The US Air Force Suicide Prevention Program: Implications for Public Health Policy

ChemInformVolume 19, Issue 33 Physical Organic Chemistry ChemInform Abstract: Ionic Structure and Interactions in 1-Methyl-3-ethylimidazolium Chloride-AlCl3 Molten Salts K. M. DIETER, K. M. DIETER Frank J. Seiler Res. Lab., US Air Force Acad., Colorado Springs, CO 80840-6528, USASearch for more papers by this authorC. J. JUN. DYMEK, C. J. JUN. DYMEK Frank J. Seiler Res. Lab., US Air Force Acad., Colorado Springs, CO 80840-6528, USASearch for more papers by this authorN. E. HEIMER, N. E. HEIMER Frank J. Seiler Res. Lab., US Air Force Acad., Colorado Springs, CO 80840-6528, USASearch for more papers by this authorJ. W. ROVANG, J. W. ROVANG Frank J. Seiler Res. Lab., US Air Force Acad., Colorado Springs, CO 80840-6528, USASearch for more papers by this authorJ. S. WILKES, J. S. WILKES Frank J. Seiler Res. Lab., US Air Force Acad., Colorado Springs, CO 80840-6528, USASearch for more papers by this author K. M. DIETER, K. M. DIETER Frank J. Seiler Res. Lab., US Air Force Acad., Colorado Springs, CO 80840-6528, USASearch for more papers by this authorC. J. JUN. DYMEK, C. J. JUN. DYMEK Frank J. Seiler Res. Lab., US Air Force Acad., Colorado Springs, CO 80840-6528, USASearch for more papers by this authorN. E. HEIMER, N. E. HEIMER Frank J. Seiler Res. Lab., US Air Force Acad., Colorado Springs, CO 80840-6528, USASearch for more papers by this authorJ. W. ROVANG, J. W. ROVANG Frank J. Seiler Res. Lab., US Air Force Acad., Colorado Springs, CO 80840-6528, USASearch for more papers by this authorJ. S. WILKES, J. S. WILKES Frank J. Seiler Res. Lab., US Air Force Acad., Colorado Springs, CO 80840-6528, USASearch for more papers by this author First published: August 16, 1988 https://doi.org/10.1002/chin.198833051Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume19, Issue33August 16, 1988 RelatedInformation

WHAT WITH delivering thousands of babies a year, caring for family members with physical and mental disabilities, rehabilitating adults with alcohol and/or drug abuse problems, counseling couples with marital woes, and dealing with the various ailments and injuries that can afflict a basically healthy young population, it's cause for wonder that peacetime personnel at the US Army and US Air Force medical centers in West Germany are able effectively to carry out the other half of their mission: being prepared to provide medical support in the event of war. Visits to the two centers under the Heidelberg-based Seventh Medical Command, Frankfurt Army Regional Medical Center (FARMC) and Landstuhl Army Regional Medical Center (LARMC), and to the Wiesbaden Air Force Regional Medical Center give some idea how they do it. The task is clearly immense. All three are responsible for primary and tertiary care in their own approximately 13 000 km

ObjectivesTesticular germ cell tumours (TGCTs) are the most commonly diagnosed malignancy among active duty US military servicemen. Occupational risk factors may play a role in TGCT aetiology, although the evidence...

The objective of this research is to evaluate a new methodology, data envelopment analysis (DEA), as a tool for measuring and evaluating the operational efficiency of US Air Force organizations. This study involves the application of DEA to locate possible inefficiencies in the performance of US Air Force real-property maintenance activities. Dynamic behaviour, as exhibited via window analyses, is reviewed along with static counterparts. The testing was done in close coordination with Air Force officials, who reviewed the results for accuracy, validity and relevance. We conclude that this type of efficiency analysis does have value for the Air Force, where it can serve as a guide to auditors, budget programmers, managers and others in measuring, evaluating and enhancing operational efficiency.

Fitness tests for military personnel require primarily weight-bearing activity and are consequently disadvantageous to members with greater body mass. Recent research has developed correction factors for adjusting actual fitness scores in order to remove body mass bias. PURPOSE: To validate these published correction factors for use with US Air Force fitness test components. This study also developed regression models removing all bias due to body weight, body mass index (BMI), and abdominal circumference (AC) measurements. METHODS: Subjects consisted of 533 male and female US Air Force personnel (35.6 ± 6.9 yrs) who completed all 4 components of the Air Force fitness test, consisting of a 1.5 mile run, a one-minute push-up test, a one-minute crunch test, and AC measurements. Published correction factors were used to adjust each fitness test component for body mass. As an alternative to the correction factor method, multiple regression models were developed for each fitness component. The validity of the published correction factors as well as the regression models to remove bias based on body weight, BMI, and AC was determined using the PPM correlation coefficient. RESULTS: For the 1.5 mile run, the corrected run times were not significantly correlated with BMI or AC. However there was a small yet significant correlation between corrected 1.5 mile run times and body weight in both males (-.13) and females (-.14). In females, there was no significant correlation between the corrected push-up or crunch scores and any of the body mass measurements. In males, there were small yet significant correlations between corrected push-up scores and AC (-.15), and between corrected crunch scores and body weight (.17) and BMI (.12). The multiple regression models successfully removed all body mass bias from each fitness component. CONCLUSION: The published correction factors were effective for eliminating body mass bias in push-up and crunch scores in females; however, these correction factors appear to over-correct for 1.5 mile run times in both genders. These correction factors appear to be useful for assessing muscular endurance independent of body mass in US Air Force personnel. For the 1.5 mile run, the developed regression models in this study appear to be an effective alternative method for correction.

Risk factors for severe outcomes among members of the United States military hospitalized with pneumonia and influenza, 2000–2012

To date, the vast majority of developmental programs have had to be satisfied with assessing students’ learning within the confines of their programs. Although there were opportunities for indirect assessments, with graduate surveys or surveys of supervisors/employers, response rates tended to be low. Even when responses were received, they often came from people with little expertise in learning, making it difficult for educators to translate the feedback into actionable program improvements. The United States (US) Air Force has, however, decided to attempt what other learning institutions have not – arguably cannot. It is attempting to leverage its competency-based approach to performance assessment to enhance program evaluation. Because of the closed nature of this learning environment, where students graduate from US Air Force programs and go on to work in US Air Force jobs, there is a unique opportunity to assess learning as it is actually being applied in the workplace. Leveraging a competency-based force-development paradigm, the US Air Force has constructed a “foundational competencies” model for common knowledge, skills and abilities, complemented by occupational competencies specific to individual jobs, positions and specialties. These competencies are mapped to performance descriptions that determine levels of mastery. These performance descriptions are, in turn, mapped to rubrics that guide performance evaluations. Shortcomings in performance can be identified, quantified, and fed back to the developmental program for potential program modification or, for special updates to the force, to ensure Airmen perform their duties properly and achieve desired levels of mastery. This approach has been approved but is not yet fully implemented. The new Foundational Competencies Model has been developed and validated through a criterion-sampling methodology. In addition, many technical careers have created “occupational competencies” models delineated the specific knowledge, skills and abilities specific to their jobs. The full range of supporting assessment mechanisms, however, are still in the process of being designed and dispatched to facilitate ease of use and centralize data-gathering. This article overviews the US Air Force’s approach and its progress to date.

The US Air Force EarthRadar system is a multi-purpose sensor designed and constructed using radar principles. This technology was originally developed for the US Air Force to detect buried unexploded ordnance (UXO). Bakhtar Associates developed the US Air Force EarthRadar technology under the DoD SBIR program. The system is capable of detecting buried metallic and non-metallic objects, including glass vials. In addition, the manner in which system hardware, signal processing, and the integrated high resolution global positioning system (GPS) are configured makes it ideal for applications such as mapping subsurface geological features, locating cavities and collapse features, and identifying contaminated ground.

United States Air Force survey of dental needs, 1977: methodology and summary of findings

: The study of pilot personality has a long and controversial history. Personality characteristics are fairly poor predictors of training completion, but are probably better predictors of operational performance. Personality characteristics are also important considerations in clinical psychological assessment. The current paper describes the personality characteristics of 1301 US Air Force students pilots based on the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R). Compared to male adult norms, male student pilots had higher levels of extraversion and lower levels of agreeableness. Compared to female adult norms, female student pilots had higher levels of extraversion and higher levels of openness as well as lower levels of agreeableness. Percentile tables for the five domain scores and 30 facet scales are provided and discussed for clinical use. A case study is also provided as an example of the clinical utility of these US Air Force norms.

: The US Air Force is the world's preeminent air, space, and cyberspace force. Its mission is to fly, fight, and win, and it does this better than any other air force in the world. Since the inception of airpower, airmen have struggled with the dilemma of how to protect their capability to fly, fight, and win when their aircraft are removed from their natural environment of the air and returned to the ground, where they become vulnerable like any bird of prey. Air Force basic doctrine states, Air and space power is most vulnerable on the ground. Thus, force protection is an integral part of air and space power employment. While the USAF recognizes the threat, base defense- defending one s air assets on the ground- is one of the least understood operational aspects of airpower. The current Air Force strategy for defending air bases is integrated defense (ID)- formerly known as air base defense or air base ground defense. This study looks at the period between September 2008 and June 2010 when the Air Force took on the base operating support integration (BOS-I) mission at Joint Base Balad (JBB). Operation Desert Safeside saw a scope of operations not seen by a single USAF security forces unit since the Vietnam War. During this period over 900 Air Force security forces personnel were deployed in one unit, charged with the defense of JBB. These men and women focused on ground combat operations outside the wire (OTW), while simultaneously synchronizing air and ground forces into the Army s counterinsurgency and stability campaign. This study examines the first full implementation of ID in a combat environment to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy in actual operations, learn from that experience, and provide considerations for future operations.

The US Air Force's (USAF) Pacific Air Forces (PACAF) has an effective approach to turning observations of problems into accomplished actions and mission improvements. This common-sense approach relies on 1) motivated buy-in and participation from the Chief Stakeholder (i.e., CEO, Commander, the Boss); 2) a standard assessment framework; 3) experienced, enduring, corporate memory-equipped assessors; 4) Chief Stakeholder's confidence in his assessors; 5) mid-managers empowered to fix their own problems; 6) access for the assessors to the Chief Stakeholder; and 7) an empowered ramrod to enforce the process and ensure follow-through. This chapter relates the steps of PACAF's process, which Headquarters (HQ) US Air Force called in 2012 “the Air Force's Best Practice at turning observations into progress” and illustrates these steps with PACAF's very positive experiences.

Application of Systems Engineering to USAF Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR)

Systems and devices that are controlled remotely are becoming more common in security systems in the US Air Force and other government agencies to provide protection of valuable assets. These systems reduce the number of needed personnel while still providing a high level of protection. However, each remotely controlled device usually has its own communication protocol. This limits the ability to change devices without changing the system that provides the communications control to the device. Sandia is pursuing a standard protocol that can be used to communicate with the different devices currently in use, or may be used in the future, in the US Air Force and other government agencies throughout the security community. Devices to be controlled include intelligent pan/tilt mounts, day/night video cameras, thermal imaging cameras, and remote data processors. Important features of this protocol include the ability to send messages of varying length, identify the sender, and more importantly, control remote data processors. As camera and digital signal processor (DSP) use expands, the DSP will begin to reside in the camera itself. The DSP can be used to provide auto-focus, frame-to-frame image registration, video motion detection (VMD), target detection, tracking, image compression, and many other functions. With the serial data control link, the actual DSP software can be updated or changed as required. Coaxial video cables may become obsolete once a compression algorithm is established in the DSP. The paper describes the proposed public domain protocol, features, and examples of use

In a move towards standardization of automatic test equipment (ATE), the US Air Force is enforcing utilization of modular ATE (MATE) guides in the development of test systems for both current and future avionics programs. The author discusses the design and production of thirteen automatic depot inertial navigation test systems (ADINTS), using the MATE guides. ADINTS is designed with accessible interfaces, large computer memory, reserved rack space and test table flexibility, all of which make it adaptable to many kinds of units under test. Of particular importance in testing inertial products, a real-time-controlled interface is available. The bus architecture complies with the MIL-STD-1553 A/B requirements. When coupled with the benefits to a depot of standardization, commonality of spare parts, and shorter run times, ADINTS has the potential to provide support to other military services and some commercial users of inertial products both in the USA and overseas, as well as the US Air Force. >