Toni Dach: What Forensics Did for Me

ALUMNI CORNER: The forensic community is filled with alumni who will tout the benefits they received through their participation in intercollegiate speech and debate activities. As directors of forensics programs face battles for budgets and sometimes for their program’s very existence, having a collection of published testimonies about the positive influence of forensics can be a tremendous help. To that end, Speaker & Gavel is setting aside space in each issue for our alumni to talk about how forensics has helped them in their professional life. These are our alumni’s stories

SLIDES: Lessons Learned from the Development and Implementation of an Adaptive Management Plan at Three Hydropower Plants in Northeastern Washington State

Presenter: Bob Dach, Federal Activities Specialist, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Mountain-Prairie Region, Lakewood, CO 11 slide

How the Ethnic-fragmentation and Class-division of Cities Contributes to Human Trafficking and Complex Criminal Activity in South East Asia

According to the U.S. state department there are approximately 20-30 million slaves in the world today; resulting from an annual human trafficking rate of over 600,000 people every year. That means over 480,000 people are trafficked for sexual exploitation and at least 120,000 people for labor exploitation. Although the transportation and forced usage of individuals is highly frowned upon, many countries still have yet to establish the necessary laws and regulations to be able to successfully combat human trafficking. This is especially true in the one of the world’s most dangerous regions for human trafficking- Southeast Asia. This presentation will correlate the Ethnic-fragmentation and Class-division of the countries the Southeast Asia (Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia) to the higher levels of Human Trafficking and Complex Criminal Activity than is seen in more communally-cohesive parts of the world

Lost in Transmission: Romantic Relationships Mediated by Wireless Technologies

Some estimate that short-messaging-service (SMS) text messaging will reach 9.4 trillion messages per year by 2016, not including billions of messages sent by other forms of texting, such as MMS and iPhone\u27s iMessage service. Research shows that habitually using methods of instant communication in romantic relationships has changed the way we communicate with our partners. Direct or inferred meanings sent electronically are often misconstrued by the “receiver” of the messages. Societal norms such as Texting and Instant Messaging (on social networking sites such as Facebook) have introduced new stressors to communication. This project will present research to analyze how the way society transmits messages in romantic relationships can lead to a change in their meanings and the quality of romantic relationships

High-rate GPS clock corrections from CODE: support of 1Hz applications

GPS zero-difference applications with a sampling rate up to 1Hz require corresponding high-rate GPS clock corrections. The determination of the clock corrections in a full network solution is a time-consuming task. The Center for Orbit Determination in Europe (CODE) has developed an efficient algorithm based on epoch-differenced phase observations, which allows to generate high-rate clock corrections within reasonably short time (<2h) and with sufficient accuracy (on the same level as the CODE rapid or final clock corrections, respectively). The clock determination procedure at CODE and the new algorithm is described in detail. It is shown that the simplifications to speed up the processing are not causing a significant loss of accuracy for the clock corrections. The high-rate clock corrections have in essence the same quality as clock corrections determined in a full network solution. In order to support 1Hz applications 1-s clock corrections would be needed. The computation time, even for the efficient algorithm, is not negligible, however. Therefore, we studied whether a reduced sampling is sufficient for the GPS satellite clock corrections to reach the same or only slightly inferior level of accuracy as for the full 1-s clock correction set. We show that high-rate satellite clock corrections with a spacing of 5s may be linearly interpolated resulting in less than 2% degradation of accurac