STOCHASTIC DUEL WITH THREE OR MORE PLAYERS

Consider a stochastic duel with many players. Each player chooses an opponent to shoot at, makes a hit after a random amount of time that follows an exponential distribution, and is killed as soon as being hit for the first time. The duel continues until all but one player is killed, and the lone survivor is declared the winner. The goal of each player is to decide which opponent to target at any given time in order to maximize their winning probability. We develop an algorithm to compute each player’s optimal strategy and winning probability. In particular, the strongest player—the one having the largest kill rate—need not be the most likely to win, and it is not necessarily optimal for each player to shoot at their strongest opponent. We also consider a variation of the game in which players arrive sequentially to select their own kill rates, knowing the selections made by players who arrived earlier. In this sequential-move game with three players, the first player wants to be mediocre and the third player has the best chance to win. Our findings enable further understanding of military conflicts that involve three or more adversaries in the same area of operations.Approved for public release. Distribution is unlimited.Outstanding ThesisMajor, United States Marine Corp

Identifying appropriate motivations to encourage people to adopt healthy nutrition and physical activity behaviours

Many social marketing campaigns use threat (or fear) appeals to promote healthy behaviours, for example, ‘Quit smoking. You’ll soon stop dying for a cigarette’, ‘Slip! Slop! Slap! Don’t die in the sun this summer’, and ‘Speed kills’. These messages appeal to the negative motivation of problem avoidance and use fear arousal to persuade. This study explored people’s motivations for adopting healthy nutrition and physical activity behaviours. Overall, it appeared that four motivations (two negative and two positive) were particularly salient: a) Problem removal: managing illness and injury; b) Problem avoidance: avoiding illness, injury, premature death, harm to unborn baby; c) Self approval: feeling better about self; and d) Sensory gratification: mood elevation. The results suggest that, while problem avoidance is an appropriate motivation it is not the only one. Social marketing practitioners could use a range of other motivations that may be equally effective. In the same way that consumers assess marketing messages relating to goods and services, consumers of social marketing messages can choose to pay attention to the sorts of messages that work for them, and decide to disregard others that may be less helpful

Move-minimizing puzzles, diamond-colored modular and distributive lattices, and poset models for Weyl group symmetric functions

The move-minimizing puzzles presented here are certain types of one-player combinatorial games that are shown to have explicit solutions whenever they can be encoded in a certain way as diamond-colored modular and distributive lattices. Such lattices can also arise naturally as models for certain algebraic objects, namely Weyl group symmetric functions and their companion semisimple Lie algebra representations. The motivation for this paper is therefore both diversional and algebraic: To show how some recreational move-minimizing puzzles can be solved explicitly within an order-theoretic context and also to realize some such puzzles as combinatorial models for symmetric functions associated with certain fundamental representations of the symplectic and odd orthogonal Lie algebras

The Development of the Perth Charter for the Promotion of Mental Health and Wellbeing

The Perth Charter for the Promotion of Mental Health and Wellbeing is an initiative of the organizing committee of the 7th World Conference on the Promotion of Mental Health and Prevention of Mental and Behavioural Disorders. An iterative feedback process was used to develop and revise the charter principles in consultation with health professionals. A final online survey showed strong support for each of the eight principles, which were rated ‘essential’ (as distinct from ‘desirable’ or ‘not relevant’) by 73–96% of respondents. The principles were supported most strongly by practitioners, of whom 85–100% classified each as ‘essential’. It is hoped that mental health professionals find the Charter useful for advocating for greater resource allocation in their jurisdictions to mental health, in general and to mental health promotion in particular

Developing the Perth Charter for the Promotion of Mental Health and Wellbeing

While the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion promotes a holistic approach to health promotion, health promotion in practice has largely been confined to physical health promotion. Hence the organising committee for the Seventh World Conference on the Promotion of Mental Health and Prevention of Mental and Behavioural Disorders (held 17–19 October 2012 in Perth, WA) decided to develop a ‘Perth Charter for Mental Health Promotion and Wellbeing,’ which has just been published in the International Journal of Mental Health Promotion. It was hoped that the Perth Charter for Mental Health Promotion would be helpful as a first step towards eventual integration of physical and mental health promotion. The Charter was designed to be succinct and actionable, and was developed in three phases through an iterative feedback process with input from health professionals around the globe. The Perth Charter is intended to be a useful resource for mental health professionals in advocating for greater resource allocation and policy support for mental health, and mental health promotion in particular at a local level. It was envisaged that the Perth Charter would do for mental health promotion what the Ottawa Charter did for health promotion generally, and physical health promotion in particular. An abridged version of the Perth Charter is provided within this review, while the full version is available for download from the Clifford Beers Foundation or from Dr Julia Anwar McHenry

NEEMIS : text of governors presentation of October 6, 1975

Prepared in association with the Alfred P. Sloan School of ManagementThis is the text of a presentation given to the six New England governors on November 7, 1975. The presentation focused on explaining how the New England Energy Management Information System (NEEMIS) has helped the region, what it is, how it will continue to help the region, what unique technology made it possible, what shall be done in the future, and a demonstration of one application

Randomized low-rank Dynamic Mode Decomposition for motion detection

N. Benjamin Erichson acknowledges support from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).This paper introduces a fast algorithm for randomized computation of a low-rank Dynamic Mode Decomposition (DMD) of a matrix. Here we consider this matrix to represent the development of a spatial grid through time e.g. data from a static video source. DMD was originally introduced in the fluid mechanics community, but is also suitable for motion detection in video streams and its use for background subtraction has received little previous investigation. In this study we present a comprehensive evaluation of background subtraction, using the randomized DMD and compare the results with leading robust principal component analysis algorithms. The results are convincing and show the random DMD is an efficient and powerful approach for background modeling, allowing processing of high resolution videos in real-time. Supplementary materials include implementations of the algorithms in Python.PostprintPeer reviewe

Audience reactions to motor vehicle advertisements: a test of compliance with self-regulatory codes

Massive automobile advertising budgets suggest that consumers worldwide are exposed to a large number of motor vehicle advertising messages. This is of concern considering some motor vehicle advertisements may encourage unsafe driving practices. In fact, motor vehicle advertising contributes a significant proportion of all complaints received by the Advertising Standards Bureau (ASB). Further, it appears that many advertisements that may be non compliant appear to fall through the regulatory gaps. This paper presents a test of the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) Voluntary Code of Practice for Motor Vehicle Advertising. It entailed assessing audience perceptions of the messages communicated in three advertisements which were the subject of complaint to the ASB, two of which (Ford, Jeep) were dismissed and the third (Mazda) upheld. Audience perceptions of the ads showed that the ASB were correct in upholding the Mazda complaint that the ad promoted speed and performance aspects of the vehicle. However, our results showed that the Ford and Jeep ads also communicated these messages to the same extent or greater. Our results also showed that the sort of driver behaviour portrayed in these ads is perceived by a majority of viewers as aggressive and risk-taking across all three ads. These results bring into question the approach the Australian Standards Bureau uses to determine whether an advertisement breaches the FCAI Voluntary Code of Practice for Motor Vehicle Advertising