war

Resistance voices from WW2 throw new light on 21st Century terrorism

The memories of Polish migrants who resisted Nazism in France during World War Two have been recorded and analysed in ESRC-sponsored research which aims to throw new light on what draws people into modern- day terrorism. This research is published today as part of the ESRC’s Social Science Week. For the study, Alan Bicker of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kent interviewed surviving resistors from among the quarter-million Poles who lived and worked in the mining area in the ‘Zone Interdite’ (or ‘prohibited zone’) of Northern France.

War just one more source of stress for those in therapy

Contrary to what you might expect, people in therapy reported no difference in their stress levels once the war with Iraq started – but that may be only because war was seen as just one more stressor in chronically stressful times, according to a new survey of psychologists by the American Psychological Association Practice Directorate.

Pentagon Officials Say Depleted Uranium Powerful, Safe

Pentagon officials showed pictures today from the 1991 Gulf War of an Iraqi tank completely destroyed by a 105 mm round made of depleted uranium. The round had pierced the tank’s thick armor, leaving only a burned out shell. Even more impressive, they told of how a DU round had penetrated directly through a sand dune to demolish a tank hiding behind it. “That’s how much of an edge it gives us, and we don’t want to give that up,” Col. James Naughton of the Army Materiel Command said today at a Pentagon briefing to explain the uses and health effects of DU on the battlefield.

WWII discovery may counter bioterrorists

A compound developed by British scientists early in World War II as a treatment against chemical weapons has value against today’s threat of bioterrorism, according to Indiana University School of Medicine researchers at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne. Researchers studying British Anti-Lewisite provide an overview of its historical uses, development and clinical implications today of the heavy metal chelating agent, detailed in the March issue of the Annals of Emergency Medicine. BAL is a medical therapy to remove metal poisonings from the body.

Navy wants ‘affordable’ weapons for war on terrorism

Cruise missiles have proven themselves in combat many times since the Gulf War, but the Navy would like to drive their cost down–the ones currently in service cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) has a program to use commercially-based equipment to build a “cruise-like” missile with good performance at a price ten times less than the norm. The new missile is called, appropriately, the Affordable Weapon.