Some science stuff of interest

.

https://france-amerique.com/en/french-sea-worms-set-to-save-the-lives-of-american-soldiers/

The haemoglobin alternative was found in those sea worms around 2003 or so, and it can be produced in powder form. The powder combined with sterile water (I suppose boiled water cooled down works fine) can be transfused as replacement for blood. This could have a noticeable impact especially on combat medics, and make enforcement of water discipline (water instead of other beverages carried in canteens & bladders) even more important than before. It's likely a much better blood substitute in emergencies than saline solution because it actually transports oxygen instead of merely averting a volume shock.

- - - - -

Microsatellites / Cubesats

Up to 500 commercial imagery satellites planned by in one service alone. The company "Planet" has already 285 satellites in space. 88 of 104 microsatellites launched by a single Indian PLSV rocket in early 2017 were from that company; 4 kg each.
Such satellites would matter a lot to warfare (a tiny quantity of commercial imagery satellites already proved valuable in the 1991 Iraq War), and it appears that anti-satellite munitions (=rockets) would not be a suitable approach against them.
Moreover, they appear to be affordable to almost any potentially warring government by the dozens at least.
A great power would either need blinding (not just dazzling) lasers or near-continuous radio data link jamming to defeat such a reconnaissance capability in space. Anti-satellite missiles that cost millions of Euros each are no appropriate countermeasure. The most affordable countermeasure might be to simply disable the operator's control capacity on the ground and hope that the adversary has no backup plan to counter this move.

www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/08/army-will-use-lasers-to-cubesats-for-50-times-faster-communication.html

The use of lasers for communication would of course make communications activity much safer for those on the ground, which might be a huge boon to clandestine agents (and assets), long range recon patrols and armoured recce guys.

The optical receiver would be highly susceptible to damage by hostile lasers, of course.

- - - - - 

blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-the-most-important-idea-in-behavioral-decision-making-is-a-fallacy/

Interesting. I suppose much of what seems to be loss aversion may furthermore be framed as  imperfect information (better information about potential losses than about potential gains).

Imperfect information and its consequences are very important in most fields, including economics, engineering (which works with much more rules of thumb, approximations and guesswork than would be comfortable to the end user) and military theory.

Math, most of physics and IT are largely unaffected by uncertainty and imperfect information, though even there it's often but a question of how close you look.

- - - - -

"[...]deradicalization activists argue that much of what the left thinks it knows about shutting down racist extremists is misplaced. When it comes to changing individuals, denunciation may counteract rather than hasten deradicalization. If that seems like surrender, consider that some researchers who study hate groups think we should view violent extremism not only as a problem of ideology, but also as a problem of addiction: a craving for group identity, adrenaline, and the psycho­logical kick of hatred. As with substance addiction, there may be no silver bullet for curing extremism, only a lifelong battle to leave such impulses behind."

www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/07/reform-white-supremacists-shane-johnson-life-after-hate/

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

.