Crime Trends: 1990-2016

This report examines crime trends at the national and city level during the last quarter century. It covers the years 1990 through 2016, as crime rates peaked in 1991. It analyzes data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and from police departments from the nation's 30 largest cities. Data for 2016 are estimated, as full year data was not available at the time of publication.This report concludes that although there are some troubling increases in crimes in specific cities, there is no evidence of a national crime wave

Footstep and Motion Planning in Semi-unstructured Environments Using Randomized Possibility Graphs

Traversing environments with arbitrary obstacles poses significant challenges for bipedal robots. In some cases, whole body motions may be necessary to maneuver around an obstacle, but most existing footstep planners can only select from a discrete set of predetermined footstep actions; they are unable to utilize the continuum of whole body motion that is truly available to the robot platform. Existing motion planners that can utilize whole body motion tend to struggle with the complexity of large-scale problems. We introduce a planning method, called the "Randomized Possibility Graph", which uses high-level approximations of constraint manifolds to rapidly explore the "possibility" of actions, thereby allowing lower-level motion planners to be utilized more efficiently. We demonstrate simulations of the method working in a variety of semi-unstructured environments. In this context, "semi-unstructured" means the walkable terrain is flat and even, but there are arbitrary 3D obstacles throughout the environment which may need to be stepped over or maneuvered around using whole body motions.Comment: Accepted by IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 201

Crime In 2016: A Preliminary Analysis

Earlier this year, the Brennan Center analyzed crime data from the 30 largest cities in 2015, finding that crime overall remained the same as in 2014. It also found that murder increased by 14 percent, with just three cities — Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. — responsible for half that increase. All told, 2015's murder rate was still near historic lows. The authors concluded that reports of a national crime wave were premature and unfounded, and that "the average person in a large urban area is safer walking on the street today than he or she would have been at almost any time in the past 30 years."This report updates those findings. It collects midyear data from police departments to project overall crime, violent crime, and murder for all of 2016

Improved Method for Detecting Local Discontinuities in CMB data by Finite Differencing

An unexpected distribution of temperatures in the CMB could be a sign of new physics. In particular, the existence of cosmic defects could be indicated by temperature discontinuities via the Kaiser-Stebbins effect. In this paper, we show how performing finite differences on a CMB map, with the noise regularized in harmonic space, may expose such discontinuities, and we report the results of this process on the 7-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe data.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures; Text has been edited, in line with the PRD articl

The private sector in fisheries: The case of Ghana

The research for this report consisted of two elements: a study of existing literature and data sets on Ghana fisheries, and a field trip to investigate the fishery first hand. The field work was divided roughly equally between key informants in the production, marketing and processing of artisanal and industrial fisheries. For individual fisherfolk, middle women and processors, a purposive sampling system was necessitated by the brevity of the period of research. Where possible, key informants were sought, such as chief fishmen, "Queen" fish mammies and heads of cooperative trading and processing bodies. The bias inherent in this approach is recognised by the authors. Other potential sources of error/bias are the lack of a seasonal perspective of the fishery, unrepresentative nature of the sample of interviews and the necessity to seek informants in accessible areas of Ghana. A number of key informants in Government institutions and agencies as well as donor agencies and universities were also interviewed in order to gain a wider perspective on the framework within which the fisheries sector operates. Where possible, a semi-structured interview format was used, with informants and groups of respondents encouraged to discuss the key issues broadly whilst allowing the flexibility to follow interesting insights as they appeared

Farm to School: A Market Analysis

This paper explores the potential for the National Farm to School Program to effectively engage with Georgia’s public schools in order to reduce local food insecurity and improve the quality of nutrition provided to students. A survey was conducted with the specific goals of assessing: first, the current and future impact Farm to School has and will potentially have on the Georgia economy through schools purchase of local foods; second, the potential market for farmers; third, school administrators willingness to buy local food by Georgia; forth, the level of infrastructure available within schools to prepare fresh, whole foods; and fifth, the perceived opportunities and challenges to buying and preparing local food. University of Georgia collaborated with the Georgia Department of Education and Georgia Organics to develop a survey that met the objectives as defined above. There were twenty-five questions total and most answers were formatted in a multiple-choice selection with an option to write any additional comments. The survey was distributed by the Department of Education to 158 public schools in Georgia, and collected, a total of 93 responses. From the data, it was concluded that the willingness to participate exists, as well as the tools necessary for participation. What appears to be missing is the infrastructure that would allow schools to purchase food easily and frequently. Most schools noted that they would be willing to interact with an online platform that would put them in contact with local growers and sellers.Farm to School, Georgia, Local foods, public schools, survey data for local buying, food security, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty,

The profile of an emission line from relativistic outflows around a black hole

Recent observations show strong evidence for the presence of Doppler-shifted emission lines in the spectrum of both black hole candidates and active galactic nuclei. These lines are likely to originate from relativistic outflows (or jets) in the vicinity of the central black hole. Consequently, the profile of such a line should be distorted by strong gravitational effects near the black hole, as well as special relativistic effects. In this paper, we present results from a detailed study on how each process affects the observed line profile. We found that the profile is sensitive to the intrinsic properties of the jets (Lorentz factor, velocity profile, and emissivity law), as well as to the spin of the black hole and the viewing angle (with respect to the axis of the jets). More specifically, in the case of approaching jets, an intrisically narrow line (blue-shifted) is seen as simply broadened at small viewing angles, but it shows a doubly peaked profile at large viewing angles for extreme Kerr black holes (due to the combination of gravitational focusing and Doppler effects); the profile is always singly peaked for Schwarzschild black holes. For receding jets, however, the line profile becomes quite complicated owing to complicated photon trajectories. To facilitate comparison with observations, we searched a large parameter space to derive representative line profiles. We show the results and discuss how to use emission lines as a potential tool for probing the inner region of a black hole jet system.Comment: 16 pages in emulateapj style, 11 figure

Spacelab Data Processing Facility (SLDPF) quality assurance expert systems development

Spacelab Data Processing Facility (SLDPF) expert system prototypes were developed to assist in the quality assurance of Spacelab and/or Attached Shuttle Payload (ASP) processed telemetry data. The SLDPF functions include the capturing, quality monitoring, processing, accounting, and forwarding of mission data to various user facilities. Prototypes for the two SLDPF functional elements, the Spacelab Output Processing System and the Spacelab Input Processing Element, are described. The prototypes have produced beneficial results including an increase in analyst productivity, a decrease in the burden of tedious analyses, the consistent evaluation of data, and the providing of concise historical records