How can the United States craft a sustainable national security strategy in a world of shifting threats, sharp resource constraints, and a changing balance of power? This volume brings together research on this question from political science, history, and political economy, aiming to inform both future scholarship and strategic decision-making.

A broad-ranging study of the relationship between alliances and the conduct of grand strategy, examined through historical case studies.

Modernizing Learning: Building the Future Learning Ecosystem is an implementation blueprint for connecting learning experiences across time and space. This co-created plan represents an advancement of how and where learning will occur in the future. Extensive learning and technological research has been conducted across the myriad disciplines and communities needed to develop this holistic maturation of the learning continuum. These advancements have created the opportunity for formal and informal learning experiences to be accessible anywhere, anytime, and to be personalized to individual needs. However, for full implementation and maximal benefits for learners of all ages and within all communities to be achieved, it is necessary to centralize and coordinate the required connections across technology, learning science, and the greater supporting structures. Accordingly, the ADL Initiative has taken the lead in this coordination process, connecting Government, Military, Academia, Industry, and K-12 teachers, instructors, technologists, researchers, and implementers to create and execute a coordinated transition process. Input was included from stakeholders, communities, and supporting entities which will be involved in this advancement of the life-long learning ecosystem.

This paper reviews the performance of the UK's flexible inflation targeting framework against the internationally-accepted monetary policy objective of price stability, a pre-requisite to longer-term growth and macroeconomic stability. Chapters cover the historical and international context, monetary policy frameworks and monetary policy instruments. The paper gives the Monetary Policy Committee's revised remit at Budget 2013. The Government has retained a flexible inflation target framework. The inflation target of 2 per cent, as measured by the 12-month increase in the Consumer Prices Index, is re-affirmed. The remit has been updated to clarify the trade-offs that are involved in setting monetary policy to meet a forward-looking inflation target, and in forming and communicating its judgements the MPC should promote understanding of these trade-offs. The remit continues to require an exchange of open letters between the Governor of the Bank of England and the Chancellor of the Exchequer if inflation moves away from the target by more than 1 percentage point in either direction. The open letter from the Governor should now be sent alongside the minutes of the MPC meeting that followed the publication of the CPI data. The remit requests that the MPC provides in its August 2013 inflation report an assessment of the merits of using intermediate thresholds - policy commitments conditional on future economic developments. The remit also reflects the Government's intention that the frameworks for monetary policy and macro-prudential policy, operated by the MPC and FPC of the Bank of England respectively, should be coordinated.

A doctor on the front lines of hospital care illuminates one of the most important and controversial social issues of our time. It is harder to die in this country than ever before. Though the vast majority of Americans would prefer to die at home—which hospice care provides—many of us spend our last days fearful and in pain in a healthcare system ruled by high-tech procedures and a philosophy to “fight disease and illness at all cost.” Dr. Ira Byock, one of the foremost palliative-care physicians in the country, argues that how we die represents a national crisis today. To ensure the best possible elder care, Dr. Byock explains we must not only remake our healthcare system but also move beyond our cultural aversion to thinking about death. The Best Care Possible is a compelling meditation on medicine and ethics told through page-turning life-or-death medical drama. It has the power to lead a new national conversation.