectious P falciparum sporozoites within a controlled clinical environment (controlled human malaria infection, CHMI) to determine the level of sterile protection.

15 years later: on the physics of high-rise building collapses.
Europhysics News, 47 4 (2016) 21-26
DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1051/epn/2016402
© European Physical Society, EDP Sciences, 2016
1Steven Jones
2Robert Korol
3Anthony Szamboti
4Ted Walter
1Brigham Young University
2McMaster University (emeritus)
3Mechanical design engineer in the aerospace industry
4Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth

Conclusion
“It bears repeating that fires have never caused the total collapse of a steel-framed high-rise before or since 9/11. Did we witness an unprecedented event three separate times on September 11, 2001? The NIST reports, which attempted to support that unlikely conclusion, fail to persuade a growing number of architects, engineers, and scientists. Instead, the evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that all three buildings were destroyed by controlled demolition. Given the far-reaching implications, it is morally imperative that this hypothesis be the subject of a truly scientific and impartial investigation by responsible authorities.”

Summary

Chapter 5 analyzes the thinking of Herman Kahn, who dared to think the unthinkable. It describes his “America,” which again was that of the golden age of the middle class, but which also overlapped with the sense of malaise that plagued the 1970s. Like the limited war theorists, Kahn agreed military instincts needed to be curbed, and he attempted to counter uncertainty by arguing, largely in vain, that escalation itself was also a bargaining process with systematic waystations or steps embedded along its path. This chapter discusses his model of war’s nature, which, like those of Brodie, Osgood, and Schelling, priviledged war’s political dimension, though he gave policy more agency than did they.

www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/wars-logic/herman-kahn-and-escalation/19C080FABFE3FCD66358C5AF1366486A

Outside physics and statistics, works written by Kahn include:

• 1960. On Thermonuclear War. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-313-20060-2
• 1962. Thinking about the unthinkable. Horizon Press.
• 1965. On escalation: metaphors and scenarios. Praeger. ISBN 1-41283004-4
• 1967. The Year 2000: a framework for speculation on the next thirty-three years. MacMillan. ISBN 0-02-560440-6. With Anthony Wiener.
• 1968. Can we win in Viet Nam? Praeger. Kahn with four other authors: Gastil, Raymond D.; Pfaff, William; Stillman, Edmund; Armbruster, Frank E.
• 1970. The emerging Japanese Superstate: challenge and response. Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-274670-0
• 1971. The Japanese challenge: The success and failure of economic success. Morrow; Andre Deutsch. ISBN 0-688-08710-8
• 1972. Things to come: thinking about the seventies and eighties. MacMillan. ISBN 0-02-560470-8. With B. Bruce-Briggs.
• 1973. Herman Kahnsciousness: the megaton ideas of the one-man think tank. New American Library. Selected and edited by Jerome Agel.
• 1974. The future of the corporation. Mason & Lipscomb. ISBN 0-88405-009-2
• 1976. The next 200 years: a scenario for America and the world. Morrow. ISBN 0-688-08029-4
• 1979. World economic development: 1979 and beyond. William Morrow; Croom Helm. ISBN 0-688-03479-9. With Hollender, Jeffrey, and Hollender, John A.
• 1981. Will she be right? The future of Australia. University of Queensland Press. ISBN 0-7022-1569-4. With Thomas Pepper.
• 1983. The Coming Boom: economic, political, and social. Simon & Schuster; Hutchinson. ISBN 0-671-49265-9
• 1984 Thinking about the unthinkable in the 1980s. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-47544-4
• The nature and feasibility of war, deterrence, and arms control (Central nuclear war monograph series), (Hudson Institute)
• A slightly optimistic world context for 1975–2000 (Hudson Institute)
• Social limits to growth: “creeping stagnation” vs. “natural and inevitable” (HPS paper)
• A new kind of class struggle in the United States? (Corporate Environment Program. Research memorandum)