Human-black bear interactions in Missoula Montana

The increasing frequency and distribution of human-wildlife interactions is a direct result of a growing human footprint worldwide. Specifically, the effects of urbanization can be significant for many species, including American black bears (Ursus americanus). Human-black bear interactions (HBI) resulting in property damage, injury or death to humans, or fear of injury or death to humans are increasing in number and extent throughout North America, and wildlife management agencies are interested in reversing this trend. Using a case study of HBI in Missoula, Montana, my objectives were to examine temporal patterns of human behaviors and attitudes regarding HBI, develop a model capable of predicting the spatial distribution of HBI, and determine forage-related variables that predict use of the urban landscape by bears. Based upon questionnaires sent to a sample of residents in 2004 and 2008, the prevalence of outdoor garbage storage decreased, and support for management actions used to deal with HBI increased. These results suggest that human behaviors and attitudes in urban areas exposed to HBI may be changing. Based on phone complaints regarding HBI recorded by Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks from 2003 to 2008, the probability of HBI is highest when residents live close to large forest patches, close to rivers and streams, and in intermediate housing densities (approx. 7 houses/ha). These results provide a wildlife management tool and a repeatable statistical framework that can be used to predict future HBI in areas where the potential for development is high. Using GPS collared black bears and a time-to-event modeling framework, the probability of an individual black bear being located within the urban landscape was driven by anthropogenic forage availability (i.e., urban green-up, apple availability) as opposed to wildland forage scarcity. Black bears will forage within the urban areas even when wildland foods are available outside the urban area, suggesting that bears shift their behavior in response to the availability of multiple anthropogenic food items (e.g., fruit trees, garbage). Wildlife managers developing management plans for HBI should incorporate possible changes in human dimensions, models that can predict where HBI will occur in the future, and bear populations that are becoming increasingly reliant on anthropogenic food items

Hostage Negotiations in Lieu of Armed Assault

The failed attempt to rescue hostages during the 1972 Olympics in Munich Germany led to the unnecessary and terrible loss of lives of both hostages and captors. Ever since then, great efforts have been undertaken by law enforcement professionals and researchers to develop clear protocols to help insure the safety of all involved parties. Negotiations, one tactic among several, represents a non-violent alternative to armed assault that can be used to obtain the safe release of hostages and the capture of unharmed hostage takers. Drawing on my forty year career experience in California Corrections, this paper argues for the power of dialogue as an essential tool for the peaceful resolution of a crisis involving people, including hostage situations. Examining six notorious case studies of hostage situations from 1972 to the present, this work highlights a number of negotiation strategies. These six events exemplify both peaceful and tragic outcomes, making it clear that all too often the outcome corresponds directly to how effectively conflict-resolution and negotiation tactics are employed. Through analysis and critique of these case studies, this work makes evident that the attitude of the team leadership, as well as the amount of cooperation and coordination between the negotiation team and the assault team, proves critical to the peaceful resolution of a hostage situation and to the saving of lives

Hash-based signatures for the internet of things

While numerous digital signature schemes exist in the literature, most real-world system rely on RSA-based signature schemes or on the digital signature algorithm (DSA), including its elliptic curve cryptography variant ECDSA. In this position paper we review a family of alternative signature schemes, based on hash functions, and we make the case for their application in Internet of Things (IoT) settings. Hash-based signatures provide postquantum security, and only make minimal security assumptions, in general requiring only a secure cryptographic hash function. This makes them extremely flexible, as they can be implemented on top of any hash function that satisfies basic security properties. Hash-based signatures also feature numerous parameters defining aspects such as signing speed and key size, that enable trade-offs in constrained environments. Simplicity of implementation and customization make hash based signatures an attractive candidate for the IoT ecosystem, which is composed of a number of diverse, constrained devices

Theoretical studies of a hydrogen abstraction tool for nanotechnology

In the design of a nanoscale, site-specific hydrogen abstraction tool, the authors suggest the use of an alkynyl radical tip. Using ab initio quantum-chemistry techniques including electron correlation they model the abstraction of hydrogen from dihydrogen, methane, acetylene, benzene and isobutane by the acetylene radical. By conservative estimates, the abstraction barrier is small (less than 7.7 kcal mol^-1) in all cases except for acetylene and zero in the case of isobutane. Thermal vibrations at room temperature should be sufficient to supply the small activation energy. Several methods of creating the radical in a controlled vacuum setting should be feasible. The authors show how nanofabrication processes can be accurately and inexpensively designed in a computational framework

Distributed Random Process for a Large-Scale Peer-to-Peer Lottery

Most online lotteries today fail to ensure the verifiability of the random process and rely on a trusted third party. This issue has received little attention since the emergence of distributed protocols like Bitcoin that demonstrated the potential of protocols with no trusted third party. We argue that the security requirements of online lotteries are similar to those of online voting, and propose a novel distributed online lottery protocol that applies techniques developed for voting applications to an existing lottery protocol. As a result, the protocol is scalable, provides efficient verification of the random process and does not rely on a trusted third party nor on assumptions of bounded computational resources. An early prototype confirms the feasibility of our approach