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Training military officers to lead in combat has always presented a training paradox: it is impossible to expose individuals to the inherent strains and dangers of real combat, but combat is where they are supposed to lead, making those demands normative for training. To overcome this paradox, the military uses training courses where stress is as realistic as possible within ethical limits. One frequent example of such a course is parachute training. Completing one demanding task (parachuting) can also increase the individual's belief that other tasks with equal or even greater difficulty (leading in combat) can be overcome similarly. The overall aim of this thesis was to investigate whether and how military parachute training can function as a method for leadership development. The purpose of Study I was to investigate whether military parachute training was associated with an increase in leadership self-efficacy. The results show that parachute training increased leader self-control efficacy when compared to the different training of a group of cadets. In addition, the training given contributed to increased leader assertiveness efficacy for both groups. The purpose of Study II was to investigate whether the inability to complete training was associated with any direct and sustained effects. The results show that there were no differences between those who completed training and those who did not. Regarding outcome, leader self-control efficacy decreased significantly for those who were unable to complete training when compared to those who did. The purpose of Study III was to examine how the two sub-domains of leadership self-efficacy examined in the first two studies were associated with leadership behaviors, specifically those described in the developmental leadership model. The results show that leader assertiveness efficacy was the best predictor to the dimensions of developmental leadership. Leader self-control efficacy seems to be more related to functioning within an extreme context. Overall, the thesis indicates that parachute training can help to prepare future military leaders to lead in combat. The results imply that the effects of parachute training are indirect rather than directly associated to leadership and that ability to remain composure in extreme situations in turn enables individual behaviors, including leadership. The thesis also contributes insight into the process of how personal beliefs can be transferred or generalized across different areas or domains in a person's life. The results are also relevant for other professions that routinely work in extreme contexts.

Anfang Oktober hat das Parlament (Jatiya Sangsad) in Dhaka ein neues Gesetz zu NGOs verabschiedet, das intern wie international äußerst umstritten ist: der Foreign Donations (Voluntary Activities) Regulation Act 2016. Laut Forschungsbibliothek des US-Kongresses (Library of Congress) trat das Gesetz am 13. Oktober in Kraft. Es eröffnet der NGO-Registrierungsbehörde (NGO Affairs Bureau; NGOAB) weitreichende Befugnisse, zivilgesellschaftliche Organisationen in ihren Tätigkeiten und öffentlichen Darstellungen einzuschränken, soweit sie als (regierungs-) kritisch eingeschätzt werden. Der Journalist David Bergman hat am 20. Oktober beim Nachrichtensender Al Jazeera einige Szenarien skizziert.

Increases in the incidence of human conflict with coyotes in urban/suburban environments fuel a need for suitable coyote tools and methods to reduce these conflicts. Traditional tools, such as foothold traps and snares, face continued problems of acceptability in urban/suburban situations because of public anxiety about the risks to non-targets as well as other animal welfare concerns. We review the major categories of methods and tools used to prevent or reduce urban coyote-human conflicts, including exclusion (fencing), environmental and habitat modification, capture devices (traps, snares, and related devices), and shooting. We briefly discuss future technologies current under development: fertility control, toxicants, and electronic trap monitoring. Among capture devices, we describe recent advances in technology as exemplified by three devices: the KB Compound 5.5TM, the BélisleTM footsnare, and the CollarumTM, which have gone a long way to address both capture efficiency and animal welfare concerns. We caution those involved in advising legislators, or in drafting legislation, to be aware of developing technologies, so as to avoid writing laws that are so broad as to ban future capture devices that improve on current devices in terms of humaneness and animal welfare.

AbstractThe assignment of personnel to teams is a fundamental managerial function typically involving several objectives and a variety of idiosyncratic practical constraints. Despite the prevalence of this task in practice, the process is seldom approached as an optimization problem over the reported preferences of all agents. This is due in part to the underlying computational complexity that occurs when intra‐team interpersonal interactions are taken into consideration, and also due to game‐theoretic considerations, when those taking part in the process are self‐interested agents. Variants of this fundamental decision problem arise in a number of settings, including, for example, human resources and project management, military platooning, ride sharing, data clustering, and in assigning students to group projects. In this article, we study an analytical approach to "team formation" focused on the interplay between two of the most common objectives considered in the related literature: economic efficiency (i.e., the maximization of social welfare) and game‐theoretic stability (e.g., finding a core solution when one exists). With a weighted objective across these two goals, the problem is modeled as a bi‐level binary optimization problem, and transformed into a single‐level, exponentially sized binary integer program. We then devise a branch‐cut‐and‐price algorithm and demonstrate its efficacy through an extensive set of simulations, with favorable comparisons to other algorithms from the literature.