Positing the problem : enhancing classification of extremist web content through textual analysis

Webpages with terrorist and extremist content are key factors in the recruitment and radicalization of disaffected young adults who may then engage in terrorist activities at home or fight alongside terrorist groups abroad. This paper reports on advances in techniques for classifying data collected by the Terrorism and Extremism Network Extractor (TENE) web-crawler, a custom-written program that browses the World Wide Web, collecting vast amounts of data, retrieving the pages it visits, analyzing them, and recursively following the links out of those pages. The textual content is subjected to enhanced classification through software analysis, using the Posit textual analysis toolset, generating a detailed frequency analysis of the syntax, including multi-word units and associated part-of-speech components. Results are then deployed in a knowledge extraction process using knowledge extraction algorithms, e.g., from the WEKA system. Indications are that the use of the data enrichment through application of Posit analysis affords a greater degree of match between automatic and manual classification than previously attained. Furthermore, the incorporation and deployment of these technologies promises to provide public safety officials with techniques that can help to detect terrorist webpages, gauge the intensity of their content, discriminate between webpages that do or do not require a concerted response, and take appropriate action where warranted

Deploying Artificial Intelligence to Combat Covid-19 Misinformation on Social Media: Technological and Ethical Considerations

This paper reports on research into online misinformation pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic using artificial intelligence. This is part of our longer-term goal, i.e., the development of an artificial intelligence (machine-learning) tool to assist social media platforms, online service providers and government agencies in identifying and responding to misinformation on social media. We report herein on the predictive accuracy accomplished by applying a combination of technologies, including a custom-designed web-crawler, The Dark Crawler (TDC) and the Posit toolkit, a text-reading software solution designed by George Weir of University of Strathclyde. Overall, we found that performance of models based upon Posit-derived textual features showed high levels of correlation to the pre-determined (manual and machine-driven) data classifications. We further argue that the harms associated with COVID-19 misinformation — e.g., the social and economic damage, and the deaths and severe illnesses — outweigh the right to personal privacy and freedom of speech considerations

Influence of capillarity on a simple harmonic oscillating water table: Sand column experiments and modeling

Comprehensive measurements of the water table response to simple harmonic forcing at the base of a sand column are presented and discussed. In similar experiments, Nielsen and Perrochet ( 2000) observed that fluctuations in the total moisture were both damped and lagged relative to the water table fluctuations. As a result, the concept of a complex effective porosity was proposed as a convenient means to account for the damping and phase lag through its magnitude and argument, respectively. The complex effective porosity then enables simple analytical solutions for the water table ( and total moisture) dynamics including hysteresis. In this paper, these previous experiments are extended to cover a wider range of oscillation frequencies and are conducted for three well-sorted materials with median grain diameters of 0.082, 0.2, and 0.78 mm, respectively. In agreement with existing theory, the influence of the capillary fringe is shown to increase with the oscillation frequency. However, the complex effective porosity model corresponding to the classical Green and Ampt (1911) capillary tube approximations is shown to be inadequate when compared to the data. These limitations are overcome by the provision of an empirical, frequency-dependent complex effective porosity model fit to the data. Using measured moisture retention parameters, numerical simulation of the data solving a nonhysteretic van Genuchten - Richards' equation type model is unable to replicate the observations. Existing results of a hysteretic numerical model are shown to be in good agreement with the extended database

New Ways of Being a Man: "Positive" Hegemonic Masculinity in Meditation-based Communities of Practice

Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity is often reduced to a singular construct, consisting of “toxic” traits viewed as detrimental to well-being. However, the concept allows for variation in hegemony, including the possibility of forms more conducive to well-being. Through in-depth interviews with thirty male meditators in the United Kingdom, we explored the social dimensions of meditation practice to examine its potential implications for well-being. Most participants became involved with “communities of practice” centered on meditation that promoted new local hegemonies, and these included ideals experienced as conducive to well-being, like abstinence. However, social processes associated with hegemony, like hierarchy and marginalization, were not overturned. Moreover, participants faced challenges enacting new practices in relation to the broader system of hegemonic masculinity—outside these communities—reporting censure. Our findings are cautionary for professionals seeking to encourage well-being behaviors: that is, there is potential for adaptation in men, yet complex social processes influence this change

Water table waves in an unconfined aquifer: Experiments and modeling

[1] Comprehensive measurements are presented of the piezometric head in an unconfined aquifer during steady, simple harmonic oscillations driven by a hydrostatic clear water reservoir through a vertical interface. The results are analyzed and used to test existing hydrostatic and nonhydrostatic, small-amplitude theories along with capillary fringe effects. As expected, the amplitude of the water table wave decays exponentially. However, the decay rates and phase lags indicate the influence of both vertical flow and capillary effects. The capillary effects are reconciled with observations of water table oscillations in a sand column with the same sand. The effects of vertical flows and the corresponding nonhydrostatic pressure are reasonably well described by small-amplitude theory for water table waves in finite depth aquifers. That includes the oscillation amplitudes being greater at the bottom than at the top and the phase lead of the bottom compared with the top. The main problems with respect to interpreting the measurements through existing theory relate to the complicated boundary condition at the interface between the driving head reservoir and the aquifer. That is, the small-amplitude, finite depth expansion solution, which matches a hydrostatic boundary condition between the bottom and the mean driving head level, is unrealistic with respect to the pressure variation above this level. Hence it cannot describe the finer details of the multiple mode behavior close to the driving head boundary. The mean water table height initially increases with distance from the forcing boundary but then decreases again, and its asymptotic value is considerably smaller than that previously predicted for finite depth aquifers without capillary effects. Just as the mean water table over-height is smaller than predicted by capillarity-free shallow aquifer models, so is the amplitude of the second harmonic. In fact, there is no indication of extra second harmonics ( in addition to that contained in the driving head) being generated at the interface or in the interior

Swash-aquifer interaction in the vicinity of the water table exit point on a sandy beach

The coupling of sandy beach aquifers with the swash zone in the vicinity of the water table exit point is investigated through simultaneous measurements of the instantaneous shoreline (swash front) location, pore pressures and the water table exit point. The field observations reveal new insights into swash-aquifer coupling not previously gleaned from measurements of pore pressure only. In particular, for the case where the exit point is seaward of the observation point, the pore pressure response is correlated with the distance between the exit point and the shoreline in that when the distance is large the rate of pressure drop is fast and when the distance is small the rate decreases. The observations expose limitations in a simple model describing exit point dynamics which is based only on the force balance on a particle of water at the sand surface and neglects subsurface pressures. A new modified form of the model is shown to significantly improve the model-data comparison through a parameterization of the effects of capillarity into the aquifer storage coefficient. The model enables sufficiently accurate predictions of the exit point to determine when the swash uprush propagates over a saturated or a partially saturated sand surface, potentially an important factor in the morphological evolution of the beach face. Observations of the shoreward propagation of the swash-induced pore pressure waves ahead of the runup limit shows that the magnitude of the pressure fluctuation decays exponentially and that there is a linear increase in time lags, behavior similar to that of tidally induced water table waves. The location of the exit point and the intermittency of wave runup events is also shown to be significant in terms of the shore-normal energy distribution. Seaward of the mean exit point location, peak energies are small because of the saturated sand surface within the seepage face acting as a "rigid lid'' and limiting pressure fluctuations. Landward of the mean exit point the peak energies grow before decreasing landward of the maximum shoreline position

Capillary effect on water table fluctuations in unconfined aquifers

Parlange and Brutsaert (1987) derived a modified Boussinesq equation to account for the capillary effect on water table dynamics in unconfined aquifers. Barry et al. (1996) solved this equation subject to a periodic boundary condition. Their solution shows significant influence of capillarity on water table fluctuations, which evolve to finite-amplitude standing waves at the high frequency limit. Here we propose a new governing equation for the water table, which considers both horizontal and vertical flows in an unsaturated zone of finite thickness. An approximate analytical solution for periodic water table fluctuations based on the new equation was derived. In agreement with previous results, the analytical solution shows that the unsaturated zone's storage capacity permits water table fluctuations to propagate more readily than predicted by the Boussinesq equation. Furthermore, the new solution reveals a capping effect of the unsaturated zone on both the amplitude and phase of the water table fluctuations as well as the water table overheight. Due to the finite thickness of the unsaturated zone, the capillary effect on water table fluctuations is modified mainly with reduced amplitude damping and phase shift

Dominance and affiliation as factors in the social organization of same-sex groups of elementary school children

The interactional patterns among first- and second- grade children in same-sex activity groups were analyzed in order to describe the relationships among several aspects of social organization and to examine the centrality of dominance and affiliation in social organization. Videotapes of one group of boys (N = 12) and one group of girls (N = 12) were coded. The results indicated that for both male and female groups, it was possible to specify dominance, leadership initiation, and leadership organization hierarchies. Moreover, there was a highly convergent pattern among multiple indicators of social organization centering on dominance and affiliation. However, the correlation patterns after controlling for social play suggested that the initially similar patterns were accounted for in different ways. Among the girls, the primary element linking the various dimensions was level of social play. Among the boys, there remained a smaller yet interrelated network indicating regularity in rank position for dominance, successful bids, recipient of requests, and number of play partners.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/24982/1/0000409.pd

Measurement of νˉμ\bar{\nu}_{\mu} and νμ\nu_{\mu} charged current inclusive cross sections and their ratio with the T2K off-axis near detector

We report a measurement of cross section $\sigma(\nu_{\mu}+{\rm nucleus}\rightarrow\mu^{-}+X)$ and the first measurements of the cross section $\sigma(\bar{\nu}_{\mu}+{\rm nucleus}\rightarrow\mu^{+}+X)$ and their ratio $R(\frac{\sigma(\bar \nu)}{\sigma(\nu)})$ at (anti-)neutrino energies below 1.5 GeV. We determine the single momentum bin cross section measurements, averaged over the T2K $\bar{\nu}/\nu$-flux, for the detector target material (mainly Carbon, Oxygen, Hydrogen and Copper) with phase space restricted laboratory frame kinematics of $\theta_{\mu}$500 MeV/c. The results are $\sigma(\bar{\nu})=\left( 0.900\pm0.029{\rm (stat.)}\pm0.088{\rm (syst.)}\right)\times10^{-39}$ and $\sigma(\nu)=\left( 2.41\ \pm0.022{\rm{(stat.)}}\pm0.231{\rm (syst.)}\ \right)\times10^{-39}$in units of cm$^{2}$/nucleon and$R\left(\frac{\sigma(\bar{\nu})}{\sigma(\nu)}\right)= 0.373\pm0.012{\rm (stat.)}\pm0.015{\rm (syst.)}$.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figure