An instinct for detection: psychological perspectives on CCTV surveillance

The aim of this article is to inform and stimulate a proactive, multidisciplinary approach to research and development in surveillance-based detective work. In this article we review some of the key psychological issues and phenomena that practitioners should be aware of. We look at how human performance can be explained with reference to our biological and evolutionary legacy. We show how critical viewing conditions can be in determining whether observers detect or overlook criminal activity in video material. We examine situations where performance can be surprisingly poor, and cover situations where, even once confronted with evidence of these detection deficits, observers still underestimate their susceptibility to them. Finally we explain why the emergence of these relatively recent research themes presents an opportunity for police and law enforcement agencies to set a new, multidisciplinary research agenda focused on relevant and pressing issues of national and international importance

Detect the unexpected: a science for surveillance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to outline a strategy for research development focused on addressing the neglected role of visual perception in real life tasks such as policing surveillance and command and control settings. Approach – The scale of surveillance task in modern control room is expanding as technology increases input capacity at an accelerating rate. The authors review recent literature highlighting the difficulties that apply to modern surveillance and give examples of how poor detection of the unexpected can be, and how surprising this deficit can be. Perceptual phenomena such as change blindness are linked to the perceptual processes undertaken by law-enforcement personnel. Findings – A scientific programme is outlined for how detection deficits can best be addressed in the context of a multidisciplinary collaborative agenda between researchers and practitioners. The development of a cognitive research field specifically examining the occurrence of perceptual “failures” provides an opportunity for policing agencies to relate laboratory findings in psychology to their own fields of day-to-day enquiry. Originality/value – The paper shows, with examples, where interdisciplinary research may best be focussed on evaluating practical solutions and on generating useable guidelines on procedure and practice. It also argues that these processes should be investigated in real and simulated context-specific studies to confirm the validity of the findings in these new applied scenarios

An alternative fit to Belle mass spectra for DD, D*D* and Lambda_C Lambda_c

Peaks observed by Belle in DD at 3.878 GeV and in D*D* at 4.156 GeV may be fitted by phase space multiplied by a form factor with an RMS radius of interaction 0.63 fm. The peak observed in Lambda_C Lambda_C at 4.63 GeV may be explained by Y(4660), multiplied by a corresponding form factor with RMS radius 0.94 fm.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figures Shorted version, conclusions unchange

An electron Talbot interferometer

The Talbot effect, in which a wave imprinted with transverse periodicity reconstructs itself at regular intervals, is a diffraction phenomenon that occurs in many physical systems. Here we present the first observation of the Talbot effect for electron de Broglie waves behind a nanofabricated transmission grating. This was thought to be difficult because of Coulomb interactions between electrons and nanostructure gratings, yet we were able to map out the entire near-field interference pattern, the "Talbot carpet", behind a grating. We did this using a Talbot interferometer, in which Talbot interference fringes from one grating are moire'-filtered by a 2nd grating. This arrangement has served for optical, X-ray, and atom interferometry, but never before for electrons. Talbot interferometers are particularly sensitive to distortions of the incident wavefronts, and to illustrate this we used our Talbot interferometer to measure the wavefront curvature of a weakly focused electron beam. Here we report how this wavefront curvature demagnified the Talbot revivals, and we discuss applications for electron Talbot interferometers.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, updated version with abstrac

Study of Cronin effect and nuclear modification of strange particles in d-Au and Au-Au collisions at 200 GeV in PHENIX

Effects of strangeness on nuclear modification in d-Au and Au-Au collisions at 200 GeV are studied, in order to quantify the effects of quark content and mass. Measurements of ratios of the yields in central collisions to the yields in peripheral collisions are performed for lambda baryon and phi meson. Found results show little dependence of particle suppression or enhancement on mass and strange content, but rather prominent difference in nuclear modification between mesons and baryons.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, proceedings of the Seventeenth International Conference on Ultra-Relativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions (Quark Matter 2004

Population spread of the introduced red imported fire ant parasitoid, Pseudacteon tricuspis Borgmeier (Diptera: Phoridae), in Louisiana

Predicting the spread of introduced species, such as natural enemies used in classical biological control programs, requires quantitative data on the rates of spread. Here, the pattern of spread of Pseudacteon tricuspis Borgmeier (Diptera: Phoridae), a parasitoid of the red imported fire ant (Solenopsis invicta Buren; Hymenoptera: Formicidae), was monitored at two widely separated release sites in Louisiana, USA. At both sites, P. tricuspis range expansion (measured as the mean radius of the range from four cardinal directions) was accelerating during the first four years post-release. This pattern contrasts with a linear pattern expected with simple diffusion. This suggests that population spread involved both a neighborhood diffusion and long-distance dispersal component. This is known as stratified or jump dispersal. Annual rates of spread were low in the first two years post-release (possibly owing to an Allee effect), increased rapidly in years 3-4, and slowed down or leveled off by years 5-6. Annual spread rates reached a peak of 15-25 km/yr, with the northward spread being about 40% greater than the spread in the other cardinal directions. High rates of spread in the latter years and directional bias in the spread of P. tricuspis may have been driven by prevailing winds and two northward-moving hurricanes. Spread of introduced species offers insight into factors affecting spread that is more difficult to evaluate for native species. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Fragmentation or Recombination at High p_T?

All hadronization processes, including fragmentation, are shown to proceed through recombination. The shower partons in a jet turn out to play an important role in describing the p_T spectra of hadrons produced in heavy-ion collisions. Due to the recombination of the shower partons with the soft thermal partons, the structure of jets produced in AA collisions is not the same as that of jets produced in pp collisions.Comment: Talk given at Quark Matter 200

π/K/p\pi/K/p production and Cronin effect from p+p, d+Au and Au+Au collisions at sNN=200\sqrt{s_{NN}}= 200 GeV from the PHENIX experiment

We present results on identified particle production in p+p, d+Au and Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 200$ GeV at mid-rapidity measured by the PHENIX experiment. The centrality and flavor dependence of the Cronin effect in d+Au collisions is measured. The Cronin effect for the protons in d+Au is larger than that for the pions, but not large enough to account for the ``anomalous'' proton to pion ratio in central Au+Au collisions.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, contribution to the proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Ultra-Relativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions (Quark Matter 2004

Impact and collisional processes in the solar system

As impact cratered terrains have been successively recognized on certain planets and planetary satellites, it has become clear that impact processes are important to the understanding of the accretion and evolution of all solid planets. The noble gases in the normalized atmospheric inventories of the planets and the normalized gas content of meteorites are grossly similar, but demonstrate differences from each other which are not understood. In order to study shock devolatilization of the candidate carrier phases which are principally thought to be carbonaceous or hydrocarbons in planetesimals, experiments were conducted on noble gase implantation in various carbons: carbon black, activated charcoal, graphite, and carbon glass. These were candidate starting materials for impact devolatilization experiments. Initial experiments were conducted on vitreous amorphous carbon samples which were synthesized under vapor saturated conditions using argon as the pressurizing medium. An amino acid and surface analysis by laser ionization analyses were performed on three samples of shocked Murchison meteorite. A first study was completed in which a series of shock loading experiments on a porous limestone and on a non-porous gabbro in one and three dimensions were performed. Also a series of recovery experiments were conducted in which shocked molten basalt a 1700 C is encapsulated in molybdenum containers and shock recovered from up to 6 GPa pressures

Digitization of multistep organic synthesis in reactionware for on-demand pharmaceuticals

Chemical manufacturing is often done at large facilities that require a sizable capital investment and then produce key compounds for a finite period. We present an approach to the manufacturing of fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals in a self-contained plastic reactionware device. The device was designed and constructed by using a chemical to computer-automated design (ChemCAD) approach that enables the translation of traditional bench-scale synthesis into a platform-independent digital code. This in turn guides production of a three-dimensional printed device that encloses the entire synthetic route internally via simple operations. We demonstrate the approach for the γ-aminobutyric acid receptor agonist, (±)-baclofen, establishing a concept that paves the way for the local manufacture of drugs outside of specialist facilities