Swedish Defence University

Autistic persons experience problems with movements and body awareness in everyday functionality, expressed in affected movement quality. Yet, there is a knowledge gap about the effects of interventions targeting these aspects in autistic persons. To evaluate effects of Basic Body Awareness Therapy (BBAT) and treatment-as-usual (TAU), compared to TAU alone on movement quality in autistic persons. In this pragmatic RCT, autistic persons with no intellectual disorder, 15-30 years old and in contact with habilitation services, were randomized to an intervention group (IG) (n=28, 22 females) or a control group (CG) (n=29, 21 females). The IG received 12 sessions of individual BBAT and TAU, the CG received TAU. Primary outcome was a person-reported measure of an individualized movement quality problem, using a numeric rating scale (NRS). Secondary outcome was Body Awareness Scale Movement Quality (BAS MQ), i.e., scored physiotherapist observations. Between- and within-group analyses, and individual one-sided t-tests were performed. Comparing the between-group changes in NRS and BAS MQ after 12 weeks, the differences were statistically significant in favor of the IG (p<0.001). Within-group analyses: the IG had statistically significant improvements on both outcomes (p<0.001), the CG had not. Individually in the IG, 54% of the participants improved significantly in NRS and 41% in BAS MQ. In the CG, the corresponding numbers were 10% and 7%, respectively. BBAT and TAU were superior to TAU alone for improving movement quality. BBAT is a relevant intervention for autistic young adults to improve everyday functionality. Clinical Trials NCT0323876.

This article investigates how officer esprit de corps was formed in the emerging interwar Finnish armed forces. The Finnish officer corps emerged during a devastating civil war from two competing groups: older Russian-educated and younger and more radical German-trained jaeger officers. Their relationship turned into a serious conflict during the 1920s. Mesolevel institutional cohesion has been sparsely examined in past scholarship, where corps esprit has usually been taken for granted. This article introduces the concept of intramilitary relations and presents seven sociological factors that can affect officer esprit de corps: ideology, identity, patronage, military experience, generation, class, and professional institutions. As intramilitary relations are closely linked to broader civil–military relations, the article also sheds light on to date largely underexplored Finnish civil–military relations. The Finnish case shows that while military institutions are crucial for esprit in the long run, without consensus, institutions can be used as instruments for power struggles and weaken cohesion.

The dominating emphasis of psychological research into moral injury has focused on clinical assessment, diagnosis, and treatment. This article focuses on the particular case of the role of the leader/leadership in moral injury in a military context. To address this objective, a systematic scoping literature review was conducted with the aim of investigating the scope of existing research to identify gaps and encourage future research and interventions. Thematic analysis was used to structure the data in an explorative inductive manner and an attempt was made to integrate the themes identified to gain a more holistic understanding of the subject matter. The results show that a significant portion of the literature views leadership failure or leader betrayal as a potentially morally injurious event (PMIE), a primary cause (predictor) of moral injury. However, a significant number also view leadership as a key factor in the prevention and mitigation of moral injury. Consequently, the lack of empirical evidence focusing on the role of leadership in moral injury must be regarded as problematic and should be given greater emphasis to advance understanding and guide the development of effective, evidence-based interventions.

Abstract The digitalization of our societies makes them increasingly vulnerable to emerging cyberthreats. These cyberthreats can manifest themselves in the form of organized, sophisticated, and persistent threat actors, as well as nonadversarial mistakes. Staff involved in responding to cyberthreats and handling incidents in organizations need cyber situation awareness. This paper presents a case study on what challenges members of staff involved in cybersecurity in a large, complex organization experience when developing cyber situation awareness while handling a remote code execution vulnerability in the form of Log4Shell. Two types of qualitative empirical material were used for the case study, data collected through semi-structured interviews with ten informants, and internal documentation. The empirical material was analyzed to create a timeline of events in the organization. The results show how information about the threat spread throughout the organization, the types of artifacts that served as common operational pictures, and the role played by information sharing in maintaining staff cyber situation awareness. Three major challenges to the organization were found: (i) information sharing among staff was not effortless, (ii) there was no organization-wide common operational picture established, and (iii) inaccurate information was shared. This study adds a real-world contribution to the literature on organizational handling of cyberthreats.

ABSTRACT Mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence (HREDD) policies seem to represent a pathbreaking shift from voluntary measures to binding rules for global supply chains. Yet these policies endorse a “smart‐mix” of voluntary and mandatory measures, and risk over‐reliance on questionable private‐sector assurances. In this paper, we ask how businesses framed these private/voluntary efforts in the face of looming regulation, focusing on the EU's new Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). Through a systematic coding of policy positions, we find businesses (1) using voluntary initiatives to delegitimize mandatory measures , (2) seeking to institutionalize voluntary norms , (3) pushing for private assurances to signify legal compliance , or (4) endorsing mandatory measures to protect the competitive advantage of sustainability leaders. While frames (1) and (4) shaped the debate, we argue that frames (2) and (3) are more fully reflected in the final text of the Directive. We explore both theoretical and practical implications.

Prehospital transfusion (PHT) of blood products by emergency medical services (EMS) has become common in civilian settings. However, variability exists in practices across the US. There are few large-scale data describing US civilian PHT with regard to blood products administered, potential exposure of females of childbearing potential to D-positive blood, or the proportion of PHT cases occurring in EMS transports of short duration. To evaluate nationwide PHT trends, regional differences, and potential risks, particularly for D-positive blood administration in females of childbearing potential. This cohort study, Characteristics, Regional Evaluation, and D-Antigen in Transfusions by EMS (CREDIT-EMS), assessed data collected from January 1, 2020, to October 31, 2024 (before hypothesis generation), in trauma and nontrauma patients of all ages treated in 48 states in the US. Prehospital-initiated transfusion of blood products. Age, sex, blood product characteristics (including blood type), and transport time. Comparative analyses were conducted using Pearson χ2, Wilcoxon rank sum, and nonparametric trend tests. Proportions were reported with binomial exact 95% CIs. The study analyzed 10 444 patients (median [IQR] age, 45 [29-63] years; 7302 of 10 439 [70.0%] male) who received 18 177 units of blood products. The proportion of transfused units that were whole blood (WB) increased from 10.0% in 2020 to 30.8% in 2024 (P < .001). Regional variations in PHT were identified, with the Northeast having the highest proportion of WB use (33.2% of PHT). A total of 1589 (15.2%; 95% CI, 14.5%-15.9%) of the study patients were females of childbearing potential (aged 12-50 years), with an increasing number receiving D-positive blood products over time (73 of 169 [43.2%] in 2020 to 372 of 497 [74.9%] in 2024) (P < .001). Prehospital times were 20 minutes or less in only 255 of 10 343 cases (2.5%; 95% CI, 2.2%-2.8%). This cohort study of civilian PHT practices in the US found geographic and temporal variability. There was increasing adoption of WB and significant implications for females of childbearing potential who are increasingly likely to receive D-positive PHT. Cases of PHT uncommonly involved short prehospital duration. These findings highlight the need for standardized protocols and further evaluation of risk-benefit considerations.

This article is about our relationship to two lethal technologies that blow the mind: nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence – and their mutual imbrication. Our diagnosis is that we are missing an ethical critique adequate to the (emergent/resurgent) technologies of mass destruction. In particular, we are dissatisfied with the persistence and dominance of algorithmic reasoning and/in contemporary just war theory, manifest in deterrence theory. We argue that such approaches fail to take into account the intrinsically human capacity to exercise moral judgement and the quintessential human-ness of ethical relations. In response to deprivation of ethics as algorithmic thinking, we summon a distinctly human quality – the imagination – and argue that it is pivotal to exploding the conceptual categories that hamper ‘ethical’ theorising. Imagining the Apocalypse is not the answer; imagining otherwise is. With this in mind, we foreground the imagination as vital to ethical reasoning and political critique.

Abstract We show how the endowment effect can be interpreted in terms of ambiguity aversion. Agents take status quo as their reference point, relative to which they evaluate potential trades. The value of exchanged goods is ambiguous, represented by a set of probability distributions over possible values. Agents are ambiguity averse, modeled as maxmin expected utility maximisers. This characteristic leads a seller to focus on the case of selling a high value good and leads a buyer to focus on the case of buying a low value good. Consequently, the seller’s willingness to accept (WTA) is inflated and the buyer’s willingness to pay (WTP) is deflated, producing an endowment effect. Assuming that agents incorporate new information via Bayesian updating of the set of priors, we show that information decreases the WTP-WTA gap. In this way our model can account for the known facts that the endowment effect is mitigated by physical contact with the good, decreasing in experience, larger for non-market goods, and more dependent on possession of the good than on ownership.

As offensive cyber operations have become more commonplace, cyber collateral damage (CCD) to society and to civilian infrastructure has expanded in impact and severity. Several research contexts, frameworks, and methods apply to these collateral effects, especially as they pertain to reducing them. To investigate and map this area of research, five leading scientific databases (Scopus, IEEE Xplore, Springer Link, ScienceDirect, and ProQuest) were searched for papers on CCD. From 716 search results, 74 relevant papers were selected. Using surface categories as well as thematic analysis, these were grouped into the main emergent categories of legal, ethical, targeting-oriented, and econometric papers, with each category showing a recent research trend. The papers were qualitatively assessed for importance and coverage and compared bibliographically to identify key papers and authors. Within the identified areas of research, significant gaps remain. While CCD is becoming increasingly well understood from a legal and operational perspective, this accounts only for a fraction of the civilian harm caused by offensive cyber operations. This study identifies potential pathways for the synthesis of the current research areas (targeting, taxonomy, econometrics) with broader definitions of collateral damage to include civilian harm. These include updating national cyber doctrines to require collateral damage estimates, as well as exploiting emerging open datasets to understand which cyber capabilities cause the greatest collateral effects. Finally, we observe that the research definitions and taxonomy of CCD differ widely and have been subjected to limited scrutiny and challenge to date.

Inter-state warfare increasingly exploits the reach and ubiquity of information technology, digital communications, and social media, employing strategies of information warfare (IW) capable of undermining democratic systems and causing destabilization through phenomena such as polarization. This paper aims to investigate the IW strategies used by the Russian state against Sweden in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. To do so, it employs an interpretivist narrative analysis, considering the thematic nature of the various antagonistic plots, or groups of plots, communicated by Russia. The authors collected data from the Russian media channel RT (formerly Russia Today) on articles concerning Sweden in the period following Russia&rsquo;s invasion of Ukraine, to identify sub- and main plots, and to determine the development of strategies based on these plots. Results identify a new strategy not previously identified in literature, that of exploitation, and several sub-plots contributing to a narrative in which Sweden is responsible for the failing security situation in Europe. While the authors&rsquo; source of data and sample size is limited and, as such, the results may not be generalized to other countries or regions, the methodology applied here can be further validated across a greater number of sources. This study contributes by building upon the growing body of literature on IW and security within the international relations context.