Formal Contexts, Formal Concept Analysis, and Galois Connections

Formal concept analysis (FCA) is built on a special type of Galois connections called polarities. We present new results in formal concept analysis and in Galois connections by presenting new Galois connection results and then applying these to formal concept analysis. We also approach FCA from the perspective of collections of formal contexts. Usually, when doing FCA, a formal context is fixed. We are interested in comparing formal contexts and asking what criteria should be used when determining when one formal context is better than another formal context. Interestingly, we address this issue by studying sets of polarities.Comment: In Proceedings Festschrift for Dave Schmidt, arXiv:1309.455

Cognitively Engineering a Virtual Collaboration Environment for Crisis Response

Crisis response situations require collaboration across many different organizations with different backgrounds, training, procedures, and goals. The Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004 and the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts in 2005 emphasized the importance of effective communication and collaboration. In the former, the Multinational Planning Augmentation Team (MPAT) supported brokering of requests for assistance with offers of help from rapidly deployed military and humanitarian assistance facilities. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the National Guard Soldiers and active component Army Soldiers assisted other state, federal, and non-government organizations with varying degrees of efficiency and expediency. Compounding the challenges associated with collaboration during crisis situations is the distributed nature of the supporting organizations and the lack of a designated leader across these military, government, nongovernment organizations. The Army Research Laboratory is collaborating with the University of Edinburgh, University o

Gait Velocity Estimation using time interleaved between Consecutive Passive IR Sensor Activations

Gait velocity has been consistently shown to be an important indicator and predictor of health status, especially in older adults. It is often assessed clinically, but the assessments occur infrequently and do not allow optimal detection of key health changes when they occur. In this paper, we show that the time gap between activations of a pair of Passive Infrared (PIR) motion sensors installed in the consecutively visited room pair carry rich latent information about a person's gait velocity. We name this time gap transition time and show that despite a six second refractory period of the PIR sensors, transition time can be used to obtain an accurate representation of gait velocity. Using a Support Vector Regression (SVR) approach to model the relationship between transition time and gait velocity, we show that gait velocity can be estimated with an average error less than 2.5 cm/sec. This is demonstrated with data collected over a 5 year period from 74 older adults monitored in their own homes. This method is simple and cost effective and has advantages over competing approaches such as: obtaining 20 to 100x more gait velocity measurements per day and offering the fusion of location-specific information with time stamped gait estimates. These advantages allow stable estimates of gait parameters (maximum or average speed, variability) at shorter time scales than current approaches. This also provides a pervasive in-home method for context-aware gait velocity sensing that allows for monitoring of gait trajectories in space and time

Unsettling Questions Regarding Lawyer Civil Claim Settlement Authority

While often presumed or declared to be quite settled, many of the guidelines on lawyer civil claim settlement authority are unsettled, leaving unresolved questions for lawyers, clients, and the courts. The upcoming publication and general circulation by the ALI of The Law Governing Lawyers will help, as may any attention directed toward settlements by the ABA Ethics 2000 Commission, now at work considering possible alterations of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. Recent experience suggests that state and federal court rulings are not likely to settle much of the present uncertainty. Our review of the prevailing lawyer civil settlement guidelines suggests the need for certain new initiatives. First, the guidelines should predominantly originate in state supreme courts. At the very least, their general parameters should usually appear in written rules on the professional conduct of lawyers. For now, federal courts should defer to these state rules unless there are very significant federal interests. Second, as a starting point, state courts should carefully consider the ALI pronouncements in The Law Governing Lawyers. Lawyers generally are not like other agents nor are lawyer retainer and subsequent legal service agreements generally like other contracts. Unlike most other agents, the conduct of lawyers with third persons on behalf of clients is governed not only by the directives of clients, but also by mandatory professional conduct standards. Furthermore, unlike most other contracts, lawyer-client legal service agreements are constrained by public policies found in these same standards, including obligations on information disclosure (from lawyer to client) and on confidentiality (by the lawyer). Thus, lawyers should keep clients informed of settlement talks even if the relevant legal services agreement does not expressly indicate such an obligation. Moreover, lawyers should not reveal the nature of their delegated authority to the adversaries of their clients even when these adversaries have good reason to know. In employing the ALI pronouncements, sensitivity to terminology will be necessary. Distinctions between delegated and undelegated authority, as well as between the varying forms of both delegated and undelegated authority should be set forth. These distinctions need not appear in written laws, but rather may be recognized in accompanying commentaries (which hopefully will dispel any notions that clients always make the civil claim settlement "decisions"). Third, in civil claim settlement settings involving the interests of two or more American governments, issues of lawyer civil claim settlement authority should normally be resolved with the lawyer professional conduct laws of the state where the relevant civil claim is pending. Otherwise, the choice of law standards in Model Rule 8.5(b) should resolve this issue. Fourth, when the general written rule (or code) provisions on lawyer conduct are supplemented (and, at times, overridden), the general laws should cross-reference, to the extent feasible, the special laws so there can be appropriate integration of all applicable standards